Scene of the Crime: Mystic Lake

by Carla Cassidy

  “You are so beautiful,” he said softly.

  “You’re just saying that because I’m naked in your bed,” she replied with a husky voice.

  He laughed. “No, it’s more than physical. You have a beautiful mind, Amberly. You draw me to you.” He wanted to tell her that he hadn’t felt this way about anyone since his wife, but he was afraid of what her reaction might be.

  She’d made it clear to him that she wasn’t looking for a relationship. This night was an unexpected gift, and he didn’t want to frighten her away by making it a bigger deal than she wanted…needed…it to be.

  “I want you, Cole.” Her eyes glowed in the light spilling into the bedroom from the hallway. “I’ve never felt this kind of want before. It scares me just a little.”

  “Don’t be scared.” He wanted her to embrace her desire for him, to wallow in it, in him as he intended to do in her. With this thought in mind, he stopped the conversation by kissing her as he began to explore her body in earnest.

  Despite his own need, his first thought was to give her the greatest experience she’d ever had in a bedroom. He quickly learned that kissing her along her slender throat caused her to mewl but teasing the tips of her breasts made her clench the sheet at her sides and moan with pleasure.

  As he slid his hand down the flat of her stomach, he felt her catch her breath in anticipation. Her entire body seemed to vibrate as he slipped his hand between her legs, finding the moist warmth. A gasp escaped her lips.

  As he moved his fingers against the sensitive spot, she tensed and whispered his name. When he quickened his caresses, she cried his name and clutched his shoulders in a tight grasp.

  He felt the climax that shuddered through her, and a wild euphoria filled him. But they weren’t finished yet. He gave her a moment to catch her breath and then moved between her thighs. As he hovered over her, her eyes flared, and her hands moved from his shoulders to his buttocks.

  “I want you inside me,” she said, and he wouldn’t have believed she could say anything that would drive his desire higher, but that did.

  Until this moment he’d maintained complete control of their lovemaking, but as he eased into her dampness, he felt his control snap.

  He hissed in pleasure as he buried himself deep inside her, for a moment not moving, just being connected in the most intimate way a man could connect with a woman. Closing his eyes, he felt surrounded, engulfed and possessed by Amberly.

  It was she who snapped him out of the moment, moving her hips against his. He opened his eyes and looked down into hers as they began to move together in unison.

  He saw the wonder in her eyes as their movements increased, becoming faster, a tad bit frantic. He felt himself getting lost in the need for release and yet wanted her to join him.

  And then he knew that she was there with him, hanging on the precipice of another climax. He cried out her name and tangled his hands in her hair as he felt his release and, at the same time, felt her stiffen and shudder and knew that she had found her own.

  For long moments afterward, they remained in each other’s embrace, trying to catch their runaway breaths. When he finally had his wind back, he released a low rumble of laughter.

  “I don’t know about you, but I needed that…I needed you,” he said.

  She smiled, a languid gesture that spoke of utter contentment. “I hate to confess that I’ve wanted this…wanted you…since the minute I laid eyes on you.” Her smile faded. “But this certainly didn’t move us any closer to solving the case, and it’s probably just complicated things between the two of us.”

  He frowned. “Complicate things how?”

  A tiny smile danced across her features once again. “Because now that I realize how very well you do this, I just might want to do it again.”

  “And I would have a problem with that, why?” he asked wryly.

  “Because I think maybe you’re ready for something more in your life than me.” She moved out of his arms and sat up and worried a hand through her long hair. “Whatever this is that we’re feeling, it’s just a fleeting thing…lust and nothing more. I’m here to do a job, and all this can be with us is a fringe benefit.”

  She slid from the bed and padded naked into his bathroom and closed the door behind her. Cole folded his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling.

  The euphoria he’d experienced only moments before had vanished, squashed beneath a sudden weight of depression.

  How had this happened? How was it that he had three murder cases he wasn’t closer to solving than the day the bodies had been discovered and a potential victim living beneath his roof?

  Still, what bothered him at the moment was the fact that he was precariously close to falling in love with a woman who’d made it clear that romance and marriage had no place in her life.

  Chapter Ten

  Amberly paced the floor of the conference room, occasionally stopping in front of the bulletin board to stare blankly at the crime-scene photos, but her thoughts weren’t on the crimes. Her head was consumed with thoughts of Cole.

  He’d left earlier with Ben to drive to Kansas City and question John. She was anxious to hear what they’d discovered when they returned, although she was certain there was nothing to discover.

  As anxious as she was about their investigation of John, she was equally confused and still a little flustered by her lovemaking with Cole.

  Nothing in her marriage had prepared her for what had happened between herself and Cole in his bed the night before. The passion she’d always feared she’d never experience had exploded out of her in Cole’s arms, and it had been sheer, unadulterated passion for him.

  Lust, she tried to tell herself. And everyone knew that lust didn’t last, that it eventually waned and left nothing behind. That hadn’t been her problem in her marriage. There had never been any lust for her where John was concerned, just a bottle of champagne and a night of mistakes.

