Secrets and Lies

by Capri Montgomery

  “It’s been awhile,” he shrugged. “But I think so.”

  “I have some pictures back at my office that I’d like for you to look at. Do you have time?”

  “If it will help Thena I have all the time in the world.”

  Thena hugged Kyle. “Thank you. I’m so glad you’re going to help us. And I’m so glad the two of you are going to get along. Kyle is my best friend,” she looked at Thomas. “And Thomas is my boyfriend,” she looked at Kyle. “I’m so glad both of you are going to be civil with each other.” She didn’t jump right to friendly because the look on Thomas face still made her think he didn’t fully trust Kyle. Perhaps trust would come with time; perhaps it wouldn’t, but the least they could do was be nice to each other in the meantime.

  “Real subtle, Thena.” Kyle patted her arm.

  “I know; right?” She laughed. “Now you two go on and handle business and I will stay here and work.”

  “You’re coming with us,” Thomas assured her. She could argue with him, or she could go. Arguing would solve nothing because in the end she was sure Thomas would win. He had that determined look on his face; the one that told her he meant business. Besides, she was curious herself and if she were in the room while Kyle looked at photos then she wouldn’t have to wait to find out what happened—or why it was relevant to the here and now.

  Kyle had been more helpful than Thomas imagined he would be, given the fact they hadn’t gotten off to the best start with each other.

  “That one,” Kyle hit the photograph. “That’s the guy. He was wearing a snazzy suit too. I thought maybe he was one of those business men or something.”

  “Congressman is more like it,” Thomas snapped.

  “Let me see,” Thena nearly knocked Kyle out of his chair to get a look at the photo. “He doesn’t look familiar.”

  “He doesn’t represent our state…but you might know his son.”

  She looked at him, silently questioning his words.

  “Doctor Evans.”

  “No way.” She looked over the gray haired man’s picture. “They don’t look anything alike.”

  “Adopted,” he told her. “His mother was a widow. Her husband died in a military training mission while she was pregnant. Congressman Evans wasn’t a congressman at the time, but he had political ambitions. He married her a couple years after her husband died. It boosted his ratings too. It was a smart move for both of them—politically and financially. Her son got a father, she got a husband, he got a playing card.”

  “How sad,” Thena shook her head.

  “I don’t know how sad it is. He seems to love him like his own blood. They’re so much alike you wouldn’t know any difference existed between their bloodlines.”

  “Well, I’m going to be late for an appointment,” Kyle stood. “If you need me, Thena knows how to reach me.” He turned and pulled Thena into his arms. “Keep your head up; things will get better.”

  She smiled at him. “Drive safely.”

  “I always do,” he grinned. “Call me later.”

  She nodded before turning her attention back to the pictures. Thomas showed him out the office. Janet wasn’t in, yet again, because she had a parent-teacher conference with one of Mike’s teachers. He hoped it wasn’t anything serious, like trouble, because he knew that even though Mike had some good influences in his life lately, he still felt anger over his father, and sometimes he would act out by skipping school. Thomas thought putting him in the youth soccer program would be good for him. So far it had seemed to help give him a feeling of family, of belonging, but he wondered if maybe he needed more.

  “I get it now,” Thena turned to look at him when he reentered his office. “Doctor Evans killed my mother and the congressman is covering it up with the help of that woman.”

  Thomas shook his head. He was going to have to find a way to settle Thena down so she would stop running off half cocked with wild ideas. “You don’t have any proof of that.”

  “Oh please! It’s so obvious. Call the FBI, or CIA, or whoever deals with this and have those murdering bastards arrested.”

  “Thena,” he sat down in front of her. “You need proof. The congressman having a drink with Phoebe, who wasn’t even a detective up here at the time, doesn’t prove anything.” The way she looked at him told him she heard his words, but she wasn’t going to easily believe them. She had made up her mind on what she thought was truth and she wanted him to do something about it now—not tomorrow, not next week, but now.

  “He has a point.” The voice from behind her made her jump nearly out the chair, while Thomas calmly lifted his eyes to the man standing at the door. He knew the voice right off, which is one reason he didn’t feel a need to pull his gun.

  “Drake, good to see you.” He was early.

  “You too. Geneva sends her love,” he nodded his head in the direction of Thena, as if he expected not only an introduction, but a full on explanation of what their relationship truly was.

  “Drake, this is Thena Davis. Thena, this is Drake—a really good friend.”

  “Hi,” she smiled. “It’s so good to meet some of Thomas’ friends—he seems to be hiding them all from me.” She crossed the room and shook Drake’s hand. “Come on over, have a seat.” She tugged at him until he was at the desk. Drake rearranged one of the chairs so that he could sit with his back not facing the door.

  “Can I talk freely with her in the room?”

  “Hey,” she said indignantly.

  “About this case,” Thomas nodded affirmatively. “What do you have for me?”

  “Doctor Evans isn’t your guy. He has an airtight alibi, although you won’t see it in any of the papers or police reports…buried police reports,” he added. “He was being questioned at the hospital on suspicion of theft. They thought he was taking drugs and—”

  “Selling them!” Thena chimed in.

