The drive to Terri Waters’s house was a series of residential streets twisting into the Hill Country in western Austin. Justin parked his SUV under the triple portico in front of the massive home that sat on a prime piece of land overlooking Lake Austin.
Justin had researched Terri’s background and discovered that she was currently living with her parents…again. There was no evidence she had a job or was currently married. However, her father was rich, which might explain her extravagant lifestyle. He had also found references to several marriages and divorces after Mark Roberts broke their engagement ten years ago at their rehearsal dinner, just walking out the night before the wedding. She struck him as the type of woman who did the dumping, so she probably hadn’t taken that betrayal well. Beware of a woman scorned. It was definitely a story line he had to pursue.
He pushed the button to the left of the double-entry solid wood and stained-glass doors and could hear the melodic chime of a doorbell echoing through the house.
“May I help you?” the voice in the speaker asked.
“Justin Archer with the Texas Rangers. I have a ten o’clock appointment with Terri Waters.”
A moment passed and then the door opened. A woman about Lori’s age appeared in the doorway. Her long legs were covered, but not hidden by a long, flowing, dark, transparent blue skirt. His gaze followed the sinuous path over shapely hips, narrow waist, and overflowing breasts before stopping momentarily on her plump red lips. He continued upward to her eyes, which were deep green. Strawberry-blond hair was artfully arranged to cascade over her right shoulder. His first impression was 50 percent natural and 50 percent surgically enhanced. While she was stunning, Justin had no trouble keeping his inspection analytical.
“Well, hell, a real Texas Ranger,” she purred. “I’m Terri Waters. Come in, please.” She stepped back and held the door wider so he could join her inside.
He looked around at the curving staircase, polished marble floors, and thirty-foot-tall ceilings. It all reeked of money and top-tier decorators. “Your home is beautiful, Ms. Waters,” he said, knowing that was what she expected to hear.
“Well, thank you. I’m a bit between marriages right now. Mom and Dad hide out on Sanibel Island most of the year, so I have this place to myself. Let’s go out to the pool.”
Justin followed her through the giant central foyer and down a long hall past several grandly furnished rooms to the open doors at the rear of the house.
“Amazing view of Lake Austin, Ms. Waters,” he commented, this time genuinely impressed.
“Terri, please. Iced tea okay?”
“Thank you, but you don’t have to.”
“It’s no trouble.” She turned and spoke to a servant who had silently followed them out to the pool area. “Iced tea, Milly, and some of your cookies, please.”
“Cookies too? Wow.” He smiled and noticed that she relaxed a little.
“I like my guests to be comfortable.” She gave him a bold look and settled gracefully on a chair, strategically allowing the skirt to split, exposing her tanned legs. “Please sit down. I don’t get much company during the week.”
Justin looked around the back of the house, absorbing all the details of the scene, then sat next to the patio table. “Did you live here when you and Mr. Roberts were dating?”
Terri gave a throaty laugh before answering. “Get right into it…I like that. And yes, I did. I had just graduated from college and was living back with my parents while I looked for a job…or in this case a husband.” She gave Justin a sexy wink.
“Here you go, Miss Waters,” Milly said as she set a tray holding the iced-tea service and cookies on the large cast-iron table.
“Thanks, Milly. Look, I’m in good hands with a gen-u-wine Texas Ranger, so you can take the rest of the day off.”
“Are you sure, Miss Waters?”
“I’m sure.”
Milly did a little half curtsy and walked briskly back into the house.
“She lives in the guest wing over the garage and has a boyfriend. She tells me it’s getting serious.” Terri smiled as she added lemon and artificial sweetener to her iced tea.
“If she gets married, do you lose her or gain another resident?”
“Who knows? That’ll be my parents’ decision. They don’t let me hire and fire. I don’t think they trust my judgment anymore.” The admission didn’t seem to bother her much. “I just live here between failures.”
“Mark?”
“Him and a couple others.” She snorted.
“I read the newspaper articles about him running out on your wedding. It must have been quite a shock.”
She exhaled heavily through her overly plumped lips. “It was…awful. Then there were all the people I thought were my friends, and all the guys who hoped to catch me on the rebound and latch onto Daddy’s fortune.” She took a drink, and Justin could see that while her tone was light, Mark’s rejection had left a deep wound. “I decided to fuck it and enjoy life.”
“But you were able to put it behind you enough to finally get married,” Justin prompted.
Terri slid him a flirty look. “Twice. I’m still looking for the real Mr. Right.”
Justin didn’t pretend to miss the suggestiveness of the comment, but he chose to ignore it. Rangers got hit on a lot. He wasn’t quite sure if it was the badge, the uniform, or the image of power and authority that was so attractive to women. So far he’d been able to resist without a second thought. He’d never met a woman worth losing his job over.
An image of Lori popped involuntarily into his mind, and he quickly pushed it aside. A little shaken that she had breached his thoughts while he was at work, he pushed on with the interview. He picked up a cookie and took a bite before continuing. “What did your parents think of Mark?”
“They weren’t crazy about him. But he had a vineyard and came from a nice family.” She sighed. “They weren’t all that upset that he broke it off, but it made my daddy madder than hell to be out all that money for the wedding. They don’t give refunds on unused wedding cakes, you know.”
It appeared Mark’s modus operandi was to cut and run when things got serious or tedious. If Lori knew his history, then she shouldn’t have been surprised.
