Controversy (5 page)

P
eyton loved her life.

She had a wonderful husband, great family, successful career, nice home and now she was looking forward to motherhood. But she was totally over her future bundle of joy sitting on top of her bladder.

“Uh-oh.” Her husband, Lincoln, lowered his Sudoku puzzle book. “I know that look. You're having one of your strange cravings,” he assessed and then climbed to his feet. “What would you like? Peanut butter and pickle sandwich or ice cream and pickles?”

“No. That's not it.” She struggled to stand.

Lincoln zoomed to her side and helped her up. “Bathroom?”

Peyton nodded. “Bathroom.” At her look of misery, Lincoln gave her a peck on the nose.

“How about I make a sandwich for you anyway?”

She wobbled her way toward the hall. “Make it the ice cream and pickles and you got yourself a deal.”

“I'm headed to the kitchen now.”

Her trip to the bathroom felt like a twenty-minute cardiovascular workout, and on her way back to the living room, the pain in her back made her wish for an early delivery.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Peyton jumped, mainly because she was walking by the door when the abrupt series of hard knocks hammered the wood. “Gee whiz. Is there a fire?” she mumbled.

“Who's at the door?” Lincoln called out from the kitchen.

“I don't know,” she said and inquired through the door, “Who is it?”

“It's us!”

Peyton rolled her eyes. She didn't know exactly which grouping of the family members qualified as “us,” but she had hoped to have a private day vegging out on the sofa with her husband. The last thing she wanted was any of the normal shenanigans that were associated with her sisters.

“It's just the girls,” Peyton yelled to her husband.

“If you get rid of them, there may be a foot massage in it for you,” he promised as he passed the hallway, waving her bowl of ice cream and jar of dill pickles.

“Say no more,” she responded and opened the door. She took one look at the Nosy Sisters Network and told them to, “Go away,” and then promptly slammed the door in their faces.

Michael blinked, closed her mouth and then glanced at her sisters. “What the hell?”

Sheldon crossed her arms and muttered, “Heck, I don't blame her.”

Frankie's grunt sounded like agreement.

Michael faced the door again, determined to bang the damn thing down if need be. This time when the door opened, Lincoln's tall frame filled the threshold.

“Can I help you ladies?”

Michael swallowed. Linc was quite a formidable figure. It seemed completely laughable that three years ago she believed him to be her brother's boyfriend instead of her sister's.

Frankie stepped forward. “Can Peyton come out and play?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, girls, we sort of wanted to spend the day together,” he said with an apologetic smile. But when three sets of eyes only blinked up at him, he added, “Alone. We wanted to spend time together alone.”

No response.

“So if you want to maybe—I don't know—come back tomorrow?”

Again—silence.

Finally, he heaved a deep breath. He knew his sisters-in-law well enough to know their wall of silence meant they weren't leaving until they got what they wanted. “Fine. I'll go get her. But you only get five minutes, girls. I mean it.” Without waiting for their agreement, Lincoln disappeared back into the house.

A few seconds later, an irritated Peyton returned to the door. “I told you all to go away.”

Michael and Frankie each grabbed one of Peyton's arms and dragged her out through the front door.

“What on earth?”

Sheldon closed the door and quickly followed behind the girls down the walkway.

“We got ourselves in a bit of a situation,” Michael said.

“We?” Sheldon and Frankie echoed in unison when they came to a stop behind Michael's black Volvo.

“Yes—we!” Mike insisted, digging out her car keys from her pants pocket. “We're all in this together now.” She jabbed the key into the trunk.

“How come I get the feeling I don't want to know what you guys are talking about?” Peyton asked, glancing around.

Michael popped open the trunk.

Peyton looked down and screamed.

Three hands clamped around Peyton's mouth while Phil, hog-tied and gagged, squirmed and bucked in the trunk.

“Keep it down,” Michael hissed. “The last thing we need is to draw attention.”

Peyton's hands clamped around her bulging belly.

“Just great!” Sheldon panicked. “We're going to send her into early labor. I told you, Mikey, this was a bad idea.”

“Calm down,” Michael coached her baby sister. “Take a deep breath.”

Peyton followed the instructions and her sisters peeled their hands away in order for her to exhale. However, she didn't stop clutching her belly or backing away from the car.

“I know this looks bad,” Michael said gently. Somehow she reasoned if she talked low and soft she could keep the panic to a reasonable level.

“Have you all gone crazy?”

“I'm going to vote yes,” Frankie said.

“Same here,” Sheldon added.

Phil mumbled something that also sounded like it was in the affirmative.

“Please tell me you guys are playing some kind of game,” Peyton begged. “If so, I don't want any part of it.”

Michael didn't want any part of it, either. In fact, she still held out a thread of hope all of this was part of some crazy dream. Maybe someone slipped something into one of her drinks last night and this was just a nightmare with apparently no end in sight.

“Look, P.J.,” Mike said, stepping forward. “Please say you still have Ricky's number—or some way to contact him.”

“Ricky?” Peyton asked. “Ricky who?”

“Your ex-husband, Ricky,” Sheldon said. “Wasn't he best friends with the Damon twins?”

Peyton grunted and rolled her eyes. “You mean the
Demon
twins, don't you?”

Sheldon glanced at Mikey, smirking. “I told you so.”

