Hot Property (19 page)

She didn’t miss the implied threat. Afraid she would make a scene, she simply turned on her heel and walked away, followed by Patterson’s soft laughter.

So, he thought he held all the cards, did he? They would just have to see about that. She had to find Michael—now. He would know what to do.

Michael caught up with James again in the library, where he was sampling from the cheese tray while his date perused the titles of some old leather-bound volumes. The room wasn’t crowded enough for Michael to lose himself, so he didn’t go in. He sent Joe instead.

“Cheese,” he said. “See if you can get a chunk of cheese after he’s taken a bite.”

“Whoa, this’ll be fun,” Joe said, slipping into the library.

Michael waited outside the door, pretending interest in some framed prints on the wall.

He sensed her before he saw her. Wendy. He was so in tune with her soul, he figured he could find her anywhere, like radar finding a lost plane.

“Wendy.” His smile froze when he saw the stricken look on her face. “God, Wendy, what is it?”

“I saw Mr. Neff. He’s here, at this party.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded emphatically. “I spoke to him. He knew I knew who he was, and he threatened me.”

“Where is he?” Michael asked excitedly. “Point him out. I’ll arrest him on the spot.”

She didn’t immediately follow him, so he stopped and turned back. “What?”

“He’s a cop.”

That gave him pause. The police chief was proud of the fact that his department hadn’t exhibited even a whiff of scandal since he’d taken over. “Do you know his name?”

She nodded. “Captain Walt Patterson.”

He froze, shocked to the core. “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.”

Michael didn’t say anything for a moment, letting this sink in. A forty-year police veteran was a jewel thief and a housebreaker. That sounded crazy!

“Remember the name on the house and the utilities? Pat Walters? Walt Patterson? It fits, don’t you see?

Michael was remembering something else. When he’d checked up on the owners of the brown Caprices, Walt Patterson’s wife’s name had come up. He and Joe had laughed about it. And the artist’s composite. Joe had thought it looked like Patterson.

He should’ve seen the pattern. But who could possibly suspect Patterson and get away with it?

“Well?” Wendy asked, hands on her hips. “What are you waiting for?”

“I can’t just waltz up to Captain Patterson and arrest him,” he said, trying to be the voice of reason. “I have to go through channels. Arrests of this magnitude have to be taken one step at a time so later there’s no way a defense attorney can get him off on a tech—”

“Michael, you can’t wait. He knows I know. He could make his escape right now and be on a plane out of the country by midnight.”

“Let me talk to my captain.”

“I say you arrest now and talk later. Isn’t that what you did with me? The man wants to kill me! You have to do something now!”

He recognized the note of hysteria in Wendy’s voice, and he didn’t blame her one bit. “You stay right with me and nothing will happen to you,” he said reasonably. “I have to follow procedures.”

Wendy was having none of his reason. “You’re just afraid to take any risks because you don’t want to jeopardize your freaking FBI job. Well, just forget it. I’ll take care of this myself. I’m going straight to the mayor, and I’ll bet
he
does something.”

Michael debated about whether to let her go, finally
deciding it couldn’t hurt to come after Patterson from two fronts. Plus, he’d rather talk to his captain alone, without her panicked pleadings. Rogers was a logical man, and his first thought would be that Wendy, increasingly desperate over her impending conviction, was making a wild, groundless accusation. He would act against Patterson only after Michael laid out the evidence in an organized and compelling fashion.

With a determined gait, he headed toward the great hall where the main cluster of party guests lingered. He hoped Rogers would be there.

As soon as Taggert disappeared, Patterson stepped out from behind the potted palm where he’d been hiding himself. He’d heard the whole exchange. He wasn’t too worried about Captain Rogers. Patterson had already told him that Taggert was lusting after their suspect and so couldn’t be trusted. He was confident the good captain would never believe Taggert.

Wendy was the one who worried him. The mayor had a real soft spot for her, and though her accusation would seem outlandish, he wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand without some type of investigation.

He couldn’t allow Wendy to reach the mayor. Period.

