Reluctant Witness (33 page)

“Maybe that wasn’t their assignment. If they
were supposed to take you to see someone, they’d probably only kill
you if it looked like they couldn’t complete the task.”

“But two different people tried to kidnap me,
not one.”

“Three, if you count the guy who shot the
marshal,” she pointed out. “And yes, that is very unusual. Can I
ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Is there something about that book you’re
reading that’s making you remember all this, or is it just that
when you read, it helps you think about things that happened to
you?”

I considered the question before answering.
“No, it’s definitely the book. Some of the things that happened to
Nora were similar to things that happened to me.”

“Not the same?” I could see her doubt about
me written on her face.

“Not the same. But similar.”

“Like what?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
How could I explain the hold Jared seemed to have on my life?

“My fiancé did a lot of international
business. I met him when I was the party planner for a big event.
He...he swept me off my feet almost like Alain Beaumont did with
Nora. It all happened so fast. I always thought he knew my desires,
my tastes so well because he was in love with me, but one
afternoon, when he thought I was in the kitchen, I thought I saw
him checking the files on my computer. It was almost like he was
spying on me.”

“Well,” she scratched her head, considering
it, “there must have been something else, because that, in and of
itself, wouldn’t necessarily alarm a woman. Most guys are naturally
nosey. And a man like your fiancé, with a financial empire to
protect, might feel entitled to make sure you’re not a
gold-digger.”

“But that’s just it,” I frowned. “He had just
opened a very large bank account in my name, down in Curaçao. He
told me he didn’t want a prenuptial agreement, because he trusted
me.”

“How much money are we talking about?” she
wanted to know.

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me. He just
said that if anything happened, it would be mine.”

“Did you get it after he died?”

“Jeff asked me the same thing. No, I didn’t.
As soon as Jared was murdered, the marshals moved me to New York.”
I told her what I had told Rocky the night before. Nancy’s eyes
grew wide as the details spilled out of me.

“Holy crapola!” She crossed over to the
dresser, grabbed some clothes from the drawer, and knocked on
Vince’s door.

“Yeah?” Vince was up and dressed, ready for
work. “What do you need, Nance?”

“Get Rocky. We’ve got trouble.” She turned
back to me. “Do you still have anything, anything at all from New
York with you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“A purse, a cell phone, a special piece of
jewelry?”

Chapter Thirty

“No. I left my purse behind at the Gilded
Nest when I ran. The hit woman took my cell phone and tossed it
into the bushes. All my jewelry was back in my apartment, except
for the earrings I was wearing, which the doctor insisted I remove
when I got shot. I stopped wearing my engagement ring when Jared
died.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Too
bad.”

“But I do have a watch.” I held out my wrist
and showed her the Citizen timepiece that had been Jared’s gift on
our first month anniversary.

A quick rap on the connecting door sounded
before Rocky and Vince came through. Rocky wanted to know what was
going on. Nancy handed him the watch.

“We need to know if this has a GPS locator,”
she told him. “If it does, it could be a game changer.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it,” said the
security expert. “In the meantime, why don’t you three get packed?
You’re splitting up.”

“But....” I heard those words and my heart
sunk.

“Not to worry, Marigold. It’s just temporary.
We’ll take the watch for a little trip, and when we figure out
what’s going on, we’ll deal with it. If someone is using that watch
to track your exact location, we want to know who it is and what
he’s planning. In the meantime, I want you some place safe. Okay,
let’s hustle, people.”

Half an hour later, we all left the Sheraton.
Rocky instructed Vince to drive the Coachmen Freelander to Denver
and hired a private investigator follow the RV, to shadow Vince for
any signs of a tail. Nancy took a train to St. Louis, where she put
the Citizen Chronograph into a padded envelope and mailed it to a
friend out in Los Angeles. From there, it would be mailed to
another friend, and then another. The idea was to keep it moving
around the country until Jeff and Rocky had settled on a plan.

