by B. J Daniels
Jill shook her head, feeling the sting of tears in her eyes. “You think Trevor…”
“I think whoever killed those girls kept a piece of their jewelry as a souvenir,” Mac said softly. “I also think there is a good possibility that the killer buried the girls on the island.”
A chill quaked through her as she recalled the skull she’d seen in Mac’s duffel bag. “Tell me Trevor couldn’t do something so horrible.” But she thought of how he’d lied and stolen and cheated. How he’d planned to leave the country.
“He gave you the ring,” Mac said.
Yes, he’d given her the ring. The ring he’d said was an old family heirloom. A lie. But could it really have been Trevor Forester in the car that stopped for her on the lake road that night fourteen years ago? She’d been sixteen. Trevor would have been twenty. Old-sounding to a sixteen-year-old.
She closed her eyes, remembering the headlights as the car came up the road and stopped. She squeezed her eyes shut more tightly, trying to remember, to see into the darkness inside the car. A large, dark car. His father’s car? The whir of the electric window on the passenger side coming down. A voice from the blackness inside as she leaned down and took hold of the door handle, thinking only about getting home on time.
Her eyes flew open, the taste of fear in her mouth, the sound of her heart hammering in her ears as he grabbed her wrist, and then her pulling free, running, running for her life.
She warned herself not to cry. The last thing Mac needed was a bawling woman on his hands. Actually, he didn’t seem to need any woman at all, especially her.
He handed her a tissue from the glove box.
She didn’t cry. She balled up the tissue in her hand. She wasn’t a sixteen-year-old girl anymore. No, she was a strong, independent woman. And the past few days had only made her stronger, more resilient, definitely more outspoken—almost brazen and, surprisingly, less afraid of her feelings. “It could have been him.”
“I know. That’s what scares me.” His words sent a shaft of heat through her.
She looked at him and their eyes locked.
After Trevor, she knew she should have been gun-shy when it came to men. But Mackenzie Cooper was a different breed of male. She was intimately aware of that, she thought as she gazed into the deep blue of his eyes. He hadn’t forgotten the other night in the cottage any more than she had.
He reached for her, cupped the nape of her neck just as he’d done last night on the boat and pulled her toward him as if he needed to feel her in his arms as badly as she needed to be there. “This is just lust,” he whispered against her hair.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“We’d both regret it if we make love again.”
“Mmm.”
He kissed her hair, her temple, her cheek, angling toward her mouth. Her breath caught in her throat as his lips hovered over hers. In his eyes, she saw the fear. Did he really believe they would be disappointed, regretful? She didn’t think so.
His mouth lowered slowly, painfully to hers. He brushed a kiss over her lips. She sighed and leaned into him. His body was warm and hard. He groaned against her mouth. Her lips parted and his mouth met hers fully. The kiss deepened. The tip of his tongue slid slowly across her upper lip, and she thought she would die with wanting him.
“Oh, Jill,” he said with a sigh as he pulled back to look at her, cupping her face in his hands.
What was he so afraid of?
His gaze moved over her face like a caress, then he pulled away, groaning. As he leaned back in his seat, he ran a hand over his face, then gripped the steering wheel with both hands as he looked out the windshield—not at her.
Disappointment made her eyes well up with tears. She felt weak, the ache in her crying out for him. She wanted to touch his broad shoulders, feel the warmth of his shirt. To lean her face into his chest and breathe in the clean, masculine scent of him.
“I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Where did Trevor say he got the engagement ring?”
She sat back, her heart pounding, the ache inside making her want desperately to cry. She took a breath. Let it out.
He looked at her. His look was a plea. Just tell me about the ring.
She took another breath and said, “Trevor told me the ring belonged to his favorite great-aunt, but I remember Heddy’s surprise when she first saw the ring.” Jill’s voice didn’t betray the unbearable need inside her. “I thought it was because Heddy didn’t think he should have given me such a valuable family heirloom.”
“He obviously lied about where he’d gotten the ring,” Mac said, “and his mother covered for him.”
