Twin Temptation

Jase tried to put himself in Maddie’s shoes. She’d been to her mother’s workplace and seen the professional side of Eva Ware. But this was personal. Intimate.

First things first. He opened the double doors of the closet and found the cardboard box on the floor just as Jordan had described.

“So far, so good.” He quickly pushed aside the clothes that Eva had been wearing the night of her accident and found a tote. Inside was a leather-bound appointment calendar. Like Maddie’s, it was stuffed with folded notes and newspaper clippings. Handing it to her, he thought, like mother, like daughter.

She ran her fingers over the cover and then tucked it into her own tote. Linking his fingers with hers, they started down the hallway together. At the end of it, Jase could see the kitchen. The reddish hues of the setting sun poured through louver-covered windows, glinting off stainless-steel appliances and black granite counter tops. An archway to their right opened into a formal dining room, but Maddie drew him through the archway to their left.

Here the light was dimmer, but Jase could make out on the wall facing them a brick fireplace flanked by two bookcases with leaded-glass doors. And there was a desk to their immediate right, its surface stacked high with sketch books. One was open, a pencil lying on its surface.

Maddie was already moving toward the desk as he felt along the wall for a switch. When he flicked it on, his attention was drawn immediately to the oil portrait over the mantel.

His eyes went first to Eva, seated in a delicately carved armchair wearing pale gray slacks, a matching jacket and a pink sweater. Her long blond hair had been twisted into a braid that fell over one shoulder. Next to her a much younger Jordan stood in a pink dress trimmed in ruffles at the neck, sleeves and hem. Her hair had been fastened back from her face with bows and fell in curls to her shoulders.

It was a family portrait, Jase supposed. Mother and daughter. He shifted his gaze to Maddie and saw that she was studying it also. Was she imagining what the portrait might have looked like if she’d been in it too, standing on the other side of Eva?

The surge of anger took him by surprise and had him striding toward her and taking her hand. Why in hell had two sane people who’d obviously loved both their daughters each cut one out of their lives?

“You should be in that portrait. They were stupid to split the two of you up,” he said.

“I’d like to think that they loved us so much that they couldn’t bear to part with both of us.”

Jase turned to study her. “Is that why you think your father kept you?”

“It’s what I’d like to believe.” She moved closer to the portrait, drawing him with her. “It’s odd.”

“What?”

“My father never had a formal portrait done. But on my eleventh birthday, he had a photographer come to the ranch. Dad insisted that the man take the picture outside near the stables. I’d been riding Brutus, the horse he’d just gotten me for my birthday. We didn’t dress up or anything. Dad posed the picture with me on the horse and him standing beside it. Later, he framed the photo and kept it on the dresser in his bedroom. Jordan will see it the moment she walks into the room.”

“Your sister looks to be about eleven in the painting.”

“That’s what I was thinking. It’s an odd coincidence that they’d both decide to have a formal picture taken when we were about the same age.”

Jase turned to her. “Do you think your parents kept in touch over the years?”

With a sigh, she shrugged. “Maybe that’s just what I’d like to believe. There has to be some explanation for what they did. Why they did it.”

Jase traced a finger along her jawline—so strong, so stubborn. “If there is, you’ll find it.” Whatever else he might have said was interrupted by a sound—metal scraping against metal.

“What’s that?” Maddie whispered.

“We’re going to have company,” he whispered back. Motioning her to one side of the archway, he flipped off the light, then flattened himself to the wall on the opposite side of the arch. From his position, he had a partial view of the door to the apartment as it swung open. In the dim light, he saw a shadowy figure move into the hall. He or she turned immediately to the closet door, opened it and pulled out the same box that he had searched earlier. By that time, his eyes had adjusted to the dimmer light and he recognized who it was.

Flipping the light on, he stepped into the hall and said, “Can we help you, Michelle?”

MADDIE FOLLOWED Jase into the hallway in time to see Michelle Tan drop Eva’s tote bag. The contents—wallet, a matchbook and a small sketchpad—clattered out onto the floor.

