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“I’m afraid I’ll have to play that by ear.”
“Baby, what’s going on? You can tell me.”
“Official police business.” She looked down at her feet.
Ruby wasn’t one not to look me in the eye. Was she lying to me? I lifted her chin with my finger and forced her blue gaze to mine. “Official, huh?”
She looked downward. “Yeah.”
“Look at me,” I said.
She met my gaze.
“Don’t lie to me again.”
“I’m not—”
I shushed her with my fingers. “You’re about to do it again. Look, if you need to leave, I get it. But don’t lie to me.”
She sighed. “All right. It’s not official business. It’s unofficial business.” This time her gaze was not deterred.
“About your father?”
She looked down again.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s okay.”
She cleared her throat. “Not exactly about my father, but he is definitely involved. I just have to look into some stuff. Get a few numbers traced.”
“Do you have anyone in your office working with you?”
“No.”
“Then how did this come up first thing in the morning?”
She pulled away and grabbed her purse and her jacket. “I don’t have any more time to discuss this. Just…call me later. Okay?”
And without another word, she left.
* * *
I invited myself over to Talon and Jade’s for lunch and then invited Joe and Melanie to join us. Marj was in the city for her cooking class and wouldn’t be home until the evening. I wanted to pick their brains about Ruby and Theodore Mathias. I hadn’t heard any news from Mills and Johnson since we’d gotten back from Jamaica, not even on the number I’d asked them to trace.
“That’s odd,” Melanie said, as we sat in the kitchen eating sandwiches Talon’s housekeeper had prepared for us. “He got right back to me when I asked him to trace the number Jonah was getting those stalking texts from.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s what’s so troubling. I’ve left several voice mails for him and his partner, but nothing.”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t heard from them since before we left either,” Talon said. “And he usually checks in every couple days, even if there’s nothing new to report.”
Talon was the one who’d originally hired Mills and Johnson to figure out who’d left the rose on Jade’s pillow all those months ago. Turned out it had been Felicia, threatened into doing so by who we now thought had been Theodore Mathias. He’d been trying to frame both Larry Wade and Colin Morse, Jade’s old boyfriend, for the break-in. Why? Larry Wade was obvious. He was a scapegoat—and guilty as hell anyway, as one of the three who had abducted and abused Talon. We’d ended up catching him on our own. But Colin Morse—we hadn’t figured out that part of the mystery yet. He was just some poor sap who’d left Jade at the altar.
Colin had ended up being kidnapped, raped, and tortured by Mathias and Tom Simpson, who was now dead. Joe had found him in the old house where they’d kept Talon all those years ago.
Colin had some part in this… Or his father did. Ted Morse had turned out to be some kind of mercenary who’d tried to extort money from us by claiming that Joe had been the one who raped and tortured Colin.
Some piece of work.
Would we ever find all the answers? Find the pieces to complete the puzzle?