  “Using them,” Drake shook his head. “Does she always do that?”

  Thomas nodded. “Sadly it does seem to be something she insists on doing.”

  “Funny,” she shook her head. “I didn’t think you could be a doctor if you used drugs. I mean, don’t they kick you out of the profession for stuff like that?” She started tinkering with one of the files Drake had brought with him. Drake judiciously unfolded her fingers from his files and moved the folders out of her reach. She smiled sheepishly before apologizing.

  “They couldn’t prove it…or more like they didn’t want to. The hospital received a rather hefty donation the same day the investigation on Harold Evans stopped.”

  “I told you they did it. I’m not sure how, but it was them.” She jabbed her finger at the photo of the congressman. “What are you going to do about it, Thomas?”

  Thomas took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. There was nothing he could do about her theory, other than investigate it, but somehow he knew telling her that wasn’t going to go over well.

  “There’s no proof. It’s just circumstantial, and given the ease at producing an alibi—”

  “No way do they get away with it. You have to do something.” She stressed her words. “If you can’t, then I will.”

  She stood and Thomas quickly got to his feet and around the desk in time to put her back in her chair. He couldn’t have her running off and doing something stupid, like throwing accusations around that could get his investigation set back to square one, or get her killed. “Listen,” he sat down on the corner of the desk. “I’m going to say this once, and once only. You do not go out there and do anything.”

  “But—”

  He held up his hand to keep her from talking. “If I have to handcuff you to the bed until this is over, I will.”

  She smiled deviously. The smile had the hairs on the back of his neck standing on edge. What was she up to now?

  “You have handcuffs?” The tone in her voice told him she was thinking of all the things he could do with those handcuffs, or more like all the things he could do to her while she was wea
ring them. He shook his head. Drake snickered.

  “The point is, Thena that I’m handling this investigation and I say when it’s time to make a move. Now is not that time.”

  “But, Thomas. They are doing something illegal at that hospital, the same hospital where my mom worked. Then my mom goes missing, not just missing, she gets killed. They have to be involved. It can’t just be a coincidence.”

  She had a point there; he couldn’t deny it. He didn’t believe in coincidences; something somewhere within this mess of information had to be connected. But he couldn’t just run off making accusations without proof, especially when politics were at play. If they were involved then they had killed once to protect the secret, and he knew they would be willing to just as easily kill again. What he couldn’t understand was why they hadn’t just gotten rid of the body all those years ago. Why hide it in the walls of a home that was being newly constructed? On the other end of that, what were the odds that somebody would come through and want to completely gut out the home and redo the interior structure? Whether it was bad luck or stupidity didn’t really matter. Their secret had been unearthed and now they were going to have to scramble to cover over it.

  “Promise me, you’ll trust me to handle this. Promise me you won’t do anything.” He refrained from adding the words, anything stupid, to his sentence because knowing Thena that would just give her reason to do just that. She, of course, wouldn’t think anything she was doing was stupid, even if he did.

  “Okay…I’ll trust you to handle it—for now.”

  He shook his head again.

  “She has fire,” Drake said. “I can see why you like her so much.”

  Thomas didn’t bother to dispute Drake’s words. Even though he hadn’t talked to him about his feeling for Thena he was sure Drake had noticed in the way he dealt with her that he felt something for her—something more than PI and client relations.

  “Now,” Drake stood. “I need to talk to Thomas about something and it’s not for your ears.”

  She looked to Drake and then to Thomas. “Oh, all right. I’ll wait outside.

  Thomas shook his head no. “You’ll wait in here. We’ll go out into the reception area.”

  She laughed. “Scared I might run off on you?”

  The thought had crossed his mind. He handed her some blank eight by ten paper. “Here,” he put a pencil in front of her. “Sketch some of those changes you insist I should make to the kitchen.” He watched the light in her eyes shine brighter. Thena was in love with architecture. If he really needed to keep her busy, keep her mind occupied so that she wouldn’t keep thinking about ways to trip up the doctor and the congressman, then he had to give her something to focus on that she loved.

  When he closed the door to his office he looked at Drake, “so,” he folded his arms across his chest, “what’s going on?”

  “Her father’s death may not have been an accident,” he stated flatly. The words rolled off his tongue so easy, as if he were giving him a recipe to an American pie.

  “I looked into everything, from the congressman and his son, to the cops here, to her father’s death. The cops wrote it up as an accident, but,” he pulled photos out of his folder and handed them to Thomas. Thomas could see the damage to the front of the car. It was completely smashed in, clear through to the back seat.

  “Jesus,” he groaned. Just looking at the damage, thinking about the man trapped beneath all that metal, had his stomach churning.

  “The damage is insinuative of that kind of accident,” Drake assured him. “The speed at which his truck impacted that tree—the speed at which it was estimated that his truck impacted that tree—would produce those kind of results. They would produce them to the front of the truck, but not the rear end. Check out the next photo, the back of the truck.”

