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WHO WOULD HAVE guessed that the mother of prosperous accountant Holly Stephens would reside in a second-rate trailer park?
Certainly not Special Agent Simon Crook, if he hadn’t known her record. But the local cops had been bitter about their past encounters with Mrs. Stephens, so Simon had a good idea whom hewas about to meet. And he was pretty sure he would find the answer to Holly Stephens’s guilt or innocence right here. Like mother, like daughter.
The Stephenses’ family home was no better and noworse than the other trailers surrounding it, with a couple of rooms tacked on the front. Venetian blinds obscured any viewof the interior, andwould have made the place look abandoned if not for the plants that flourished in the tiny front yard.
Special Agent Andy Slater dismissed the inhabitants of the trailer park an hour east of Portland in two words: white trash.
Simon frowned. Andy was a good agent, but he had trouble shaking off his Southern attitudes. “Some of these people work hard for a living,” he said.
“This one doesn’t.” Andy gestured toward Mrs. Stephens’s door. “Leastways, not so’s we know.”
He had a point. Crook knocked on the door, which shook in its flimsy frame, and waited. No answer. What a surprise. In his experience trailer-park dwellers were universally hard of hearing when the law came calling.
But they knew Margaret Stephens was at home. They’d stopped at the euphemistically titled Management Office on their way in, and the old guy there had confirmed it. “Don’t often go out, that one. No car.”
Crook knocked harder. “Mrs. Stephens,” he called. “FBI. Open up.” Silence.
“Break it down,” Andy said laconically.
Simon assumed—hoped—Andy was joking, given they didn’t have a warrant. Still, he was mentally judging where he would best apply his shoulder to the door if they did have one, when it opened.
“What do you want?”
For a second, he couldn’t for the life of him remember why he was here. But Margaret Stephens’s truculent greeting and the startling contrast between the hostile words and her husky voice weren’t to blame for his momentary amnesia. No, it was Mrs. Stephens herself.
He’d expected a woman as scrawny as her daughter, but from poverty rather than fashion. Someone plain, like Holly, but made even mousier by her circumstances.
There was nothing scrawny and nothing plain about Holly’s mother. Wild waves of thick, chestnut hair framed a face dominated by eyes as green as envy and a wide, full mouth that was positively sinful. He knew her to be forty-nine years old, but she was the most stunning woman he’d seen since…
Okay, so the woman was…voluptuous. But she was also a druggie and goodness knew what else.
“Mrs. Margaret Stephens? Can we come in? It’s about your daughter.”
She regarded them with suspicion. “Summer’s working in Portland during her vacation.”
“I’m talking about Holly.”
“Holly?” Shock provoked her to take an instinctive step backward, and the two agents took advantage of it, stepping inside. “Is my baby hurt? Dead?”
“She’s okay,” Simon said quickly. “We just need to ask you a few questions.”
The inside of the trailer was at first glance no more promising than the outside. Shabby furnishings—a couch that looked as if ninety percent of its stuffing had disappeared years ago, a threadbare rug, a Formica dining table with matching chairs so old-fashioned they were trendy again—all spoke of a woman struggling to survive.
If Margaret Stephens had made any money out of drugs, she must have blown it all.
Crook shifted his scrutiny from the furnishings—and did a double take.
“What the hell—?” Andy was also looking at the walls.
Not that a lot of wall was visible. Paintings, all sizes, covered just about every square inch. Crook surmised they were intended as art, given they were executed on canvas. But there any resemblance to the impressionist and modern masters he’d studied in high-school art class ended.
Some of the canvases bore swirling swathes of color, others seemingly random splashes and splotches. A few comprised collections of tiny dots.
“My three-year-old paints better than this crap,” Andy muttered, not quite under his breath.
Simon saw Mrs. Stephens’s face redden. What did Andy think he was doing, antagonizing her before they had any answers to their questions? Not to mention being downright rude on a subject he probably knew less about than Simon.
“Shut up, Andy,” he said. “Show some respect.” He sensed rather than saw the woman’s surprise, and took immediate advantage of it. “Mrs. Stephens, we need to—”
“It’s Maggie,” she interrupted him with quiet force. “I don’t use Stephens much these days. Should’ve dumped the name when its owner dumped me.”
The local cops had no record of Mr. Stephens ever getting into trouble. Maybe he’d had enough of his wife’s shenanigans and gotten out of here, like any decent guy would.
“Like I said, ma’am—” he couldn’t bring himself to use her first name “—we need to ask you—”
“What did you say your name was, Officer?”
