Return to Mystic Lake

by Carla Cassidy

  He settled back in his seat and stared out the passenger window. “Now, tell me about this John Merriweather,” he said, deciding he was far better to focus on solving this crime than imagine what his partner might look like without her clothes.

  * * *

  MARJORIE STOOD JUST INSIDE Amberly’s living room, a homey space decorated with pottery and bright colors and woven rugs celebrating her Native American heritage.

  The room smelled of sage and sunshine, and it was obvious that a little boy resided here. The bookcases held not only pottery, but also puzzles and children’s books about horses and dinosaurs. A large plastic dump truck sat next to the coffee table, the bed filled with tiny army men.

  Jackson prowled the room like a well-educated burglar, with booties and gloves to leave no evidence that he’d ever been here. As he moved, she tried not to think about that moment when she’d walked into his motel room and he’d leaned out of the bathroom with just the thin white towel hanging low on his slim hips.

  His bare chest, sleekly muscled and bronzed, had been more than magnificent. As she’d gotten that glimpse of it, for a long moment she’d forgotten how to breathe, and she hadn’t been able to get the unwanted image out of her head.

  He stopped and stared at the large painting above the fireplace. It depicted Amberly as an Indian princess on horseback. Her long dark hair emphasized doe eyes and high cheekbones. She was wild beauty captured on canvas.

  Jackson turned to look at Marjorie at the same time she self-consciously shoved a strand of her hair behind an ear. “She’s quite beautiful,” he said, and then added, with a twinkle in his eyes, “But I much prefer blondes with just a hint of strawberry in their hair.”

  “Does it just come naturally to you? Kind of like breathing?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Yeah, just like breathing,” he replied with a genuine grin that warmed her despite her aggravation with him. He turned back to the painting. “Painted by her ex-husband?”

  “Yes, John painted it.” She’d already told him that John Merriweather was a famous painter who was known for Western settings and beautiful Native American portraits. Most of the Native women he painted looked like his ex-wife. She’d read an article in some magazine where John had talked about how Amberly was his muse.

  “How did John take their divorce?” Jackson turned back to look at her.

  She shrugged. “According to the local gossip, initially he took it rather hard. But I think they had become more like friends than husband and wife. Amberly once mentioned to me that John’s greatest passion was his painting.”

  Jackson frowned. “I love my work, but I save my passion for living, breathing people.”

  Women. She knew he meant women. Not that it mattered to her what Jackson Revannaugh’s personal passion might be. “Are you married?” The question fell from her lips before it had even formed in her head.

  “No, and have no intention of ever getting married. My problem is that I love all women, but I’ve never found one who I haven’t tired of after a week or so.”

  “So, you are a player,” she said, having already suspected as much.

  His blue eyes held an open honesty she wasn’t sure she could believe. “On the contrary, I only date women who know I’m looking for a passing good time and nothing more serious. I don’t toy with hearts or emotions. And now, shall we get back to the case?” He lifted a dark eyebrow wryly.

  Heat warmed Marjorie’s cheeks in an unmistakable blush. Thankfully he didn’t comment on it but rather moved from the living room into the kitchen.

  He hadn’t even asked her if she was married or if she had a boyfriend. He probably thought she was too much of a witch to hold a man’s attention for more than a minute.

  She was, and that was the way she wanted it. She had enough on her plate with her job and helping to pay for the fancy apartment where her mother lived and believed she was still a wealthy heiress.

  She didn’t have time for men. She’d had one brief relationship years ago and he’d turned out to be untrustworthy, as she’d come to believe most men were. She’d been through enough men with her mother, seen what they were capable of, especially the handsome ones full of charm. Nope, she had already decided she’d eventually get a cat, but there would never be a man in the small house where she lived.

  Of course, that didn’t mean she would never have sex again. Like Jackson, if she did she’d just have to make it clear to her partner that she was a one-night stand—not a forever—kind of woman.

  She snapped her attention back to realize Jackson had left the kitchen. It was easy to follow the sound of his heavy footsteps down the hallway to the bedrooms.

  Focus on the job, she reprimanded herself, irritated that Jackson had somehow managed to throw her off her normal game, and she’d been working with him less than two hours this morning.

  It took them only minutes to check out the bedrooms and return to the living room. “There doesn’t appear to be anything here to tie into whatever happened at Cole’s house in Mystic Lake,” he said. “I think it’s time we go talk to John Merriweather.”

  “He lives less than two blocks away.” She checked her watch. It was a quarter after nine. Max would have already left for school and John would be waiting for them.

  Within minutes they pulled into the driveway of John Merriweather’s neat ranch house. Although John was a respected artist whose work was both expensive and in constant demand, he had remained in the house where he and Amberly had lived as a married couple over five years ago.

  “John and Amberly lived here together when they were married,” she explained to Jackson. “When they divorced, Amberly bought her house close by so that Max could stay near his father.”

  “Do they have a court-ordered child custody agreement?” Jackson asked.

  “Not that I know of. I think they just winged it and it worked for them.”