  Had last night with Cole been a mistake? How could she possibly categorize that splendid act as a mistake? She hadn’t known how wonderful lovemaking could be until last night. And now she would never want to settle for anything less.

  He was getting to her, with his blue eyes and hot body. But more than that, he was getting to her with his compassion, with his intelligence and with his very heart, and she couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Her life was complicated without a man in it. She had Max to consider, and she’d absolutely made a vow to herself when she’d divorced that she wouldn’t drag a parade of men through his life.

  At least she hadn’t slept in Cole’s bed. After they’d made love, she’d gone back to the guest room, afraid that by sleeping in his arms, by awakening with him in the same bed to the morning light, what they’d shared would somehow transform into something deeper than mere lust.

  She needed to be home. There had been no other threats against her since the photo and dream catcher hung on her mailbox. Maybe they’d jumped the gun by removing her from her home, from her son.

  Sure, there was no question that the message sent to her mailbox had frightened her, but maybe it had been nothing more than a prank played by one of the men she’d fooled the night she’d gone to the bar and hadn’t told anyone she was an FBI agent.

  She stared back at the crime-scene photos, her heart beating an uneven rhythm as she gazed at the victims. Was she willing to take a chance with her life, assume that it had been just a prank? Was she willing to take a chance on Max’s life?

  She turned away from the board as Roger Black entered the room. “Thought you might like some lunch,” the deputy said as he placed a fast-food bag on the table.

  “Lunch? Already?” She looked at her watch and realized it was just after twelve. Where had the morning gone? “Thanks, Roger. It was really sweet of you to think of me. What do I owe you?”

  His cheeks blushed a bit. “Don’t worry about it, it’s just a cheeseburger and fries.” He headed for the door. “I’ll get you one of th
ose diet drinks you like from the vending machine.”

  Before she could protest, he was out of the room. She sank down on the table and opened the bag. He’d ordered her cheeseburger just the way she liked them, with no onions and double cheese.

  It was just another indication that she’d been in Mystic Lake for too long. Everyone knew how she ordered her burgers, what she liked to drink, and the small police force had been as accommodating to her as anyone could be.

  She smiled as Roger returned to the room, her diet drink in one hand and a canned orange in the other. “Here you go.” He set her drink in front of her and then sat across the table. “How’re you doing?”

  “Hanging in there,” she replied as she plucked a hot fry out of the paper container. “Although it seems to be taking Ben and Cole an unusual amount of time to question John.”

  “I know they wanted to find a time when your little guy wasn’t around, and you know how these things go…it always takes longer to interview somebody than you think it’s going to take.”

  She offered him some of her fries but he shook his head. She took another one, ate it and then focused back on Roger. “What do you think about all this? You have a specific theory to the case?”

  “I still think Jeff Maynard is good for the murders. He’s a nasty piece of work. It’s easy for me to imagine him killing Gretchen and getting off on the power of the kill.”

  “Enough to make him kill again and again?”

  Roger nodded. “I just think he’s the type that once he got the taste of murder in his mouth, he liked it. Besides, it would tickle him to death to sit back and watch us run around like chickens with our heads missing.”

  “What about the dream catchers?” she asked and then bit into her cheeseburger.

  Roger frowned. “That’s the part I just can’t make sense of, no matter how I twist it around in my mind.” Roger snaked one of her fries out of the container and then popped the top of his soda. “I can’t imagine that Jeff would know a dream catcher from a tom-tom drum.”

  “And I can’t imagine my ex-husband had anything to do with any of this,” Amberly said, tension tightening in her chest.

  “I think Cole was looking to definitively count him out rather than seriously looking at him as a suspect.”

  Roger’s words released some of the tension. “I hope you’re right.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “And I wish they’d get back here soon. The waiting to hear how it went is about to kill me.”

  As if conjured up by her very wishes, at that moment, Cole and Ben entered the room.

  “It’s about time,” she said, her appetite gone as she stared first at Ben and then at Cole. “So, what happened?”

  “We didn’t get any real definite answers as far as alibis for the nights of the murders,” Ben said.

  “According to John, many evenings when he’s alone, he shuts off his phone and works. He says his best creativity happens late in the night or in the very early morning hours. Apparently, the last month he’s been working overtime to get paintings ready for a show he has coming up,” Cole said.

  Amberly nodded. “That’s right. He has a big show scheduled, and he does often work late into the night all alone.” During the years they’d been married, John had often started painting after dinner and had worked into the wee hours of the morning.

  “Makes it tough to confirm an alibi.” Cole sank down at the table in a nearby chair. “Although he did think that on one of those nights he’d played chess with your neighbor, Ed.”

  “And so we stopped at Ed’s and spoke to him,” Ben said. “He wasn’t good at particular dates, but said he and John frequently play chess in the evenings.”

  “That’s true,” Amberly replied. She fought against a sigh of frustration. “So, is he still a suspect, or did he answer your questions satisfactorily enough that we can mark him off our short list?”