Crook felt heat at the back of his neck. He hadn’t introduced himself, a clear breach of protocol. “Special Agent Crook.”
“I suppose your first name is Small-time?”
Beside him Andy sniggered, and Simon felt the heat intensify. “This here’s Special Agent Slater,” he persisted. “Mrs.—uh—ma’am, if you want to help your daughter, you’ll answer our questions.”
He’d hit upon the magic words. Maggie Stephens sat on the worn-out sofa and gave them her full attention. She didn’t invite them to sit, but Crook pulled a couple of dining chairs out and passed one to Andy.
In as few words as possible he outlined the theft Holly’s clients had suffered and made it clear Holly was a suspect.
“Holly would never do that,” her mother said. “She’s honest, like me.”
He frowned. He couldn’t resist pointing out the flaw in her logic. “Ma’am, I understand you have several criminal convictions. Claiming Holly takes after you may not help her cause.”
Maggie’s remarkable green gaze didn’t waver. “Holly is a woman of strong principles,” she said. “She wouldn’t betray those for money.”
She said “money” with a genuine contempt that Simon envied. But with retirement looming he couldn’t be complacent. And he wouldn’t want to live in a trailer park.…
“When did you last speak to your daughter?” He didn’t imagine they were best buddies. Young Ms. Stephens looked as if she’d gone all out to get as far away—philosophically, if not geographically—from her upbringing as possible.
So he wasn’t surprised when the mother said, “Maybe three or four months.” Which probably meant six months.
“Does she ever talk to you about her business partner, David Fletcher?”
Maggie Stephens shook her head. “She mentioned him when they first set up the business, but not lately.”
“What did she tell you about Fletcher back then?”
“Is your first name Murray?”
The unexpected question threw him off track. “What? No. No, it’s not.”
“It’s just you look like a Murray.”
What was that supposed to mean? Most likely itmeans this woman’s a fruitcake. “We were talking about Dave Fletcher,” he prompted her again.
“Holly said he wasn’t particularly bright, but he was reliable and good on detail.”
“You’ve got a good memory. She said that—what, two years ago?” Andy sounded plain skeptical.
“My daughter and I don’t talk much.” She addressed Crook as if Slater wasn’t there. “So when we do, I hold on to that conversation for a long time.”
“Then you should remember what you talked about last time you spoke,” he said.
Maggie Stephens shrugged. “Is your name Horace?”
“No.” Even as he willed himself not to respond to her provocation, he was faintly stung she would even suggest it.
“Wayne?”
An improvement on Horace, at least. Crook shook his head. He was more than familiar with delaying tactics. If he told her, she’d just think up some other way to bug him. “What did you and Holly talk about last time you spoke?” he repeated coldly.
She shrugged again. “She told me her business was going well, and the twins were doing okay at college, far as she knew.”
“The twins?”
“Summer and River. They’re nineteen. Holly is paying to put them through college.” Her voice was devoid of expression where Crook might have expected pride or gratitude. He left aside the subject of why Maggie might not be pleased her kids were going to college, and focused instead on the potential motive for fraud she had just presented.
“That’s a big financial commitment for Holly,” he said conversationally.
She saw right through that. “Holly is very generous with her money. Sensible, too. She doesn’t spend what she doesn’t have. And the only money she has is what she’s worked for.”
The questioning went around in circles for another fifteen minutes. While Crook didn’t think she was lying, Maggie had been interrogated by authorities often enough that she knew how to annoy a federal agent, and how to say nothing that was of any use. Every so often she’d ask, “Is your name Kevin?” Or Peter, or John or whatever. Crook was pleased with the way he kept his cool, especially in the face of Slater’s growing and ill-concealed amusement.
At last he figured he wasn’t going to get any more out of her. He rose to leave, looking forward to getting out of the trailer, away from its shabby furnishings, its art-cluttered walls and the dominating presence of Maggie Stephens. With luck, he wouldn’t have to speak to her again.
“Thank you for your cooperation, ma’am,” he said, his politeness edged with sarcasm.
The glint of mischief in her green eyes told him she knew just how he felt. “My pleasure, Officer,” she said.
And as he headed down the path behind Andy, she called, “Lucas?”
Crook stopped. She really thought he looked like a Lucas? The only Lucas he’d known had been the coolest kid in high school. Unable to help himself, he grinned at her. “Nope.”
She stood in the doorway with her arms folded, a defensive stance. Her next words were diffident, almost shy. “You told your colleague to show some respect for my work. Does that mean you like it?”
