A Great Kisser (33 page)

“Wow, I never really figured her for wanting an escape hatch. I thought she reveled in her life, her world. I was always a bit envious of how certain she was about her…point, I guess, for lack of a better word.”

“I know, right? But I tell you, Daphne, she’s happier than I’ve ever seen her, almost gloriously so. So, it makes it hard to fault her judgment on marrying Arlen when it’s brought her joy and contentment.”

“So…what are you going to do?”

“About my mother? Nothing. She’s happy and I’m happy for her. We’ve mended fences, and I’ve more or less told her that I’ll come to terms with my own feelings about Arlen and deal with that on my own.”

“And she’s okay with that? She’s not pushing you to have a chummier relationship with him?”

“No. She’s—we’re—just respecting each other’s decisions and feelings.”

“All good. Except he still gives you the heebies.”

“Exactly. So I figured I’d just keep digging until I at least figured out where those feelings are coming from. For myself, at least. If I can put my finger on something, then maybe it will lead to a better understanding.”

“Or not.”

Lauren sighed. “I know. You’re right. But should I just pretend all is hunky-dory and not try and figure it out for myself?”

“No, no. I’m all for figuring things out. So, are you going to investigate this latest wrinkle?”

“Yes, of course. If someone is making phone calls, asking questions about me, I want to know who it is and why they’re doing it. I’m just not exactly sure how to proceed.”

“I think you should talk to Jake. Sounds like he’s rational and pragmatic. And maybe this will resolve the other issue at the same time. If you let him know that you know about Ruby Jean’s dilemma, then perhaps it can all be put on the table and dealt with, once and for all.”

“That might not be a bad idea. I didn’t want to chance making it worse, but it might be the best way to just get it all out there.”

“When do you see him again?”

“We just got back from Vegas—”

“Excuse me? Now
you’re
running off to Vegas? Do not tell me—”

“No, no,” Lauren said, laughing. “Nothing like that.” She explained about the race and the investors.

“So, where was I during this lovely plane ride filled with rich, single men?”

“I know, what’s up with that?”

“Maybe I need to book a few vacation days myself.”

“I wouldn’t turn down the company, or having another voice of reason. You could even bunk with me.”

Now it was Daphne’s turn to laugh. “Right. I’ll just pretend I don’t notice you and Jake in the other bed.”

Lauren actually felt her cheeks heat up. She really had to learn to control that, but with Jake, she seemed destined to become a blusher.

“I’d say you already have enough bunkmates.”

“You might be right about that.” Lauren was grinning again. It was hard not to when she thought about a certain pilot who would be sleeping beside her that night.

“I’m glad I’m right about that, by the way. Besides, I can’t book any time off right now. My best friend went and ditched her job, so I’m stuck trying to train her replacement.”

“Very funny. Natalie is like the bionic woman. I’m sure she’ll be better in my job than I was.”

“She certainly has the right barracuda tendencies for the job.”

Lauren laughed. “See? I knew there was something lacking in my approach.”

“Mine, too, if that’s what they’re looking for.”

“How is the dynamic with her and Todd? I thought she’d be good for him. I don’t think I realized how badly I’ve been burning out until I worked with her briefly, prepping her, before I left. She’s—”

“Bionic. You’re right. And yes, she’s working with him fine.”

“You don’t sound overly enthused.”

“Oh, I’m fine. She’s good, great even. But we won’t be best buds. Hard to make friends with a machine. I just miss you and I’m whining a little. I’ll get over it. When are you coming back?”

Lauren paused. And then the silence lengthened.

“Seriously?” was all Daphne said.

“I don’t know,” was all Lauren could say.

“Well, and I mean this, despite the fact that I already know there’s a pint of Ben and Jerry’s in my immediate future at the prospect of losing you forever, I’m happy for you. And I hope things work out, whatever that means. Your mom is out there now, and your man is there, too. No reason on earth why you shouldn’t join them, if it’s what you want.”

“It’s not that simple. I have to figure out who and what I want to be when I grow up. Again.” She laughed. “But, in the meantime, while I’m working that part out, no, it’s not a bad place to be at all.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help with the other little detail, please let me know. I don’t mind doing some digging of my own, if you need me to. Or making calls to Cedar Springs for you, so you don’t have to be obvious about tracking down whoever is making calls about you. Just give me the word.”

“Thanks, Daphne,” she said, never more sincere. “And, for the record, I don’t miss my job, but I miss you terribly. And I do wish you were here.”

“Ditto. Hey, I have to run. Let me know how it all shakes out.”