Once she left the post office, Nancy returned
to the Amtrak station and boarded another train for Springfield,
Illinois. Rocky and I picked her up there, and once she was settled
in the back seat of the SUV, we continued the journey to
Chicago.

At O’Hare Airport, we separated again. This
time Rocky dropped Nancy and me off at the Hilton there, on his way
to catch a flight back to Atlanta.

“Enjoy Florida,” he told us, pulling our
suitcases from the rear of the SUV. “Don’t hesitate to call me if
you two need anything, anything at all.”

“We’ll do fine, boss. Relax.”

“It’s my job to worry,” he reminded her
sternly. “Call Terry and have him meet you down there.”

I had spent enough time with him to notice
something was bothering Rocky. Nancy also picked up on it and did a
little backpedaling.

“Right,” she nodded. “Want us to call when
we’re in place?”

“No. I want you to get in touch with Jojo and
tell her you just found the perfect recipe for cooking fish.”

“Fish?” Nancy seemed a little confused. “You
do know, Rock, that I don’t cook, right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “If
everything seems good down in St. Augustine, make it a trout
recipe. If, for any reason you’re nervous about your environment,
make it a catfish recipe.”

“Okay. I get it. It’s a coded message. That
will work. You want me to have Terry bring his weapon?”

“Absolutely. Tell him I’m putting him on the
clock. And book a suite or a pair of adjoining rooms. Jeff will
compensate you for it.”

“You’ve got it, boss.”

“Nance, just so you know, you folks might be
down there for more than just a weekend.”

“Aw, shucks,” she grinned. “I guess you’ve
got to take the bad with the good.”

It turned out Rocky was right. We spent a
total of eight days at the Renaissance World Golf Resort. It was
pleasant enough, as hotels go, and the location was wonderful, too,
if people weren’t holed up in their rooms. For me, it was hardly a
vacation. I grew weary of the same four walls day after day. Every
time I left my room, I was accompanied by a bodyguard or two.

As the days passed, we fell into a routine.
We usually had breakfast on the outdoor terrace of the Fairways
Café, lunch at the Murray Bros. Caddyshack, owned by the actor,
Bill Murray, and his five siblings, and dinner at Villagio, the
Italian restaurant inside the hotel. A couple of mornings, we
ventured out to wander through the historic village of St.
Augustine and do some shopping. Nancy and Terry played eighteen
holes of golf every afternoon while one of their retired cop
friends babysat me at the hotel pool or took me to the private
beach club. Most of my time, though, was spent confined to the
hotel room or on the small balcony overlooking the lake.

After the third day, I found myself growing
rather restless, unsettled. I longed to get on with my life, to
resolve the mess I was in, but Jeff had other ideas, and he shared
them during a phone conversation we had.

“Marigold, you’re in limbo. It’s just the way
it is. You’ll have to make the best of it until we get you sorted
out. There’s no point in moving you again until we can do it
safely.”

“But I’ve got nothing to do here. There’s
only so much television I can watch.”

“That’s the problem, you’re bored?” Jeff
sounded surprised. “Do you want me to send you more books?”

“No, I’m taking a break from reading.”

“Are you?”

“Yes,” I admitted. The truth
was I didn’t want to finish
Vanilla Orchid
Magic
, at least not until my own life was
back on track. There was a part of me that was afraid something
terrible would happen to Nora or Jean-Claude, and I didn’t think I
could bear that, given my own unfortunate circumstances.

“Would it help you to know
the book had a happy ending, Marigold? My mother has a rule about
that. She continued Nora’s story in
A
Whisper of Ginger
.”

“She did?”

“In Guadeloupe, Nora knew too much about Le
Scorpion’s organization and about him as a man, enough to figure
out what he was doing. She was his Achilles heel and he knew that
Noiret would use her to bring him down especially as he came up for
trial. Ruthless men will go to the ends of the earth to satisfy
their desire for revenge and their need for self-preservation? A
man like Le Scorpion is always going to be suspicious under the
circumstances,” Jeff acknowledged. “You didn’t really think the
danger would end for Nora when she left the Caribbean, did
you?”

