“Yeah. Even you.” I saw by the confused, almost hurt look on his face that I needed to explain, so I added, “You are a pretty suspicious person, Alex. You can’t deny that.”
“I don’t deny it at all. People are rarely what they seem to be, Poppy. You know that as well as I do. Until you spend hours upon hours around someone, you can’t think you know another person. It’s just not how it works.”
The intense look in his eyes told me he wasn’t talking about Lee Reynolds being a nice guy anymore. A strange feeling settled in between us, and for a moment I thought he might come right out and tell me how he felt about me spending time with Jack. He didn’t, though, and after a few awkward moments of us looking at each other across the desk, he lowered his eyes and returned to reading Lee’s loving messages to his second wife.
I did the same and began reading one of his texts regarding his working late on a Thursday afternoon. Flipping through the pages, I saw he sent a text to Jessica every Thursday to remind her he was working late.
“Did you notice he never lets her forget he’ll be home late on Thursdays?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah. And every time he tells her he loves her. Then she messages back every time to tell him she’ll have dinner ready for him at eight instead of six.”
“And to tell him she loves him too. They seem perfectly blissful in these texts.”
Leaning back in his chair, Alex folded his arms behind his head and stretched. “What was Lee doing every Thursday if he wasn’t with his ex-wife? I get no sense that he was cheating on Jessica, so what was he doing since we know he wasn’t working late?”
“I don’t know, but I feel like we need to know to know what happened to him. Every Thursday he works late, and then on one of those Thursdays he’s murdered in the woods outside of town and nowhere near where he works. Not a coincidence in my mind.”
Finished with his brief break from reading the texts, he returned to them as he mumbled, “I can’t shake the feeling it has something to do with his marriage.”
I scanned the rest of the texts transcript and found nothing to indicate he had even spoken to his ex-wife through messages in the entire time since he bought his new phone. “Alex, I can’t find anything in these that shows he and Cherise talked this way even once. If they were having an affair, we’ve got no proof here.”
Alex nodded. “I must be wrong then. It’s just that a man who takes that much care to tell his wife he’s going to be working late every Thursday when she already knows is reminding her that he’s going to be away so he doesn’t have to deal with her calling while he’s busy.”
A memory of how Jared accused me of cheating on him right around the time he took up with that grocery tart he’d leave me for just months later floated through my mind. Guilty people often projected their guilt onto others, but what if Lee was the opposite and suspected Jessica of cheating?
“Here’s a wild idea. What if Lee thought Jessica was cheating on him and the whole Thursday working late thing wasn’t about him making sure she didn’t call him but was to make sure he let her know the coast was clear? What if he was reminding her to make sure she felt comfortable to do whatever she was up to in those hours when he was supposedly at work so he could catch her?”
For a moment, Alex looked skeptical. It was a twist on what we’d been thinking all along, but it certainly wasn’t impossible. He thought it through and nodded as he opened up his notepad to jot down what I’d said. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, to be honest, but she was a younger, beautiful woman so maybe Lee worried she was up to something.”
“I know we have no proof of her ever cheating on him, but that would explain why she would try to kill him.”
Alex sighed. “Except now we’re two steps back again. If Jessica was cheating on him, we need to figure out who the other man was.”
I hung my head as the excitement of my theory faded away, leaving only more questions about Lee Reynolds’ murder. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a message from him to the other man,” I joked.
He smiled but said nothing else as he finished writing his note and returned to reading Lee’s texts. Page after page of what were basically love letters between him and Jessica took up the next few minutes, in addition to messages between Lee and his boss, Kevin Nash, and those he sent to a guy named Phil he named The Plumber.
“A jetted bathtub in the master bedroom for Jessica’s birthday in February?” Alex said under his breath.
“Maybe all that crying was real,” I said. “I’d probably cry my eyes out if I lost such a great guy too. That’s a nice gift.”
We read on to see messages back and forth between Lee and some guy from the radio station named Anthony about meeting up at a bar named Ridgeways a couple Saturdays in a row to watch college football. More and more, it seemed like his text messages weren’t going to help us at all.
Then suddenly the tone of Lee’s messages changed when someone named Drake came into the picture. I looked up to see Alex’s eyes light up as he began reading them too.
“You must be reading the Lee and Drake messages.”
“Listen to this. There are only three messages, but these aren’t like any of the others. The first one was sent by Lee to Drake in mid-September on the 15th at 8pm and says: NEXT TIME I SEE YOU DOING THAT AT WORK I WON’T KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT. Drake’s response just a few minutes later says: DO IT AND YOU’LL PAY. Lee answered back around eleven PM that night. I GAVE YOU FAIR WARNING.”
Now we had something to go on other than the possible baiting of Jessica and Lee making plans for home improvement and guys’ afternoons out at the bar. Alex excitedly flipped through the pages of information Kevin Nash had given him about the employees at WXSN.
Looking up, he said, “There’s nobody named Drake in the list of people who work at the radio station.”
“Maybe it had to do with something else? Maybe he saw someone at their job doing something wrong?” I suggested.
