River's Edge (5 page)

D
etective Joe McCormick, the only detective on Cade’s force, had not been with Cade last night when Ben reported Lisa missing. Since she still hadn’t been found, and the possibility that she’d met with foul play increased with each passing hour, Cade decided to bring McCormick in. Maybe something in Ben’s story would send up a red flag in the detective’s mind.

McCormick took notes as Ben went over his story again. When Ben finished, McCormick studied his notes. “Where were you fishing yesterday, Ben?”

“I took my boat and went out to the reefs.”

“Catch anything?”

“Yeah. Six black sea bass. They’re in the freezer.”

“Then you took the time to clean them before you went to meet Lisa?”

“Yeah. It didn’t take that long. Then I showered and headed to the doctor’s office.”

“How long were you out there?”

“Until about two. Appointment was three-thirty.”

“Did you communicate with her at all from the time you left Cape Refuge until you came back?” McCormick asked.

Ben shook his head. “Not at all. She had all these appointments scheduled. It was a big day for her. She was closing on some houses and looking forward to that appointment. And I don’t have to tell you that our cell phones don’t work on the island. When she’s in Savannah I can usually get her, but not here.”

“Was she worried about anything—upset at all?”

He shrugged. “Just the usual.”

“What usual?” McCormick asked.

“Well, you know, we were both stressed about the debate, and she was worried about whether this in vitro would work. She had this big-deal Hollywood producer coming, and she was supposed to help him scout locations for his newest movie.”

“I’ve got his name,” Cade said. “We’re questioning him today.”

“She never made it to that appointment. Rani said she had to fill in for Lisa.”

McCormick rubbed his chin as he studied Ben’s face. Cade knew what he was looking for. The husband always had to be considered a suspect when a wife met with foul play, but so far, Cade hadn’t found any guile in Ben’s body language or glitches in his story. They still weren’t sure there had been any foul play.

“Had a lot on her plate, huh?” McCormick asked.

“Yeah, but she always does.”

Does.
Present tense was a good sign.

“I expected her at home when I got here because we were going to ride to the fertility clinic together, only she didn’t show up. So I called her at the office. Rani hadn’t seen her. Nobody’d seen her, but I didn’t worry. I figured she’d meet me at the doctor’s office. There was no way she was going to miss it.” He stopped talking and rubbed his mouth hard. “It wasn’t until I got there that I realized something must have happened to her. That’s when I started getting worried.”

Cade heard a car door slamming outside, and Ben sprang up and lunged for the window, as if expecting to see Lisa getting out of her car. But it wasn’t Lisa. A television van from Savannah had
parked in front of the house, and a camera crew was setting up. Cade saw the coiffed correspondent trudging across the lawn to the door.

“It’s the press,” Ben said. The disappointment hung over him like a lead cloak. He dropped back into the chair. “I thought it was her.”

Cade watched him cover his face and fight tears. He didn’t know how to comfort the man, but he felt sure this wasn’t an act. The worry and dread seemed genuine.

The bell rang. “Do you want to talk to them?” Cade asked softly.

Ben slid his hands down his face and looked toward the front door. “I guess it might help. Get the word out.”

It wasn’t the answer Cade expected, but he saw the wisdom behind it. Maybe it was a good idea.

Ben went to the door and told the reporter that he’d be out in a minute to give a statement, then he turned back to Cade and McCormick. “I need to figure out what I’m going to say.”

“Find a picture of her to give them,” Cade said. “Describe her car and when she was last seen. That kind of thing.”

Ben grabbed a framed picture off of an end table. “This one should do.” His hands trembled as he took it out of the gilded frame. He looked scattered, as if his mind raced with pleas for his wife. “Are we finished here?”

Cade looked at McCormick. He nodded. “Ben, last night we checked all the hotels on the island, to see if she might have checked in. She didn’t. Today we’re checking the hotels in nearby towns. Are there any other towns we should check? Any family members she might have gone to stay with?”

“No. I talked to her parents in Cordele last night, and they haven’t heard from her. She’s an only child. There’s no place I can think of where she would have gone.”

“We’re putting a statewide APB out on her car, and I’m going to ask South Carolina and Florida to do the same. Maybe someone will spot it.” Cade got up and reached for his cane. McCormick followed him to the door.

Ben stopped them at the door and grabbed Cade’s arm, his desperate gaze locking into Cade’s. “Find her, Cade. She has to be all right.”

Cade knew better than to give him meaningless assurances. “We’ll do everything we can, Ben.”

Ben’s face sagged with the heaviness of his fear. “Look, would you two mind going out and standing with me while I make my statement? They might want to ask you a few questions.”

“I’m not going to give a statement,” Cade said, “but our presence will let them know that we’re looking.”

The three of them stepped out into the front yard, and the television camera started rolling. Cade saw Blair’s car pulling up, and she hurried up the yard, as if she didn’t want to miss a thing.