“She was a pawn,” I sighed, finally
understanding the common bond between us. “Jeff?”

“Yes, Marigold?”

“Am I a pawn, too?”

“It looks that way.” He said it
matter-of-factly, much to my dismay.

“Does that mean my only way to survive is to
hide out the rest of my life?”

“Finish
Vanilla Orchid Magic
and then check
out
A Whisper of Ginger
, if you want to know what happened to Nora.”

“Is it important?” I asked him.

There was a long pause. Jeff took a deep
breath and let it out slowly. “It might be, Marigold. It just might
be.”

“Okay, I’ll finish it. But....”

“But what?” he demanded.

“I just wish I had something to do, to fill
the long hours. I’m not used to being idle.”

“Have you forgotten the Jefferson project?
Come up with a plan to convert the condo.”

“It’s kind of hard to do long distance,
especially since I don’t have a floor plan or any photographs.”

“I’ll take care of that. Now, are we good?”
That little touch of impatience was back in his voice.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ve got to go. I’m late for a
production meeting.”

“Jeff?”

“What?”

“Do you think I could have someone take my
stitches out? I think it’s been long enough, and there aren’t any
signs of infection.” I heard him groan on the other end of the
phone. “I’m not trying to be difficult. It’s just that....”

“No, no. It’s not you, Marigold. I’m so
sorry. With all the things going on, I completely forgot about your
ear. We’ll have to find you a doctor. You’ll need an alias. And
Nancy will have to pay in cash.”

“Thank you,” I said sincerely, my faith
restored.

“You’re welcome. One more thing,” he added.
“I want Nancy and Terry to teach you some self-defense moves, just
in case you ever find yourself in trouble.”

“That’s not going to be much help if someone
tries to shoot me,” I pointed out. “I’m pretty sure a bullet trumps
hand-to-hand combat.”

“True. But folks seem most interested in
kidnapping you, and in that case, being able to get away might come
in handy.”

It was hard to argue with that. With a more
hopeful heart, I focused on moving forward.

One of the first things I
did was finish reading
Vanilla Orchid
Magic
. I took the paperback out to the
balcony and settled myself in the chair. In the distance, I could
see golf carts coming and going on the winding paths by the lake.
Maybe it was a good thing to be in Florida, away from all the cold
winter weather. The soft, warm breeze felt good on my skin. It
helped to put some distance between me and the reminder of my icy
terror.

Forcing myself to pick up where I had left
off, I took a deep breath, set aside my own sense of panic, and
rejoined Nora in the trunk of that French sedan.

Despite the warmth of the night, I found
myself shivering as I lay cramped inside the trunk. The mountain
road was rough on the Citroën, shaking it hard as it rolled over
the potholes. By the time the car stopped three-quarters of an hour
later, I was on the verge of losing my composure.

This panic was exacerbated when I heard
Inspecteur Noiret exchange angry words with another man, who
insisted on inspecting the car.

“To what end?” the French policeman
demanded. “Do you have a reason to believe I have committed a
crime?”

“I received a tip,” said the gruff voice in
response. “I have every intention of looking inside the vehicle. If
you don’t like it, take it up with the....”

“I shall! And when I do, I will personally
put you behind bars and throw away the key!”

“Oh, let me guess! You have friends in high
places! How frightening for me!” mocked the other man.

“What an astute assessment you have just
made. Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Jean-Claude
Noiret, Interpol.”

“Ah, boss....” A newcomer tried to
intercede, but he was quickly silenced as his boss continued.

“I am questioning the suspect, Renny! Inform
headquarters that I have located him.”

I was crestfallen at the news that my
rescuer was a suspect, but a suspect in what crime? Despite
identifying himself as a member of Interpol, the island police
officer was continuing to treat Jean-Claude with hostility. I
thought that unusual behavior. Was this the result of Alain calling
in favors from his influential friends? Or was this a matter of law
enforcement corruption? Perhaps this was just a traffic stop gone
wrong, an attempt to shake down a driver for a pay-off.