Florida Heatwave (30 page)

Two days ago in Lily’s office, Brad’s fiancée, Joan Marin, had smiled nervously at Lily and said, “You have an unusual occupation.”

Lily smiled back. “But a useful one.”

“That’s why I called you,” Joan said. “You saved a girlfriend of mine.”

Still smiling, Lily shrugged. “I save as many as I can. Here’s the deal, Joan. I choose the time and place and make myself available to Brad. I don’t exactly come on to him, just make it clear that I could be agreeable to what he might suggest.”

“Can you do that?” Joan asked.

“It’s a subtle thing, but I’ve mastered it,” Lily said.

“I never could flirt,” Joan said, “even though I’ve worked at it.”

Lily looked at her—this attractive enough brunette who’d gone to the right schools and had the wrong hairdo—and thought, not in a thousand years, sweetheart. But she widened her smile and said, “It’s my business. If Brad does proposition a stranger a month before your wedding, you’ve got a right to know about it. And I’ll see that you do know.”

“Will you …,” Joan twittered nervously, “I mean, go all the way?”

“No, no,” Lily said tolerantly. “Ours is a business arrangement, and sleeping with your fiancée isn’t part of it.”

Joan looked down, looked up. There was a glint like a diamond chip in her eye. “But what if I wanted it to be? I mean, there’s only one way to have actual proof.”

Surprised, Lily nodded. “I understand. I can supply you with a videotape, if it comes to that. But of course my fee will be increased accordingly.”

Joan agreed, and didn’t find Lily too expensive. But she did ask meekly if she could pay ten percent of the fee up front, the rest after Lily’s report. Lily told her that would be okay, thinking how the rich really were different from the rest of us, but very much like each other.

This Brad, Lily thought, watching him at the bar, was also rich. Joan had told her that, but it wouldn’t have been necessary. Lily could figure it out from his obviously expensive blue blazer, Italian loafers, the glitter of his gold watch and diamond ring when he lifted his arm to sip from his glass. A young, good looking guy over six feet tall, with dark eyes and a head of black curls. He was well built enough that he made his tailored jacket look even more expensive.

He glanced over and saw Lily staring at him. Didn’t smile, but didn’t look away immediately. Lily averted her eyes precisely when he did, so he would know she’d also looked away. Lily knew how to flirt the way an artist knows how to prepare to paint.

When Brad was finished with his second drink, he hadn’t come to her, so she went to him, standing close and asking the bartender for a bowl of peanuts.

When she’d returned to her booth and sat down, she saw that Brad had followed her. Big surprise.

“Do I know you?” she asked coolly.

He smiled white and wide, aiming his charm like a gun. “Would you like to?”

Lily waited a couple of beats. “I don’t know. Would I?”

Brad sat down opposite her.

He was obviously experienced, and very good. Lily had to admire how adroitly he played her while she was playing him. It took him only about ten minutes to ask if she’d wait while he went to the desk and got a room, then go upstairs with him. Lily dropped the coy act. She told him that wouldn’t be necessary, she was staying at the hotel and had her own room.

He was good all the way. No violence or disrespect, only gentleness combined with blatant lust. Lily’s style.

Afterward she lay back with her fingers laced behind her neck and smoked a cigarette. Apparently Brad wasn’t a smoker himself, but he registered no complaint. Lily watched him watch a bead of perspiration she could feel finding its way around the nipple of her left breast. The expression on his face almost made her want to reach for him, but that would hardly do when she showed Joan Marin the videotape of her fiancée thoroughly enjoying the last half hour with a stranger he’d picked up in a hotel lounge. The camcorder was set up between the wardrobe and desk, concealed in the shadows and focused on the bed, with a piece of tape over its red power light. A small voice-activated recorder was taped to the back of the headboard so it could pick up words uttered even in a whisper.

Brad reached across her for the glass of scotch poured from the bottle he’d brought up from downstairs. Lily gasped and sat straight up as the glass slipped from his hand, spilling ice and diluted scotch over her bare stomach and crotch.

“Damn!” Brad said. “I’m sorry.” He leaned down and began to lick her stomach.

