Scene of the Crime: Return to Mystic Lake

“I also want you to assign a couple of officers to walk the streets, ask questions and see if we can find anyone who had any contact with the missing couple after Friday night. And you mentioned a couple of names for us?” Marjorie asked.

She wanted action. She needed to be doing something to move the investigation forward as quickly as possible. Jackson was right—she worked like a dog until conclusions were reached and bad guys were arrested. She was a hare, not a tortoise.

“I know Cole was having some issues with Natalie Redwing,” Roger said.

Jackson pulled out his notepad and pen. “What kind of problems?”

“She was kind of, like, stalking him.” Roger gave a dry laugh. “Cole thought she was harmless, but irritating.” He gave them her address.

“Who else?” Marjorie asked.

“Jeff Maynard. He’s a bartender at Bledsoe’s on Main Street. He didn’t like Cole and he definitely didn’t like Amberly. He’s a hothead loser, although I doubt he has the brains to kidnap a couple of people and not leave any clues behind. Off the top of my head those are the only two I’ve ever heard about Cole having any issues with.”

Minutes later, armed with address information, Jackson and Marjorie left the small sheriff’s office and headed out to interview both new suspects.

“You can do the interviewing with Jeff Maynard and I’ll take Natalie Redwing,” Jackson said.

“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’d want to talk to the woman and assign me the hothead loser?” Marjorie said dryly.

Jackson gave her that slow, lazy slide of his lips into a smile that heated places inside her that had never been warm before. “I’m hoping you can find a little charm and twist that hothead loser right around your little finger.”

“Yeah, right, I’ve been holding out on you with the charm thing,” Marjorie replied sarcastically.

She was aware of Jackson’s gaze lingering on her as she focused on Main Street and searched for Bledsoe’s tavern. It was late enough in the afternoon that Jeff Maynard should be working.

“I think you might be hiding a little bit of charm under a basket and I’ve decided it’s my goal in life to figure out how to get that basket off your head.”

Marjorie couldn’t help herself—laughter bubbled to her lips and she shook her head. “You’re a funny man, Agent Revannaugh.” She pulled into a parking place in front of Bledsoe’s, a long, low building at the edge of town.

“You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen a genuine smile on your lips or heard laughter from you. You should do it more often. It definitely becomes you.”

“I’m not a laughing kind of woman,” she replied as she turned off the car engine. “I haven’t had much to laugh about in my life.”

“Then my second job is to change that,” he replied.

“Duty calls.” She got out of the car and slammed the door, more touched by Jackson’s words than she wanted to admit. She couldn’t let him get to her. She’d seen what men like him had done to her mother’s life, to her life, and she was not going to be one of those women who fell for the charm and never saw the callous calculation beneath.

At just after four in the afternoon, Bledsoe’s already had a few customers seated on stools at the long bar. It was semidark inside and reeked of booze and a faint underlying hint of urine.

It was the kind of place where the clientele was tough, bar fights occurred on a regular basis and nobody came for a social event. A jukebox played an old country song about a broken heart and a Texas man, but Marjorie was beginning to think it wasn’t the tall, handsome cowboys you had to watch out for, it was the smooth-talking Southerners.

As she approached the bar, she pulled out her official identification from her purse, careful to keep the side of her purse that had a built-in gun holster against her body. She went toward the dark-haired bartender, feeling no need to show any more authority than her badge, but she was prepared, should that change.

“Smells like Feds to me,” the bartender said as he slowly wiped a glass dry.

“Ah, nice to know you have a good sense of smell,” Marjorie said, forcing a pleasant smile to her lips. She almost felt as if she had something to prove to her partner, that she could be as charming as she needed to be while talking to a potential suspect.

“You’re cuter than your partner.” He set down the glass and jabbed a finger in the direction of Jackson, who stood a couple of inches behind her.

“Thanks. I’m smarter, too. But I let him think he’s smarter because he has a huge ego.”

Jackson cleared his voice as the bartender barked a dry laugh.

“We’re looking for Jeff Maynard,” she said.

“You found him, sweetheart, but as far as I know I haven’t done anything to get special attention from the FBI.” His eyes were dark with more than a hint of wariness.

“What do you know about Cole and Amberly Caldwell’s disappearance?” Marjorie asked.

“Only that I’m not gonna cry in my beer tonight over it.” He picked up a wet cloth and gave the bar a desultory swipe. “Look, I know you’re here because everyone in Mystic Lake knows I don’t like Cole. I have a problem with authority figures,” he added with a smirk.

Marjorie leaned closer to the bar, closer to the man she knew might possibly have had something to do with Cole and Amberly’s disappearance. “All authority?” she asked with a teasing lilt to her voice.

She sensed Jackson leaning closer behind her, but she kept her gaze focused on Jeff, as if he were the most important person on the face of the earth. A small, lewd grin curved his lips. “Well, maybe not all. I wouldn’t mind getting over it by maybe handcuffing you to my bed.”

Marjorie blinked in shock and leaned backward, bumping into Jackson’s firmly muscled chest. “I must protest,” Jackson said in his pleasant Southern drawl. “If anyone is going to handcuff this little lady to his bed, it’s going to be me.”

Marjorie felt as if she were having an out of body experience. “Where were you this past weekend?” she asked Jeff, trying to get her feet beneath her and get the conversation back on track.

The smirk disappeared from Jeff’s face. “Friday is my night off. I was out with buddies. Saturday night I worked my usual shift here, from four until close.”

“And where did you go with these buddies on Friday night?” Marjorie asked. She didn’t bother to pull out her pen and pad. She knew instinctively that Jackson already had his out.

“We were at Jimmy Tanner’s place, playing poker. He’s newly divorced, thanks to Cole and Amberly and their prying into private lives when they were investigating the murders of those women last year.”

“Jimmy Tanner, what’s his address?” Marjorie asked, realizing she’d just added another name to a potential suspect with a motive of revenge.

“At the moment he’s living at the Mystic Lake Motel on the south side of town,” Jeff replied. “His wife really took him to the cleaners in the divorce.”

By the time they left Bledsoe’s, they had not only added Jimmy Tanner’s name to their list, but also Raymond Chandler, who had also been at the supposed poker party on Friday night.

“I’m impressed, Ms. Maggie. I think there’s a bit of naughty woman trapped inside you,” Jackson said once they were back in the car.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed, cheeks far too warm. “There’s no naughty inside of me. I’m by the book, rigid and uptight. Trust me, Jackson, I know who I am.”

“I wonder,” he mused. She kept her mouth firmly closed, not wanting to know what he wondered. “Let’s head on back to Kansas City,” he said. “We can drive back out here and start with this Natalie Redwing first thing in the morning.”

“Why not do it now?” Marjorie asked.

Jackson looked at his watch. “It’s going to be close to six by the time we make it back to Kansas City. I say we order a pizza and sit down and go through what we know, figure out who needs to be interviewed next and get a general idea of where we are.”

“Right now it feels like we’re nowhere,” she replied.

“Exactly. It might surprise you to know that I can be a by-the-book kind of guy despite my huge ego.”

She glanced over to catch him smiling that sexy grin of his. “So, what does that mean?”

“It means I’d like to feed my notes into my laptop and see if we really have nothing or if we’ve already made any connections that might lead somewhere. I also want to utilize some resources I have with the agency to double-check bank records, travel and anything else that might pop up with Amberly or Cole’s names.”