Hot Money (8 page)

“Have the police found the murder weapon?” she asked.

“If you’re talking about the silver candlestick, they hadn’t when we left here last night. I haven’t bothered Detective Abrams this morning. I’m sure he has enough theories of his own to check out without dealing with advice from me.”

Molly ignored the implied reprimand. “I can think of two places it might be. They’re so obvious, no one would ever think of looking there.”

“You don’t give the police much credit for clarity of thought, do you?”

“Do you honestly want me to answer that?”

“I guess not,” he told her. “Okay. Where did the murderer dispose of the weapon?”

“You have to promise to let me check it out with you,” she bargained.

“Molly!”

“Promise. This is my theory, remember.”

“Okay, fine,” he muttered with a resigned shrug. “Just spit it out.”

“The pantry. I’ll bet there are other candlesticks stored in there. No one would notice if the caterer’s was just stuck in the middle, right?”

“It’s possible,” he agreed thoughtfully. “What’s the other alternative?”

“The catering truck. Neville saw the candlestick was missing from the buffet table. We don’t know if he ever searched for it later on the truck. It would have been easy for the killer to steal the candlestick, clobber Tessa, then slip into the catering truck and put it back with the other supplies.”

“You could be right.”

“Does that mean we can go look?”

“It means we can tell the officer on duty here and maybe he’ll agree to let us go along on a search.”

“Do you ever do anything that isn’t entirely by the book?” Molly inquired grumpily.

“Plenty, according to my superiors.”

“Then why are you so stiff-necked with me?”

“For one thing you’re a—”

“Don’t you dare make some sexist comment.”

“I intended to point out that you are a civilian.”

“Oh,” she said, somewhat pacified. Then she was struck by a distressing possibility. “You don’t suppose they let the catering truck leave last night?”

“I doubt it, especially when they heard about the missing candlestick. I’m sure they’d want to take another look through everything in daylight before releasing anything that was on the grounds last night.”

Apparently Michael was particularly persuasive with the duty officer. After a minimum of badge flashing and backslapping, he allowed them access to the pantry, sticking close by to assure they didn’t disturb any evidence or make off with any of the museum’s valuables. His presence hardly mattered since there was no sign of the missing candlestick amid the supplies stored in the room’s cabinets.

Molly barely hid her disappointment. “What about the catering truck? Is it still here?”

“Right outside, ma’am,” the officer said. “I think it’s locked up tight, though.”

It was indeed locked, complete with a strip of crime-scene tape across the freight doors on the back.

“Now what?” Molly asked.

“Now we call Detective Abrams of the Miami Police Department and share your guesswork with him,” Michael said.

“Couldn’t we maybe pick the lock?”

The duty officer looked horrified. Michael merely shook his head. “Not unless you want to spend Sunday afternoon in a cell.”

“They wouldn’t arrest you, if you did it,” she grumbled.

“I wouldn’t count on that. Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go into the Grove and have brunch. Maybe we can even catch an early movie.”

“Yeah!” Brian said enthusiastically, clearly bored by the lack of action here and fearing he might actually have to view the museum after all. “Can I have the biggest popcorn they’ve got? With butter?”

“Only if you’ll share with me,” Michael said. “Molly?”

“Oh, all right. If I can’t solve this mystery, maybe I can figure out why men are born with absolutely no curiosity whatsoever. The bookstore at Cocowalk probably has a whole section of books on that topic alone.”

“All written by frustrated women, no doubt,” Michael countered.

“Exactly,” she agreed. “No man would even be curious enough to try to figure it out.”

“Are you guys going to stand around arguing all day?” Brian demanded finally. “I’m starved.”

“You’re always starved,” Molly retorted.

Michael rested his hand on Brian’s head. “Just another one of those idiosyncrasies we men share, right, kid?”

“Right,” Brian said.

Molly wondered, not for the first time, why the Cuban-American cop understood her son so much better than the Harvard-educated lawyer who’d actually fathered him. The easy rapport between Michael and Brian was just one of the things that made him dangerously seductive to her. It would be very easy to fall for a man who was as easy with kids as Michael was, while at the same time exuding enough sex appeal to stir the most jaded female senses. When his hand moved from Brian’s head to her hip, she stopped thinking about anything of substance at all.

