Still Waters...

by Crysal V. Rhodes

  As he drove along the highway to fulfill his mission, Ray’s mind wouldn’t stop churning. The information on that CD was so explosive that he needed to get it into the proper hands as quickly as possible. Stark Enterprises was located on the East Coast, so the first name that he thought of was James Starr, who had already indicated that he knew something unsettling about the company. He would hand him the proof that might be needed with the hope that James had the connections to make something happen. Ray just wanted the CD out of his and Bev’s hands. The last thing that they needed was any involvement with a drug cartel.

  Then there was the matter of Moody Lake. Mitch had indicated that he could still be alive. These words had jarred Ray. He’d had the same thought, only his thinking went further. He suspected that Moody might be Colton Cameron. But Bev had looked at Lake’s picture when she read the article and had not displayed a hint of recognition. Yet it had been her Uncle Gerald’s words about Colton’s accident and his identification of the body—or lack of it—that had kept Ray up last night. It had been those words that had sent him to his office this morning looking for any information on Lake that he could get. He had been on his computer searching before going through the papers in Mitch’s briefcase. It had been Bev’s sudden appearance that had stopped his one-man investigation, but the erotic results had been well worth it.

  The thought of their sexy interlude brought a smile to his face. He wasn’t sure that he would ever be able to work on that desk again.

  Thinking of Bev reminded him of the package that she had given him. Curious, he pulled over to the side of the road and slipped it out of his jacket pocket. It turned out to be her iPod. She had used it during their trip from Tiburon to L.A., at times snapping her fingers and singing at the top of her lungs. She had taunted and teased him about being in the Stone Age for not owning one. A note was wrapped around the iPod. Unfolding it, he read the words scrawled in her precise handwriting: Enjoy, and listen closely to the words of the first song.

  Slipping on the earphones, he turned the iPod on and pulled back into traffic. He should have stayed parked, because the first song that played nearly had him driving off of the road.

  It was Aretha Franklin’s old-school classic “Call Me” and the first refrain of the songstress soulful voice left no doubt in Ray’s mind about Bev Cameron’s feelings. The words were loud and clear, as were their meaning. She was in love with him.

  * * *

  The first floor of Ginny Little’s house had been turned into a sanctuary for her daughter. Dana was using a walker, so the house had been made handicapped accessible. But there was one gesture of her mother’s love that brought Dana to tears. Ginny had seen to it that all of the bedroom furniture from her younger daughter’s L.A. condo was transported to the house in Stillwaters, recreating an exact replica of the room.

  After seeing that her sister was settled, Bev retreated to her own house. She welcomed the solitude. The Stillwaters family rarely did anything small, and Dana had been welcomed by a banner mounted across the front of their mother’s house, followed by a stream of visiting relatives led by Grandy. They had brought enough food to the house to feed an army, and, much to Bev’s delight, she discovered that her refrigerator had been stocked as well.

  Dragging herself up the stairs, she jumped into the shower and washed the day’s grime off of her body. Slipping into a pair of pajamas, she sank into the comfort of the billowy mattress. Her body welcomed the relief. Nothing in her life had prepared her for a day like this—drug cartels, murder, infidelity, break-ins. What was next?

  She was close to falling asleep when her cell phone rang. She had placed it on the table by her bed, and her first thought was to ignore its summons. She was too tired to reach that far, but fearing that the call might be one regarding Dana, she picked it up.

  “Hello?” Her voice was sluggish from exhaustion.

  There was silence on the other end for a moment, and then a voice—Ray’s voice.

  “I love you, too.”

  CHAPTER 25

  It had been quite a week. Between being knee-deep in the middle of intrigue, running her Chicago business from her home office in Stillwaters, and helping attend to her sister, Bev had little time for anything else, except Ray. Their calls to each other were nonstop. They took turns calling each other in the morning to start their days. She usually called him in the afternoon and he called her at night. He had become a part of her life. It had gotten so bad that she found it difficult to fall asleep without his voice to soothe her. She was in love! Bev Cameron was in love! Added to that revelation was the flourishing relationship with her sister.

  Dana was thriving. Her speech was improving, as was her gait. Much of her memory had returned, but she was still unclear as to what happened the day of her fall. For Bev, that was irrelevant when compared with the many advantages that her accident had garnered. The love and support of her relatives seemed to have turned Dana’s former opinion of the Stillwaters family in a new direction, and she and Bev had never been so close. They chatted daily about everything, even Ray. Bev didn’t share with her how she felt about him, but Dana was happy that he and Bev were together. They even examined their past sibling relationship and, out of that, began forging a new one.

  Bev hadn’t informed her that she had read her journals, and never would. She had given them to Ray to be returned to their rightful place. That she had breached her sister’s privacy wasn’t something of which she was proud, but reading them had given her insight into Dana’s life that helped heal the wounds between them. Those journals had served a purpose for which she would always be grateful.

  On this day, Dana and she were walking down Stillwaters Road together. It was the same tree-lined street that her sister and Ray had driven down months before. Dana was using a walker, and a daily stroll was part of her therapy. Her memory was slowing returning, and her engagement to Mitch was part of that.