“I will.” They hung up and Lauren stared at the computer screen and the phone number she’d typed in. She slid in her air card and went online to the reverse directory, but the number came up as unlisted or unknown. “Of course, it couldn’t be that simple.” She was tempted to just use her motel room phone and call the number—see who answered. But she wasn’t sure the direct approach, in this case, was the wisest. Someone was making calls about her and she’d rather not tip them off that she knew about it until she knew a little something about them.

She started to close her computer, then remembered why she’d gotten it out in the first place. She clicked to her desktop, but her neat little rows of shortcut icons were all still lined up, right where she’d left them. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, really. Other than the file she’d scanned some of the articles into, she wasn’t actively working on anything, and her e-mail account was security coded. She clicked on that, typed in her password, but nothing new popped up. She went ahead and opened the scanned files one at a time. All of them were there, just like she left them. She sighed. “This is silly.” She was playing like she was some kind of super sleuth. “And acting like there’s something to be sleuthing.” So the maid moved her computer, so what. Stranger things had happened.

Her hand paused on the lid before clicking the screen shut. Stranger things…like her bike being stolen, mangled, then returned anonymously to her hotel room. Like someone from Cedar Springs calling her former coworker and asking a bunch of questions about her. Strange things, indeed. She propped the screen back and right-clicked on one of the scanned files, then clicked on Properties. Her fingertips stilled on the mouse buttons. There was the date when the file was last saved. And it was after she’d left her motel room yesterday with her mother…but before she’d returned last night.

She curled her fingers inward and moved her hand away from the keyboard, as if it might suddenly bite or something. Her heart rate picked up some speed, but she tried to ignore that and think rationally, calmly. There was an explanation. A simple one. She was sure.

She turned her gaze toward the door to her room. “Yeah,” she murmured, “and the easy explanation is that someone has been in my room. More than once.” First the bike, now this.

Her first instinct wasn’t to call Daphne back, or even her mother, the two go-to people in her world. No, her first instinct was to call Jake. Or better yet, go see him. Only this time it wasn’t a flimsy excuse to be in his personal space, nor was it to talk to him about the fact that his sister might be the entire shortlist of who Lauren suspected was behind the disturbing goings-on, or at least strongly involved. Although both of those things were definitely in play. No, her instinct to turn to him was precisely that. She was confused and had some questions, and regardless of what they were about, he was the one she wanted to talk to about them.

“So…how about that.” She did close the computer then and stood up, needing to move, to think, to not do something foolish because she was thinking with her heart instead of her head.

Should she try to discover the owner of the phone number first? Go to Jake only when she had something concrete to tell him or show him? Would he tell her the truth if confronted without any actual proof?

Wearing a track in the carpet, pacing, wasn’t doing anything to solve her dilemma. Jake was trying to protect his sister from something. And he’d also said he was trying to protect her. If she went around digging and inadvertently caused more trouble, for any of the three of them…“I need to talk to Jake.” One way or the other, that was where whatever happened next had to begin. She crossed to the bed, slid her computer back in the bag, and hefted the shoulder strap over her shoulder. The phone number was there, as were the accumulated articles she’d scanned and the ones she’d copied. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had.

She wasn’t sure if he was up in the air with a lesson or working on the ground at the moment, but that was okay, she’d wait.

Just as she was heading to the door, someone knocked on it. She froze, then shook her head at herself. “You’ve got yourself spooked now.” She went to the door and peeked through the hole. This time when she went still, it was with reason. She recognized the blond woman on the other side of the door, but only because she’d seen pictures of her when she was much younger. Standing with her grandfather, next to the planes they’d flown in air shows when she was twelve.

She wasn’t twelve anymore.

Lauren took a calming breath, squared her shoulders, undid the lock, and opened the door. “Hello, Ruby Jean.”

J
ake sat in the front office, looking through the stack of newspapers Lauren had checked out of the library, waiting for Roger to come back on the other end of the phone. She’d meant to return the papers on her way back to town, but had forgotten them with the flight to Vegas.

He flipped through several of them. Most were recent, the past few years, but some were dated some time ago. He’d looked through them once before, when he’d first taken them from her when her mother had unexpectedly shown up. He hadn’t done much more than realize that the stories were about various business dealings Arlen had been involved in locally, as well as a few things he’d accomplished as the mayor.

“Hey, Jake, sorry to keep you on hold.”

“No problem,” Jake said, frowning as he thumbed through one of the older issues Lauren had checked out to read the rest of a smaller front page article. “I hate to bug you with something like this, but I thought you or one of the guys might know something about it.”

“Nothing immediate is coming back, but I’m waiting to hear from a few others who might be more connected to what his party is doing in Denver—what their plans are for the upcoming election.”

“I really appreciate you looking into it.”