He hoped the publicity would bring Lisa home and that later they would all feel like idiots for making so much out of nothing. Yet he had no intention of resting on that assumption. If he had anything to say about it, Lisa would be found today.

H
er friend’s disappearance haunted Morgan all morning, and she finally decided to drive to Lisa’s real estate office to talk to her partner. Rani Nixon’s Mercedes Roadster was the only car in the parking lot, and Morgan supposed that the staff must be off on Saturday.

The sun blazed on the black asphalt, its heat radiating upward. She was glad the debate wasn’t going to be today. She still felt weak from the miscarriage and had dreaded standing out at the South Beach Pier, trying to look perky in ninety-five-degree heat.

The cool air from the air-conditioner blasted her as she went into the building. She stepped into the quiet waiting area and looked around. Morgan had never been in here before, so she wasn’t sure where Rani’s office was, but she could hear the woman’s low voice from one of the offices at the back. She went to the doorway and saw the woman talking on the phone. Rani saw her and lifted a hand in a wave, then held it there as if telling her she’d be right with her.

“Yeah, look, if she does come by, would you please have her call? We’re all very worried about her.” Rani sniffed and wiped her nose with a wadded ball of tissue.

Morgan looked away, feeling as if she’d stepped in on an intimate moment.

“We hope not too. Yeah, I know.”

Morgan looked up at her again, a sense of awe falling over her at the strikingly attractive woman. Rani Nixon still looked like a cover model. With her Halle Berry features and short-cropped black hair, she looked as if she should have a mob of paparazzi following her around. When she’d given up her career five years ago and moved to Cape Refuge to work with Lisa, she had been an instant success. Everyone wanted to do business with the celebrity. Her reputation, her money, and her aggressive nature had all added up to skyrocketing success for their real estate business.

Rani got off the phone. “Morgan, isn’t it?” She stood up, her five-feet-ten-inches making Morgan feel dwarfed.

“Yes.” The woman had a Wall Street handshake, and Morgan was intimidated. “It’s good to see you. I just wanted to come by and talk to you about Lisa. I’m really worried about her.”

“You and the rest of us. I haven’t slept all night. I’ve been worried sick.” She motioned for Morgan to sit down, and Rani took her chair again. “So how did you come to hear about it?”

“I left some messages for Lisa yesterday, so Cade came to question me this morning about whether I’d talked with her. I hadn’t. She never called back.”

Rani shook her head and leaned forward. “I have a bad feeling, Morgan. A real bad feeling.”

That wasn’t what Morgan wanted to hear. “Why?”

“Because she had a million things going on yesterday. Trust me, she wouldn’t have just bagged them. I spent the whole day trying to do spin control and cover for her, and that never happens. And the kicker is she missed her doctor’s appointment.”

“At the fertility clinic.” Morgan wanted Rani to know that Lisa hadn’t kept that secret from her.

“Yeah, she’s practically psycho about those things. Her body’s pumped so full of hormones that if Ben’s one minute late for one of those appointments, she just about goes ballistic. No way did she just decide to skip town and not go.”

“Well, that’s the thing. Don’t you think those hormones just may have pushed her over the edge?”

“Hey, she’s moody, but she’s not crazy. I meant she was psycho about the appointments, the fertility, the whole baby thing. It’s an obsession with her, you know? I didn’t mean that her hormones were really making her crazy. A little irritable maybe. A little moody. And come on, she missed half a million worth of commissions yesterday. No way that would happen.”

“Was there any place she went where her car might have broken down or something?”

“There’s no telling. Her car hasn’t turned up, so we don’t know.” She dug into her drawer and came up with a cigarette and lighter. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked as she lit it. She took a drag and blew the smoke out in a stream, then tossed the lighter back into the drawer. “Lisa hates when I smoke in the office. I’ve been trying to quit, but it’s impossible with this stuff going on.”

Morgan tried not to cough.

“Anyway, if the cops know what they’re doing—and frankly, I’m not so sure—they’re interviewing everyone she was supposed to meet with yesterday.”

Morgan ignored the comment about Cade’s police force. “They’ll find her. I know Cade real well. He’s very good at what he does.”

“Let’s hope you’re right. But with one detective and a half-crippled chief, I’m skeptical. If Lisa’s all right, she would have called by now. If she could get to a phone, that is. If this blasted place could just get a cell phone signal—I’ve never heard of anything so primitive. It almost kept me from moving here. And it hurts with selling real estate, I can tell you. People prefer to go somewhere else if they can’t even make a call.”

Morgan didn’t bother to mention that they always had Ma Bell. “Did she have a cell phone with her?”

“Yes, and I’ve tried to call it a million times. She’s not answering. If she were off the island somewhere, she’d at least check her voicemail.” She brought the cigarette to her lips again. “I swear, I think he had something to do with it.”

“What? Who?”

“That Ben.” She blew the smoke toward the ceiling. “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Morgan just gaped at her. “Are you suggesting he would hurt Lisa?”

Rani gave Morgan a conspiratorial look. “I’m not accusing him of anything, okay? I’m just saying, there’s been trouble in paradise for a long time.”