“Yes, that would be like Heddy.” Jill couldn’t bear to look at Mac. She glanced out at the lake and remembered something. “The day he found out the island was for sale, Trevor was beside himself. We were at his parents’ house and he was practically begging his father to buy the island for him. I remember him saying, ‘If I don’t develop it, someone else will.”’ She shivered. “Alistair said he’d never seen his son so excited or anxious. At the time we all thought Trevor wanted to prove himself to his father, and Inspiration Island was going to be the means.” She looked over at Mac now. “But Trevor’s had the island for months. I would think if his purpose was to move the bodies, he would have done it by now.”
“I suspect he’d forgotten where all the bodies were buried. Plus, animals have gotten into the remains. I suspect he was moving the bodies to the south end of the island, thinking he could hide them behind the restricted area. Or maybe that was where he’d buried them to start with and was just reburying them. I think the bodies were floating up in the mud. The skull I found was sticking up out of some weeds.”
She thought she might throw up. “We have to tell the sheriff.”
“I asked my cop friend for forty-eight hours,” Mac said. “It will take that long to try to get an ID on the skull through dental records. Give me the same amount of time. Let me find my nephew. We still don’t know who killed Trevor. Or why. And my client’s coins are still missing. I’m afraid any one of those factors could get Shane killed if the authorities became involved.”
“You can’t tell me who your client is?”
“Sorry. He’s a victim of Trevor Forester, too. Just like us, it seems,” Mac said, meeting her gaze. “I still don’t know why Trevor sent me a Rhett Butler costume and told me to meet him in the lake cottage. That concerns me.”
“Yes.” She had to agree. “I also wish I knew what Trevor had planned for me the night of the party.” When she thought of what the man might have been capable of…
“Can you hold off going to the sheriff for forty-eight hours?” Mac asked.
“Maybe we can make a deal.”
He groaned.
“I help you find your nephew and you help me find the other Scarlett. What do you say?” He started to argue, but she stopped him. “Please, don’t try to warn me about the dangers, okay?” She gently touched her bruised forehead, remembering the man in the black ski mask.
Mac sighed, then nodded with obvious reluctance.
She gave him a smile, as much as it hurt. “Marvin lives just up the road.”
“WAIT HERE,” Mac said as he pulled up in front of the blue-and-white striped trailer Marvin rented. Jill didn’t argue about staying in the pickup as he climbed out.
He wore jeans, a pale-blue cotton shirt and a dark suede jacket, his idea of funeral attire. Under his jacket, the weapon in his shoulder holster fit snuggly against his ribs, not that he expected he would have to use it. At least he hoped not.
He could feel Jill watching him as he knocked on the side of the trailer and then tried the door.
Unlocked. Almost like an invitation. He opened the door and stepped in, drawing the weapon from the shoulder holster. The place looked and smelled like a summer-kid rental. It was cluttered with clothes, the counters covered in beer bottles and empty fast-food boxes, and the air smelled of stale beer and pepperoni pizza.
He f
ound Marvin passed out in a back bedroom of the trailer. He appeared to be the only one home this late morning. Either he didn’t have to go to work yet or he didn’t have a job. Likely the latter. Mac called his name. Loudly.
Marvin squinted up from the crumpled covers of the twin bed stuffed in a corner of the otherwise packed-with-junk bedroom.
“Who the hell are you?” Marvin looked about fifteen, but according to the driver’s license Mac took from the wallet lying on the bedside table, the kid was nineteen—the same age as Shane. His greasy brown hair hung in strings about his acne-covered face, and he looked as if he had the hangover from hell, but there was no doubt he was the kid who’d been driving the getaway van the night of the coin theft at Pierce’s.
Mac grimaced just looking at him. “Get up.”
“If this is about the rent, you gotta talk to my roommate,” the kid said, and covered his head with the blanket.
“It’s about the robbery. The one you pulled off with Trevor Forester.” Mac opened the back door, needing a little fresh air.
