The Lake House Secret, A Romantic Suspense Novel (A Jenessa Jones Mystery)

by Debra Burroughs

  “I just wanted to see how you’re holding up before I head back to work.” His hand brushed down her arm and she was sure she felt a spark.

  “I appreciate that.” Jenessa flashed him a little smile. “I wish we could talk more.”

  “Me too.” His deep brown eyes lit up.

  “You see, I’ve dug up some things on this dead body case I’m investigating and I wanted to ask you a few questions.” As Jenessa spoke the words, the sparkle in his eyes dimmed.

  “Oh, I see. You just want me for inside information, and here I thought you wanted me for my body.”

  Her cheeks were on fire. “I…I…well, no, I just meant—”

  He chuckled. “I’m only kidding, Jenessa.”

  She gave his arm a sharp jab. “Michael Baxter. You never change. Always the kidder.” Although, he had changed in so many other ways—anyone with eyes could see that.

  “I’ve got to fly, but how about I stop by your place after my shift, around nine o’clock?”

  “That’d be great. I’ll just be going through Dad’s office this evening with a fine-tooth comb. Hey, that reminds me, do you know anyone who can pick a lock?”

  “Planning to break into someone’s house?”

  “Of course not. I can’t open the lap drawer to my dad’s antique desk, and Aunt Renee almost came out of her skin when I told her I was going to break it open. I thought that if you knew any petty criminals who could pick locks I could get their name and number from you.”

  “No way I’m letting you bring a criminal into your house. Geez, Jenessa. For someone so smart, you can be pretty dumb sometimes.” He grinned.

  That was a statement he’d made to her with some regularity when they were in high school. She responded by balling up her fist and shaking it at him playfully. “Hey, buster, you want another sock in the arm?”

  Michael covered her fist with his hand. “What about a locksmith?”

  “I thought about that, but I’d rather it was someone who could keep their mouth shut about anything they saw in the drawer.”

  “I tell you what, I’ll bring my tools and I will pick the lock for you, but right now I’ve got to get to work.” He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

  A male, standing close by, cleared his throat.

  Jenessa’s and Michael’s heads both turned toward the sound.

  “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Hello, Logan,” Jenessa said, stuffing both hands behind her back, her chest tightening at his presence.

  “Logan.” Michael pulled upright to his full six-foot-five-inch height, towering above Logan by at least three inches. “I was just on my way out. Take care, Jenessa.”

  Michael pushed the door open and was gone, leaving her to deal with Logan.

  “I didn’t mean to chase him away,” Logan said with a hint of sarcasm. “Was it something I said?”

  “Don’t worry, you didn’t. What can I do for you?” Her voice held steady and aloof, her eyes looking toward the crowd as she stiffly rested her back against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Logan rested a hand against the wall behind her and leaned in. “Can’t an old friend say hello and offer his condolences?”

  Her gaze shifted and met his. He was now only inches from her. Those liquid blue eyes and that wavy blond hair drew her back to her teens, as if she was standing before him as a seventeen-year-old girl, deeply in love. Her heart began to hammer in her chest and suddenly the room became stuffy and warm.

  Forcing herself to look away, she searched the crowd for Ramey or Sara or Aunt Renee—anyone who could rescue her from this moment. But she couldn’t make eye contact with any of them.

  He must have sensed how uncomfortable he was making her, for he pushed off the wall and straightened his stance. “I’d still love to get together and catch up with you. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other. A lot of things have changed, for both of us.”

  “I’m not so sure—”

  “Listen,” he cut in. “If you’re going to be staying in town and working at the paper, I’d like to be friends so it’s not awkward every time we run into each other.”

  He was right. They would keep running into each other—Hidden Valley was a pretty small town—Aunt Renee had even said as much. Perhaps if she spent more time with him, those overwhelming feelings from the past would lose their power and they could simply be friends.

  “What do you suggest?” Was she out of her mind for even entertaining such an idea?

  “How about you let me take you to dinner tonight?”

  She started to open her mouth in protest, but he pressed a couple of fingers lightly over her lips.

  “Nothing fancy,” Logan promised, lowering his hand. “Just two old friends catching up over a burger and fries. What do you say?”

  His engaging eyes held her gaze, her lips tingling from his touch. Should she trust him again after all this time—or run? She hated the way she felt every time she bumped into him—a cross between wanting to throw up and her heart trying to jump out of her chest. If Hidden Valley was going to be home again, maybe she should at least attempt to make peace with him, for her own sake.

  If it didn’t work out for them to be friends, no one could say she hadn’t tried. “All right. Pick me up at six.” She peeled away from him and wandered toward the crowd to find her family, leaving Logan standing alone by the door. She assumed he was watching her go, and a quick glance over her shoulder confirmed it. A nervous chill shimmied down her back at the thought of his eyes shamelessly following her. She wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or irritated.

  Ramey and Sara were huddled in conversation with Aunt Renee near the buffet table and she headed toward them. What would the girls think of her decision to have dinner with her old flame? Maybe it was best not to spill the beans.