  “We’ll see if it was really working out that well, especially when a new man entered the picture,” Jackson replied as he got out of the car. “I’ll do the interview with him,” he said in a clipped tone she hadn’t heard before.

  She hurried after him, wondering when she’d lost control as lead investigator. She’d allow Jackson to have his moment now, but then she would remind him that this was her case, and he’d simply been invited in to help.

  John answered on the first knock. He was a handsome man with dark brown hair and hazel eyes. At the moment he wore a pair of jeans, an old T-shirt and a simmering panic that shone bright from his eyes.

  Jackson took care of the introductions, and John sighed in relief. “Have you found them?” he asked as he allowed them entry into the house.

  “No, and that’s why we’re here. We’d like to ask you some questions.” Although the Southern accent remained, there was nothing of the lazy charmer in Jackson’s demeanor. His eyes were an ice-blue as they gazed at John.

  “Ask me questions about what?” John sank down to the sofa as if unable to stay on his feet beneath the intensity of Jackson’s gaze.

  Jackson remained standing, as did Marjorie, her gaze darting around the room with professional interest. Nice furniture, although the space had a lived-in look with a newspaper spread across the top of the coffee table and several matchbox cars on a highway built of paper on the floor.

  The walls were filled with Merriweather’s artistic genius, framed canvases of paintings in bright colors, including several of Amberly.

  “How did you feel when your ex-wife married Cole Caldwell?” Jackson asked.

  “I was happy for her...happy for them. All I ever wanted for Amberly was her happiness. What’s this all about? Surely you can’t think I had anything to do with whatever has happened to them.” John’s voice held a hint of outrage.

  “Were you worried that your son might start to think of Cole
as his daddy, cutting you out of his life?” Jackson’s tone held an edge of suspicion that Marjorie instinctively knew he was doing on purpose.

  “That’s crazy,” John scoffed. “My son loves me and I hope he and Cole love each other. A child can’t have too many people to love them in their life.”

  “What did you do over the past weekend?” Jackson asked as he pulled his small notepad and pen from his shirt pocket.

  John released an impatient sigh. “I had Max all weekend. Friday night we went to a movie, Saturday we went to the mall and did a little shopping and then ate at the food court, and then Sunday we hung out here all day.” His hands clenched tight although he kept his voice calm. “You’re wasting precious time here. I would never do anything to hurt Cole and Amberly, especially because they are important to my son. I would never do something like that to him.”

  He looked beseechingly at Marjorie. “Do you have children?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t.” His question created a wistful ache inside her, one she quickly tamped down. In order to have any children she’d have to trust a man, and that wasn’t in the cards for her.

  “Then you can’t understand the love a father has for his son.” He half rose from the sofa. “You have to find them. Max needs his mother.” Tears filled his eyes and he fell back against the cushions.

  “Has Amberly mentioned any problems she’s had with anyone lately?” Jackson pressed on.

  John frowned. “No, not that I can think of. She went through a terrible trauma last year, but the person who tried to kill her was shot dead. Since then she’s just seemed happy with Cole and hasn’t mentioned any problems or issues with anyone.”

  Jackson wrote something down on his pad and then looked back at John. “How was your relationship with Cole?”

  “Fine. It was fine.” John’s control appeared to be slipping. Marjorie saw his hands once again tighten into fists in his lap, and his voice had an edge that had been absent before. “Cole is a good man, and if I’d handpicked the man I wanted in Amberly’s life, in my son’s life, it would have been a man like him.”

  He looked at Marjorie again. “Please, find them. Max needs his mother. He doesn’t know that they’re missing. I just told him his mother was late in coming back from Mystic Lake. For God’s sake, don’t make me tell him she’s missing again.” The humble plea in John’s voice shot straight to Marjorie’s heart.

  “Are you seeing anyone now?” Jackson asked, obviously unmoved by John’s emotion.

  “Seeing anyone? You mean, like, dating?” John shook his head. “Not at the present time.”

  “Have you dated at all since your divorce from Amberly?”

  John’s eyes took on a hard edge of their own. “You think I’m so obsessed with my ex-wife and that I killed her and her new husband?” he scoffed. “I’ve had several brief relationships since Amberly and I divorced.”

  “Why brief?” Jackson was relentless, and still with the cold demeanor that had Marjorie thanking her stars that he’d never be interrogating her.

  “I have my work and I have Max—that doesn’t leave me much time for romance.” John stood. “Are we finished here? You’re wasting valuable time when you could be out hunting who kidnapped Amberly and Cole.”

  “You think they’ve been kidnapped?” Jackson jotted something else in his notepad.

  John raked a hand through his hair, his features once again twisted in agony. “I don’t know. I don’t know what in the hell happened to them. I just know that Amberly would never just disappear like this on Max unless something terrible happened. You’ve got to find them.”

  “We’re going to,” Marjorie said, cutting off anything else Jackson might want to say. She stepped toward where John stood and pulled one of her cards out of her pocket. “If you think of anything that might be helpful, if you remember anyone who might be a threat to Amberly or Cole, call me.”

