Clowns and Cowboys (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 3) (13 page)

“No problem. Oh, and Murray?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t forget Wendy’s skating in the Atlanta Open next Saturday. We’re all going to be there.”

Oh, crap. She didn’t even know if they’d be done with this case by then. Or if they’d have another. But she had to be there. She couldn’t miss the big event of the girl she’d grown so close to the past year.

“You didn’t forget, did you?”

Miranda cleared her throat. “No, of course not. Why would you think that?”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a really bad liar?”

She almost growled under her breath. “Thanks for reminding me anyway. I’ll be there.” Somehow.

“Good to hear it. Talk to you later.”

“Later.”

She hung up and saw Sam had already paid the check and was studying her pensively. “You’ve changed.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sounds like you’ve got a personal life now. You used to be pretty much of a loner. No matter how hard I tried to change that.”

He’d wanted to get close. He’d wanted to be a couple back then. Right now, she didn’t want to talk about it.

She wiped her mouth on her napkin and got to her feet. She was tired of this walk down Memory Lane. “I need to get back to the hotel, Sam.”

He stood, stretching his long, attractive body, took his hat off the rung of the chair where he’d stashed it and tipped it to her. “Sure thing, ma’am.”

When she unlocked the door to the downtown hotel suite and stepped inside, Miranda found Parker sitting at the fancy desk in the window working away at his laptop, an expression of intense concentration on his handsome face.

A plate of crumbs and a coffee cup sat on the desk beside him. Remnants of a lonely meal.

The sight filled her with anguish.

Why did she have to go off with Sam? What had she been trying to prove?

She closed the door and moved up behind him quietly. “Hi there.”

“Hello,” he said without looking up from the screen.

Her heart sank at his chilly tone. “Missed you at the restaurant,” she ventured.

“I had something here.”

“So I see.” She picked up the plate, moved it to the coffee table, and settled a haunch on the table next to him. Get to the chase, she decided. “I told Sam we’re married tonight.”

That got his attention. He stopped staring at the screen and turned to look at her. But she couldn’t read him. She waited several long minutes for the news to sink in.

Parker studied his wife’s face for any sign of delusion, of misdirection, of deception. Not that he thought she would lie to him. But that she might lie to herself. He saw nothing but honesty.

Had the flame of the past reawakened and died out as quickly as he’d hoped it would? Or had her dinner with Keegan left a coal smoldering under the embers? He couldn’t be sure and he hated being unsure of anything. Especially when it came to the woman he loved.

The whole time she’d been away he’d been struggling with the urge to fight for her, to claim what was his, to find Keegan and tear him limb from limb. But he wasn’t a caveman. And Miranda wasn’t a piece of meat, a prize to be won. She was an intelligent human being with feelings and opinions of her own.

Feelings she had a right to.

Had she discovered those feelings were stronger for Keegan than for himself? He chafed at the very thought. He sounded like a jealous schoolboy. But he knew this wasn’t jealousy. No, this was facing reality. A reality more painful than the beating he’d taken a few weeks ago.

His wife did in fact have feelings for this man from her past.

So she’d told Keegan they were married. And what else?

Death had taken two women he’d loved dearly. He’d feared he’d lose Miranda that way sooner or later. He never thought, even for an instant, he’d lose her to...another man.

His mind began to race as if out of control. He’d always believed in the sanctity of marriage, but he refused to keep Miranda with him against her will. Dear Lord, how could he live without her? He couldn’t imagine. His life would be empty, meaningless. But if she would be happy—and above all, safe—with the man who had come before him, that would be all that mattered.

He drew in a breath to steady himself. “How did Keegan take the news?” he dared to ask.

She rolled her eyes with a disgusted expression. “Not real well. You know how men are.” She reached over and punched him on the arm.

Miranda grinned at him, then stopped when he didn’t respond. His reaction was like an icy spike through her heart. It made her angry. “What do you want from me, Parker?”

His muscular chest rose and fell. “What do you think I want?”

Stop answering a question with a question
, she wanted to scream at him. He was interrogating her like she was a suspect.

