Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [91]
“Were you lovers?” Henderson asked.
“A long time ago.” Thane didn’t miss a beat.
“But not recently?”
“No.”
“Yet she came to see you?” Clearly the detective was suspicious. He exchanged a glance with his partner, who scratched another note on her pad.
“Sometimes.”
Henderson reached for his baseball as if he didn’t know he was doing it. “Who else did she go to?” He gave the ball a toss.
“Beats me.”
“Oh, she must’ve told you something.” Catching the ball, he frowned and set it back in the scratched holder that was molded in the shape of a tiny mitt.
“Nothing that you haven’t read in the papers.”
“And you have no idea what happened to her?”
Thane’s gaze was rock steady. “None.”
Henderson said to Maggie, “I assume you’ll be staying in town for a while.”
“Yes. I haven’t booked a hotel yet, but when I do I’ll call. I want to know what’s going on.”
“Then we’ll talk again.”
“Wait a minute.” Maggie wasn’t through. She hadn’t shipped her injured, estranged daughter to Dean’s relatives in California, spent the last few days driving through a near blizzard, dealt with the one man who had nearly ruined her life, worried herself sick with her stomach in knots, her life out of kilter, only to show up here without getting a few answers of her own. “So what’re you going to do about finding my sister?”
“Continue the investigation.”
“How?” she demanded. From the corner of her eye she thought she caught the ghost of a smile whisper across Thane’s mouth.
“Through diligence, resources, leads…it’s what we do here, Mrs. McCrae.”
“Diligence?” she said. “You’re checking her credit-card receipts—right? The phone, and bank cards and gas cards? And you’ve got an APB out for her Jeep as well as her? You’ve let the radio and television stations know that she’s missing and have asked for their help?”
“She works for KRKY. Believe me, the media is informed. They called us when she didn’t show up for work and they couldn’t get through to her.”
“Are you watching her house? And she has a place…near Aspen, where she goes to ski.”
“It’s covered, Mrs. McCrae.”
“How about her psychiatrist? She was seeing someone—a woman, I think. Kelly…”
“Dr. Michelle Kelly.”
“She might have some idea what was going on in Mary Theresa’s mind.”
Henderson stood. “Trust me, we’re doing everything possible to find your sister. Talking to anyone who knew her. We’ll find her. The last person to see her that we know of was Mr. Walker here. She had a blowup after taping her program on Thursday, went toe-to-toe with her cohost, then blew off a meeting with her agent, who had flown here from L.A. just to talk to her. Even so, because she’s flighty and has a history of being a hothead and a flake, the station wasn’t in an out-and-out panic, but they were concerned, sent a news crew out to knock on her door to find her, then started digging. That’s when we were contacted. By this time KRKY was all over the story, and the other stations picked up on it. I’m surprised they or Marquise’s secretary didn’t call you.” He glanced at Thane. “Ms. Lawrence contacted you, right?”
Thane nodded.
“And the newspeople?”
“They had just started nosin’ around when I met with you and decided someone should inform Maggie, face-to-face.”
Henderson motioned to Maggie. “No one called you but me?”
“No,” Maggie shook her head. “I don’t think so. I was away for the weekend, shopping with my daughter, and my answering machine wasn’t hooked up.”
Henderson’s eyebrows beetled, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Well, the upshot is that after the station manager, Ron Bishop, down at KRKY got worried and couldn’t find her, he and the executive producer for Denver AM called down here; we asked him to come in and file a missing-person report and have been investigating ever since.” He riffled through his notes. “The last person who thinks she recognized your sister was the cashier at a convenience store/gas