  ~*~

  It was nearly five o’clock when Jenessa planted herself at her father’s desk and opened her laptop. She had promised Charles McAllister a story on her father’s funeral, along with a little more background information on him. She plowed through the story, and after submitting her article via email, she sat quietly and pondered Lucy St. John’s murder.

  Eleven years ago, Ramey had turned eighteen and graduated from high school when her mother announced that she and her boyfriend were taking off for a more exciting life in Southern California. With no extended family that Ramey knew of, she would have been all alone in the world, if it hadn’t been for the Jones family.

  Jenessa closed her eyes and let her imagination run wild with theories. She liked to call it playing the What If game.

  What if Lucy’s boyfriend killed her? Lucy St. John had been a drunk most of Ramey’s life and her last boyfriend had turned her on to recreational drugs. Rather than heading straight to LA, what if they had gone up to the lake for one last party? Teenagers and the college crowd were known to do that, but would Lucy and her lover have done it too?

  What if she had overdosed on something? Or, what if she and this guy had fought over something and he accidentally killed her?

  Chapter 17

  If only Jenessa knew the name of Lucy’s last boyfriend, she could research him on the internet and hopefully discover something about him. She phoned Ramey. “Hey, can you stop by my house on your way home from work?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here.”

  Within a few minutes, Ramey was knocking at Jenessa’s front door. She gave her a quick hug and let her in. “Come back to the study and we’ll talk.”

  Ramey followed her down the hallway and took a seat across from the old desk. “Why are you being so mysterious?” Before Jenessa could answer, Ramey noticed the photo of the locket sitting on the corner of the desk. “What’s this?”

  She picked it up and gazed at it. “This is me.” She raised her eyes to Jenessa. “Why do you have a picture of my mother’s locket?”

  Aunt Renee was right. Ramey ju
st confirmed it.

  “Ramey, I have something to tell you. Something bad.”

  “What is it?” Ramey’s bright blue eyes darkened as a suspicious frown swept across her face.

  Jenessa drew a deep breath and leaned back in the chair. “If the little girl in this photo is you, I have reason to believe that the remains that were found at the lake belonged to—”

  “My mother?” Ramey blinked a few times, then her eyes grew round and wet. “Are you saying my mother is dead?”

  Jenessa rose from her seat and came around the desk. “I’m so sorry.” She bent down and laced her arms around Ramey. “It certainly appears that way.”

  “How do you know that? Did the police tell you? Did they do some sort of DNA testing on the bones? What?”

  Jenessa straightened. “This locket was found with the bones, Ramey. What else could it mean?”

  Ramey studied the photo again. “How did you get this picture?”

  “I can’t say, but trust me when I tell you that this locket was found with the buried remains.”

  Ramey nodded sadly. “Here, all this time I thought my mom ran off and didn’t care about me anymore—but that’s not what happened at all. She didn’t run off…she died.” Her voice cracked on the last painful word.

  “So now the question is, who killed her?” Jenessa said. “And why.”

  Ramey handed the picture back. “Promise me you’ll find out, Jenessa. Please, promise me that.”

  “I’m not a detective, Ramey. I’ll do all I can, but I can’t make any promises.”

  As an investigative reporter, Jenessa would pursue every avenue available to her to find the truth. If she could continue to apply pressure on Detective Provenza, she might learn more about the case, and perhaps she could also enlist Michael’s help to feed her some clues to Lucy’s murder.

  Jenessa took her seat behind the desk again. “Do you remember the name of your mom’s last boyfriend? The one she said she was going to LA with?”

  “You think he’s involved?”

  “I’m trying to think of anyone who may have had motive or opportunity to kill your mom, and her boyfriend was the first one that came to mind.”

  “It was Tony something or other. All I remember is I used to call him Phony Tony Bologna.”

  “To his face?”

  “Not if I knew what was good for me, but that’s what he used to say when he wanted me to stop doing something. ‘I swear, girl, if you know what’s good for you.’ I can hear him screaming it in my head like it was yesterday.”

  “So, Tony Bologna had a temper. Did he ever hit you?”

  “A few times.” Ramey paused for a moment, her expression falling, as if she was remembering one of those instances. “You know, I may know where I can find his name—my mom’s old boxes.”

  “Old boxes?”

  “Yeah, she was a packrat. When she left, I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. Let me poke around in them when I get home. I’m pretty sure there are photos in one of them, and there just might be a picture of the two of them. If we’re lucky, mom wrote his name on the back. She used to do that—to keep her boyfriends straight, I’m guessing.”

  Jenessa recalled there had been quite a string of men in Lucy St. John’s life. Poor Ramey.

  “Do you remember anyone that your mom had trouble with? Anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?”

  “Boy…that was a long time ago. I’d have to give that some thought. Let me go find that box and look through it. If I come up with anything, I can drop it by tonight.”

  “I probably won’t be home, so just call me and leave a message.”

  “Where are you going?” Ramey inquired.

  “I’m having dinner with a friend.”

  “Anyone I know? Like a certain tall and hunky police officer perhaps?”

  “No, I’m having dinner with Logan. Now, don’t judge.”

  “Logan? What on earth for?” Ramey obviously missed Jenessa’s last words about judging her.

  “It’s no big deal, nothing fancy. He just wanted to talk, make things not so uncomfortable every time we bump into each other.”