  “Red paint,” Thomas studied the photograph. “Could have been an earlier accident. Maybe he…” his words trailed off as he looked at the damage. If he had backed into something he would have had to hit it pretty hard.

  “The cops chalked it up to an earlier accident, even though there was nothing on file about a previous accident. That’s not unusual for people who want to avoid the insurance hike, but he was in a company truck—not reporting it would have been a dumb move on his part. I don’t get the feeling the man was an idiot.”

  “Me either,” Thomas nodded. “You think somebody ran him off the road?”

  “Gut feeling,” Drake shrugged. “I could be wrong—but…”

  “But you rarely are,” Thomas assured him. “Honestly, with what’s been happening lately it’s hard to know what’s going on here. Thena said her father wanted her to put the alarm on the house. A few weeks before he died he had insisted.”

  “Sounds to me like he knew something. The question is, was it related to your current case, or something else?”

  That was the question…the big question. If everything was related then if he could find the killer then he could stop the attacks on Thena. But if this were something else, if Thena’s father had stumbled upon something, knew something, that got him killed, then he was working this case all wrong. He was working the case assuming everything was connected—the attempts on her life, her mother’s death…but maybe, just maybe, these were two separate things entirely.

  “It’s not going to be easy to find out why a dead guy insisted his daughter put an alarm on the house three weeks before he died—especially when he didn’t tell her why.”

  Drake nodded his understanding. “I thought you might say that. So I did a little more digging and this is what I found.” He handed him another picture. “This was taken two days before he died; it’s from one of those parking lot security cameras. I don’t think they ever get rid of these tapes.”

  Thomas studied the photo. “That’s Kyle,” he nodded. “Why is he following him?”

  “I don’t think he was. You see I watched the video, and while at first I thought maybe…possibly he could have been following Kyle, a little time and patience provided me with another possibility. I think he was following that car,” he pointed to the black Toyota in the distance. “There’s not enough on the car to make it out. It’s dirty, the license plate is blocked out, and the windows are too dark to see a thing. But I think whoever is in that car was following Kyle, and Thena’s father was following it.”

  Thomas pushed his hand into his hair and pulled on the black, leather clip holding his hair back until his hair was free from the contraption. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “I don’t know,” Drake assured him. “But whatever it is, it got him killed.”

  “I can’t tell her this—not now, and not without more information. She’s been through enough.” He knew he would have to address the subject with her eventually, but now wasn’t the time. How could he tell her both of her parents had been murdered?

  “I can stay and help if you want.”

  “No,” he shook his head. “This is my job; I can handle it.” He would have to handle it.

  “If you need me, you call me.”

  “I will.”

  He looked at the photos again. That was the same black car, he was sure of it, the one that he had seen speeding away from Thena’s office that day. He was sure it was most likely the same one in the incident with Sandy too. So now his question was, what did this black car have to do with everything? Since the driver of the car had been following Kyle, Thomas had a feeling he was going to have to expand his search to yet another person in this charade.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “So what you’re saying is I’m still a suspect,” Kyle rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t do a damn thing to hurt Thena.”

  “I didn’t say you’re a suspect.”

  “But you’re here on my construction site instead of researching Thena’s case, so you must think I am.”

  He shook his head. Good Lord, they both jumped to conclusions. “I’m here because I want to know who might have a problem with you.”
/>   “Why?”

  Thomas explained about Thena’s father, not the part about his death possibly not being an accident, but that he had been following somebody and that somebody had been following Kyle.

  “Damn,” he ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, back then there are only two people I can think of who might have been angry with me. Sandy—clearly she had issues since she went through all of that to get the cops to arrest me. And Eddie Mason.”

  “Mason?”

  Kyle nodded. “Yeah. I never liked that guy, but at least I knew how to be professional.”

  “What happened?”

  “He had a bug up his butt about my dating black women. He didn’t think I had a right,” he snarled. “What a nutcase. It’s like, dude, slavery days are over; segregation is over, and last I checked, women had the right to decide who they wanted to be with. Well, he got pissed over that and wrote a dozen fictitious violations on one of my sites. I filed a complaint, and when they sent somebody else out all the violations were dismissed. It went in his record and he wasn’t happy about that.” Kyle shrugged. “I didn’t care. At least I didn’t have to see the guy again. He’s not allowed to step foot on one of my sites—ever. I used to see him parked outside my house in some raggedy old Toyota, but then he stopped. I guess he got over it.”

  “A black Toyota?”

  “Nah, it was red last time I saw it.”

  “The car that was following you was a black Toyota.”

  Kyle shrugged. “He could have had more than one. I know his brother used to stay with him until he joined the Army. Maybe he left his car with him.”

  Thomas’ thoughts went back to something Thena had said and he wondered if it were at all possible that this guy was the one who had been trying to kill Thena. Had Mason been the one to stalk Sandy and make it look like Kyle had done it? It wouldn’t be impossible for him to plant evidence. He was constantly on construction sites; it wouldn’t be impossible at all for him to grab a few materials while nobody was looking.