Instead she jumped off the desk and began to stomp around the space between the desk and the bed. She didn’t want to be caught between two men. For years and years, she’d never wanted any man in her life. How did she ever wind up with two of them?

She pulled at her hair in sheer frustration. She had no idea why Parker was acting this way. All right, maybe she shouldn’t have had dinner alone with Sam, but Parker had suggested it, dammit. And she’d only done it because he’d made her so mad.

Suddenly she knew what he wanted from her. The truth.

She stopped pacing, spun on her heel, fisted both hands on her hips with a snarl. “Okay, smartass. I slept with him. Are you happy now?”

His expression didn’t change.

“Not tonight.”

“No,” he said calmly. “When you knew him before.”

He’d known, hadn’t he? He’d known all along. He’d probably guessed it at the airport. No, when she first came to him with Sam’s case in his office. She should have realized that. He could always see straight through her.

He drew in another slow breath as he fixed her with that cold, gun-metal gaze of his. “Why didn’t you tell me?” This time his voice had just a touch of tenderness in it.

It broke her.

She sank down on the end of the bed and put her head in her hands. “Hell, I don’t know, Parker.”

He was quiet a long moment before he spoke again, even more softly than before. “Miranda, didn’t we make a promise not to hide things from each other anymore?”

She stared at him.

After their last case they had vowed not to keep things from each other, not to hide things, as he said. Things about the case and how they intended to solve it. Not this kind of stuff.

“Professionally,” she said. “That promise didn’t apply to our personal lives.”

He uttered a wry laugh laced with pain. The first human emotion he’d openly shown tonight. “Are you saying we’d have to make another vow not to hide our personal lives from each other?”

It sounded so awful when he said it like that. “No. I don’t know.”

She rubbed her hands over the thighs of her jeans. She had to tell him the truth. The whole truth. There was probably a Bible in the drawer she could swear on if he didn’t believe her.

She didn’t want to. She’d had enough of reliving this part of her past tonight. But it was only fair. He deserved to know.

She took a deep breath and began. “I met Sam Keegan when I was making my way around the southwest, passing through Phoenix.”

He sat back, leaned an elbow on the desk, ready to listen.

“I got a job with a drywall company. We did hotels, high rises, apartment buildings, that sort of thing. Sam was a hanger and I came on as a finisher trainee. He showed me the ropes, trained me, really. We hit it off.”

Slowly he nodded. “And?”

“We…started hanging out together after work. We’d go out to a bar, get in a few fights with the local scumbags. You know.”

“Um-hmm.” Parker knew her background only too well.

“We had fun. He was the one who taught me to ride a motorcycle.”

He shifted his weight and she knew that had to sting. “I see.”

She could see his mind go back to the time she mentioned a pal in Phoenix who taught her how to ride.

“Sam was…the first nice guy I’d ever met. We hung around together maybe five or six months. Longest I’d stayed in one place. And Sam, well. He started getting serious. Really serious. Talking about a future together.”

Parker folded his arms. He was still listening.

“And I got…well…nervous. You know how I was.”

“I do.”

“Then one night, we had a little too much to drink and I ended up going home with him.” God, this was awkward. “He started kissing me, things got out of hand, and I ended up in his bed.” She could still see the small apartment, the beer bottles and empty pizza boxes in the kitchen. The manly smell of the sheets on his bed. “Guess I was lonely. He told me he loved me that night.”

Parker rose and came to sit down next to her on the bed. He took her hands in his and stared at them as if wrestling with himself. “What happened after you slept with Keegan?”

“What do you mean, what happened?”

“How did it end?”

She let out a long sigh. “I left.”

He frowned. “Left?”

“Got up the next morning with a bad case of cold feet, packed up and took off. Didn’t even leave him a note. Pretty rude, huh?” She tried for a laugh without success.

“I see.” His voice was even more quiet and thoughtful.

He must not have guessed that part. Even though she’d tried to do the same thing with him—and failed.

