Don't Look Down (24 page)

“What you’re doing won’t get Rick into trouble, will it?” she asked. “Because I won’t allow that. Especially because getting Rick into trouble will get Tom into trouble.”

“It won’t get Rick into trouble. I swear it.” Samantha hoped she wasn’t being overly optimistic. Crossing her fingers, though, would be a bit blatant.

Without a backward glance, Kate returned to the group of women with whom she’d been chatting. The invitations all had table numbers on them, though Samantha had erased hers and Patricia’s. They were going to sit at Laurie Kunz’s table. If Laurie didn’t see the necklace, they might as well be at Taco Bell.

Finally she spied Charles Kunz’s daughter, seated at table number eleven. Swiftly, she pulled a pen from her purse and etched the corresponding number onto her invitation. “Let’s go,” she said over her shoulder.

She’d taken a few steps before she realized that Patricia wasn’t following.

“What is it?” she said, returning.

“I did not come here to be embarrassed and humiliated,” Patricia snapped, her voice shaking a little.

“I didn’t embarrass you. I will if you don’t go through
with this, though. And not just because you’re dating Daniel. I haven’t forgotten that whole stolen ring thing, Patty. I still have the tape, so I pretty much own you.”

“I’m not talking about you. I meant Kate Donner. She used to be
my
friend. All these women used to fall over themselves to be my friend. And now they invite
you
to their parties.”

Samantha gazed at her for a minute. “Under other circumstances I might feel some compassion for you,” she finally said, “but today I’m trying to get my friend out of jail. You made your bed, Patricia.”

Patricia stomped her yellow sandal. “I made a mistake. A stupid mistake. And you stepped in to take advantage when you had no right. You’ve ruined everything.”

“So make it right.”

Patricia pinned her with a pale blue glare. “What a stupid thing to say.”

Sam grinned. “It made sense to me. Help me, and I’ll give you credit for discovering a murderer. That’s the beginning and end of this partnership.”

“It had better be.”

Four other women were already seated at the table, and another three were headed in that direction. Grabbing Patricia’s hand, Samantha towed her to their chairs and sat before anyone could dispute their ownership of the seats.

“Miss Kunz,” Samantha said, “I wanted to give you my condolences again. It’s nice that you’re not giving up your charitable activities.”

“My father was a great supporter of wildlife,” Laurie returned. “I didn’t realize that you and Patricia really are friends. How…interesting.”

“Richard asked me to guide her about society,” Patricia put in, embellishing the lie she’d begun earlier.

That was fine with Samantha. Just looking at the tables directly around them, she recognized occupants of three houses she’d robbed over the years. She’d hobnobbed with them before, but only when it gave her an opportunity to case their houses. Now they would happily invite her in, because gossip linked her with Rick Addison. Weird.

“It just so happens that I’ve been guiding Richard around at the same time,” Laurie contributed, favoring Samantha with another smile. “He’s quite the charmer.”

“You and Richard?” Patricia broke in.

For once Patricia’s obsession with her ex-husband was useful. It saved Samantha from having to ask that question herself. Whether she would have to beat the crap out of Laurie would depend on how she answered the question.

“Yes. We’ve been looking at real estate.”

Samantha rotated her shoulders, forcing herself to relax. One thing was for sure—whether she was good at chitchatting or not, she preferred a straight B and E to all this fake politeness and artifice. And Rick owed her an explanation as to why he’d selected Laurie to be his realtor, especially after all the shit he’d fed her about honesty and questioning whom she chose to hang out with.

The rest of their table filled up, and two older women were left standing there, looking from one guest to another. “I thought this was our table,” one of them said.

Samantha sipped iced tea, gave a commiserating look, and kept her mouth shut. Finally one of the hostesses appeared and led them to the two empty seats at table eight, where she and Patricia had originally been assigned. As trays of shrimp salads appeared, Mrs. Cynthia Landham-Glass took the podium by the pool and began her speech about the charity while Samantha kept her attention on Laurie Kunz.

Ideally Laurie would have seen Patricia’s necklace already and blurted out some sort of accusation about her brother, but she seemed engrossed with lunch and with chatting to the ladies at all the surrounding tables. She was firmly entrenched in Palm Beach society, and if anything, her father’s death had only helped with that. Now she had the sympathy card to play—and that, together with her family’s longtime residence, would get her into practically any-place she wanted.

After twenty minutes of being charming, Patricia leaned toward her. “She hasn’t seen it,” she murmured, dragging her fork through the chicken capellini.

“Be patient. She will.”

“What am I supposed to do, stick my tits in her face?”

“If it comes to that,” Samantha returned. “Ask her to pass the sugar.”