Not in the mood, Lily shoved him away. “It’s okay,” she said, “really.” The mattress was wet and cold beneath her. “I’m gonna get up and shower.”

“Okay,” Brad said. “I’ll wait for you. Then I’ll buy you a big dinner so you’ll forget my awkwardness.”

Lily thought, why not? She liked the guy, and Joan wasn’t going to marry him after seeing the videotape. Lily had even gotten Brad to say he loved her, always the end of an engagement.

She showered quickly then dried off with one of the hotel’s towels from a heated rack, thinking maybe she’d found the right occupation for a woman with her skills and a realistic attitude.

When she wrapped the towel around her and returned to the room to get dressed, she found Brad still nude and seated on the edge of the bed. He was going through her purse. Lily forced herself to be calm, fighting back her anger. She’d had Brad wrong. Now she wondered how wrong.

“Private investigator, huh?” he said, holding up the copy of her license.

The hell with this guy, Lily thought. He was the one with the problem.

“Knowing that will hardly make any difference now.” She dropped the towel and stepped into her panties.

He smiled at her, his own coolness disturbing, making her wonder all the more. He should be furious, threatening. “Notice that smell?” he asked her.

For the first time she did, the acrid scent of burned plastic.

“I burned the videotape in the wastebasket while you were showering,” he explained. “I figured Joan might hire someone to test my fidelity. It’s the thing to do for women in her crowd. So, when I saw you I could hardly believe my luck.”

Lily continued dressing, staring at him curiously. He wasn’t simply a sneak thief caught rooting through her purse. Something else was going on here.

“I recognized you,” Brad said. “You’re Lily from Miami. When you came on to me, I knew you were a working girl one way or the other, so I decided to take my chance and hope you were hired by Joan and not still … er, working your other profession.”

“I decided on a new, honest profession. A new start in another city.”

“You should have chosen a city farther from Miami.”

“I like Florida and don’t want to leave. But I won’t miss Miami. Are you a former client of mine?”

“No, I only recall you from someone telling me about you at the convention in South Beach. I admired you enough to remember your face.”

“Then you don’t really love me?” she asked wryly, using humor to stall for time while she finished dressing, trying to figure out what this was about, how she would deal with it.

“I meant it when I said it. And I’m glad you turned out to be you, because it makes what I’m going to ask a lot easier.”

Lily felt better. He wanted something from her he couldn’t simply take.

Something he had to ask for. She bent forward to display her cleavage while she fastened her bra, looking at him to let him know she was waiting.

“You see, Lily, I have a prison record, and I’d rather not have Joan find out about it. What I’m asking is for you to give her a clean report on me.”

“She only has my word anyway, now that you destroyed the tape.”

“But I want you to go beyond saying I didn’t betray her. I want you to tell her you checked out my past and it’s unblemished. That way she won’t hire someone else to check it. Rich women are suspicious.”

Lily couldn’t resist grinning at him. “You don’t think they have good reason?”

He gave her a sheepish look and nodded. Lily didn’t buy into it.

“There’s something more, isn’t there?” she said.

He gave her a level stare that went right to her core, surprising her with its effect. Joan would be crazy not to marry this guy even if he murdered his last five wives. He said, “You’re no fool, Lily, which is why I think you’ll go for what I’m going to propose.”

“You already proposed to Joan,” she pointed out.

“I’m being sincere now, and not about marriage. I’m marrying Joan for her money.”

“Shocking,” Lily said, zipping her skirt. “I would have guessed you had money of your own.”

“I did, and now I don’t. But I will again. Joan’s.”

“Unless she finds out about your past,” Lily said. She knew how to play the Brads of this world.

“That’s true. Especially my recent past.”

Here is comes, Lily thought. “How recent?”

“As long ago as the New York Diamond District robbery.”

Lily sat down in a chair near the bed, not bothering to button her blouse. She remembered the multimillion dollar jewel heist from when it was all over the news about six months ago. Four men had held up separate shops in New York’s diamond district simultaneously, then somehow faded into the throngs of pedestrians on the sidewalks. Later the police theorized they’d worn the dark clothes of Hasidic Jewish diamond couriers beneath their coats, then placed hats or yarmulkes on their heads and passed for diamond merchants themselves. Lily recalled thinking the robbers might just as easily have dressed as cops, but the cops would never advance that theory unless they had no choice.

