Bikinis in Paradise (Tj Jensen Pardise Lake Mysteries) (15 page)

“Are you sure there isn’t another reason your jeans are getting tight?” Tj asked.
She knew that Jenna and Dennis had been trying to have another baby. There had been one false call when Jenna had thought she might actually be pregnant, but it turned out she’d been wrong.

“No
.” Jenna sighed. “No reason at all.”

“Okay
, let’s do the class,” Tj agreed “Who’s teaching it?”

“I’m not sure.
When I spoke to Harriet, she said she had someone in mind, but she didn’t say who.”

Harriet Kramer was the town secretary and responsible for booking activities in the community center
, among other things.

“I’m sure it will be awesome.” Tj turned to Kyle
. “Want to join us?”

“Thanks
, but tights and leotards don’t do a thing for me.”

“Oh
, come on,” Tj teased. “I bet you’d look adorable in tights. We could get matching leggings.”

Kyle threw a mini cream puff at her.

Tj plucked it out of her hair and ate it. Jenna really was the best cook.

After Tj and Jenna had finalized their plans to sign up for the class, the discussion turned to which type of treat to bring as a gift for Lori and her parents. They decided to go with an assortment of freshly baked cookies because Tj didn’t know Lori well enough to judge her food preferences. Lori’s parents owned a nice two-story house on the corner of Oak and Spruce. The area, known as the tree streets, was more of a residential neighborhood than was found in the rural parts of Paradise Lake. The houses were situated on small lots with lawns in the front yards and canals that provided boat lovers with direct access to the lake in the back. Personally, Tj wouldn’t want to live where you could almost reach out and touch your next-door neighbor’s house, but those who lived in the upper-middle-class neighborhood seemed to love it.

Lori blushed and smoothed a hand over her hair as she greeted Tj
, who introduced her to Kyle. He really was a good-looking man: supermodel gorgeous, with shaggy blond hair, intense blue eyes, and a killer smile that had a tendency to melt hearts. Most of the women in town, whether married or single, young or old, had crushes on the community’s newest millionaire.

“How have you been doing in college?” Tj asked as Lori led them through the house to an outdoor deck
that featured a sitting area positioned near a delightful fountain.

“Really well,” Lori answered. “I aced all of my classes last year, which I absolutely needed to do to get into
medical school, which is really amazing since I flunked high-school biology.”

“You flunked biology?” Tj asked. Lori had always been a serious student as far as she could remember.

“Warren Livingston was my lab partner.”

“Ah.” Warren was a year ahead of Lori and the
school heartthrob. Tj wasn’t surprised that Lori had had trouble concentrating with such a distraction. “High-school biology aside, I’m sure you’ll have no problem getting into a good med school. You always did do well in high school.”

“Yeah, well
, high school and college really aren’t the same beast.” Lori laughed.

“True.”

“I really appreciate your bringing the cookies,” she said, sliding them onto a plate and setting it on the table. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked. “Ice tea? Lemonade?”

Tj noticed that Lori
had been prepared, with glasses and pitchers of both beverages on a counter that was part of an outdoor kitchen built into the covered patio behind the table where they sat.

“Lemonade would be nice,” Tj answered.

“I’ll have the same,” Kyle added.

Lori poured the drinks and then took a seat across from them.
“So you’re looking for Kiara Boswell?”

Tj had explained the reason for their visit when she’d called
, but she hadn’t gone into any detail on the phone.

“
I don’t know if she told you, but she entered the Tropical Tan spokesmodel competition,” Tj began. “She arrived on the bus with the other girls but then left with a man we believe to be her ex-fiancé, Aaron. No one has seen her since.”

“I did know that Kiara had entered the competition,” Lori informed them. “She wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but like me, she really wants to be a doctor
, so I figure the scholarship must have been more than she could resist. I know she didn’t have the financial means to pursue her dream, so it made sense to me that when she found out about the scholarship included in the prize package, she signed up. The thing is that even though everything she told me made perfect sense, I got the feeling there was something more going on.”

“Something more?” Tj asked.

“She didn’t say so specifically, but she seemed . . .” Lori appeared to be searching for the right word, “hesitant. She not only didn’t seem to be very excited about the whole thing but almost seemed scared.”

“Scared how?” Kyle asked.

“I don’t know. It was more the tone of her voice. If I had to guess, she was really nervous about something.”

“Kiara
was last seen with Aaron. Do you think she was afraid of him?” Tj asked.

“Aaron? No. She never said she was afraid of
him. In fact, she really seemed to like him. She told me that he was as much a victim in the whole engagement fiasco as she was. She said he was a nice guy who would make someone a good husband, but she wasn’t interested in marrying anyone, and especially not anyone from the village. I know she was concerned about hurting him when she left, but in the end she did what she needed to do.”

“Annabeth indicated that Kiara
planned to come back for her when she had a chance.”

“Yes, she was concerned about her half
sister. She hated to leave her but had no way to provide for her. The sisters didn’t grow up in the same household, but they were very close.”

“Did Kiara ever
tell you that she was afraid of her father?” Tj asked.

Lori shyly glanced at Kyle as she considered the question. “I don’t know if she was afraid of him. I do know that she didn’t really like him. She said that he was a cruel and selfish man who blamed her for her mother’s death and blamed Annabeth for her mother’s desertion. Kiara was raised by
her grandmother until the last couple of years. Annabeth lived with her father, but Kiara mentioned on more than one occasion that she was an independent soul who would do okay in life if she could get her away from the isolation of the compound. Kiara wanted Annabeth to go to school. She really wanted her to have options in life other than what the settlement offered.”

