The Third Secret

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Or that you aren’t worth the air you breathe.”

  “I’m with you on that.”

  “Watch your back,” Rick said, assessing the rising water level in the bottom of a boat that should have been firewood years ago.

  “Watch yours, son.”

  The phone clicked and Rick was alone on the water again. But he didn’t feel quite as alone.

  Erin heard from Ben Pope Thursday afternoon. She could have called her client, relayed the information. She didn’t.

  She couldn’t offer him a cup of coffee over the phone. And after two days of thinking about it, she’d decided to run Rick Thomas’s DNA through the system.

  She’d have the test done quietly—for a hefty price that she’d foot herself. In cash. And then have it unofficially checked against national databases.

  Nothing that would hold up in a court of law. But then, she wasn’t planning to fight Rick in court.

  She was planning to fight with him. For him.

  And win.

  Which was why she was going to run the test. Ultimately, it was for his own good.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t answer his home phone. Or his cell.

  She left a message on both.

  Any man who’d give most of his fortune to the care of a mentally disabled childhood friend, who bothered to visit that friend, even infrequently, was a man with character.

  A man who looked at her with haunted eyes and still compelled her to believe him was a man she had to try to help.

  She just hoped he hadn’t skipped town again.

  Paranoid was good. Insanity was not.

  “Yum. I love brownies. You love them, too, huh, Ricky?”

  On the floor with Steve, an Erector set and plate of brownies between them, Rick said, “You bet I do, sport.”

  “Then come on, have another one.”

  “I’ve already had two.” Rick grinned at the older man. A real grin. Steve was just so damned happy most of the time.

  And that was as life should be.

  “Will Angela get mad at you if you have some more? I won’t tell her, I promise.”

  “Hey.” Leaning on his elbow, Rick grabbed Steve’s hand, waiting until Steve was staring him in the face wide-eyed before he continued. “You tell Angela everything, you hear me? Everything. You notice anyone breaking any rules, any rules at all, you tell her.”

  Steve’s mouth agape, he nodded, never moving his gaze from Rick’s.

  “I mean it, big guy. Everything. You don’t ever keep secrets from Angela or Jill.”

  “Or you.”

  “That’s right. Most of all me.” And then Rick grinned again. Picked up a brownie he absolutely did not want and took a bite. “Come on, let’s get to work or we’ll never have it finished by bedtime.”

  And that easily, Steve’s attention was diverted as they went back to the robot Steve had wanted to build when Rick had arrived with the new set that afternoon.

  Rick wished he had the same ability to let things go. There’d been a man standing on the beach that afternoon. He hadn’t even been on Lakeside property. Nor did he seem to be watching the couple of residents who’d been down by the water.

  But his presence bothered Rick. Because shouldn’t the man have been at least a little curious to see adult-size children playing in the sand?

  Maybe the pressure was getting to him and he was seeing bad guys everywhere. Was he was crossing the line from careful to insane?

  Erin was in a hotel ballroom in Ludington, at a professional gathering of judges and attorneys. She was listening to a judge at her table espouse the values of settlement conferences when she felt her phone vibrate. With a discreet look, she saw who was calling. And immediately excused herself.

  She was sitting in the back. Intentionally.

  “Rick, hi, thanks for getting back with me,” she said before the door was fully closed behind her. She didn’t want him to hang up. Didn’t want to wait for him to decide to call her back. “I have some information for you. Are you free tonight?” It was just past eight. Not too late for a man who’d called her close to midnight the other night.

  “I’m free now.” The man’s voice always had that slow, steady tone. Whether he’d just been charged with murder or was sitting in his own living room. Calm. Like he could handle anything at any time. “What have you got?”

  “Actually, it’s more than information,” Erin said, feeling in her purse for her keys as she headed out to her car. She’d apologize to her peers later for deserting them without a goodbye. “I talked to Christa Hart today. She’s hard at work trying to convict you of murder. I need a plan here. And I’m assuming—correct me if it’s a wrong assumption—that you don’t want to sit back and let me handle everything.”

  “You are correct.”

  “Can you spare a couple of hours, then? Meet me at my office? Or I can come to your house. Give me half an hour to get back to town.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Ludington.”

  “As it happens, so am I. Have you eaten?”

  “I’d just taken two bites of rubber chicken when your phone call rescued me.”

  “You left a dinner to take my call?”

  She needed this man to trust her. She needed to trust him. “Yes.”

  “I’ve had nothing but brownies since lunch.” He mentioned a bar not far from the two-lane state route they’d be taking back to Temple.

  Erin agreed to meet him there in ten minutes.

  She wondered how she was going to get a glass or fork from the place into her purse without his knowing.

  The idea that she was contemplating theft hardly fazed her at the moment.

  She needn’t have worried.

  George’s Place was as plain and nondescript on the inside as its gray weathered siding promised from the exterior. Considering that Rick Thomas had suggested the place, she should have expected the dim lighting. Dim not in a romantic way, but in a dark way. And where it wasn’t too dim to see anything but shadows, everything was red. Red booths. Red Formica flooring. Red Formica-topped tables with red faux leather chairs.

