One of those guys a smart, serious girl like her should avoid at all costs.
Her ex-husband had been one of those. But Jared had been shallow, too. A quality she hadn’t noticed until too late. Liz returned her gaze to Rick and found him conversing with another patron while he shook the thick, frozen mixture into a glass.
He looked at her then, and smiled. She experienced the tickle of sexual awareness and jerked her gaze away. Don’t be stupid, Liz, she told herself.
A moment later he set the drink in front of her. “One killer frozen margarita. With salt.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, then sipped. She had to admit, it was the best margarita she had ever tasted. She told him so.
He grinned and leaned toward her. “It’s a secret recipe. My very own.”
“I’m impressed.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Not in the same league as curing cancer, but on a steamy Key West night, it’ll do the trick.”
That it would. The sweet, tangy concoction no doubt packed a deceptive wallop.
“But you didn’t come here to shoot the breeze or drink margaritas, did you?”
She shook her head. “No, though I wish I had. I came because of Mark Morgan.”
“Mark?” His eyebrows shot up.
“He said you were his friend. That he trusted you.”
“That right? He bother to tell you he lifted six hundred bucks from my register, then left town? He trusts me, all right. To be a sap.”
She shook her head, confused. “Left town? That can’t be right.”
“It’s right, I guarantee you that. He left me a note telling me he did it.”
“When did this happen?”
“The night Tara died.”
The night he and Tara planned to run away together. “I’ve seen him since then.”
His gaze sharpened. “When?”
“Last Monday.”
He hesitated, as if deciding if the direction of this conversation was worth any more of his attention. He took a step away from her, signaling that he had decided it was not. “I don’t really have time for this right now. The drink’s on me, Liz.”
“Wait!” She leaned toward him, lowering her voice. “He contacted me about Tara ’s murder.”
He straightened and turned toward his new bartender. “Margo, can you handle the bar for a few minutes?”
She nodded and Rick indicated for Liz to follow him to his office. She did, and there he shut the door behind them. They didn’t sit. “What’s going on?”
“Mark’s in trouble, Rick. Big trouble.”
“Go on.”
“He was there that night, in the garden.”
“Holy shit.”
“He’s Tara ’s baby’s father. He’s the reason she was in the garden that night. They’d arranged to meet there. They were running away together.”
“Son-of-a-bitch.” Rick crossed to his desk and sank heavily onto its edge. “The IOU he left. Of course.”
“IOU?”
“The six hundred bucks. He left me a note promising to pay it back. He said it was an emergency.” Rick passed a hand across his forehead. “What else did he tell you?”
Liz launched into the story, finishing with Mark’s account of finding Tara dead, and running.
“No joke he’s got himself in trouble,” Rick muttered. “Stupid kid. Did you tell him to go to the police?”
Her silence was his answer and he narrowed his eyes. “Exactly how did you say you knew Mark?”
“He contacted me last Monday. I never heard of him before that.”
“Then why call you?”
“He wanted someone to know everything in case…he disappeared.”
“But why you?”
She hesitated, considering her options. She could tell him the easy part of the story and probably get away with it. But at this stage of the game it seemed not only pointless but dishonest as well.
And being dishonest with Rick Wells would be a mistake.
“Because I had counseled Tara. And because I’m Pastor Rachel Howard’s sister.”
She saw the moment he made the connection. “From Paradise Christian. The woman who disappeared.”
It wasn’t a question. She answered anyway. “Yes.”
He glanced at his watch. “I have to check on Margo. It might be a few minutes.”
The door shut behind him and she sank onto a chair. Only then did she realize she was shaking. She clasped her hands together and moved her gaze over the office. No photos adorned his neat desktop, no awards, diplomas or other memorabilia hung on the walls.
No, she realized. One picture. Mostly hidden behind the in-box on his desk. She stood, crossed to the desk and picked it up. It was a picture of Rick in his full-dress police uniform and a woman in a lovely spring outfit. Liz tilted her head. Rick’s graduation from police academy, she decided, judging by his crisply pressed uniform.
That the woman adored him was obvious by the way she was gazing up at him. Because of the slightly fuzzy quality of the photo and the way the sunlight fell across her face, it was difficult to make out her features. She had coloring similar to Liz’s own; a slight build. She was pretty.
A lump in her throat, Liz returned the framed photo to its spot on his desk. As she did, she discovered another photo tucked into the back of the frame.
It was of a little boy with curly blond hair and Rick’s smile. He looked to be about three and was smiling at the camera, pure joy radiating from him.
Who was he? she wondered. Rick’s son? A favorite nephew? Was the woman his wife? That would have been her first guess, but Rick didn’t wear a wedding ring.
Though these days many men didn’t.
She trailed her finger lightly over the boy’s image. She found something sad about the way Rick had the photographs tucked almost out of sight.
She heard Rick at the office door and quickly replaced the child’s photo, then set the frame back where she had found it. She turned just as Rick stepped through the door.
“Sorry,” he said. “Saturday’s my busiest night.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it-just not for what he thought. By peeking at those pictures she had pried into a corner of his life he obviously preferred no one see. “My timing stinks, but I didn’t…I was afraid for Mark. I think he’s in danger.”
Rick sat and ordered her to do the same. “Now, start at the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”
Liz began. She told him why she had come to Key West, that she didn’t believe the police version of her sister’s disappearance. She relayed the content of the message her sister had left on her answering machine. “She said she had uncovered illegal activities on the island, something that involved the young people. She feared for her own safety. I believe those involved killed her. Nobody believed me…until Mark.”
Rick leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and linking his fingers together. “Go on.”
She repeated everything Mark had told her: that the group called itself the Horned Flower, that Tara had belonged and that they had threatened her when she tried to get out. “They describe themselves as a family and are both devoted to and possessive of other members of the family, as well as suspicious of those outside. So suspicious that Tara had to keep her relationship with Mark a secret for fear of reprisal. He said the group was into drug use and indiscriminate sex. Their shared ideology was hedonistic and atheist.”
“What you’re describing is a cult,” he murmured. “There are thousands of loosely joined and highly organized groups in the United States that meet the criteria that defines a cult, basically a group organized around a central figure and singular philosophy. Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, Crowleyism, the Charles Manson family all fit the criteria though each is very different from the other.”
“Whatever they are, they had great power over Tara and she was terrified of them. He believes they killed her because she tried to break away from them. He believes they killed my sister as well.”
Rick looked unconvinced. She pressed on. “Mark decided the best way to expose the group was to become one of them. He left me a message saying he was being initiated last night. He told me to come to you if I didn’t hear from him.” She held her hands out, palms up. “So, here I am.”