“Then how would he get their number? No, I think this has to do with someone who worked with Lee.” Reaching for the phone, he dialed a number. “I’m going to call the station manager to see who this Drake might be.”
Alex placed the call on speaker so I could hear and asked Nash who Drake could be at the station. He explained there had been someone who worked there named Jason Drake, but he was let go two weeks ago. As far as he knew, the man still lived in the area. While he looked for his address, I hoped this would be the lead we’d wanted for days to find.
“Up for a visit to 798 Cressly Lane to talk to Jason Drake?” Alex asked as he slipped into his jacket and stuffed his gun into its holster at his hip.
I stood from my chair and eagerly waited for him to be ready to leave. “Of course! This is the first new piece of evidence we’ve had in days. I’m dying to hear what this Drake guy has to say about those texts.”
“Let’s go and find out what he was up to that made Lee so upset.”
The Drake house sat at the end of a tree-lined street in west Sunset Ridge, about five blocks from downtown. Made up of mostly older homes, this area of town had recently seen many young families buy homes here so it had a far different look with its toys scattered across front lawns and swing sets in the back yards.
Jason Drake lived in a modest red brick Cape Cod style home. Kevin Nash had told Alex he hated to let him go since he was recently married with a newborn, but he didn’t have a choice due to the station owners’ decision to cut back on payroll even after a successful year. Drake had left unhappily, according to his former boss, but Nash had never known of any problems between him and Lee Reynolds.
With all that information and the texts sent between the two men a few weeks ago, we knocked on his front door to get some answers and see just how angry he’d been at his former co-worker. There had only been three messages back and forth, but he had threatened our victim, so I wondered if the combination of that problem and losing his job had sent Jason Drake over the edge last Thursday.
A pretty brunette woman answered the door dressed in grey sweatpants and a pink t-shirt. In her arms she held an infant wrapped up in matching pink baby clothes. At the sight of Alex dressed in his police officer’s uniform standing at her front door, she stepped back.
“Can I help you officer?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for a Jason Drake who lives at this residence.”
Her expression morphed into one of pure concern, and with a frown she said, “That’s my husband. Is something wrong?”
Alex put on his best smile and shook his head. “We just need to speak to him. Is he here?”
A man appeared behind her and kissed the baby on the forehead. “They’re here to speak to me about a fender-bender I saw yesterday, honey. I gave the cop my address since I was a witness. Take Katie into her room and I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
His wife believed what I was certain was a lie told for her benefit and gave us a tiny smile before leaving him alone with us. A large man with unkempt hair desperately in need of a trim and a five o’clock shadow, Jason Drake wore sweatpants similar to his wife’s and a black t-shirt. I guessed the combination of a new baby in the house and losing his job had taken a toll on his appearance since his wife clearly was far too attractive to date a man who looked that bad, much less agree to marry him and give him children.
He stepped out of his house onto the front porch and asked in a worried voice, “What’s wrong, officer?”
“We need to ask you some questions about the problem between you and Lee Reynolds,” Alex answered flatly in that official tone he sometimes used with suspects.
Folding his arms across his chest, Drake quickly answered, “There was no problem.”
Alex read him the transcript of the messages between him and our victim and asked, “Do you still want to go with the answer that there was no problem between you and Lee Reynolds?”
After hearing his own words coming back to haunt him, Jason Drake hung his head and quietly said, “Yes, okay, there was a problem. Lee knew I wasn’t being the man I should be.”
“We’re going to need a little more than that, Mr. Drake. Can you elaborate?”
He looked at each of us sheepishly and then back into the house before admitting the truth. “I was seeing the secretary at the station and Lee saw us together. He told me he wouldn’t ruin Mercedes’ reputation at work, but he had no problem doing it to me since I was the one cheating on my wife who’d just given birth to our daughter. He sent me that first text a few hours after seeing us coming out of a closet at work. I knew he’d seen us because when I turned around after closing the door and Mercedes hurried back to her desk, I saw Lee standing there with that disapproving look on his face.”
“You must have been pretty angry with Lee Reynolds for threatening to tell people what you were up to,” Alex said, practically accusing Drake of wanting to hurt our victim.
“I was. I mean, you saw the text I sent him, but I didn’t do anything. I stopped what I was doing with Mercedes even before I left the station. Lee knew that. I saw him at work before I was let go and thanked him for showing me what a bastard I was being. I was wrong and I felt terrible.”
Alex nodded like he understood how a man with a beautiful wife and an adorable newborn little girl could be such a cheating bastard and then asked, “Where were you late last Thursday afternoon, Mr. Drake?”
He hesitated for a moment and then answered, “I went out for a drive while my wife and Katie took a nap.”
“Were you with anyone who can vouch for you?”
Drake shook his head. “No, I was alone. I didn’t kill Lee Reynolds, if that’s what you think.”
“Do you own a .38 caliber gun, Mr. Drake?”
His face hardened, as did his tone. “I think I should contact a lawyer, and if you want to speak to me again, you’ll have to do it with my attorney at my side.”
And with that, he slammed the door in our faces, leaving us with the obvious conclusion that Mr. Jason Drake had something to hide.