  The bartender glanced up as Rick followed Erin inside. He saw Rick, waved and went back to work.

  No one else seemed to notice them. There was no hostess to seat them. No waitress to bring menus.

  Rick chose one of the four empty booths—the one in the far corner—and took the side with his back to the wall. He slid all the way in, with his left leg up on the seat beside him.

  Erin slid in across from him and had barely removed her calf-length black coat and placed it beside her purse on the seat when the bartender was at their table, setting a cup of beer down in front of Rick. A plastic cup of beer.

  One problem solved.

  “What can I get you?” the fiftyish man asked. He was tall, husky and had a beard.

  She wanted a glass of wine. But was afraid to chance what she might get in this stellar establishment. “Light beer, please.”

  She’d sip slowly. She was driving.

  “And can you get us a couple of steaks, George?” Just steak. No particular cut.

  “Sure thing.” The man wrote nothing down. And didn’t ask any other questions, either, like how she might want her steak done. Or if she wanted anything to go with it.

  George left and, with the rumble of conversation around them, Erin looked at her client. He’d downed a quarter of the beer in one long swig. His chin was shadowed again, as though he needed a shave, but there was no stubble there.

  His glance was lazy as he took in the room. More than half the booths had been filled when they’d come in. All the tables except one by the door were occupied. She’d seen only one vacant stool at the bar. Not bad business for eight o’clock on a Thursday night.

  George returned with her beer, set it down and left without a word. She understood why Rick Thomas frequented the place.

  Erin had never been in a bar or restaurant quite like it. But she didn’t feel unwelcome ther
e. Or particularly uncomfortable, either.

  A little nervous, maybe. But that, she feared, had nothing to do with the establishment—and everything to do with the man who lounged across from her.

  He hadn’t worn a coat, just an untucked denim shirt over a black T-shirt and the inevitable jeans.

  Had any woman ever had the right to see that chest naked? To run her fingers through the hair she’d occasionally glimpsed?

  Was Erin losing her mind?

  “Maria Valdez was in prison,” she blurted, although she managed to keep her voice low.

  “Was?”

  Nodding, Erin said, “Drug trafficking, although there was no record of who she ran for. She also had prostitution raps in several different states. But only one attorney, a Ralph Guardano. I looked him up. He practices out of Florida but doesn’t seem to have much in the way of big wins. Or big clients.”

  “Was?” Rick asked again.

  “She’s dead.”

  He blinked. And then his gaze, which had been casually roaming, locked on Erin. “Dead.”

  She nodded again. “Considering the life she was leading, that’s not all that surprising.”

  “When?”

  “Six months ago. She was involved in an altercation in prison. Another inmate stabbed her.”

  He didn’t say a word. Just stared at her.

  “How long ago did Charles Cook mention her to you?

  He didn’t answer.

  “I wonder if he knew she was dead. And how he knew her in the first place. Charles didn’t do drugs. In a town the size of Temple something like that wouldn’t have passed unnoticed. Besides, he’d have gone through random drug testing for his job.”

  Rick Thomas watched her. And, completely out of character, Erin continued to babble. “I was thinking maybe he hired her…you know…services. Maybe Cook was into ladies of the night.”

  Ladies of the night. Great, Morgan. A phrase from the gangster movies of childhood days spent with her father.

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll put my guy on it. See if anyone on the streets recognizes him. He never married. Never even had a girlfriend that I know of. It’s not impossible that he bought sex partners and had some pimp after him.”

  “Or that he was gay.”

  “You think Charles Cook was gay?” she asked skeptically.

  “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t rule out the possibility.”

  “You think his death was somehow attached to that? Maybe someone found out? A wife or girlfriend, maybe?”

  “There are a lot of small-minded people in Temple.”

  She didn’t agree. Temple was a conservative town, but the citizens there were basically open-minded.

  “Could also have been a lovers’ tiff,” Rick added. “The one thing I’ve learned is that everyone has secrets.” He was staring straight at her.

  And Erin burned from the inside out. He couldn’t possibly know what she was planning to do.

  And then another thought occurred to her. He didn’t know about—no one in Temple knew about—Erin’s past, about her father, about staying under the radar until she was eighteen so she didn’t become a ward of the state. She hadn’t told anyone, not even Noah.

  Not that she had anything to be ashamed of. But old habits died hard. And…she hadn’t wanted anyone to think there was anything different about her. Anything odd.

  She hadn’t wanted sympathy.

  Or raised eyebrows.

  All she’d ever wanted was to be accepted for who she was. Not to be judged by what she’d come from.

  Her father had paid that price for both of them.

  She stared back at her client. Afraid of what he knew.

  And then her mind caught up to her.

  This wasn’t about her. He’d just admitted he had secrets.

  And, that quickly, Erin was back on her game.

  “Tell me, Rick, what are your secrets?”

  “I sleep in the nude.”

  He’d obviously meant to unnerve her. He’d succeeded. Damn him. Erin didn’t want to think of him nude. Didn’t need any push in that direction at all.