  “I’m still ambivalent,” Cole confessed after a moment of hesitation.

  Deep disappointment flared through Amberly. She’d hoped to at least have some closure where this situation was concerned. Her heart rebelled at the very thought that the man she’d married, the man who had been her best friend for the past eight years, could actually be a monster.

  But there was no question that since Cole had told her Ben’s crazy theory she was having trouble completely dismissing it from her mind.

  “So, what happens now?” she asked.

  “I think we all go back to the drawing board,” Cole said, his gaze moving to the pictures of the victims. “Somehow we’ve missed something, a key piece that would point a finger at somebody.”

  “It’s the dream catcher,” Amberly said without hesitation. “Until we figure out what meaning it has to our killer, we won’t have the clue we really need.”

  Cole frowned thoughtfully. “We need to delve deeper into the suspects we have and, at the same time, reinterview family members and friends of both the suspects and victims. I’m afraid we’re back into the drudgery of leg- and paperwork.”

  Ben smiled easily. “And unlike what is seen on television, that’s usually what solves crimes.”

  “What we’re looking for is either Native American ties or specific affinities to dream catchers,” Cole said. He appointed a victim and a suspect to each deputy and kept Jeff to reinvestigate for himself.

  He assigned Amberly nothing, and she figured it was because he identified her as a potential victim and didn’t want her running off on her own to investigate anything.

  After the two deputies had left the room, Cole moved to sit next to Amberly. “I wish I had the words to erase those worry lines that are creasing your brow,” he said.

  “The only thing that will do that is getting this creep behind bars and letting me go home to Max.” What she wanted to do was melt into his arms, for him to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay.

  The victims cried out for justice, and she just wanted to hold her son close and assure herself that he was happy and healthy. “Do you really think I’m in some kind of danger?” she asked.

  This time, it was Cole’s forehead that wrinkled with worry lines. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I expected another body or something to happen before now. I thought he was escalating, but I think maybe he’s just cunning and calculating, waiting for the best possible opportunity to strike again.”

  “If I’ve been marked as his next victim, maybe he didn’t anticipate that I’d move out and come here to stay with you. Maybe that slowed down his time line a bit.”

  “Perhaps. But I don’t know why he hasn’t just picked another victim. Even though I’ve warned the young women in this town not to be out alone, that doesn’t mean they’re all heeding the warning.” Cole stood abruptly. “Come on, let’s go see what we can find out about Jeff Maynard’s past. Somehow, the answer is here in town. We just need to find it.”

  “Then let’s get to it,” she replied.

  For the next five hours, she and Cole talked to everyone who knew Jeff Maynard. They asked about any Native American he might have in his background, if he’d ever shown or talked about any interest in Native American history or myths and legends.

  “I’d like to get a warrant and search wherever he’s been staying, maybe get hold of a computer he uses,” Cole said once they were back at the office.

  “Unfortunately, a judge wouldn’t even entertain the notion of a search warrant based on what we have,” she replied. “We have a public fight between him and Gretchen, but he also has an alibi we haven’t been able to break for the time of her murder.”

  Cole checked his watch. “It’s after seven. I guess we’ll call it a day and head home.”

  Minutes later, as they rode back to his house, Amberly felt his discouragement. “You know, the FBI doesn’t always get it right, and some crimes are never solved,” she said softly.

  “Don’t even think that,” he replied firmly. “We’re going to find this guy and stop him. I won’t quit until I�
��ve found him.”

  “I like a man with that kind of determination,” she said in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  “What kind of food would you like for dinner? Personally, unless you’re in the mood to cook I’m all in for takeout.”

  “Is there a Chinese place somewhere? I’m definitely a fool for sweet-and-sour chicken,” she said.

  “Mr. Wok’s, two blocks away. I just like eating out of cartons with chopsticks.”

  She laughed, although it certainly wasn’t a laugh from her heart. They were both making light to cast away the discouragement over the fact that they couldn’t catch a break to nail the killer.

  Thirty minutes later, the two of them were seated at Cole’s kitchen table eating from half a dozen different cartons from Mr. Wok’s.

  “What worries me is that the break we’re waiting for will come at the price of somebody else’s life,” she said as she speared a piece of sweet-and-sour chicken with the end of a chopstick.

  “That worries me, too.” Cole leaned back in his chair and shoved his empty plate away. “Even in the years I worked in St. Louis, I never had a case where there was no significant evidence left behind. Whoever is doing this has to be smart and very organized.”

  “And that takes our top three suspects right off the list,” she said dryly.

  He returned her smile. “I’d be the first to admit that I don’t believe Jeff, Raymond or Jimmy are the sharpest crayons in the box, but I also don’t want to underestimate any of them. One of them might just be playing the fool.”

  Amberly ate the last piece of chicken off her plate and then leaned back in her chair. “How long do we do this? How long do I keep away from Max? From my life?”

  “I wish I had an answer for you, but I don’t. All I know is that I feel like something is going to break soon, that whoever is committing these crimes won’t be able to help himself from committing another one very soon.”