Marvin’s head came out from under the covers. “I don’t know what you’re talking out.”
“Sure you do. Get dressed.” He turned and saw Jill standing in the trailer’s kitchen. He started down the hall toward her, angry. Damn, why couldn’t she just run her bakery and let him do his job?
“What do you think you’re—” The rest of the words were cut off by the look on her face. She was holding a paper bag in one hand and a bakery roll in the other, her eyes large, her face white as snow.
She held the roll out to him.
He stared down at the perfect impression of a double-eagle, twenty-dollar gold piece in the baked dough. “Where did you find this?”
She pointed to the trash.
That was when he noticed the bag in her hand and the name on it: The Best Buns In Town.
Just then he heard Marvin go out the back door of the trailer.
Mac swore and went after him. He caught the punk kid a few yards from the trailer and took him down with a football tackle that knocked the wind out of them both.
He jerked Marvin to his feet and dragged him back toward the trailer. “Are you a cop or something?” the skinny kid whined.
Mac pushed Marvin in through the front door of the trailer and pointed to the kitchen table. “Sit.”
He looked at Jill. She was right. She was up to her neck in this. He took the roll from her and showed Marvin the impression of a coin that had been baked in the dough. “Where are the coins?”
“I swear I don’t know.” He was dressed in thongs sandals, basketball shorts and a once-white T-shirt that hung on his scrawny frame.
“I know you were driving the van the night of the robbery,” Mac said to Marvin. “It’s all on videotape.”
“Mr. Forester, Trevor, he said he needed some help. This guy owed him money and wouldn’t pay, so we helped him. But I got the impression it had something to do with a woman.”
Didn’t it always? Mac shoved the roll with the coin impression in front of the kid’s face. “The coins?”
Marvin swallowed, eyes wide. “My roommate is the one who had them, and he’s gone.”
“Who’s your roommate?”
“Just some guy I worked with. He called himself Spider. That’s all I know.”
Mac heard Jill gasp. He shot her a look. Damn, it appeared she knew this Spider. “How exactly did your roommate end up with the coins?”
“I don’t know. Really. He gave me one of the rolls, all right. The coin was baked inside it. It was my payment for the job.”
This Spider had paid Marvin with one of the coins.
“Tell me you still have the coin.”
Marvin seemed to hesitate, but only for a second. He hurried to a closet and dug around in the back, pulled out an old boot and upended it. A gold coin fell out and clinked on the worn linoleum floor.
Mac picked it up. It still had dough on it. “Did Spider kill Trevor for these?”
“I don’t know anything about that, I swear. I didn’t ask him. I wanted nothing to do with it. I just worked for Mr. Forester, okay?”
“And felony burglary was part of the job?”
“He offered me five hundred bucks to drive a van one night. It was a hell of a lot better than digging up bones on the island.”
Mac shot Jill a look. Her skin had paled even more.
“Who was the other guy involved in the burglary?”
“Mr. Forester and Spider. That’s all.”
“You didn’t see anyone else in the house?” Mac asked, remembering the shadow he’d seen on the video.
“I just drove the van, man.”
That meant the fourth man was either already inside the house or had met them after they got out of the van. That man must have known about the surveillance cameras or just lucked out and stayed out of the picture. Except for his shadow.
“One more question. Who is Buffalo Boy?”
Marvin reddened. “It’s just this name I picked up.”
Mac nodded. “And you met Spider in Whitefish, right?”
Buffalo Boy nodded.
“You need to clean this place up, Marvin.”
“No, man, somebody trashed it yesterday,” the kid said. “At least they didn’t take my stereo or anything.”
“Let me guess—Spider hadn’t dropped off your share yet?” Mac asked, holding up the half roll.
Marvin paled. “You think they were looking for the coins?”
Mac felt protective, probably because Marvin reminded him of Shane. “You might consider lying low for a while.”
Taking the roll and the coin, he and Jill returned to the pickup. Some of the color had come back into her face. “Any idea how that coin ended up inside the baked roll?” he asked her after they were in the truck and pulling away.