Patricia blew out her breath. “Laurie, love, would you mind passing me the butter?” she asked. Apparently substituting butter was her way of improvising.

Samantha kept her eyes on Laurie and saw the exact moment she noticed Patricia’s necklace. Green eyes widened, then narrowed again. Her next glance was at Sam, who lowered her gaze to her lunch in time to avoid contact.

“Where did you get that lovely necklace, Patricia?” Laurie asked.

Patricia buttered a piece of bread. “This? Daniel gave it to me over dinner the other evening.” She smiled. “He said I should be showered in rubies and emeralds, and that this was only the beginning. Your brother is quite the romantic.”

Not bad
. Sam waited a beat, then leaned over to finger the ruby. She gave a low whistle. “That’s quite a beginning.”

For a moment Patricia simply basked while all the ladies leaned in to look at her neck and offer various compliments.
Laurie didn’t, but then she already knew where the ruby had come from—or she thought she did. What was it like, Sam wondered, to realize that your kid brother had killed your dad? She supposed she could have been more tactful about making her suspicions known, but as far as she was concerned, nobody in that house had been cleared.

For the rest of lunch she watched. Laurie chatted and applauded readily enough, but she picked at both her capellini and dessert, and several times fingered the cell phone on the table beside her elbow. She wanted to call Daniel, no doubt, though Sam wasn’t entirely certain whether it was to accuse her brother of murder or of giving away stolen rubies.

Lunch began to break up, and Samantha wrote out a donation check. As she replaced the checkbook in her purse, she pulled out the note she’d written that morning and slipped it under Laurie’s cell phone.

The next step was the hardest. Now she had to wait.

Saturday, 3:45 p.m.

“I
s she home?” Richard asked without preamble as Reinaldo met him at the front door.

“Miss Sam came in just a few minutes ago. I believe she was going to change and go for a swim.”

Nodding, Rick tugged his tie loose and headed for the stairs. “Have Hans put out a half-dozen steaks. I’m going to barbecue for the Donners tonight. They’ll be here at six.”

“Very good. Hans is working on a Boston cream pie for dessert. Is that—”

“That’s splendid,” Rick interrupted, for a second debating cancelling dinner in favor of another night of pie sex. He almost immediately changed his mind, though; he wasn’t going to wait that long.

Outside the bedroom door he moved into stealth mode, slipping off his shoes and inching the door handle down until it opened. They had other things to deal with, and Walter was still in jail, but damn it all, that didn’t change one unavoidable fact: he was a man who wanted to get laid. Hell, he’d even brought home the Kunz and Paradise Realty pa
perwork instead of staying at Donner’s office to look at it there, despite the risk of Samantha finding them.

He spotted her immediately, one hand on the back of the deep blue couch as she slipped on her flip-flops. She had on a red bikini, and his mouth actually went dry. Samantha was a slender woman, but round in all the right places, and well-toned muscles played beneath her smooth skin.

Moving fast, he took the two carpeted steps in one bound and tackled her around the waist, throwing both of them onto the soft cushions of the couch. She yelped, giving him a hard elbow in the ribs before she realized who it was.

“Damn it, Rick, you scared the hell out of me,” she protested, twisting underneath him until she was on her back.

“Score one for me,” he returned, lowering his head to kiss her.

She kissed him back, giving his lower lip a gentle nip. Mm, life was good. His tie slipped onto the floor, followed by his jacket.

“I take it your meeting went well,” she mused, reaching between them to unbutton his shirt. “You’re the pipe fitting king of the world now, right?”

“Right.”

“Neat. Maybe I’ll branch out into security and plumbing installation.”

“Ah. And tell me why Leedmont said I should thank you?”

Samantha looked up at him, grinning. “Because he asked my opinion of you, and I told him how sad and nerdy you are and how you’ve always wanted to own a pipe-fittings company.”

“I see.” He didn’t know whether to take her seriously or not. Whatever she’d told John Leedmont, though, the man had actually listened to reason.

She laughed at him. “You totally owe this deal to me, studmuffin.”

“Shut up,” he murmured, kissing her again.

She ripped two buttons off the cuff of his sleeve as she pulled his shirt off. “Oops. Can I at least tell you that you contributed to SPERM?”

That caught his attention. He stopped midway through untying her bikini top. “What?”

“Society for the Protection of the Environment and Range of Manatees,” she said, moving his hand to cover her left breast. “You gave ’em five thousand dollars.”

“For a minute I thought we were supporting a fertility clinic or something.”

Samantha laughed again, the sound reverberating through his hand and straight into his heart. “Isn’t it great? Who would have thought that the Palm Beach matrons had a sense of humor?”

