Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [101]
“That she’d be better off without that leech. But, as she was fond of telling me whenever I offered her advice, it was her life.”
“Is her life,” Maggie clarified. “Is.” A long, sable-colored robe with a hood hung on the back of the door. Matching slippers were tucked by a scale positioned near the shower. Maggie fingered the robe’s belt. “Looks like something a monk might wear.”
Thane snorted. “Don’t look for a rosary tucked in the pocket, okay? Pomeranian isn’t exactly a saint.”
“No one is,” she observed, as they made their way up another set of stairs.
On the third floor, the attic had been converted to a dance studio, complete with sound system, ballet barre, and shining hardwood floors. Mirrors covered the walls, and the sloped ceiling was broken up by dormer alcoves.
“Any other reason you and Mary Theresa don’t get along?” Maggie asked, sensing something more, as if Thane had never quite disconnected from his ex-wife, as if there were ties that bound them together, ties Maggie had never known existed.
His jaw slid to the side. “You mean other than that she tricked me into marrying her, we got a divorce, and she’s been a pain ever since?”
“Yeah,” she prodded.
“She does owe me money,” he admitted.
“Ahh…,” Maggie said. “How much?”
“Enough.”
“This is no time to be coy, Walker,” she said, pointing a finger at his chest as they walked down the stairs to the main level again.
“Okay. She owes me two hundred thousand dollars, plus interest. All told, it’s closer to two hundred and fifty.”
Maggie stopped dead in her tracks at the base of the stairs. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“She needed it.”
“I question that,” she said, eyeing the foyer with its marble floor, polished cherrywood staircase, and chandelier. The flapper and medieval knight stood guard. The piano was visible behind French doors that closed off the living room. “For what?”
“Taxes. Your sister forgot to pay for a few years, and the IRS doesn’t like that much.”
“So you bailed her out?”
“I loaned her some money.”
“A lot of money.” She walked into the den and sat down in Mary Theresa’s chair, as her legs were a little less steady than they had been. Picking up a pencil, she tapped it nervously against the edge of the desk as Thane stood near the window, staring out at the expanse of snow-covered lawn. The sun was lowering in the western sky, the November night fast approaching. “You haven’t been leveling with me,” Maggie finally ventured.
“How’s that?”
“You didn’t tell me about seeing Mary Theresa fairly regularly, and my guess is you knew that I didn’t think you two had any contact.”
“I only saw her when she was in trouble.”
“You should have told me,” she insisted, more than a little hurt. An old sense of wariness stole into her heart.
“I did. When you asked.”
“Give me a break.”
“Maggie—”
“And you didn’t mention the loan,” she pointed out, her blood starting to boil. Who was he to keep things from her? Weren’t they in this together?
“It wasn’t the issue.”
“Good Lord, Thane, are you crazy?” she snapped. “Don’t you know what’s going on here?” She pushed back the chair, shot to her feet, and crossed the distance between them. “Weren’t you in the police station with me today? Detective Henderson thinks that either Mary Theresa is pulling some elaborate publicity stunt, or that she might have holed up and killed herself, or that you were somehow involved in a kidnapping or worse! That fight you had put you right up at the top of the suspect list!” Exasperated, Maggie threw her hands up in the air. “I mean, I thought you came to my place to drag me back here because you wanted my help. That…that you thought that we, together, could find Mary, that…I don’t know, that we could help the police clear this up.”
He stared at her long and hard, the way he had years before, and she swallowed with sudden difficulty, her anger evaporating a bit as she sensed a shift in the atmosphere in the room.
“Did it ever occur to you that I might have used all this as an excuse to see you again?”
Oh, sweet Jesus. His words