Of all times for hizzonor to play coy! Wendy thought, annoyed. He’d been highly visible all night,
gladhanding everyone in his path, paving the way for his next campaign. Now he seemed to have gone into hiding. Even Alice hadn’t seen him.

“He was complaining of a headache earlier,” Alice said. “Perhaps he went upstairs to find some aspirin. You can go up there to look for him if you want,” she said amicably. “He won’t mind. He’s quite fond—”

She broke off as the country-and-western band on the patio started up with a raucous tune.

“Oh, my, they’re loud,” she said, raising her voice over the music and laughing.

“The younger folks will love it,” Wendy assured her distractedly before breaking away. She wasted no time in heading for the stairs.

As she reached the second-floor landing, a strong arm reached out and grabbed her by the neck, yanking her around a corner so fast, her feet left the floor for an instant. She started to cry out in shock and fear, but a hand clamped over her mouth, making it impossible for her to breathe, let alone scream. Another hand twisted her arm behind her back, nearly dislocating her elbow.

Suddenly her fear was pushed aside by a pure, white-hot anger at the person who would do such violence to her—and she had no doubts as to his identity. Her body reacted instinctively. She twisted, she bit, she kicked backward. One of her spike heels came into contact with her attacker’s shin, and she was rewarded with a grunt of pain. But he didn’t loosen his hold on her one bit.

“Stop it!” Walt Patterson hissed in her ear. “Don’t
make this any harder than it already is. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.”

Wendy immediately recognized the lie. He would spend years in prison—maybe the rest of his life—if she lived to identify him; he knew that. He was going to finish the job he’d started two days before.

She fought him that much harder, but his hold on her was amazingly strong for a senior citizen’s. She realized he was dragging her up another flight of stairs to the third floor, where their struggle wouldn’t be heard by the party guests downstairs.

Even if she did manage to scream, she realized, no one would hear her over the blasted band.

Was this it, then? Was she about to die? Rather than panic her, the thought of her imminent demise filled her with a calm resoluteness. If ever there was a time she needed a clear head and all the ingenuity she could muster, this was it. As they reached the third-floor landing, she tried to think of ways she could convince Patterson
not
to kill her.

The most important of those reasons was that she would never get to see Michael again, never feel his arms around her or hear him tell her he loved her. But she didn’t figure Patterson would give a rat’s tail about that.

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she blinked them back.

Patterson never even broke stride as he dragged her down a long hallway. Wendy got the distinct impression he knew exactly where he was going, that he’d planned her murder in advance.

At the end of the hall was a set of French doors. Patterson had to remove his hand from across her mouth to turn the handle. That was the opportunity she’d been waiting for.

She didn’t waste her time screaming. She started in with her logic. “You will
not
get away with this,” she said. “I already told Michael Taggert that you’re Barnie Neff. If you kill me—”

“But I’m not going to kill you,” he argued reasonably. “After your lovers’ quarrel with Sergeant Taggert—and given the hopelessness of your legal situation—you will throw yourself off the third-story balcony. Any accusations you made against me will be written off as completely insane, attributed to your increasing desperation to remain out of jail.”

Damn. His arguments made way too much sense.

“You haven’t killed anyone yet,” she said. She was desperate, all right, though right now jail sounded infinitely preferable to Patterson’s plans for her. “You could probably get a suspended sentence for the burglaries.”

“You don’t know much about criminal law, do you?”

“I won’t tell anyone! I’ll tell Michael I was mistaken about Neff’s identity.”

He didn’t even honor that claim with a denial.

“Three stories isn’t that far up,” she tried again. “How do you know I’ll die?”

“Because your neck will be broken before the fall. The medical examiner won’t be able to tell when it happened.”

His casual passing of her death sentence sent cold chills rippling up Wendy’s back and into the roots of her hair.

“I’m sorry I can’t, er, numb you ahead of time, to spare you the pain,” he said. “But any drug I might use would be detected in your system, and that might lead to questions I don’t want answered.”

His show of compassion didn’t fool her. The man was without a conscience. How had she ever thought this monster was a sweet old man? How could she have been fooled so thoroughly?