Back then she didn’t
do
love. She’d been done with that kind of crap after Leon. Until she met Parker. She hadn’t wanted to have feelings for her boss, had fought them, fought him, with all she had.

But he was too good to her, too sexy, too mind-blowing. And he loved her with such a stubborn steadfastness, she had no defenses against him. In the end, she’d lost the battle. She just couldn’t help falling in love with him right back.

Parker studied her long fingers and wrists that seemed too delicate for such a strong woman. She had her weaknesses. He’d thought he’d known them all. So Keegan hadn’t been the one to break it off. That was a relief. That meant it was less likely there were residual issues to be resolved on Miranda’s part. For Keegan, it was different. Perhaps that was why he’d gone after Miranda without even questioning if she was in a relationship. Perhaps he was looking for an explanation after all these years.

Miranda laid her hand on her husband’s lap and forced out the words she knew she had to say. “Parker, do you want to drop this case and go home?”

He turned his head to face her, the shadow of a smile on his lips. She’d surprised him. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to find out who really killed Tupper. And about Layla. I want to find out why she’s missing. I’d like to see it through. For professional reasons. Not because of Sam.”

He studied her face for a long while as if he were looking for any small vestiges of her long ago mini affair. He must not have found any because at last he nodded and got to his feet.

“Very well. Let me show you the research I’ve been doing.”

###

He took her hand and led her over to the desk, seated her in the chair.

“I found exactly two cut-rate motels in the area near UBT. Both of them small. No one matching Harvey or Layla’s description had checked in during the past two days. And the maids had cleaned all the rooms in both establishments by this afternoon. They hadn’t seen anything unusual.”

Miranda let out a breath of relief. “That’s something, then.” Didn’t mean she wasn’t somewhere else, or Harvey hadn’t killed her and tossed her in a field somewhere.

Parker pressed a key on his laptop and switched to an open browser window on the screen. “I’ve found some information on Harvey Hackett that may be pertinent.”

She took the mouse and scrolled and read. Divorced. Ex-wife living in Houston. No kids. Arrested for DUIs several times over the past year. Treated for depression. She sat back. “This certainly impugns his character, but where would a guy like Harvey get cyanide from? He doesn’t seem capable.”

“He could be more resourceful than he appears. Or he could have an accomplice.”

“Sam?” Was that what Parker was thinking?

“No, not Keegan. But perhaps someone else he knows.” He pressed a key and flipped to a new page.

This one was a website for Yvette Nannette, the petite, vivacious dog trainer. Lots of pictures of her and her little dogs. Videos. Information about how she got started in the circus. She was born in a small town outside Paris, acquired a few miniature poodles and trained them to do funny stunts, started going to the festivals. She’d worked in Denmark, Finland, Croatia. No mention of a rap sheet.

Miranda clicked to another page of Parker’s work. This was about Biata Ito and The Flying Itos. Again, nice photos and videos of performances. The trapeze artist’s claim about her family history was correct. They started out in LA with Ringling Brothers and had worked every circus on the planet. Or so it seemed from the list.

Next page. Yuri and Dashia Varga. Just a photo of Yuri being shot out of a gaudily painted cannon, smoke everywhere. No videos. No bios. Just a short description of their act. That seemed odd.

Miranda looked around for another page. She’d reached the end. “What about Layla?”

“Nothing on her,” Parker told her.

“Nothing at all?”

“Except for her photos on the UBT page, there’s nothing. She doesn’t even have her own website.”

“Odd for a performer.”

Parker let out a low breath of frustration. “Of course, it would help if we had a last name.”

“Yeah,” she smirked. “If you type in
Layla
, you’d mostly get links to the Eric Clapton song.”

“And some pornographic sites.”

“Well, you must have had fun while I was gone, then.” Her joke died on her lips. She turned back to the Vargas’ sparse web page with the exploding cannon and thought about how evasive the pair had been, how uneasy Dashia had been when she last talked to her. Especially about Layla. “I got a vibe from these two. They’re hiding something.”

“I got the same impression.”

“In fact, I caught Dashia alone after the police took my statement this afternoon. She clammed up tight.”