In fact, Molly decided eventually, it would probably take something of the magnitude of another murder to drag her attention away from the deliciously wicked way that faintly intimate gesture made her feel.

Obviously, she’d tempted the fates once too often just by thinking that another murder might be the only adequate distraction, Molly realized on Monday morning. Her contemplation of a tedious new work week was interrupted first thing by the one other matter guaranteed to drag her thoughts away from Michael O’Hara, whose unexpected hint of jealousy on Saturday and whose attentiveness on Sunday had tantalized her all night long.

“Your ex is on line one,” Jeannette said as she punched the hold button on the office phone. She rolled her eyes, indicating that Molly’s ex-husband was probably in one of his surlier moods.

Molly suspected an already lousy morning was about to get a thousand times worse. She groaned at the prospect of dealing with Hal DeWitt, who was no doubt in the mood to pick a fight after reading the morning paper and its enthusiastic reporting of one more body. Seeing his ex-wife’s name in print was the only reason he ever called her at work.

“I could tell him you are out, yes?” the Haitian clerk offered, her soft, lilting voice laced with sympathy.

Molly considered the offer, then shook her head. “No. I’ll just have to deal with him sooner or later anyway. I might as well get it over with.” Reluctantly, she picked up the receiver and injected a note of cheerfulness into her voice, hoping to catch him off guard. “Hi. What’s up?”

“As if you didn’t know,” Hal grumbled. “You were there when Tessa was killed on Saturday, weren’t you? Right in the middle of things … again.”

“It was in the paper that I discovered her body,” she said with exaggerated patience, regretting deeply that Ted Ryan had somehow discovered that after all. “Did you expect me to deny it?”

“I don’t know what to expect from you anymore.”

His exasperated, aggrieved tone had her twisting the phone cord into a knot. It took everything in her to keep from snapping back with some sharp retort that would only add to his self-righteous annoyance. How had their once-happy relationship deteriorated to this ongoing stream of petty arguments?

“What’s your point?” she said finally.

He drew in a deep breath. “Things cannot continue like this,” he said flatly. “I won’t allow it.”

Hal’s unusually calm tone sent shivers down Molly’s back. She’d learned how to deal with his sarcasm. She could even defuse his anger, but this quiet finality was something else.

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” she asked equally calmly, refusing to acknowledge exactly how shaken she was by the unspoken threat in his voice.

“You’re always telling me how bright you are. Figure it out,” he snapped in a tone that was more in character, but no less chilling.

Before Molly could reply, he’d slammed the phone down in her ear.

“Trouble?” Jeannette asked, regarding her worriedly.

“Hal DeWitt is always trouble,” Molly replied wearily. “Sometimes I am simply amazed that I was once head over heels in love with that man.”

“Perhaps you still have some ambivalence in your feelings,” Jeannette suggested, studying her intently.

Molly shook her head. That definitely wasn’t what worried her. All she felt most times was irritation that she continued to allow the man to get to her at all. His vague threat had probably meant nothing, she told herself finally. It was just his way of tormenting her.

And yet she couldn’t get it out of her mind, not until Liza called in midafternoon. It was the first time they’d talked since late Saturday night. Molly had called her apartment several times on Sunday, but either Liza had had the phone turned off or she’d been out. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d holed up, trying to get herself centered, as she explained it, whenever Molly inquired about her sudden reclusiveness. Lord knew, after the murder, getting centered was probably a very good idea. Molly wished she knew how.

“What’s up?” she asked Liza now, determined not to plague her with questions it was obvious her friend didn’t want to answer.

“Can you get free later this afternoon?”

“Probably. Vince is out of the office and things are slow. September’s not the best time to be shooting films or commercials in Miami. There’s still too much heat and rain, to say nothing of the threat of hurricanes. What do you need?”

“I want to go see Roger and I really don’t want to go over there alone.”

“Lafferty?” Molly said with some surprise. “Are you sure you want to pay a condolence call?”

“You remember what Caroline advised. We need to get him to agree to set up a memorial fund. It has to be done today. The services are scheduled for the end of the week, so there’s still time to get some sort of announcement of the memorial in the paper. Please, Molly. I need to take care of this and I’d really like the company.”