“Granted, their methods are a little extreme, but up until last night I've always viewed them as harmless,” Michael confessed.

“Wait. Ray and Scott are behind this?” Peyton asked. “Okay. I
definitely
don't want anything to do with whatever the heck is going on.” Peyton turned. “I'm going back into my crime-free house and I'm going to pretend you guys were never here.”

The three sisters blocked Peyton's escape.

“You can't just act like you didn't see anything. Phil is threatening to throw us in jail for kidnapping.”

“I'd say he has a pretty good case.”

“And what—you think he's going to omit you refused to help him?”

“Fine. I'll call the police.”

Michael easily called her bluff. “You'll do no such thing. Besides, the police have already been to my place this morning, asking about his disappearance.”

“What?” Peyton clutched her belly again. “Mike, this is serious!”

“What? You think I don't know that?” Michael snapped. Her patience was at an end and her blood pressure was at an all-time high. “I'm trying to find those damn twins so they can convince my idiot of an ex-husband I did
not
instruct them to kidnap him, or at the very least tell him I was plastered and didn't mean any of it.”

“Why don't you just tell him that yourself?”

“He doesn't believe me!”

Sheldon and Frankie coughed.

“No one believes me!” Michael amended. Her eyes burned with a sudden rush of tears. What the hell? Maybe she should just cut Phil loose and then just take her chances trying to convince a jury. Yet, at the same time, if she couldn't convince her family, she stood no chance of convincing a jury of her peers.

Peyton drew a deep breath—several, actually—while she clearly weighed her options.

“Please, P.J.” Michael dropped to her knees, her hands forming a steeple. “If you do this for me, I swear I'll never ask you to do another thing.”

Her baby sister's brows lifted in obvious disbelief.

“Hell,” Frankie said, jabbing a fist into her hip. “What about us?”

Michael ignored them, but kept her pleading gaze on Peyton.

“Oh, all right,” Peyton gave in. “Who knows, maybe we'll all get to share a room in the mental ward.”

Michael caught a movement from the corner of her eye and turned to see that Phil had managed to sit up in the trunk. “Oh, no you don't.” She climbed back onto her feet, pushed him down and closed the trunk. When she faced her sisters again, they were all just staring and shaking their heads.

“Oh, he'll be fine. Let's just hurry and find that number. The faster we find the twins, the faster we can end this nightmare.”

Peyton turned and led the way back to the house. Michael followed while Frankie and Sheldon brought up the rear.

“I just thought of something,” Frankie whispered to Sheldon.

“What's that?”

“Can you ever remember a time when Michael's plans worked out?”

Sheldon fell silent, thinking.

“Yeah,” Frankie said. “Me neither.”

 

By the time Kyson and his partner returned to the station, their notepads were full and their heads were spinning with information regarding the ex-Mrs. Matthews. Kyson had no doubt that the geriatric Neighborhood Watch gang would've held them hostage longer if Griff hadn't faked a call from the captain and then lied about having to return to the station.

“There's only so much mothballs and Ben-Gay a man can take,” Griff said.

Kyson agreed. Now that he was back at his desk, he immediately pecked Michael's name into the police files, hoping the elderly women had exaggerated their former neighbor's character.

They hadn't.

“Oh my God, take a look at this,” he said, staring at the screen.

Griff stood from his desk and rushed around to Kyson's.

On-screen, the computer looked as if it was going haywire as arrests, citations, warnings and detailed footnotes scrolled before them.

“I told you she was an odd bird, didn't I?” Griff leaned forward, reading what was being printed on-screen. “It doesn't look like she was booked for anything too serious.” He chortled. “Looks like she's one hell of a prankster.”

Kyson released a low whistle. “That, or she has anger-management issues.”

Scrolling with the mouse, the partners quickly learned that all charges in Michael Adams's criminal file were eventually dropped.

“Either the woman is incredibly lucky or most people are afraid to cross her,” Kyson concluded.

“I'm going to place my money on the latter,” Griff said, straightening and then shuffling his way back over to his desk. “Hopefully her file has softened that hard-on you have for the chick.” He plopped down in his seat. “Those old ladies were on to your girl.”

Kyson ignored the comment and stared at Michael's arrest pictures. Even looking at those was a source of amusement. The woman had put an artistic spin on posing with her arrest numbers as if she'd been hired for comedy stills. There were pictures of her throwing deuces, sticking her tongue out, flipping a bird and even a few of her blowing kisses.

“Oh, God,” Griff moaned. “You still have it bad for her, don't you?”

Again, Kyson didn't answer, but pulled out his notepad and began typing in this morning's notes.

Griff laughed and shook his head. “All right. Don't say I didn't warn you when we have to smack the handcuffs on her over this whole mess.”

“What? You really think she had something to do with her husband's disappearance?”

“And you don't?”

Did he?
Kyson didn't want to admit he'd pretty much turned off his policeman's intuition the moment this voluptuous goddess opened the door. Hell, he hadn't been
this
affected by a woman since…since…Jada.

“Never mind,” Griff said, studying his partner. “I got my answer.”

“I think we're jumping ahead of ourselves,” Kyson finally said. “Philip Matthews has only been missing for a few hours. So his house was a little wrecked. The man could be a lousy housekeeper for all we know.”

“Sort of like his ex-wife?”

“She just moved in.”

Griff shook his head. “You got it bad.”