“I’m afraid so,” she said.
“And Spider? You know him?”
“I know just the person to ask about him,” Jill said, sounding awful. “My baking assistant, Zoe.”
JILL COULDN’T believe it. But then again, she could. Zoe was head over heels for this Spider guy. She was young and had an excuse for being naive and falling for a man’s line.
But Jill was almost thirty, and look how she’d been conned by Trevor, a man who was a liar, a thief and maybe even a killer.
“The coins were baked into the rolls,” she said, and realized Mac had figured that much out on his own.
Jill thought back to the morning of the party. Zoe had been excited because her boyfriend was going to stop by the bakery. Jill’s father had called, saying he wouldn’t be by because he had the flu, doubted he’d be going to the party, either, sorry. She’d left Zoe with the unbaked rolls while she’d run to the drugstore to get her father a few things.
“I let Zoe finish up the rolls the morning of the party. I should have known something was up, but she’s been so anxious to learn and do things on her own… And her boyfriend was stopping by…”
“Spider, right?”
Jill nodded.
“The morning of the party?” Mac said, sounding surprised. “That means Spider had the coins before Trevor was killed. Where do we find this baking assistant of yours?”
“Summer school. Algebra II. Head back toward Bigfork.”
“Let’s hope they still have the coins,” Mac said.
Jill was worried about Zoe. She’d trusted the girl. And now all she could think about was Zoe’s reaction when she heard about Trevor’s murder. How deep was the girl in all this?
AS THE SMALL summer-school class let out, the students and teacher left quickly. Jill stepped into the classroom and watched Zoe finish an algebra problem, then fold several papers and stuff them into her algebra book before she rose to her feet. Her hair was blue today like everything she wore, including her fingernail polish.
When she saw Jill, Zoe froze, fear in her eyes. She clutched her algebra book to her chest and looked from Jill to Mac and back again.
&nbs
p; “We need to talk to you,” Jill said. “This is Mackenzie Cooper. He’s a private investigator looking for the coins you hid in the rolls you baked the morning of the party.”
Zoe’s face crumpled as she dropped back into the seat at her desk. Mac closed the classroom door.
“I had to help Spider!” Zoe cried. “He would have killed him if he found out.”
“Who would have killed him?” Mac asked.
“Trevor,” the girl said, close to tears.
“Is this Spider?” Mac asked as he walked over to her, opened his wallet and showed her a photo of a young man with blond hair, blue eyes and an angular face.
“Yes, that’s him.” Zoe looked up in confusion.
“His name is Shane Ramsey,” Mac said. “He’s my nephew and I have to find him. His life is in danger because of the coins, the ones you put into the rolls.”
“I don’t know where he is,” she wailed. “He swears he didn’t know Trevor was going to rob anyone that night.”
“You’d think he’d get suspicious when Trevor told him to put on the ski mask,” Mac said.
“I know it looks bad…” Zoe’s eyes teared up.
Jill shot Mac a pleading look.
“He was afraid of Trevor,” the girl said. “He didn’t say it, but I knew. Trevor had hired him to do some work on the island.”
“Do you know what work precisely?” Mac asked.
Zoe shook her head, then frowned. “One night though, when he picked me up, he said he’d been digging in muck all day and that he was going to quit, but the next time I saw him, he said Trevor wasn’t going to let him quit. I got the impression that maybe Trevor had threatened him, you know?”
Digging in muck. “Yeah, I can see where Trevor might have changed Spider’s mind.” Was that how Shane had gotten involved in the robbery? Had Trevor forced him? Or had Shane gone along willingly?
“Where are the coins now?”
Zoe shook her head. “I don’t know. Honestly.”
“How is it Spider ended up with them?” Mac persisted.
Zoe hesitated. “Trevor changed his mind. Said it was a big mistake taking the coins and that Spider had to return them. Trevor was acting all weird—like the guy they stole the coins from was going to kill him. There was no way Spider was going back there with those coins.”
