Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [139]
“Maybe. She was divorced, I think. No kids that I know of, but I’m not sure.” Thane’s lips curled over his teeth. “Jesus,” he whispered. “What was she doing in Mary Theresa’s rig?”
“We’ll give your foreman a call. What’s the number?”
As he gave Hannah the phone number of his California spread, Thane glanced at his watch. “He should be at the ranch now, but he might not be near the phone.”
Hannah Wilkins scratched out the number as she marched toward the door. “I’ll call now and be right back.”
“Get all the info you can on Ms. Nielsen.”
Hannah sent Henderson an oh-sure-like-I-haven’t-ever-done-this-before look over her shoulder as the door closed behind her.
Henderson turned his attention back to the viewing window and stared for a few long minutes through the glass to the body. The lab assistant stood ready to cover the dead woman. “So why would she”—he pressed the tip of an index finger to the glass—“be driving your ex-wife’s Jeep?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” Thane shook his head slowly, and Maggie stared at the corpse before looking away. Thane had known this woman? She’d worked for him? Mary Theresa had known her as well? Maggie didn’t recognize Renee, and yet her name was familiar. Why? Nothing made any sense. The headache that Maggie had been fighting for days thudded painfully behind her eyes.
“You remember if Ms. Nielsen had any relatives?” Henderson asked.
“No.” Thane shook his head. “But Tom might know.”
“Let’s hope.”
“We’ll need all the information you’ve got.”
Thane’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “You’ve got it.”
“Did your sister ever mention Renee Nielsen to you?” Henderson asked Maggie, then motioned to the assistant behind the glass to cover up the body.
“No…I don’t think so,” she said truthfully, yet there was something familiar about the name. “Maybe. I can’t really remember.”
“But you didn’t know her?”
“We’d never talked or met, no.” Maggie shook her head and was grateful that the dead woman was draped again, her battered face hidden. “Why would she be in Mary Theresa’s Jeep?” she asked, echoing Henderson’s question.
“That, Ms. McCrae, is exactly what I intend to find out.” He sent Thane an unfathomable look before guiding them out of the room and hitting the light switch. The room was suddenly dark, and Maggie shivered as they walked into a hallway that seemed garishly bright in contrast. “Believe me,” Henderson assured her, “we’ll find your sister.”
Someone has to and soon, Maggie thought. Before it’s too late. “I…I’d like to call my daughter again, just in case she sees or hears something on the news. I want her to know that the dead woman isn’t her aunt.”
“You can use one of the phones upstairs.”
“Good.” As they walked toward the elevator, she said to Thane, “Then I want to see the wreck.”
“It’ll just upset you,” Thane said, as Detective Henderson punched the call button.
“You can’t get too close,” Henderson said. “We’re treating the accident as a crime scene.”
Because you think Mary Theresa’s dead, Maggie realized as the elevator bell rang, and the doors whispered open. Well, she wasn’t going to give up. Mary Theresa was somewhere—she just had to be found. So why hasn’t she contacted you again—thrown her voice and told you where she is?
Henderson pushed a button to an upper floor and Thane settled next to Maggie as the elevator groaned and the car began to move upward. His jaw was set, and he looked mean—as if he could spit nails.
For a split second she had the creepy sensation that he knew more than he was telling, that true to Mary Theresa’s desperate call to her all those days ago, Thane was somehow involved to his damned sexy eyeballs in his ex-wife’s disappearance, that his seduction of her was planned—a distraction to throw her off track.
So why then would he drive all the way to Idaho only to bring you back here? Why let you get so close?
Maggie didn’t know, but she damned well intended to find out.
Chapter Eighteen
“No one could have survived that,” Maggie whispered, her stomach curdling as she stared through the bare, broken limbs of chokecherries