  John took the card with shaking fingers and nodded. “And you’ll let me know what’s happening with the investigation?”

  “We’ll keep you up to date,” Marjorie assured him.

  “Like hell we will,” Jackson said a few moments later when they were back in his car. “Right now John Merriweather is at the very top of my suspect list.”

  Marjorie shot him a look of surprise.

  “Think about it, Maggie. Who has the most to gain from Amberly and Cole disappearing? Max’s father, that’s who. He has a great motive for wanting them gone.”

  She didn’t want to even think about the fact that he’d just called her Maggie, something nobody else in her entire life had ever done. She didn’t intend to reprimand him now, as right now she was considering what he’d said about John Merriweather.

  “He might have a good motive to get rid of them in a sick sort of way, but he doesn’t have opportunity. He had his son with him all weekend long,” she replied.

  She pulled out of the Merriweather driveway and headed in the direction of the Kansas City field office where they would next be interviewing Amberly’s closest coworkers.

  “I saw a picture of Max and his dad on the bookcase. What is he...about six?” Jackson asked.

  “Seven,” Marjorie replied. “I think he’s going to be eight in a couple months.”

  “I don’t know about you but when I was seven my father could have tucked me into bed and then left the house, gone to a movie, slept with a woman and been back home again before I woke up the next morning.”

  She slid him a curious glance. “And where would your mother have been while your father was out through the night hours?”

  “Dead. She died when I was five, of cancer. But that really doesn’t matter now—my point is that John could have easily slipped outside the house while Max slept, driven to Mystic Lake and done something to Amberly and Cole and been back before Max awoke the next morning.”

  “So, supposing he made that midnight run to Mystic Lake, then where are Amberly and Cole? If he killed them, why not just leave the bodies in the house?”

  “Nobody said I had all the answers, darlin’. I just have theories.”

  “I think this one is kind of lame,” she replied.

  “Maybe,” he agreed, the laid-back agent once again present. “John mentioned something about the last time a man tried to kill Amberly. What was that all about?”

  “It’s actually the case that brought Amberly and Cole together. Somebody was killing young women in Mystic Lake and leaving dream catchers hanging over their bodies. The mayor of Mystic Lake asked for FBI help, and since Director Forbes thought Amberly was the perfect agent to assist, because of the Native American overtones, she was sent to Mystic Lake to work with Cole.”

  She paused to make the turn into the parking area of the field office, a three-story brick building in the downtown area. “The perp eventually went after Amberly and trapped her in a rented storage unit. It was John’s best friend and neighbor who had taken her.”

  She frowned in thought as she pulled into a parking place. “Ed...Ed Gershner was his name. He had some crazy notion that the only way John would be happy again was if Amberly was dead and John could finally forget her. Thankfully, Cole found Amberly, killed Ed and the rest, as they say, is history.”

  She turned off the engine and they both got out of the car. “Hopefully these interviews will go fairly quickly. It’s got to be getting close to lunchtime by now,” he said.

  Marjorie hurried after his long strides, successfully stifling the impulse to knock him upside his head.

  Chapter Three

  Amberly Nightsong Caldwell’s coworkers at the FBI field office had little to disclose about anyone who might want to harm her. She wasn’t currently assigned to any active case. Her director knew she was in the middle of a transitional time in moving Cole into her home, and so he’d given her desk
duty pushing paperwork, and regular hours until she and Cole got things settled.

  Jackson had stepped back and allowed Marjorie to interview the players, since they were also her coworkers.

  He quickly noticed that while the people they spoke to all appeared to respect Marjorie, none of them seemed to be particularly close to her. She was apparently a loner who didn’t require friends.

  Jackson had tons of men he counted as close friends in past partners and at the Baton Rouge field office. Jackson wasn’t only considered a ladies’ man—he was a man’s man, as well.

  He was the first one to invite a crew over to his place for drinks and chips and dip during a football game, or get together a group to do some horseback riding at nearby stables or head to a firing range for a little impromptu competition.

  One thing had become increasingly clear to Jackson as the morning had gone on. Marjorie Clinton was one uptight woman. She smiled rarely and the few she sent his way were filled with either irritation or a strange curiosity, as if he were a species of animal she didn’t know and certainly didn’t trust.

  She intrigued him. He was interested to know her background, what made her who she was today. It was unusual for him to care enough to want to know that much about a woman.

  When they’d finally finished up with Amberly’s coworkers, he’d insisted they find a place where they could sit and eat lunch before beginning the next phase of interviews in Mystic Lake.

  “Don’t look so miserable,” he told her when they sat down across from each other in a booth in a nearby diner.

  “We could have just done drive-through on the way to Mystic Lake and saved some time,” she replied.

  Jackson opened a menu and shoved it toward her. “Mystic Lake will still be there whether we take ten minutes doing drive-through or half an hour actually sitting and eating.”

  “Don’t you feel any urgency?” she asked, leaning toward him, her green eyes shining brightly. Her lashes were long and dark brown and he noticed, not for the first time that day, that she smelled of the fresh scent of a fabric softener combined with a hint of wildflowers.