There was no mistaking the odd note of nervousness in Liza’s tone. That wasn’t the clincher, though. Molly couldn’t resist the opportunity to see firsthand how Roger was taking Tessa’s death. “You want to meet me here or should I drive to the Lafferty house and meet you there?”

“You’re on my way. I’ll come by the office,” Liza said hurriedly, then added as if she felt a further explanation were needed, “There’s no point in taking two cars.”

“I’ll see you when you get here, then,” Molly said, more puzzled than before by Liza’s hesitancy to go to the Laffertys’ alone. Why would a woman who’d stood in front of a bulldozer to stop destruction in the rain forest be afraid to pay a perfectly normal call on Roger Lafferty? Did Liza fear that Roger would publicly accuse her of the murder, for heaven’s sake? If not that, what?

Coming up with no logical answers, Molly swiveled her chair around in time to catch a worried frown on Jeannette’s usually impassive face. “This is not a good idea,” she said, her tone ominous.

“Oh, come on. It’s just a duty call on the bereaved.”

The clerk regarded her skeptically. “I read the papers, my friend. This is no ordinary situation. For all you know, this man could have killed his wife.”

“We won’t be alone with him, Jeannette. He’ll be surrounded by friends. Besides, I can’t imagine Roger Lafferty killing Tessa, much less Liza and me.”

“Who knows what measures a desperate man might be driven to take.”

A vague chill stole over Molly for the second time that day. “You aren’t having one of those visions of yours, are you?”

“I do not have visions,” Jeannette said huffily. “I am just sensitive to certain auras.”

“I don’t believe in all that stuff. You shouldn’t either. You’re an educated woman.”

“It is because I am educated that I have learned to trust what I feel in my heart,” she retorted, her expression quietly serene.

With her mahogany skin and regal bearing, Jeannette came across as a high priestess of some sort, one whose words of wisdom should not be taken lightly. She scared the daylights out of Vince, who was convinced she had the power to cast spells. Molly was less easily frightened, espe-cailly when one of Jeannette’s feelings butted headlong into her curiosity.

“I’m going,” she said firmly.

Jeannette shook her head, but said nothing more. Her visible disapproval did take some of the spirit out of the anticipated meeting, however. Molly could hardly wait to leave the film office with Liza.

Unfortunately, Liza appeared to be as unenthusiastic about going to the Lafferty house as Jeannette. She had dressed in what was, for her, a sedate outfit—black stirrup pants, a black silk tank top, and a loose-fitting jacket in black-and-white silk that floated around her. Chunky onyx and silver jewelry acquired on some Mexican adventure accented the ensemble. Her pixie face, normally animated, seemed pinched. Not even the dash of her clothes could stave off the overall impression of gloom.

As they drove to Roger’s, it didn’t help that dark, heavy clouds were gathering in the west, promising a typical afternoon thunderstorm. A ‘gator pounder, as one local weatherman sometimes referred to the brief but violent storms. With the skies rapidly turning a gunmetal shade of gray, the winding, heavily shaded streets of old Coral Gables took on a threatening ambience. The twisted trunks of the spreading banyan trees along Coral Way added to the eerie atmosphere. If they’d been approaching a dreary castle on thecoast of Cornwall, Molly couldn’t have felt any more as if she’d stumbled into some gothic novel. She shivered. Obviously, Jeannette’s dire warnings had thoroughly spooked her.

“Have you been to Tessa’s before?” she asked Liza, hoping that conversation would dispel the odd sense of impending disaster she hadn’t been able to shake all day.

“A couple of times for meetings. It’s quite a place, built in the thirties and filled with tile and odd-shaped rooms. When Roger and Tessa bought it, ten years ago I think it was, they redid the interior and upgraded the kitchen to something that half the chefs in Dade County would kill to have in their restaurants. They had a major hassle when they painted the outside, though.”

“Why?”

Liza grinned. “One of those typical Gables things. The painter didn’t check his color chips against those the city of Coral Gables permits. He had to do the whole damned paint job over again, because the shade of paint was slightly darker than the law allows. Roger was fit to be tied, tried pulling strings at City Hall, but to no avail. Coral Gables may not be able to keep out the drug dealers, but they sure as hell can control what color paint people use.”