“They’ve never let me forget what a big mistake I made. What’s that saying about if you don’t learn from the bad relationships, you’re doomed to repeat them? I guess I still haven’t learned.”
Justin didn’t bother to correct her on the misstated quote. Her version clearly had deep meaning to her. “Maybe it will be different now that Mark has passed,” Justin suggested, watching her intently.
“Passed? He’s dead?”
After Justin confirmed it with a nod, her face brightened.
“Rotten bastard deserved it. Who killed him?”
That was an odd question, considering she had just heard the bad news and hadn’t been told how he had died. “Why do you think he was killed?”
“Because with an asshole like him, it was just a matter of time. I even thought about it myself, but I could never go through with it.”
“If he was killed, who do you think might have done it?”
She shrugged. “Hell if I know. I’m sure there’s a long list of people who wanted him dead. Did you ever meet him?”
“No, I was brought in to investigate his death.”
“Well, to know him was to hate him.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re too upset at the loss,” he commented.
Terri laughed and picked up a cookie. “Would you be if he’d treated you like shit?”
Justin thought for a moment. “Probably not. Actually, I was wondering if you ever found out why he broke it off so abruptly.”
She looked out at Lake Austin and then back at him, her eyes clouded with the hurt of rejection. “I tried to find out. He hooked up with that Lori girl pretty quickly. I guess things didn’t work out so well for her either.”
“Was she the reason he broke it off with you?”
“You know, marriage is like playing roulette, Justin. You never know where the ball will drop or who’ll get a royal flush. I finally decided that Lori happened to be in the right slot when Mark’s ball dropped. But I honestly don’t know if he knew her before or after the breakup.”
He didn’t question her mixed-up analogy. Did she not know you didn’t get a royal flush in roulette?
“So how is the merry widow? Have you talked to her yet?”
“I did, and she’s, well, pretty accepting.”
“Did she tell you he was leaving her?”
Justin tried not to act surprised. He hadn’t thought that was general knowledge. “Mark was leaving Lori?” he asked coolly.
“No one said anything? Lori didn’t tell you?”
Justin didn’t want to question from a point of weakness. “What did you hear?”
There was a gleeful lilt to her voice as she asked, “Have you ever heard of grape groupies?”
“Young women?” he guessed.
“Let’s just say the grapes weren’t ripe enough to pick. Fuck, Justin, Mark had wines that were older than these girls.”
“So?”
“No one told you about Mark?”
“That’s why I’m here. Tell me what?”
“He was a player, big-time. I caught him more than once with a girl in the tasting room, and there was no bottle in sight.”
“While you were engaged?”
“No. Of course, he promised to change before I agreed to marry him.” Her laugh was mirthless. “I was young and stupid, and he was charming and rich…or so I thought.”
“And you assume he also did this when he was married to Lori?”
“Leopards don’t change their stripes, do they? But I guess you’ll have to ask her. I’ve moved on…to Randy and Cliff and…” She gave him a sexy sideways glance.
Justin stood up. He couldn’t take any more of her crazy scrambled clichés. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Waters. Here’s my card if you think of anything else.” He set it in front of her on the table.
She picked it up and checked it out. “Is this your personal cellphone? I’ll text you if anything occurs to me. Maybe we can meet for dinner and talk about it.” She tucked the card in her cleavage, where it had no chance of falling through. “I’ll walk you out.”
She led the way back through the house. Before she opened the door, she turned to Justin. “Honestly, I was surprised that Mark hadn’t walked out on Lori a long time before his disappearance. I guess she was nice enough to look at, but my God, she was a waitress! There’s just no accounting for taste.”
He recognized her condemnation as frustration that no amount of plastic surgery or daddy’s cash could buy her love. She opened the door, and he put his hat on and touched the brim as he said, “Have a nice day, ma’am.”
“It could be better,” she called after him hopefully.
He jotted down some notes on his legal pad after he was belted into his SUV. Ms. Terri Waters was definitely still holding a grudge, but she didn’t strike him as a killer, especially since she would have been more likely to kill Lori than to kill Mark. Justin got the impression she had never gotten over the jerk.
But there was still her father’s name on his suspect list. He had the motive and probably the means, whether by his own hands or as work for hire. Justin smiled. He could use a vacation to Florida. What were the odds he could get approval for that?
He grabbed some fast food and headed toward Crystal Springs. After gobbling down his burger, he punched in Lori’s number and put the call on speaker.
“Hello.” Her voice was almost drowned out by a loud rumble in the background.
“Lori? Justin Archer. Is this a bad time?”
“No, no, this is fine,” she shouted. “Hold on a second.” Abruptly the rumble stopped. “Sorry. I’m out cutting the weeds in the olive grove.”
“I thought you had help for that.”
“Everyone’s busy with the crushing. We’re going to harvest the olives in a couple of weeks, and it’s better if the grass is short. Plus, it discourages the snakes.”
“I bet.” Justin had his share of run-ins with snakes during the course of his job, and they rarely lived to tell the tale. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. What’s up? Did you talk to Terri?”
“I’ll tell you all about it later. Are you still available this afternoon?”
“I’m counting on it. I’m going to head to the house and take a quick shower. You can meet me there.”
Oh, great! That conjured up some unwelcome but very stimulating images. “I’ll be there in forty-five.”