“Not me.” He returned to his untying, slipping her scanty top off and lowering his mouth to her bare breasts. “So your lunch went well, then, I presume?” he muttered.

“Just shag me, baby. We’ll talk later.”

That didn’t bode well, but neither did he want to be distracted right now. Four hours of hard discipline, keeping a rein on his temper and his impatience, working slowly and patiently to wear down a very stubborn and suspicious CEO and board of directors—he was ready to let loose.

He slipped a hand into her bikini bottoms and cupped her. She was wet. If he waited another minute without being inside her, he was going to explode. Thankfully, her bottoms were tied together with what felt like dental floss, and getting them off only took a second. With her help, Richard unbuckled his belt, unzipped his trousers, and shoved them down to his thighs.

With a grunt he shoved forward, inside her. Samantha gave a gasping moan, digging her fingers into his back and wrapping her ankles around his hips. He pumped hard and fast, feeling her contracting around him with delicious heat. “Come for me,” he ordered, taking her mouth in a hard, deep kiss.

She did come, with a half-strangled scream, and Richard closed his eyes, pushing himself forward. He ejaculated at the tail end of her orgasm, sending them both into a heaving, writhing pile of tangled limbs and sweat.

“Jesus,” she gasped after a minute, still clinging to him.

“Sorry for the quickie,” he managed, carefully settling his weight on her. She could take it.

“The hell you say. That must have been some negotiation.”

“It was. Toward the end, there, all I could think of was getting back here and shagging you.”

Samantha chuckled, lifting her head to kiss his jaw. “Then I’m glad I was here, for Reinaldo’s sake.”

“It wouldn’t have been the same.” Putting out an arm to catch himself, he rolled off the couch and onto the floor. He took her with him, still straddling his hips, still encasing him.

“Want to go swimming with me?” Samantha asked, sitting up with her hands braced on his chest. “We could cover up the cameras and go in the buff.”

“The Donners are coming over for a barbecue at six,” he returned, watching her face.

Her expression tightened a little, then relaxed again. “All of them?”

“Yes. Even Chris. He’s on winter break from Yale. I invited them for a swim, as well.” Slowly, he ran his palms along her shoulders, drawing them down over her breasts.

“Okay.” She leaned into his palms, sighing with a deep satisfaction that made him seriously consider cancelling dinner.

“Are you going to tell me about your luncheon now?”

Green eyes held his. “Did you go looking at real estate with Laurie Kunz?”

To borrow one of Samantha’s favorite words,
crap
. “I’m looking for a place for Patricia. You know that.”

“I know that. What, precisely, made you choose Laurie Kunz as your ideal realtor?”

Lying there flat on his back with his pants around his knees and his cock still inside her, he wasn’t going to lie. “I thought she might know something about the robbery.”

“But the police are handling that case, Richard. They are doing a splendid job, and do not need help from amateurs.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Hm. It seems like I’ve heard that before. Who was it that said that to me?”

“I just thought I might lend a hand.”

“You’re a hypocrite.”

Richard sat up, frowning. “Why, because I decided to talk to her?”

“Because when I look into things on my own it’s dangerous and a probable disaster and none of my business, but you get to go house-hunting with a possible murderer and it’s fine that you don’t tell me?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“Because I caught you.”

Okay, so she was correct. That didn’t mean he had to admit it to her. “Would it make a difference if I said she seemed a little suspicious?”

“It makes things more interesting,” she said after a moment.

“And why is that?”

“Because I passed Laurie a note at lunch offering to help her with any problems caused by her brother.”

He looked her in the eye. “You did what?”

When Samantha pulled away from him and stood, he was certain he wasn’t going to like her answer. She walked naked and graceful into the bathroom and came out pulling on a bathrobe. “I didn’t say anything specific. I wanted to see how she would react. First I gave a faux Gugenthal ruby to Patricia to wear, and had her say that Daniel had given it to her. When Laurie saw it, her eyes practically popped out.”

Worry and a fair bit of anger clenched into his gut. Standing, he yanked his trousers back up and fastened them. This wasn’t a naked-type conversation, any longer. “She’s not going to react well if she’s the killer.”

“It was Daniel. I’m almost positive. She’ll just want a way out, maybe to keep herself from getting the blame.”

She could be positive if she wanted, but he intended to reserve judgment until he’d looked through Laurie’s financial records. And now he definitely wasn’t going to tell her about the Kunz paperwork unless or until he got results. He had a wager to win. “So how or when will you know she’s decided to bring you in?”

“My note gave her twenty-four hours. I told her that after that I would take my suspicions to the insurance company. I’m sure they’d offer a reward for saving them the kind of money involved in all this.”