  Bev wasn’t sure if this was the right time to broach the subject of the briefcase, but she decided to proceed. When she asked her sister if she remembered having it at her house, Dana looked at her blankly at first as she tried to recall.

  “Yes, I think so. Why?”

  “There’s something inside it that’s very important, and Ray needs your written permission to give it to the authorities.”

  Dana stopped walking and stood studying Bev. “What is this about?” The unspoken question was for Bev to remind her of the reason that the briefcase was important. There was a hint of recognition of the issue in her tone.

  “There’s a CD in that case that has some information on it that the police need to see.”

  “Something that Mitch was working on?” Her eyes wandered beyond Bev, trying to recall. “Yes! He left the briefcase at my house before he died. That’s what happened.” She turned to her sister with excited eyes. “There was a CD in there. There was something on it…”

  “You remember!” Bev’s hopes soared and sank at the same. “Did you read what was on it?” She didn’t want her to be caught up in the intrigue.

  Dana bit her lower lip, trying to recall details. “I read the first few pages and that was enough to let me know that something illegal was going on. I wanted somebody else to see it.” She hesitated. “Hey, didn’t I call Ray? Did he tell you that I called him?”

  “Yes, he did. You told him that you had something to show him.” She was relieved that Dana didn’t appear to know everything that was on it. What Mitch had written about Dana and the other women in his life had been near the end, and it had been less than flattering. The man was a misogynist, a first-class jackass.

  “That’s what the call must have been about,” Dana mumbled. “But then the doorbell rang—” Her eyes took on a faraway look.

  Bev took over. “Was it Renee Ingram?” She didn’t want to put words in her mouth, but she was eager for Dana to confirm her suspicions. She knew the moment that her sister remembered. The look on her face said it all.

  “
Renee was there when I fell down the stairs.” Dana paused. “She pushed me!”

  “She pushed you?” Bev was irate. Taking her sister by the arm, she guided her to the seat attached to the walker. “Come on, sit down and tell me everything that you can remember.” Bev settled on the grass in front of her as Dana told it all.

  Dana and Renee had met through Mitch. The two of them had hit it off, and whenever Renee vacationed at the Ingram house in Malibu, she contacted her. After his death, Dana had shared with Renee her suspicion that it had been foul play and her plan to investigate her relatives to see if any of them were involved. Renee had even offered her old engagement ring to assist with the ruse.

  Renee’s visit to Dana’s condo that day had been unexpected. She said that she had stopped by to pick up the ring that she had loaned Dana. From what Bev could discern, what occurred after that was a series of misunderstandings and coincidences that had nearly cost Dana her life.

  “I was telling Renee that I was in a hurry,” said Dana, “explaining to her that I might have found some evidence that someone else might have killed Mitch, and not somebody in my family. She asked me why I would think that, but not being sure of what I had, I wouldn’t say. For some reason that really upset her and she kept demanding that I tell her what I knew. I mean, she was going off.

  “I went up the stairs to get her ring, and she followed me. She was ranting and raving like a lunatic. She kept asking me what I knew and saying something about how I wasn’t going to ruin her life and break up her family. Crazy stuff! I don’t know what she was talking about. We were at the top of the stairs and I told her that I didn’t know what her problem was, but she could get out of my house. I had someplace to go. She grabbed me by the shoulders, saying something about how I wasn’t going anywhere. Then she pushed me, and that’s the last thing that I remember.”

  That was it, all of the evidence that was needed to bring charges against Renee Ingram. Bev was disillusioned that the concern that the woman had shown so fervently during Dana’s hospitalization had been deception based on self preservation. They hadn’t heard from her since she was told that Dana’s memory had been impaired. When she spoke to Ray that evening, she told him what her sister had revealed.

  “Renee either came back to the condo for her ring, or she was looking for the evidence that Dana had told her about. But she didn’t get what she was looking for. From the sound of it, she thought that her husband had something to do with Mitch’s death.”

  Ray agreed. “That’s what Mitch wanted her to think. Apparently, she must know that her husband is capable of murder.”

  Bev shuddered at the thought. “Dana promised me that she wouldn’t share what she told me with anybody else yet. I asked her to trust me to take care of it, and she agreed. I sent the signed letter of permission to you by overnight express. You should get it tomorrow.”

  “Good, I’ll look for it. Meanwhile, it sounds as though a lot has changed between Dana and you.” Ray sounded pleased for her.

  “It has.” Bev couldn’t be happier. “And when I told her that Mitch had written that he was going to commit suicide, she accepted it quite well.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, too. And you,” his voice became seductive, “when do I get you again?”

  She gave him a sexy chuckle. “I’ll be flying home to Chicago the day after tomorrow.”

  “Give me a few days to take care of some business and then I’m coming to you.”

  Bev curled into a ball and purred, “I can’t wait.”