“Well, I think we have a new suspect,” Alex said as he turned to walk back to the car. “What do you think?”
“I think that guy is damn lucky to have a wife and a beautiful daughter like that and his cheating on her right after she just gave birth makes him a dirtbag. I also think he could be our guy.”
Alex stopped at the front of the car and nodded. “I agree. What do you say to an early dinner and we can talk about this case? My shift is ending and I’m starving.”
I felt my phone vibrate in my purse to let me know I was getting a text, so I pulled it out and saw Jack had messaged me. I quickly scanned the text and saw he wanted to get together again. I didn’t want to smile, but my face had a different idea and the corners of my mouth hitched up as I closed out the message.
“It’s okay. Forget it,” Alex said, shaking his head.
“No. I mean, why forget it?” I asked, but Alex was already in the car and couldn’t hear me.
I got in and he began to drive toward my house instead of the police station, so I grabbed his arm. “You don’t have to drop me off at my house, Alex. I just checked my phone because I wanted to make sure my father hadn’t called. I think dinner would be great.”
The part about my father was a lie, but I didn’t want things to go back to being bad between us. If a little fib could prevent that, then I wasn’t above lying.
And just as much, even though I hadn’t told Alex, I wanted to give Jack some much needed closure by solving his brother’s murder. I’d seen the familiar look of real sadness in his eyes when we talked about it the night before, and if I could be the one to make some of that sadness go away, I wanted to try to do that.
“Are you sure you don’t have something else to do?” Alex asked as he turned toward the police station.
“I’d love to have dinner. Thank you. Do you think we can get in at Diamanti’s or will it have to be fast food?”
He parked the squad car and turned to look at me with a broad smile. “How does a home cooked meal sound instead? While I’m making dinner, we can talk about the case and try to figure out who killed poor Lee Reynolds.”
I said yes, jumping at the chance for a home cooked meal. It had been far too long since I’d had much of anything for a meal other than restaurant food. But even though many of my meals and the majority of my breakfasts had been shared with Alex in the past few months, this was the first time he’d ever invited me to his house to eat with him.
And all I could think was how much I looked forward to whatever he’d make. “Let me go get my car and I’ll meet you there!”
Alex stood on the opposite side of the massive island in the center of his kitchen stirring a pot of what he called his world famous winter risotto. I wanted to mention that October wasn’t exactly what I’d call winter, but I figured maybe the name was meant to be taken less literally.
I’d never seen him so relaxed. With each ladle of chicken broth he added to the recipe, he closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of the delicious dish. This was truly a side of him I’d never seen, and compared to the silent guy he usually was or the surly one he had been so often recently, this version of Alex was definitely one of my favorites.
“I’m curious. What’s the difference between winter risotto and risotto at any other time of the year?” I asked playfully, not knowing the answer and unsure there really was any difference.
He chuckled and said, “It’s heavier. Meant to fill the belly and stick to the ribs to keep you warm. Oh, and no lemon.”
“Not to be too much of a stickler here, but I think the high today was somewhere in the mid-sixties. Not exactly stick to the ribs kind of weather.”
He dismissed the details about the temperature outside and took another deep inhale of his concoction. “I’ve wanted to make this for months. It might be a little early, but that’s okay. It’ll be great.”
Before I cou
ld tell him I was looking forward to tasting it for the first time, he poured me a glass of red wine and placed it in front of me. I had to admit this Alex was not only someone I liked to be around but very sexy too. His dark brown eyes sparkled as he added another cup of broth to the rice and stirred, taking that same deep breath to appreciate the delicious scent of it as it mixed with the squash, carrots, onion, garlic, white wine, and thyme.
I took a sip of my drink and couldn’t help but love how it tasted surrounded by the smell of that risotto cooking right in front of me. The entire scene of Alex happily cooking a home cooked meal for me combined with the delicious scents and the sound of his laughter made for a feeling of sensory overload that nearly overwhelmed me.
“Do you usually have all the ingredients required to make such a special meal?” I asked since I often had little more in my refrigerator than a wedge of cheese and a variety of drinks to wash it down with.
He smiled and shook his head. “No. Since I live alone I usually don’t, but I got them this morning instead of going to breakfast with you.”
His answer struck me like a bolt of lightning. As he turned his focus back to adding the final ladle of chicken broth, I realized while he probably thought I was lying in bed in Jack’s arms, Alex was shopping for the things needed to make a special meal to impress me.
And that was a problem. I couldn’t deny my interest in Jack, but the friendship I’d had with Alex had changed to something else without my even knowing it. I saw it now in his dark eyes, and it frightened me because it was so real and intense.
Like him.
“Did you hear me, Poppy? I said dinner was ready.”
I shook myself from my thoughts and smiled. “Sorry. I was thinking of something there for a minute. It smells great!”
We sat down at his small kitchen table in the corner of the room, and as we ate his world famous winter risotto that tasted like heaven on earth, I had to admit I’d never been so comfortable with a man in my life. All we talked about was the case, but it felt like we’d known each other all our lives.
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