He could have said yes, in the hope it would make the woman more inclined to help him. But generally he didn’t lie, even to suspects. He had a hunch that a couple of small lies would put him on a road he didn’t want to go down, and he might not find the way back again.
“No, I didn’t exactly like them,” he said. “Mind you, I didn’t dislike them, either. I just…didn’t get them.”
He wasn’t sure if her brusque nod indicated she’d taken offence or not. Not his problem. He raised a hand in farewell. By the time he and Slater were in the car, she’d disappeared inside.
“That woman is nuts.” Slater didn’t hold back his contempt.
Crook, who ordinarily had no problem ascribing varying degrees of lunacy to the people he met through his work, merely said, “She didn’t give us much to go on.”
That he hadn’t given the ready agreement Slater was looking for irritated Crook. Maggie may not be nuts, but she was a criminal who in all likelihood had raised her daughter to be an even bigger criminal. He shouldn’t defend her.
He flicked his turn signal as they pulled out of the trailer park onto the highway.
“So, Slater, is Holly Stephens innocent? What does your gut tell you?” It was a question Crook liked to ask his colleagues. Some agents made their best decisions on the promptings of their instincts. Others, like Crook, did everything by the book, followed due process, to figure out answers.
It hadn’t always been that way. At one time, he’d employed what he considered to be an inspired blend of instinct and logic. But in recent years he’d become a process man. The process worked, but just sometimes he liked to hear what other agents’ guts told them.
Slater shook his head. “Too soon to call.”
For the briefest moment, Crook had a sense this case wasn’t going to be as straightforward as it looked. Could it be his long-dormant instinct stirring at last? He dismissed the thought. The only thing his visit with Maggie Stephens had stirred was his hormones.
MAGGIE PACED THE CONFINES of her living room, unsettled by the intrusion of the two FBI agents. By one of them, at least.
How could she be thinking about a man when her daughter was in trouble? Even if that daughter believed Maggie had forfeited the right to worry about her long ago. What kind of a mother was she?
She knew the answer to that one. The kind of mother who always put her causes ahead of her family, and who’d probably do it all again, given the chance. With the possible exception of marrying Andrew Stephens.
After Andrew had left, she’d been thankful never to experience that powerful pull toward a man again. Until today. She couldn’t explain—couldn’t believe—the attraction she’d felt for the FBI agent.
And for no obvious reason. He wasn’t good-looking—entirely average—and he was the sort of man who would despise everything she stood for. Life had taught Maggie long ago that respect was a scarce commodity. She sure wasn’t going to find it in a man like Crook.
Though he’d surprised her as he left. Instead of lying to her and saying he liked the paintings, he’d given her an honest answer.
Maggie shook off the distraction posed by the man she’d met today. She couldn’t be attracted to him after those accusations he’d made against Holly. Holly. The oldest of Maggie’s children, but the one she always thought of as her baby, would be devastated to have her integrity questioned. She wouldn’t welcome the phone call Maggie was determined to make. Maggie was under no illusion that she could comfort Holly, or help her. But she had to try.
She braced herself for the sneer of the park manager, who considered his tenants several rungs below him, and headed to the office to use the phone.
JARED FOUND HIMSELF unreasonably excited about his meeting with Holly on Sunday night. It was because the goal he’d worked toward for nearly twenty years was so close, he told himself.
It had nothing to do with Holly’s razor-sharp analytical mind, which presented such an intriguing contrast to the sensuous, almost mysterious curve of her mouth. And definitely nothing to do with the hottest kiss in history, the one they’d shared Friday night.
They both knew he wouldn’t do it again.
Tonight Holly opened the door promptly in response to his knock.
“Had a good day?” After an initial nanosecond scan of her person, Jared kept his gaze firmly on her face. The red leather miniskirt revealed gorgeous legs that Friday’s jeans had only hinted at. Teamed with a white cotton blouse with off-the-shoulder sleeves, the overall look was one of sultry innocence. Very sexy.
But he knew she wouldn’t appreciate his appreciation. And after his performance the other night, the last thing he needed was to get their first evening together—working together—off to an unpropitious start.
“A long day.” She stifled a yawn—hardly the usual reaction Jared encountered when he arrived at a woman’s home—as she led the way into the apartment.
Jared crossed to the office area. Apart from a small pile of papers on the desk, there was no evidence of three days spent on his deals. Could it be that Holly wasn’t as thorough as everyone said?
He soon found it was more a matter of her being meticulously tidy. She’d gone over a ton of information since he’d last seen her, and she ran through his options with a thoroughness that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck.