  “I remembered something else Cook talked about.” Rick’s tone had changed, lost that hint of the personal. “There was a vacation. I’m not sure when. He never mentioned with whom. I was going fishing after work and he said he’d gone deep-sea fishing once. Caught some fifty-pounder that broke his pole, but the line held. He was on a yacht called The One That Got Away. Can you check that out? See who owns the boat?”

  Pulling a notepad out of her purse, Erin jotted it down.

  “We can’t ignore another angle,” she told Rick. “Cook worked for Homeland Security. Maybe there’s something going on there.”

  “I assumed Johnson’s looking into all of that. You said he was searching Cook’s place and his things.”

  “According to Christa Hart they haven’t found anything, but we can’t expect them to do our job for us. They aren’t going to be looking for any other suspects. They believe they have their man.”

  Him. His gaze shuttered, Rick finished off his beer just as George reappeared with another. And a tray with two plates containing the thickest, juiciest-looking T-bone steaks Erin had ever seen, each accompanied by a baked potato big enough for two with sour cream and real bacon bits and a tossed salad with eggs and croutons garnishing it. George plopped a couple of small plastic lidded containers between them.

  “Ranch dressing,” he said.

  Rick nodded. And Erin was glad she hadn’t preferred honey mustard.

  Before she’d even cut into her steak, George was back with a cup of water for her, not that she’d asked for it, and a plastic basket of warm bread.

  So while Rick Thomas went for simple in some things, apparently he also appreciated quality.

  17

  The steak was as good as usual. George didn’t miss a beat.

  The woman across from him had missed several—just in the half hour they’d been at the bar. She was hiding something.

  Rick didn’t like that. Not with his future resting partially in her hands.

  He liked how she ate, though. With attention. No nonsensical chatting. Rick liked to treat a good steak with reverence. It was one of the few pleasures in life he could count on.

  Halfway through her meat, Erin Morgan put down her knife and fork. “That was excellent.”

  “You were hungry.”

  “Yeah. I forgot lunch today.”

  Rick caught George’s eye and signaled for another beer. He was going to be there a while tonight. Now that he had a scrambled phone and time to think, he had phone calls to make and didn’t trust them to his truck or house. Nor did he relish walking around out in the cold.

  George’s Place was noisy enough to allow for private conversation as long as Rick was in the back booth. And George took good care of Rick.

  Erin reached for her purse. Fine with him if she left. He could enjoy a couple more beers before getting to work.

  Her breasts pulled against her jacket as she turned back. She was too gorgeous and fragile-looking to be running around alone at all hours of the night.

  And too much of a distraction to Rick.

  She handed him a familiar, folded lunch-size brown bag. “I didn’t know if you’d want this back.”

  His matchbook. Rick took it. Slid it in his shirt pock et.

  “There were no prints on it at all. Which is odd if it just fell out of someone’s pocket.”

  He’d figured there’d be nothing. But he’d had to be sure. “Unless whoever was using the matches wears gloves. Or at least he did the last time he used them.”

  “Why would someone wear gloves to light a match?”

  Shrugging, Rick could come up with any number of scenarios. He settled on the most innocuous. “Maybe he camps and used them to light his campfire on cold nights.”

  “I was hoping there’d be something to lead us to Cook’s real killer,” Erin said, pushing her plate to the edge of the
table and setting an open notebook in front of her. “Christa Hart is working hard to build her case against you, Rick. We’ve got to have answers.”

  He frowned, wishing she’d let him drink another beer or two before reminding him that he was sitting with murder charges on his back. Or given him ten minutes for the steak to digest, anyway. But he applauded her, too. Get business done and get out. Good motto.

  “She wants to go for capital murder. The murder weapon wasn’t something that would’ve been at the EMA office. Nor was there any sign of struggle. Charles Cook’s murder was obviously premeditated.”

  “All supposition.”

  “And all she has to do is convince a jury—not provide irrefutable proof.”

  “Convince them beyond the shadow of a doubt if she’s going for capital murder.”

  He couldn’t believe he was even discussing such a thing in regard to himself. Capital murder? It was…

  Possible.

  Rick had blood on his hands. But not Charles Cook’s.

  “Exactly. And right now, I don’t think she has enough to do that.” Twisting the pen she held between the thumbs and forefingers of both hands, Erin leaned forward, her gaze locked with Rick’s.

  “Here’s what I’m looking at,” she said, her voice clear. Confident. “The most significant piece of evidence is the murder weapon. Cook’s blood was on the knife and Hart has a statement from the coroner saying the incision matches the blade. The knife was found in a register duct in your bedroom.

  “You have no alibi. Your own phone call puts you at the scene around the time of the murder. And you had plenty of opportunity to get home and hide the weapon before the sheriff got his search warrant.”

  “Anyone could’ve hidden that knife there. Hell, there was an entire crew of people traipsing through the house, judging by the footprints.”

  And all his things that had been moved out of place. Things Rick had taken the time to meticulously right. His order was a layer of protection he’d learned at the hands of a master.

  “I realize that, and believe me, I intend to drill that point home. But fingerprints on the matchbook would have helped. One of the sheriff’s deputies could’ve dropped it during the search and that wouldn’t have done much for us. But I was really hoping that whoever was there before the sheriff, whoever planted the weapon there, had dropped it.”