In Harm's Way (10 page)

Justifiably so, maybe, since he now knew she'd possessed an excellent motive. She could hardly blame him for doing what he was trained to do. But it hurt to think he could still believe her capable of murdering her husband.

He looked sympathetic, maybe only a ploy to gain her trust. Or maybe he really did sympathize. So far he hadn't thrown her any curves. He had been honest with her as far as she could tell.

“You said you were in a bad relationship before you married James?”

She nodded and released a sigh, only then realizing she'd been holding her breath. “With Troy Mathison, a male model I had met six months before in one of the charity shows.” She interrupted her tale to explain, “I had done very little modeling for about six years, only in special events like benefits, when my former agent called a favor.”

“I see. Was Mathison a full-time model?” Mitch asked.

“Yes, and doing very well at it. Mostly magazines, catalogs, but only the occasional runway gig. He initiated our first conversation, indicated that we had a lot in common. It seemed we did at first. I soon found he was not quite as…congenial as he appeared. Our affair didn't last very long.”

Robin rushed on, hoping that if she hurried through it, he would ask fewer questions. “After a whirlwind courtship, if you could call it that, Troy moved in with me. I'm still not sure how he accomplished that. I had always lived alone. Preferred it.”

She forced a smile. “It didn't work out. He was self-centered, thoughtless, not at all the man I had thought he was. In less than two weeks I asked him to move out. He refused.”

Mitch was frowning at her. “What did you do then?”

“Threatened to call the police. Troy laughed.”

“And?”

“I called them and they made him leave. He was horribly embarrassed and angry that I followed through with the threat. He began to harass me, disrupting my life any way that he could. Even the restraining order didn't help.”

“But James Andrews did,” Mitch guessed.

“Yes. He lived in my apartment building. We had known each other for several years. Had dinner occasionally. I watered his plants and brought in his mail when he was away on business.”

“Insurance?” Mitch asked, one eyebrow raised. “That took him away from home a lot?”

She had never thought about that until today. “I supposed the trips were business. I didn't ask and he didn't say. He looked after my apartment for me when I went to Florida to visit my mother. As I told you, James and I were friends. Neighbors.”

“So you married him for protection?”

His question held a note of disbelief or censure. It was hard to tell. Mitch was wearing his detective face which revealed very little of what he was thinking.

“No, that's not true! Well, not precisely. He began coming over every evening, answering my phone, giving the impression to outsiders that he had replaced Troy, if you know what I mean. He even slept on my sofa when the calls began coming in the night.”

“So you trusted him that much.”

Robin bit her lip, unwilling to admit that she had slept with her bedroom door locked. “Eventually.”

“He suggested the marriage?”

She nodded. “I refused at first. We didn't know each other quite that well. Then he began what he called his campaign to win me. It was…flattering.”

How could she explain to Mitch that she had never actually been courted that way? Men had always just assumed she was fair game since she was a model.

“James respected me. He always said he liked me for myself.”

Mitch smiled. His expression seemed forced. “That unusual?”

“In my line of work? Yes. When you appear wearing revealing clothes in fashion magazines and strut braless on the runway, some men just naturally assume you will hire out for anything.”

He looked away, focusing out the window. “You make it sound like hooking or somethin'.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Not that different. We're all selling
something,
Mitch. I was peddling my body, just in a different way. It's almost as degrading, sometimes as dangerous.”

“That why you live like a recluse now?”

That hit too close to home to suit Robin. She didn't answer.

He took another tack. “Okay, so you finally took him up on his offer, married him and you moved in together. His place?”

“No, mine.”

“You split the expense?”

“What does that have to do with anything? He was helping me.”

She watched as he sat back and ran a hand through his hair, blowing out a breath of what appeared to be frustration. Robin liked it when he dropped out of professional mode and let her see the man behind the detective.

Strange how everyone had these masks they wore. She had grown so tired of hers, she had all but abandoned it in favor of seclusion so she could be herself. That must be why it slipped so often now. Practice was required to keep it in place, she guessed, and resented the necessity of it.

It was several minutes before he resumed his questions. “Did he ever discuss his work with you? Surely you talked about how your days went.”

Robin thought back. “No, not really. We mainly spoke of art, the theater, the news, books. That sort of thing.” Wasn't that strange? For the first time she considered how impersonal her conversations with James had been. Even sex between them had never gone beyond a minimum level of intimacy. Sad.

Her thoughts must have been reflected in her expression because Mitch leaned forward again, this time far enough to touch her hand. “Robin, I know this is hard. You want to take a break?”

His concern felt real. “There's very little else I can tell you. James
was
kind. He was my friend when I needed one. His affairs were as much my fault as his and only his way of exiting a relationship—a marriage—that was a mistake from the beginning. We did talk about that and agreed to part amicably.”

“Big of you.”

She decided to reveal something she had only recently admitted to herself. “You see, I could never give James what he
deserved as a husband. It simply is not in my nature to love. It's not in me.”

He laughed, a bitter sound. “Bull! The man used you, Robin. You trusted him and he used you. You gave him a home, paid his bills. Knowing his kind, I bet you a dollar to a doughnut he talked you into making a few investments, right?”

She frowned, her anger welling up inside her. She tamped it down. “Do you think I amassed what I have by doling it out to every man who bought me roses? I'm not stupid!”

“You refused to let him manage your money?”

“Of course I did. James said he had a degree in business management and assured me he knew what he was doing. However,” she said, deliberately pausing to get his attention, “so did I.”

“Bet he loved that,” Mitch said with a smirk. It was almost as if it didn't surprise him at all. “Was he mad?”