“Do you think Kiara’s father could have hurt her?” Tj asked.

Lori looked shocked by the question. “God, I hope not. Do you think that’s what happened?”

Honestly
, Tj wasn’t sure.

“I don’t know,” Tj admitted.
“Maybe. She did run away, and it seems like he’s a less than kind man. From what I’ve learned, I can imagine him being someone who would take out his anger on a daughter who didn’t obey him.”

“I really hate to think that’s the case
.” Lori frowned. “She was—I mean
is
—such a sweet thing. I know her dad was upset when she left, but he is her father. I can’t imagine that he would hurt her.”

Tj sighed.
“Can you think of anyone else who might have wanted to hurt Kiara?”

“No.” Lori shook her head
. “I know that doesn’t help you, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt Kiara.”

Tj finished
her beverage. She glanced at Kyle, and then motioned that they should prepare to leave.

“If you hear from
Kiara, will you please call us?” Tj asked.

“Sure, no problem. It was nice meeting you,” Lori
said, turning toward Kyle.

“It was nice meeting you too.” Kyle shook her hand
, and Lori looked like she might pass out. “And good luck with your studies. I’m betting you’ll make a fantastic doctor.”

“Thank you
.” Lori blushed.

“So what do you think?” Kyle asked as the pair walked
down the rose-lined sidewalk back to the car.

“I don’t know what to think,” Tj
said. “It seems like all roads lead back to the father and ex-fiancé, yet no one we’ve talked to feels either of them could have hurt Kiara.”

“Do you think there’s a possibility that she isn’t hurt?” Kyle asked. “Perhaps she simply decided the contest wasn’t for her and took off.”

Tj thought about Kyle’s question. “I would entertain that idea if it weren’t for Annabeth. I find it hard to believe that Kiara would take off without contacting her sister. Annabeth is really worried about her. Wouldn’t Kiara realize that and get in touch with her in some way if she were able to?”

“Do you think she’s dead?” Kyle asked.

“God, I hope not.”

“It looks like the Playboy Mansion around here,” Roy commented as he walked with Tj
. Many of the twenty-four models on-site were lounging by the pool while working on their tans.

“The girls are sunning
themselves after a long day of modeling,” Tj answered. “The pool policy is that proper bathing attire needs be worn at all times, but I have to say that some of these girls are liberally interpreting the definition of proper bathing attire.”

Tj sat down on a picnic bench
in the shade at the edge of the lawn where it bordered the sand. She invited Roy to join her. It was much less crowded here than it was either at the pool or on the sand, yet the view was still spectacular.

“So you spoke to Dylan?” Roy asked.

“Yeah, he filled me in. I considered for a moment that Fenton’s wife might be involved in Tonya’s death if he
was
having an affair with Tonya, but Dylan said that two men rented the boat, and it seems pretty conclusive that whoever was on that boat is responsible for Tonya’s murder. What have you found out about Fenton?”

“Fenton Ridley first fou
nded the Tropical Tan Corporation more than twenty years ago. He used the money that his first wife, Sharon Linstrum, inherited from her grandmother to get started. Once he started to make money, he began sleeping with anything in a bikini. His wife filed for divorce when their son was two.”

Tj frowned. “Fenton made it sound like his wife left him due to his traveling.”

“That doesn’t line up with what was documented in the divorce papers,” Roy said.

Tj thought back to her conversation with Fenton. She realized that he
’d never actually said that his traveling was the reason for the divorce, though he’d seemed to insinuate it when he’d said he was a terrible husband and father.

“Okay, go on,” T
j encouraged.

“
The divorce was beyond nasty. Ridley’s wife insisted that she should get a share of the current and future earnings from the company because it was her inheritance that allowed him to start it in the first place. Ridley argued that Tropical Tan was young and not really worth anything since all of the profits were being funneled back into the start-up. In the end, Ridley’s wife got back the money she’d invested plus a small amount of interest. Ridley paid child support but wasn’t an involved parent.”

It seemed odd to Tj that his son would be on this trip with him if he hadn’t shared a relationship with his father when he was a child.

“And the son?” Tj asked.

“Porter Ridley barely knew his father until he turned eighteen.
That’s when he sought out the father he hadn’t seen since he was a baby. It appears Fenton convinced the boy that it was his mother who wouldn’t allow the relationship he very much wanted. He gave his son a cushy job with a huge paycheck and the two have been close ever since, although it appears that Porter has cut his mother out of his life.”

“It doesn’t make sense that Porter’s mother could forbid his father from seeing him unless Fenton had done something truly heinous.
Fenton has to have been lying.”

“The only thing I can come up with is that Fenton’s ex had something damaging to hold over his head
, or he didn’t care about seeing his son or being a part of his life and didn’t fight for the right to do so.”

Tj looked out across the lake. The water was filled with kids swimming and splashing as they cooled off from the heat of the afternoon.
Sounds of laughter filled the air. Tj couldn’t imagine walking away from your own child.

“Okay, so Fenton cheats on
his wife and abandons his child. Sixteen years later, his company is worth millions and his wife is out in the cold while he’s reunited with his son. He ended up with the kid and the money. I know who the prime suspect would be if Fenton ends up dead.”

“Tell me about it,” Roy agreed.
“Although the ex-wife remarried and is far from being out in the cold. I wouldn’t feel too sorry for her.”

“Okay
, so back to the affair,” Tj encouraged. “Did you find out anything more about that?”