Richard joined her to look over the pool deck. “Does she know that you and Walter are friends?”

“She probably knows we work in the same office.”

“If she did the deed, she’s not going to want you around to talk about it.”

“I know what I’m walking into.”

For a long moment Richard stayed silent as he slowly pulled her warm, terry-cloth-wrapped body back against his. “I appreciate that you told me all this, wager or not.”

“I didn’t want you walking into a potential fire without knowing. Especially if you’re still going to work with Laurie on your real estate stuff.”

“I have to, don’t I? We can’t risk making her suspicious.” Not until he’d satisfied himself about whether she was involved.

Samantha twisted in his arms to face him, her upturned face serious. “You’re not going to say we should call Castillo and let him know what’s going on?”

He smiled. “I know how reluctant you are to make statements without proof. Or to put yourself in the position of being the star witness.”

“Yes, that does make me twitchy, doesn’t it?”

“Not as twitchy as it used to, if you can joke about it.” Bending his head down, he kissed her. “Brace yourself, because I’m going to say it again.”

“Rick—”

“I love you, Samantha Jellicoe.”

Predictably, she made a show of untangling herself from his grasp. He let her loose. It
was
a show, he realized, probably for the first time. She was getting used to hearing him say it, and it didn’t bother her as much as it had before. Which meant either that she no longer considered being close to someone—to him—a trap, a confinement that would somehow harm her, or that she didn’t mind being trapped.

The intercom buzzed. Grateful the interruption hadn’t come a few minutes earlier, Richard went to the phone and hit the button. “Yes?”

“Sir? Detective Frank Castillo is at the front gate. He says he has an appointment with Miss Sam.”

“Send him in, Reinaldo,” Samantha said over his shoulder. “We’ll meet him in the library.”

Richard straightened. “‘An appointment’?”

Sam gave him her quicksilver grin. “I might have called him and asked him to come by. Winning by any means and all that. And Walter. The ambush sex made me forget.”

“Very likely.” He walked over and grabbed the front of her robe, pulling it wide open. “You should probably put some clothes on before I make you forget again.”

“You, too.” She ran a hand down his bare chest. “You look like one of those romance cover models like that—bare feet, belt undone, no shirt.”

“Just so it’s not Fabio I look like.”

“No. One of those black-haired British noblemen.” She kissed his chin, then scampered toward the closet. “Oh, wait! You are one of those.”

“Smart ass.”

“I was kind of surprised you waited until this afternoon to call me,” Frank Castillo said, taking a seat at the large library research table and accepting an iced tea from Reinaldo.

“So you know that Walter Barstone and I are friends?”

He gave a short laugh that managed not to sound all that amused. “Give me a break. Tom Donner’s been calling everybody who owns a phone to try and get information. Donner means Addison, and it didn’t take my shiny detective badge to figure out that that meant Jellicoe.”

“Stoney’s an old friend helping me set up my security business,” she lied, wishing she and Rick had had a little more prep time to get the back story straight. Neither, though, would she have wanted to pass up the ambush sex.

Frank took a swallow of iced tea. “Look, Sam, I’m not an idiot. I don’t expect you to make any confessions, but I’m running a murder investigation. Don’t mess with witnesses
or evidence, and don’t lie to my face. Walter Barstone’s been under surveillance before, and while he’s just about as slick as you, we could still make a fair case against him even without this new stuff.”

Her heart dropped into her stomach. “Are you?” she managed, just barely keeping her voice steady. “Going to make a case against him regardless of how the Kunz investigation turns out?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m homicide, remember?” He looked down for a moment, stirring his tea with the straw. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Thanks, Frank.”

“Is that why you called? We could have done this over the phone.”

“I want to know who tipped you off that Stoney had some of the Kunz property.”

“It was an anonymous tip. We get them all the time, but they usually don’t pay off like that.” Blotting his moustache with a napkin, he sent Samantha a curious look. “It surprised the hell out of me when I realized who we were arresting. I mean, you made such a big deal about being concerned over Kunz’s death, and then poof, it’s your guy fencing the stolen prop—”

“Stoney didn’t do anything,” Samantha broke in. “He was set up.”

“I don’t suppose you can prove that?”

“Not yet. Not in court, anyway.”

“Sam, I ain’t a judge.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay. And I’m trusting you, so don’t shaft me—or nobody’s gonna be happy with the way this turns out.”

“I’ll ignore that and just say tell me what you know.”

Sitting beside her, Rick stirred for the first time. It was funny; he was the one with the reservations about trusting the cop this time around. “I still think Donner should be here,” he murmured.