  “Oh, brother. And you bought that line?”

  “Well, he does have a point, Ramey. This is a small town and I work for his family now.” What could it hurt to give him an hour and see if he was right? “We’re going to keep running into one another. If it turns out to be a mistake, I’ll make a mad dash for the door.”

  “Call me if you need a ride home. And even if you don’t, call me when you get home. I want to hear all the juicy details.” Ramey snickered.

  “Please, just see if you can find that photo of Phony Tony.”

  ~*~

  Now that Ramey had confirmed she was the child in the locket, Jenessa wondered if Aunt Renee could shed any more light on Lucy St. John. She had lived in Hidden Valley for more than thirty years and knew most of what went on in that town. If she phoned her aunt now, she’d have time to talk before Logan showed up.

  “Now, I can’t say with a hundred percent certainty,” Aunt Renee began, “but I’m pretty sure that Ramey is Grey Alexander’s daughter.”

  Jenessa sucked in a quick breath. “Are you kidding? What makes you say that?”

  “I knew Lucy St. John when she was about twenty. I had just moved to Hidden Valley with Phillip, my second husband.” Renee paused. “You remember him, don’t you?”

  “Barely.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter. I met Lucy when she was working at the bank.”

  “The one where Grey Alexander is the president?”

  “Yes, but his father was the president then, and Grey was an asset manager, I believe. Anyway, Lucy worked for him. She was a pretty girl with long red hair and bright blue eyes, like Ramey’s.”

  Jenessa leaned closer to the phone, as if her Aunt was right in front of her. “And you think they were having an affair?”

  “Oh, honey, I know they were. Lucy confided in me one day over lunch that she had been seeing Grey, but she asked me to keep it to myself. No one could know.”

  “Wasn’t Grey married by then?”

  “He was. That’s why. You see, his wife was very pregnant. Some men simply can’t go without sex while their wives are in their third trimester and that period of time right after the birth, so he started up with Lucy. He didn’t care about her, he just wanted sex—and she knew it. It wasn’t like he was ever going to leave his wife and newborn baby for her. I don’t know what that girl was thinking.”

  “That son of a—”

  “Watch your language, young lady. Lucy had a hard upbringing, and not much sense, so when a handsome, powerful man like Grey started paying attention to her, well, it must have gotten the better of her.”

  Jenessa knew how that felt. Those Alexander men had a way about them.

  “I tried to get her to break it off with him,” Aunt Renee said, “but Lucy was under his spell. She wouldn’t give him up. I didn’t think we should stay friends after that.”

  “Then how do you know Grey Alexander is Ramey’s father, if you’d broken contact with her?”

  Chapter 18

  There was a pause on the phone line, as if Aunt Renee was measuring her words. “As far as I knew, Grey was the only man Lucy had ever slept with up to that point. She was obsessed with the man.”

  Jenessa recalled her own obsession with the younger Mr. Alexander. Her stomach knotted at the thought.

  “A few months later,” Aunt Renee continued, “maybe four or five, I was in the bank doing some business and I noticed Grey’s wife, Elizabeth, was there with the baby. Logan must have only been two or three months old at the time. Several of the tellers were crowding around them, getting a look at the child and wishing them well. I didn’t see Lucy there though, so I asked one of the girls about her. She said Lucy had been let go, but she didn’t know why.”

  Aunt Renee let out a long sigh. “I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what. A couple of days later I
saw her in town, stepping out of a store, and it was obvious she was pregnant, maybe four or five months along. She turned and went the other way when she saw me coming. I called out to her, but she kept walking.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “I never spoke to her after that. Maybe I should have made more of an effort.”

  “But you don’t know for sure Grey Alexander is Ramey’s father, do you?”

  “No, not absolutely. But who else could it be?”

  “Well, Ramey could get a paternity test,” Jenessa said.

  “Assuming she wants to know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Aunt Renee paused, “that Grey Alexander is a powerful man, and he obviously has not wanted any relationship with her. He could make life hard for her in this town if she exposed him.”

  “Yeah, that would be bad,” Jenessa replied. Then a thought hit her like a light bulb coming on. “Oh no, that would also mean Logan is Ramey’s brother—well, half-brother. I wonder if he knows.” If Ramey pursued it, he would have to split his inheritance with her, which Logan would certainly be opposed to doing.

  “Not likely Grey would have told him,” Aunt Renee supposed, “or anyone else.”

  “Do you think his wife knew?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” Jenessa pressed. It wasn’t like Aunt Renee to give such short answers.

  “Only that Grey and Elizabeth divorced when Logan was young. There were rumors.”

  “What kind of rumors?”

  “If town gossip at the time is to be believed, it’s very doubtful Lucy was the only one. Word was that there were a number of other women Grey had been, let’s just say, spending time with. So, yes, Elizabeth was probably aware.”

  “Do you think she knew about Ramey?”

  Elizabeth couldn’t have been pleased with that fact, not to mention the division of the Alexander wealth. Her son would no longer be Grey’s only heir.

  “That I can’t tell you, dear.”

  “If she did, though, do you think she would kill Lucy to keep it quiet?”