“I never thought he was a slacker.” Jaslene looked for a waitress, eager to get on with this before her friends exaggerated her relationship with Cal. Just because he dropped her off didn’t mean there was something romantic going on between them.
“Not smart, then,” Catherine said.
“No, I never thought that, either.” She had always thought he was shrewdly intelligent. “He just seemed to...not care very much, or...not have any feelings about anything, really. But he quit the force because his boss was going to reassign him.”
Tatum drew her head back and Catherine froze as she lifted her water glass.
“Wow. He...quit his job for you?” Tatum asked.
“No, not for me. To investigate freely.” Her annoyance came out in her tone.
Tatum looked at Catherine at the same time Catherine looked at her, and then they both returned skeptical gazes to Jaslene.
“He only cares about the victims. He said so himself,” Jaslene said.
“Did you have sex with him?” Tatum asked.
The question stunned her. “No!” How could they ask such a thing? She hadn’t thought about sex with another man since before her husband died. She had felt the urge in her awkward situation and felt guilty about that to this day. But Cal had no right to judge her.
“I thought he wasn’t doing anything to solve Payton’s missing person case,” Catherine said. She was always so practical.
“I thought he wasn’t, either, but it turns out he was. He found evidence Payton’s house and laptop might have been searched before police got there.”
“My, oh my, he is smart,” Catherine gushed.
The waitress came to deliver Jaslene a water. She hadn’t even looked at the menu yet.
“Was anything missing that police didn’t notice?” Tatum asked.
“I don’t think so, but Payton was in contact with a man she never told me about. Did she ever mention she was seeing anyone to you?”
Tatum shook her head.
“No,” Catherine said. “Did your detective find out she was?”
“We know she met a Dr. John Benjamin for lunch one day. He denies having any relationship with her and says she was his patient, but I can’t get past how odd it is that she met him for lunch. He claims it was to introduce her to a chiropractor, but the chiropractor never showed up.”
“I agree it’s odd she met her doctor for lunch.”
“She would have told us if she was seeing anyone,” Catherine said.
“Dr. Benjamin is married.” Jaslene waited for that to sink in.
Tatum drew her head back in surprise and Catherine just stared at Jaslene.
“Payton was having an affair with a married man?” Catherine said. “That is so not like her.”
“I know,” Jaslene agreed. “I think that’s why she didn’t tell us.”
“Wait a minute.” Tatum leaned forward on her elbows. “You’re not saying you think the doctor kidnapped her and maybe killed her, are you?”
“What if Payton threatened to tell his wife?” Jaslene wanted to hear what her friends would say. “Maybe he told her he would leave his wife and then she found out he had no intention of doing it.”
Catherine shook her head this time. “She wouldn’t do that.”
Jaslene didn’t think so, either, but she’d wanted to know what they both thought.
“There’s something else,” Jaslene said. “I saw Riley the other day. He made a pistol with his hands and mimicked shooting me.”
“Oh, that slithering snake.” Catherine made a face.
“Why is Riley stalking you now?” Tatum asked.
“Did you tell the police?”
“Cal knows. I saw him outside my house a month ago, too. I’ve seen him around town, just random run-ins, like normal. But he stops and watches me, like he used to do to Payton. He’s never made shooting gestures to me before. I guarantee you, I’d have told the cops if he did. There’s nothing anyone can do about a man who’s doing what he normally does in town and happens to run into me.”
“He’d like to kill you,” Catherine said. “Isn’t that what his little gesture means?”
“That’s how I took it,” Jaslene said. “He had an alibi, but Cal is going to look into that again.”
“It makes more sense that Riley had something to do with Payton’s disappearance than a married doctor she might have been experimenting with sexually,” Catherine said.
“Cal?” Tatum queried. “You just called your detective ‘Cal.’”
“Detective Chelsey.”
“You’re calling each other by first names now?” Tatum teased. “Ooh la la.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
“Stop it.” Her friends knew her well enough to pick up on undercurrents.
“What’s been going on between the two of you?” Tatum asked.
“Nothing.” Her response, if she was truthful, would be wild attraction—before he had insulted her, but she would rather not go there.
Both Catherine and Tatum pinned her with doubtful gazes.
“Nothing,” she repeated.
Tatum cocked her head dubiously and Catherine started to smile.
“Nothing is going on,” Jaslene almost snapped.
“He’s very good-looking,” Tatum said.
“And manly,” Catherine added. She’d married a tall man herself.
“There’s nothing going on between us,” Jaslene insisted. “In fact, I told him about Ansel and he assumed I cheated on my husband.”
“You almost did,” Tatum said.
Jaslene lowered her head with the pang of grief and regret that fact instilled. She felt like she had cheated. And Cal was right. Her husband had died not knowing the truth.
Tatum reached over and put her hand over Jaslene’s. “I’m sorry. I know what a sensitive subject that is for you.”
“You didn’t cheat on Ryan,” Catherine said. “Ansel kissed you. You didn’t kiss him. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Jaslene wished her heart would believe that. True, she hadn’t been the one to initiate the kiss, but what it had made her feel was the part that felt wrong.
“I asked my husband what he would do if something like that happened to me,” Catherine said. “He told me he’d beat the hell out of the man and make sure I felt loved.” She smiled, full of affection for her man.
Had Jaslene’s husband made her feel loved? Ryan had been a geologist like her. They’d gone to school together. Sometimes she thought both of them having the same profession wasn’t such a good thing. They’d both had different ideas on certain earth processes, for one. For example, he supported global warming and had conviction that would be the cause of an apocalypse. She agreed humans were responsible for climate change, but she also thought the earth was far more powerful than any human influence. People would heat up the earth, but that didn’t mean the planet would come to an end. The earth would recover, even if humanity did not.
She and Ryan had argued