“He was livid, but I…” The truth dawned as suddenly as her fury had struck. “That's it!” She grabbed Mitch's hand. “That's why he…I never made the connection before. Soon after that's when things started to fall apart with us.”

Her breath came in short puffs as the time frame of his affairs fell into synch with their disagreement over her portfolio and liquid assets.

“Not so kind after all, was he?” Mitch grumbled. “I almost wish he was still alive so I could choke the bastard.”

“I didn't kill him, Mitch,” Robin vowed.

“Okay,” he said easily, squeezing her hands gently, seeming distracted by all she had said. “Did he ever name a project, any specific deal he wanted to sink your funds into?”

“No. He just swore he could triple my investment. Do you suppose that's what he did with those men on the list? Invested for them?”

“Maybe. How much did he want you to fork over?”

Robin hesitated.

“Come on, honey. Do you think I'm after your little pot of gold? I've never taken a dime from a woman in my life. How much?”

“Half a million,” Robin mumbled.

His eyes rounded. “Jesus! You have…?”

“No. He assumed that was all I had.”

For a moment he was speechless. Then he croaked. “More?”

Robin nodded. “Close to two, but most of it's not readily accessible. Some is in a trust for my mother, some in stocks, the rest in a special account. I live on the interest.”

“But you still work.”

“Of course I work. I tried sitting around all day watching soaps or chatting online, but that's boring. I have to do
something.
And what I have saved isn't really that much when you think about it.”

He shot her a look of profound disbelief. “Give me a minute here. This takes gettin' used to, okay? You want a drink?”

Robin nodded. “That would be nice. Do you think Detective Taylor has any white wine?”

He shook his head a little as he released her hands and got up slowly. “I'll go and see.”

She knew she had irrevocably changed the way Mitch Winton saw her, and regretted the fact. He would treat her differently now. He would either keep his distance so she wouldn't believe him a fortune hunter, or he would pull out all the stops and go after her money like a mongoose after snakes. In any case, Robin felt she had lost something potentially valuable.

For a while she had been plain Robin Andrews, a woman from New York in a bad situation and needing his help. A woman he was attracted to in spite of himself. The only man with honest-to-God principles she had been close to since she could remember. But then again she realized she could be wrong about Mitch. She certainly had been wrong before.

 

Mitch braced one hand against the counter beside the refrigerator and contemplated the bottle of unopened wine.
She was a millionaire.

If nothing else, that sure let out ol' James's life insurance as a motive. But it also put Robin in the position to hire someone to shoot him. If she'd done that, though, surely she would be flitting around New York with alibis up the wazoo, not stumbling over Andrews's body down here in Nashville, potentially incriminating herself.

Or maybe she had come to finish what her husband had begun and try to squeeze more out of Somers and the others. Some people thought they never had enough money. Mitch figured James Andrews must have either made investments and/or set up offshore accounts for the people on the list, then got a little greedy and demanded more of a percentage than first agreed on. The pages in Russian worried him even more. Foreign espionage? More likely, the Red mafia in New York.

Not that Mitch really believed Robin was mixed up in that. He only reminded himself once again that she could be, and that he had to recognize the possibility. Damned hard that was, too, since she raised his temperature several degrees every time he looked at her. He'd probably need blood-pressure medicine if she stuck around for long.

God, this was making him feel sick. He wanted her so bad he could taste it, but that was out of the question now.

Just when he'd given himself permission to ask if maybe he could see her again after all this was solved and settled, she pulled the rug right out from under him. Rich. Damn. And maybe playing him like a fish.

She'd just blown his mind completely with the news that she was wealthy. Models—good ones, at least—did make a
fortune, he had heard. Weird that he couldn't recall having seen her in magazines, but maybe not so strange. He didn't spend a lot of time reading
Vogue
or whatever. Maybe she looked different now or had made most of her money on the runway instead of in the mags.

He guessed it didn't matter in the long run. She had no reason to lie about the money she'd made. It would be easy enough to check her financial situation and she would know that. Kick had probably done it already.

And where the hell was Kick, anyway? He should have been home an hour ago.

He yanked open several drawers until he found a corkscrew. “Just like at the country club,” he muttered through his teeth, remembering the bartending job that helped put him through college. “Pour and serve and smile and listen.” He splashed the wine in one of the stemmed glassed off the rack beneath an upper cabinet.

He sloshed a little bourbon into a highball glass for himself and carried the drinks back into the living room.

She sat right where he'd left her, hands folded in her lap, looking sad. What the hell did she have to mope about?

“Here you go,” he said in as normal a voice as he could manage. “Merlot. I don't know much about vintage.”

She took the glass. “Neither do I.” After tasting it gingerly, she nodded. “Not vinegar. That's good enough for me.”

“Is it,” he said, not a question.

“You don't quite know what to say to me now, do you?” she asked. “It doesn't make any difference, you know.”

“Right.” He downed the bourbon and winced. Not a good vintage here, he thought. But maybe everything would taste nasty under these circumstances.

She leaned toward him. “Mitch, the money is just incidental. Two million is not that much really. Not when you con
sider it's probably all I'll ever make. Modeling pays well, sure, but it's an incredibly short-lived career.”

He rolled his eyes. “Right, you're so over-the-hill now. Jeez, look at you.”

Robin sighed with obvious frustration. “I'm still the same person I was an hour ago.”

“So am I.” He thunked down his glass, not caring whether it left a ring on the shiny surface of Kick's stupid ugly end table.

“Let's get on with this,” she snapped.

Mitch stood, pacing in front of her, not looking at her. “Tell me about Andrews's friends in New York. Did you ever meet any of his associates?”

“We attended parties on occasion,” she told him. “Three, I think, the whole time we were together. He introduced me to some people, but I formed the impression they were connected to the arts. He was big into that.”