  * * *

  After talking with Bev, Ray lay in his bed and thought about how wildly insane his life had become. He was madly in love with the most wonderful woman in the world, and, between making deals with Hollywood moguls, he was secretly involved in the possible downfall of a drug cartel, the implication of its leader in a murder, and the likely arrest of the man’s wife for attempting to do the same. Added to this was the possibility that the dead husband of the woman that he loved might also have been a killer, a drug czar, and really wasn’t dead. There wasn’t a writer in Tinsel Town that could have come up with this story. If he had read a script like this he would have rejected it as too bizarre.

  He thanked God for Bev. It was she who brought some balance into his life. It was she who brought him a sense of calm. The sound of her voice was his lifeline. He had wanted to tell her that he loved her face to face the first time that he said the words, but that hadn’t happened. It didn’t matter, they both made up for it by repeating those three little words every chance they got. Ray wanted to shout to the world that he was a man in love.

  Bev’s son-in-law was having a field day when it came to teasing Ray about her. After Thad had fallen in love with Darnell, Ray had bragged with confidence that he would never let a woman possess his heart so thoroughly. Thad had no problem reminding him of that declaration. Ray took the ribbing good-naturedly. Considering what he had gained, a little teasing was a minor price to pay.

  He lived for his daily talks with Bev; whether their conversations were short and mundane or long and steamy, there were few subjects that they didn’t discuss, except one—her former husband. She hadn’t mentioned him since their conversation during their drive to L.A. from Tiburon. Still, he remained on Ray’s mind, especially in light of what Mitch had written. He could no longer rule out the possibility that Colton might be alive. For his own satisfaction, Ray felt compelled to solve the mystery of Colton Cameron.

  He hadn’t told Bev about his trip to Carmel earlier in the week. He had flown up and searched Darnell and Thad’s house until he found a photo—a color snapshot of a man who appeared to have been caught off guard by the camera. Darnell had placed it alone on one of the pages of a family album that she kept in her office. Below the photo, she had written the words: “My father, Colton Cameron.” Next to those words was written the year that the photo was taken, the same year that he had died.

  Ray studied the close-up. It was of a handsome young man in his prime. There was a slight smile of surprise on his face, but his eyes were sparkling with humor. It was a good picture for a daughter to have of her father. He made a copy of the photo, returned it to its place of honor, and flew back to L.A. the same day. When he compared the picture of Colton Cameron with that of Moody Lake, he noted that there were similarities in the slope of their brows and the shape of the ears. Other than that, if there had been plastic surgery on Lake the doctor had performed his job well.

  As Ray lay in bed contemplating what he would do next, he knew that his choices could be explosive. If Colton Cameron and Moody Lake were the same person the complications could be many, not the least being that the man was a killer. Someone had given his life so that Moody Lake could live, and the way that the victim had died had not been pretty. It took a special kind of sadist to decapitate another human being, to say nothing of the kind of character it took to head a drug cartel. If this man were Colton, he was a dangerous man. If he were still alive, who knew what he was capable of doing?

  With that in mind, sleep didn’t come easily for Ray. He got up from his bed and wandered downstairs. After pouring himself a glass of wine, he stretched out in a chair and tried to relax. It didn’t work. All he could think about was Bev. How in the world had Colton Cameron left a woman like that, knowing that she was carrying his child? All indications were that he loved her and was looking forward to becoming a father. There must have been a hell of a reason for him to want to erase all traces of his existence. Ray concluded that if Colton and Lake were the same, he must have been deeply involved in illegal activities for quite a while.

  Reportedly, he worked in construction. It was no secret that the industry was rife with criminal activity. Colton must have been involved. Something had happened and he’d had to run for his life, which meant that he had to end someone else’s life in order to live.

  Just how long had he been involved in such activities? This was a man in his twenties who might have pulled off a deception that had co
ntinued successfully for over three decades. It took ingenuity to pull something like that off. It took savvy way beyond the years of someone that young, unless that person had experience in the criminal world. He would have had to have underground contacts and lots of money. If he’d had assistance, he would have had to develop a level of respect from those who helped him that took years to hone. Who could Colton Cameron have been in the underworld that he would be able to pull something like that off? Were there people still alive who could confirm Ray’s suspicions? Or had he killed them along the way, as he might have done to the victim in the river who took his place? Was Colton Cameron—a.k.a. Moody Lake—still alive under another name and with yet another face, still trying to make contact with his daughter, or with Bev? Would that mean that mother and daughter were in danger? More than likely it would be Ray who would be in danger simply because he loved the woman that Colton had loved.

  Ray gave a distressed sigh. How could he rest not knowing? How could he rest if he knew? Did it really matter? He could end all of this speculation and anguish by walking away and ending the relationship with Bev. After all, she still wore her ex-husband’s wedding band around her neck. Why should he stress over the man?

  But he knew that he would never abandon Bev; he loved her too much. Whatever the outcome might be, he was going to be there. That was a definite.

  Massaging his throbbing temples, he longed for the days when the only challenge that he could foresee regarding the two of them being together was her concern over their age difference. How trivial that had been.