“I—” Michelle placed a hand to her heart and took a deep breath.Maddie wasn’t sure who was more surprised—Michelle or herself, but she managed to ask, “What are you doing here?”

Without answering, Michelle dropped to her knees and began to stuff things back into the tote.

“Yes, what are you doing here?” Jase repeated.

“I came to see if I could find Ms. Ware’s appointment calendar,” Michelle mumbled.

Maddie noted that the young woman’s hands were trembling. She put a hand on Jase’s arm as she moved past him, caught his eye and mouthed, “Good cop.” Then she dropped to her knees in front of Michelle and stilled her hands. “Why did you think the calendar would be here? And how did you get a key?”

Michelle’s head popped up at that, and her voice was suddenly stronger. “Ms. Ware gave me a key. Sometimes she would get to work and remember that she’d left a sketch of a design at home. She’d ask me to come here and pick it up.”

Okay, Maddie thought. That jelled with Jordan’s description of Eva as a bit disorganized. Plus, she’d seen the sketches littering Eva’s desk. “She trusted you then?”

“Yes. Yes, she did.”

“Why did you think the journal was here?”

Avoiding Maddie’s eyes, Michelle sat back on her heels and folded her hands together. “I knew you were interested in finding it. I was on my way home from work when I remembered Jordan saying that she’d brought everything that the police had returned to her to this apartment because she couldn’t bear to go through it yet. It’s right on my way home, so I decided to stop in and see if it was here.”

Liar, Maddie thought.

“I don’t think so.” Jase’s voice had turned so clipped and cold that it nearly sent a shiver down Maddie’s spine. “I think you eavesdropped on Maddie and me when we were talking on the speakerphone with Jordan.”

Michelle shook her head. “No.”

“Yes. Then when I told you that we were going to be tied up for some time at the police station, you saw an opportunity to get hold of it before we did.”

Michelle shook her head again.

“Jase,” Maddie said. “Can’t you see she’s upset?”

“She should be upset. What’s so important about that appointment calendar that you had to sneak in here to steal it, Michelle?”

Michelle looked at him then. “Nothing. I wasn’t going to steal it. I was just trying to help.”

“Help yourself, maybe,” Jase said. “You were worried about something that it might contain.”

“No. Why should I be? I have nothing to hide.”

“Jase.” Maddie injected a note of warning into her tone. Then she took Michelle’s hands in hers. “We know that you deposited one hundred thousand dollars into your checking account three days after Eva Ware Designs was robbed of over a hundred thousand dollars worth of jewels.”

Michelle’s eyes went wide with shock, then flooded with tears. “You think—no. You can’t. I didn’t.”

The young woman’s emotional reaction could be fake, Maddie told herself. “Then where did you get the money?”

Michelle opened her mouth, shut it, then shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”

When Jase didn’t say anything, Maddie pushed forward. “You’re going to have to. We already know that Cho Li is your grandfather.”

Michelle dropped her head into her hands and began to cry.

A HALF HOUR later, Jase stood next to Maddie beneath the awning of Eva Ware’s apartment building watching as two uniformed policemen helped Michelle into the backseat of a patrol car.

She hadn’t said one more word while he’d called Dave Stanton and they’d waited for the police. Neither had Maddie.Stanton had sent someone to pick up Cho Li and he was going to question Michelle personally as soon as she reached the precinct. He and Maddie had been invited to come down and watch.

“I don’t like it,” Maddie murmured as the patrol car pulled away.

There were quite a few things that Jase wasn’t liking, the top one being that they’d stayed a lot longer than he’d intended at Eva’s apartment, plenty of time for someone watching the place to put a plan into operation. And he had a bad feeling about that.

He’d insisted that she put on the scarf and sunglasses again, but the disguise was a thin one. He scanned the street, spotted a taxi blocking the entrance to an alley across the way, and recognized the driver as the one he’d tipped heavily to wait for them.