“Hey, listen, no problem. Happy to help. So, you looking to back the old man? Because if you think he’s a good candidate—”

“It’s not that. He’s recently married to Lauren’s mother. I’m just doing a little background check, is all.”

“Ah, I see.”

Jake knew that Roger didn’t really see that much, and he wanted to keep it that way. “Just trying to figure out the lay of the land, that’s all. Lauren’s mother is pretty well connected herself…”

“Right,” Roger said, picking up on his drift. “You just want to make sure the new stepfather isn’t taking advantage of the new wife.”

“Something like that, yes. And I appreciate you keeping the source of the questions quiet. I don’t need to cause any family discord, just—”

“Protecting your own. I completely understand, I’d do the same. You’re a stand-up guy.” He chuckled. “And your taste in women is certainly not in question, either. Both your sister and your significant other. What do you all drink out there in the hills anyway?”

“It’s the clean air. Listen, if I can ever return the favor—”

Roger laughed. “Just win that race and get us up in that clean air in that sweet ride of yours, and I’ll be a perfectly happy man.”

Jake grinned. “I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will. That’s why we’re a team. I’ll be in touch.”

Jake hung up the phone and checked the clock. He had one last lesson that afternoon, but that wasn’t for another hour. He started to gather the stack of papers, then remembered that last little story. It was about the fire out at Arlen’s place, the one that had burned his house down. Jake was pretty sure Lauren had snagged the issue because of the big article on the business page about Arlen trying to push through zoning that would enable the resort to extend its commercial properties, which it in fact had, and the town had gone on to benefit pretty handsomely. Nothing really earth shattering, but part of the pattern that the articles continued to prove over the years.

He flipped the paper in half and read the small blurb in the local news column about the house burning down. It had apparently happened several weeks before this issue had come out and was mostly just a follow up to what had probably been a much bigger story in a previous issue. This was just a tiny side note saying that the fire marshal hadn’t been able to determine conclusively what had started the fire.

Jake leaned back in his chair. He was certain Arlen had said it was started by a lightning strike. Jake didn’t know a lot about fire investigations, but he didn’t think that one would be all that hard to prove, but maybe he was wrong. Arlen seemed certain enough of it. He read through the short column again, but there wasn’t even a mention of lightning even being suspected.

Jake started to flip the paper shut, then stood and made a copy of the article for Lauren first before gathering all the papers into a stack. A quick check of the clock showed he had plenty of time to get the papers back to the library before his next lesson. Time enough to look back a few issues and see what had been said when the fire had actually occurred. Not that it mattered, really, but…all the same, he was curious now.

He ducked into the library, relieved in this case to see that Becky wasn’t on duty. He could avoid making small talk and explaining why he needed to sift through more back issues. It was old Mrs. Peabody instead. She was somewhere between eighty and a hundred, had been head librarian in Cedar Springs as long as Jake had been alive, but now just worked weekends. She’d always favored Jake and Ruby Jean since their parents had died. “Blessed orphans” she’d always called them. Disconcerting when he’d been a child, but oddly comforting since he’d grown up. As he’d explained to Ruby Jean at the time, more people looking out for them was never a bad thing.

“Hello, Mrs. Peabody,” he said, raising his voice above the strict library whisper because she was hard of hearing. “You’re looking very nice today. New hairstyle? I’m just returning some papers I borrowed from the back room. I’ll put them back for you, not to worry.” He kept on moving, smiling as he passed by the front desk.

“Why, it’s Jake McKenna,” she said in her warbling voice, patting her hair and smiling faintly as he went by. “I thought perhaps you no longer took time to read. I haven’t seen you in here in ages. Your sister, now, she comes by all the time. Blessed angel, that girl.”

“Yes, she is definitely that.” He kept on moving. “I won’t take long.”

“Keep things orderly, young man,” she directed to his back, still sporting quite the commanding edge to her wavery tone.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling to himself, comforted by the routine of it all. It was nice that some things never changed.

He already had the stack Lauren checked out in chronological order, so he worked from newest to oldest, sliding the issues back where they’d come from. When he got to the final one, he pulled out the entire hanging folder and starting thumbing through them, assuming a fire taking out the mayor’s home would make the front page. “Bingo,” he murmured, sliding an issue dated two weeks prior to the one Lauren had checked out. He skimmed the article, looking for any mention of an electrical storm or lightning, but it was something else entirely that caught his attention.

He frowned. “That’s…interesting.” He wasn’t sure it was anything more than that, but it got his attention. It was just a few lines in the story. A mention that the fire was an unfortunate tragedy coming at a difficult time for the mayor, who had just recently finalized a divorce with his second wife. Jake hadn’t remembered that, but then he’d been too young at the time for those kinds of things to matter. It went on to mention that Paula Thompson had resided in the home after their separation, but had recently relocated out of state. No details had been released regarding where she’d moved, other than a repeat of her formal statement asking that her privacy be respected.