“You were one of the robbers?” she asked.

He nodded. Didn’t seem to be kidding.

“Then you should be rich. None of you were ever caught.”

“All of us got away,” Brad said, “but when the four of us split up, only three of us had diamonds.”

“Your partners robbed you of the robbed diamonds?”

“Yes. I was stupid enough to give them the chance. That leaves me just about broke. Which is why I need Joan.” He fixed her with that dreamy stare again. She felt it. “I’m being honest with you, Lily.”

“That doesn’t seem to be your pattern.”

“It is when my back’s to the wall, like it is now.”

She finished buttoning her blouse, then bent over and reached her shoes and slipped them onto her feet.

“You didn’t say no, Lily.”

“Since we’re being honest with each other,” she said, “I’m wondering, if I report to Joan that she’s about to marry a saint, what’s in it for me?”

“You get half.”

“Of what?”

“Millions. Joan’s not very careful with her financial records. Her first husband died five years ago and left her over four million dollars. It’s grown since then.”

“If you get half after the divorce, that’s a million for me. All that just for giving Joan a favorable report about you?”

“Well, there’s more. I want you to befriend Joan, keep building me up, make sure she doesn’t do any more checking into my background. Right up to the marriage and beyond.”

Lily was thinking ahead. “I guess part of my job would be to talk her out of a prenuptial agreement.”

“Not necessarily,” Brad said.

“Then what makes you think you’ll walk away from the marriage with a couple of million dollars that you’ll then split with me?”

“More like six million,” he said, watching Lily closely now. Knowing it was the kind of money that shortened her breath.

“How six million?” she asked, thinking this is just the sort of stupid but simple plan that might work, only there has to be a catch because there always is.

He gave her his handsome smile. “The inheritance …”

“Uh-huh …”

“Plus the life insurance.”

“Oh Jesus!” Lily said.

The wedding was a small one, with only a few family members and friends. Joan’s old college friends were a snooty lot, but they seemed to accept Lily easily enough. It helped that Joan introduced her as “my very dearest friend.”

The reception was at one of the best hotels near the marina and downtown Sarasota, less than half an hour’s drive from Joan’s luxurious home on Longboat Key. A portable dance floor had been set up, and there was a four-piece band playing softly enough that there could be conversation.

When Lily and Brad were dancing, Lily found herself feeling good in his arms. She resisted the temptation to press herself against his lean body in front of everyone. Instead she moved just close enough so she could whisper to him. “Mr. and Mrs. Brad Masters,” she said. “Is that even your real name?”

“Real enough. Want some punch?”

“I want you,” she said. “And as soon as possible after the honeymoon is over.”

During the next two weeks, Lily tried not to think about Brad and Joan in Hawaii.

The distance from Brad gave her time to do some reconsidering, and she drove to Miami and met with Willis in the bar at the Royal Roman Hotel. Like old times. It didn’t feel good.

“I’m glad you’re doing okay,” Willis told her, leaning across the table and patting her wrist. He was wearing Levi’s and a long-sleeved plaid shirt despite the eighty-degree temperature outside. “You said on the phone you needed a favor. If I can help you, I will.”

“I need to know about a guy who calls himself Brad Masters. Whatever you can find out about him.”

“That his real name?”

“I doubt it.”

“I thought your new business was finding out things like that.”

“This one’s over my head, but maybe not yours.” She paused, but she knew Willis would keep her secrets. He had in the past. “He was involved in that big New York diamond theft last year.”

Willis’s expression changed to one Lily had never seen before. It gave away nothing. “I’ve got lines to it,” he told her. “I might be able to learn something for you. But it would help if I knew his real name. Or at least what he looked like.”

“Here’s his photo,” Lily said, handing him a copy of a snapshot taken by Joan. A smiling Brad at the wheel of her vintage Jaguar convertible.

“Nice looking guy,” Willis said. He looked closely at her. “You involved in a romantic way?”

“‘Fraid so.”

Willis smiled and wagged a finger. “You of all people should know what they say about mixing business with pleasure.”