He had her on the balcony now. Far below were flagstones, hard as granite. She tried not to think about her bones shattering against the unyielding surface. Around the corner of the mansion, the hardiest of the party revelers danced to the country music. She could see a few of them as they drifted to the very edges of the patio, but none were looking her way.

She refocused her attention on Patterson. He was a coolheaded man of logic.

“Sergeant Taggert believed me when I told him you were Barnie Neff,” she said, speaking quickly now, knowing she had only a few seconds in which to change her enemy’s mind. “He’ll know what really happened. He’ll know I wasn’t suicidal. You’re only making your situation worse.”

“It would take your Michael forever to convince anyone I’m guilty of jaywalking, much less murder. By the time he gets anyone to listen—and I don’t think he will—I’ll be in Tahiti.”

“If they won’t listen to him, why would they listen to me? You don’t have to kill me!”

“Unfortunately, my dear, you have the mayor’s ear. He’ll believe you.”

“No, he won’t!” she shrieked as he pushed her up against the wall, preparing to do unspeakable violence to her.

“Oh, and Wendy,” he said, his voice soft, almost seductive. “You don’t look anything like my sister.”

“Have you gone completely mad?” Captain Rogers asked Michael. “Walt Patterson, a jewel thief and housebreaker?”

They were on the patio, where even some distance from the band it was difficult to converse.

“I’m not saying he did it with his own two hands. But he’s involved. He got Wendy involved, posing as this Mr. Neff character. Didn’t you see how the composite drawing looked like him? The car that nearly ran Wendy over was registered to his wife.”

“I thought you didn’t get a complete license number on that car.”

“I eliminated all but a handful of possibilities,” Michael said, desperation creeping up on him. He’d known this story would go over like a lead balloon.

Rogers leaned closer and spoke loudly into Michael’s ear to be heard over the band. “Look, Tagg, everybody knows you’ve got a thing for this girl. It happens. I’m not saying I don’t frown upon it, but I didn’t think you’d let it interfere with your judgment.”

God, had he been that transparent, wearing his heart on his sleeve like a mooning teenager? He didn’t bother denying he had a “thing,” as the captain put it, for Wendy. “Look, Captain, I’ve gotten to know Wendy well enough in the past few days to know she’s not making this up. Patterson is deep into this thing, and if we don’t do something about it now, he’ll be in Tahiti—or wherever he’s
really
going—where we can’t touch him.”

“What are you proposing we do?” Rogers asked, arms folded. And mind closed, Michael imagined.

“Arrest him. Wendy’s talking to the mayor even now. He’ll believe her.”

Rogers groaned. “That’s just what I need. Okay, look. I wasn’t going to tell you this until it was a sure thing, but the D.A. is going to drop the charges against Ms. Thayer. It looked like an open-and-shut case at first, but Nathaniel Mondell has introduced enough doubt, and with public opinion lined up squarely behind Ms. Thayer, the D.A.’s office just figured it wasn’t worth it to prosecute. They’d like to pursue other suspects, like this James Batliner.”

Michael shook his head. “That’s great news. But that doesn’t address the fact that Walt Patterson is trying to have Wendy killed because she’s the only one who can identify him as Mr. Neff.”

“Really, Tagg—”

The country band finished its number with an off-key guitar flourish, and blessed stillness took over. Other than a smattering of applause, it was relatively quiet again.

Michael lowered his voice, though his tone was even more insistent than before. “
Someone
is trying to kill her! Captain, if you’ve ever thought I had an ounce of common sense or reliable cop’s instincts, think it now. We have to do something about Patterson, and we have to do it now—tonight—before—”

That’s when he heard a scream in the distance, and it wasn’t just a partyer with too much to drink. There was undeniable terror in that scream.

Judging from the expression on Rogers’s face, he’d heard it too. “I’ll go this way,” he said, indicating the French doors. “You check outside.”

Michael nodded his agreement and set out, scanning the grounds for some sign of movement.

It was impossible to say where the scream had come from. Michael made a three-sixty, trying to see everything at once. There! A flash of movement up on the third-floor balcony. He ducked behind an overgrown bush, then darted from bush to tree trunk to birdbath, hoping he wouldn’t be seen.