Jake skimmed through the article again, but there was nothing else of interest other than the standard line that the source of the fire was unknown and a quote from the fire marshal assuring that he would be looking into it. Jake wondered what kind of insurance Arlen had had on the house and assumed it was the fire marshal’s inability to determine an exact cause that led to the insurance payout, which, in turn, had financed the rebuild. He pulled out the other paper again, but there was no mention of where the mayor was temporarily residing, any insurance issues, or whether he planned to rebuild.

Jake sifted through the papers published for the seven days following the fire, but, other than a comment Arlen made thanking the citizens of Cedar Springs for their support during a speech given at an awards banquet for the local high school sports teams, he couldn’t find anything. He checked his watch, swore under his breath, then did a quick search back through another month of articles, not having much time to do more than skim the front pages. He found two articles regarding the mayor’s divorce. Without questioning the instinct, he slipped those issues, along with the one containing the story on the fire, into the tote.

He wanted to show them to Lauren, but first he wanted to run the subject by his sister. She’d been far too young to really remember anything about the fire or divorce back when it had happened, but Ruby Jean had an interest in town lore and a knack for recalling an almost disturbing quantity of details on even the most arcane of town topics. Couldn’t hurt to pick her brain over anything she might have gleaned about the town’s view on both events in the mayor’s life.

He glanced at his watch and quickly slid everything back where it belonged. He debated on explaining to Mrs. Peabody that he was borrowing a few additional back issues of the local paper and risk being late for his next lesson, but when he emerged from the back, he found her in conversation with Arlen’s secretary, Melissa, who was heaving a stuffed tote bag onto the return counter.

He gave them both a smile and a nod. “Thank you, Mrs. Peabody.”

“Surprised to see you here. I thought Ruby Jean was the big reader in the family,” Melissa said, turning so he had no choice but to slow down.

“I was just saying the very same thing,” Mrs. Peabody offered.

Jake forced a smile. Melissa had moved to Cedar Springs several years before. She was around RJ’s age, but that hadn’t stopped his sister from trying to fix them up. After all, Melissa was single with a pulse. She seemed like a perfectly nice woman, was attractive enough, and had made it clear on more than one occasion that his interest would likely be returned, but he’d never pursued it. He’d told himself it was because she worked with his sister, but the truth was, she simply wasn’t his type. Which he couldn’t have described…until recently.

“Well, I’d read more, but between the two of you, it appears there isn’t much selection left.” He nodded toward the bulging bag.

Melissa laughed. “Oh, those are donations. The mayor donates back issues of his magazines and has urged the local businesses to do the same. Just doing my bimonthly collection run.” Her smile brightened. “I don’t suppose you could be talked out of copies of
Aviation Monthly?
”

“Those are sacred, I’m afraid. Sorry to run off, but I have a lesson waiting. A pleasure seeing you again, Mrs. Peabody. Keep doing that thing with the hair. Very flattering.”

Mrs. Peabody’s papery smooth cheeks flushed and Melissa laughed. “Now I understand why I could never turn your head. You prefer a more mature woman.”

Jake kept smiling and heading out the door, but almost stumbled over his own feet when he heard Mrs. Peabody reply, “Oh, his head has been turned all right, but not by my thin blue hair.”

Jake opted not to listen in on where that particular conversation was headed. He had no problem with Mrs. Peabody spreading the word that he was otherwise involved, especially to Melissa. It just felt somehow…naughty that the octogenarian he’d known since prepuberty had any knowledge of his very adult social life. “Bad images,” he muttered with a little shudder, and immediately turned his mind to other things.

Like getting through this next lesson so he could see Lauren.

“Definitely better images.” He slid his phone out as he climbed into Xavier’s borrowed truck and punched the number for his sister. He wanted to get her take on things before talking to Lauren. Plus he wanted to persuade her that bringing Lauren in wouldn’t jeopardize anything.

Ruby Jean didn’t answer, so he left a quick message, then got a beep telling him there was a message waiting. It turned out to be a voice mail from Roger. Who, as it turned out, had some interesting information of his own. He clicked off after listening and tried Ruby Jean again. They definitely needed to talk. The sooner the better. It went straight to her voice mail. “Call me, RJ,” he said, “we need to talk. It’s four now. I’ll be teaching for the next hour. Better yet, be waiting for me when I touch down. It’s about…the matter we discussed the other day.”

He clicked off, tossed his phone on the passenger seat, and slid on his sunglasses. All traces of good humor gone.