Morgan didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned. If it really had been a fight, then maybe Lisa was off nursing her anger. Maybe she’d be back.

Rani tapped her cigarette on an ashtray shaped like a manicured hand. “Lisa comes in here a few weeks ago with tears in her eyes. She’d just collected the mail in her office, and you’ll never guess what she found.”

Morgan couldn’t imagine. “What?”

“A letter from a woman who claimed to be Ben’s lover.”

Morgan’s mouth fell open. “You’re kidding.”

“The woman told her that she’d been having an affair with Ben for months and that he’d been promising that he was going to leave Lisa.”

“Who was it from?”

“That’s just it.” Rani leaned on her desk, her gaze locking into Morgan’s. “There was no signature and no return address. The letter was postmarked Cape Refuge. No clue who sent it.”

“Did Lisa confront Ben?”

“Of course she did.” Rani stubbed out her cigarette. “That jerk just told her he had no idea where the letter had come from, that it was a bunch of lies. He told her that if she didn’t believe him, she could hire a detective to follow him around. She bought it.”

“Did she hire the detective?”

“No. She convinced herself he was telling the truth. She figured he wouldn’t be working so hard at trying to have a baby with her if he planned to leave her. And besides that, he seemed to be available at a moment’s notice. Not like he was hiding anything.” She waved her hand in the air. “They were doing this temperature thing, checking her body for ovulation, all this stuff, and whenever she’d call him, he’d drop whatever he was doing and meet her—at home, at the doctor’s office, wherever she needed him. He also convinced her he’d never do such a stupid thing when he was trying to run for mayor. It would ruin his chances in a town like this.”

“Well, that does sound reasonable,” Morgan said. “Ben is always worried about image. You’d think he wouldn’t be so stupid as to have an affair when so much was at stake.”

“You would think.” She set her chin on her hand and let out a long sigh. “But I wasn’t believing it. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. People
are
stupid when they’re cheating. And then she got more letters.”

Morgan frowned. “How many?”

“Three or four more. And every time, he denied it, but I think Lisa was starting to get wise. The last one really concerned her, though, and I could see on her face that her faith in him was starting to falter. I tried to convince her to call his bluff and hire a detective just like he’d suggested, but I don’t think she ever did.”

Morgan felt sick. Maybe the pain she’d seen on Lisa’s face so many times hadn’t just been mourning over her infertility. Maybe there was something much deeper.

“Rani, have you told the police about this?”

Rani lit another cigarette. “I’ve been going around and around about it. I didn’t know if I should, because it opens a whole new can of worms. And if Lisa hasn’t just run off, they might assume she has and stop looking.”

“Cade wouldn’t do that. You have to tell them. This is relevant information.”

“If Ben has any decency, he’ll tell them himself.”

“Not if he’s hiding something.” Morgan thought back over Ben’s countenance this morning. Did he look like a guilty man, someone who’d been having an affair, cheating on his wife, lying to her all along? No. The truth was, he had been beside himself, panicked over the disappearance of his wife. It couldn’t have been an act.

Or could it?

“The thing is, even if he was having an affair,” Rani said, “I don’t think he would have killed her.”

Morgan shivered. “
Killed
her?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, to get her out of the way so he could be with his lover or whatever.”

Morgan had considered that Lisa could be dead, but only as a fleeting thought. Now, the idea that Ben might have done it disturbed her more than she could explain. “Rani, you have to tell the police.”

Rani stared at her for a long moment, turning the idea over in her mind. “I guess you’re right. I wonder if she kept those letters in her desk. They came here, after all. Maybe I can find them.” She slid her chair back and walked out, her perfume trailing in the air behind her, mingling with the smoke.

Morgan followed her into Lisa’s office. The walls looked like polished marble, and the carpet was a deep wine color. Tiffany lamps accented the antique desk and the sitting area. Morgan could just imagine Lisa making deals in an office like this.

Rani pulled out the drawers and searched through them until she came to the bottom drawer and found a box of letters.

“Bingo. Pay dirt.” She pulled the letters out, then tossed them onto the desk. “Take a look if you don’t believe me.”

“Uh…no. I don’t feel comfortable doing that. Let’s just take them to Cade. Let him read them.”

Rani shrugged. “Okay, maybe they do have some relevance. Let me get my purse.”

When Rani had locked the office, Morgan looked at her. “Do you want me to follow you there and talk to Cade with you?” She felt foolish for asking. Rani was tough, assertive. She didn’t need anyone to hold her hand.

But the woman surprised her. “Yeah, it might not hurt to have a little moral support, if you don’t mind.”

Morgan followed the Roadster to the police station, thinking about those letters and praying that they didn’t mean something terrible had really happened to Lisa. Was Ben Jackson grieving over his wife’s disappearance—or his own guilt? Was he covering for a lover who might have taken matters into her own hands?

The questions filled her with nauseating urgency. She only hoped Cade could answer them.