Reluctant Witness (43 page)

“Marigold!” It was Nancy. I could hear her
footsteps behind me. “Marigold, wait!”

I just didn’t have it in me to respond. I
walked faster. I just wanted to be away from here, away from
Cinnamon Beach and all of its beautiful water and swaying palm
trees.

“What in God’s name is going on?” I felt her
hand on my shoulder. “Talk to me!”

“I have to go,” I told her, shrugging her
off.

“Go where?”

Chapter Thirty
Eight

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What did that idiot say to you?” she
demanded. This time, she put both hands on my shoulders and twirled
me around, not giving me a choice. “I’m responsible for your
safety. I can’t have you running away!”

“I need to go,” I told her defiantly. I had
no intention of breaking down and begging Jeff to save me.
“Please!”

She pulled her hands away and took a couple
of steps back, exasperated. “Fine. Do what you have to do.”

“I’m sorry, Nancy,” I sniffed, so close to my
breaking point. “Thank you for everything.”

Through the blur of tears, I hurried on, my
intention to collect some of the clothes in my room and the little
dog. But what if I couldn’t take care of Cooper? What if I couldn’t
afford to feed him, or find an apartment that was dog-friendly?
Just one more heartbreak on life’s highway for Marigold Flowers, I
thought.

I waited by the side of the building for a
family of four to climb onto the elevator. When the doors shut,
whisking them away, I stepped into the vestibule, and let out a
deep, sorrowful sob, no longer able to contain my tears.

“Oh, geez!” Jeff said, entering behind me. He
sounded annoyed. I decided my best course of action was to ignore
him. “When all else fails, turn on the waterworks. Classic ploy,
Marigold.”

That was the last straw. Now that I had no
choice but to leave, I was free to say what I thought.

“You have to be the meanest bastard on the
planet, Jefferson Cornwall! I didn’t turn on the tears because I
expected to see you. In case you didn’t notice, I’m the one who
walked away so you wouldn’t see them! Now, if you’ll excuse me,
I’ll think I’ll take the stairs, because I wouldn’t want you to
think I’m trying to manipulate you any further!”

He was waiting for me by the stairwell when I
arrived on the top floor, his arms crossed, leaning against the
railing.

“We need to talk,” he growled.

“No, we don’t. There’s nothing to talk about.
You made yourself quite clear. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to
pack.”

“Pack?” he said, his tone incredulous. “Where
are you going to go?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m not your
responsibility any more!” I brushed past him, eager to get into the
condo.

“Marigold, this is ridiculous!” he snapped.
The elevator dinged behind us, but I didn’t really care. Let the
world hear me, I thought.

“First I’m a manipulative gold-digger looking
for a sugar daddy and now I’m ridiculous! Forgive me for not being
what you want me to be!” Anger welled up inside me, replacing those
tears. “I’ll be out of your hair in five minutes.”

“That’s not what I meant!” he shouted at me.
“Stop being so bloody stubborn!

“I’m stubborn, on top of everything else?
There’s just no winning with you, is there?”

“Oh, brother!” Nancy groaned as she, Terry,
and Tom stepped into the corridor. “Let’s take this inside.”

“There’s no need. I just need to get my
things.”

“Marigold,” he growled, “I never asked you to
leave.”

“No, you didn’t. I’m just saving you the
bother down the road.”

“You know what the trouble is?” Nancy asked
aloud. Jeff and I ignored her, so she told the others as we all
entered the condo. “Marigold has lived her entire adult life on the
run, hiding out from really bad people. And just when she thought
the man who wanted to marry her was legit, he went and set her up
for yet another fall before he kicked the bucket. Jeff, on the
other hand, has spent his entire adult life running away from
women.”

“Nance,” Terry warned her, “you don’t want to
cross that line.”

“Yes, I do,” she told her husband. “I very
much do. I’ve spent a lot of time with this young woman, and I know
for a fact that she’s good and decent. If Jeff’s too stupid to see
the real Marigold, then I don’t want to work for him. She deserves
better than this!”

“Now hold on....

“No, I will not hold on! I was hired to keep
her safe. That’s my job. And I don’t care if you’re the boss, Jeff.
You’re driving this woman away!”

“I am not,” he retorted. “She’s being a fool,
an illogical fool! I never asked her to leave.”

“Illogical?” Nancy was incensed.

“She’s used to rich men taking care of her,”
Jeff said bitterly. “One sugar daddy is as good as another,
right?”

Nancy went right up to him and wagged a
finger in his face. “You’ve got some nerve, fella! She was set up
by her fiancé. Was it her fault he tried to have her killed? Is
this ‘blame the victim’ time?”

As I stood there listening, my mind was
having trouble filtering the conversation. Did I hear Nancy
right?

“Jared wanted me dead?” I asked. No one
answered me.

“You think she’s after you for your money?
She’s just using you?” Nancy was in attack mode, determined to make
her point, and she wasn’t about to back down any time soon.

“Isn’t she?” he shot back, his face contorted
by a scowl, his arms folded across his chest. Was he trying to
protect his heart from an assault by me?

“Oh, you’re a real prize, Jefferson Cornwall!
Come on, Marigold. Pack your things. We’re out of here!”

“What?” That was not what the boss of Roaring
Kill Productions expected to hear from his employee, and it was
clear he didn’t like it. Neither did Terry. He let out a frustrated
groan before he shook his head and appealed for calm.

“Can we please have a little sanity here,
people?”

“I’m taking her home with me. Are you coming
with us?” Glowering at her husband, Nancy waited all of three
seconds before she turned on her heel, intending to head to their
bedroom to collect her things.

“I don’t understand.” I gazed at the people
around me and realized they knew far more about my life than I did.
What was I missing? I slumped down on a chair at the dining room
table, unable to process the information. “Why would Jared want me
dead?”

Nancy stopped in her tracks just as she
reached the hallway, pausing to look over her shoulder before she
let out a long sigh. “Oh, crap! Did I let that cat out of the
bag?”

Rocky took a seat next to me at the dining
table. “Marigold, we haven’t had a chance to tell you about some
new developments in the case....”

“But why would he do that?” I demanded, as my
confused mind tried to sort out the details. “Why would he want to
have me killed?”

“You were a loose end. He needed you to take
the blame for what he planned to do. And if you were still alive,
someone might figure out his end game.”

“But he’s the one who’s dead,” I pointed
out.

“Maybe he crossed the wrong person in the
process of setting you up. Or one of his associates decided to take
advantage of the opportunity to knock him out of the game. It’s
possible that while he was ripping people off, Marigold, he wanted
you to be suspected of being his accomplice. He needed people to
believe you were his fiancée, while the real one was free to move
about, posing as you and living a double life.”

“I feel so dumb.”

“You weren’t dumb,” Rocky insisted. “The guy
was a con man. Lying was just part of his game.”

“But why did he pick me? What did I ever do
to make this happen?” I moaned. Terry and Tom joined us, taking
seats at the table.

“Men like Jared are predators, Marigold. They
pick women for their vulnerabilities,” Terry explained. Nancy
hovered behind him, holding onto the back of his chair. “And you
seemed like an easy target.”

“But....” I started to say. Terry cut in.

“You’re a good person, Marigold. You trust
folks to do the right thing because that’s how you operate. It
doesn’t occur to you to suspect the people around you of doing
something wrong.”

“Listen, if it’s any consolation, Jared
fooled a lot of people.” Tom patted my hand. “As it stands now, it
looks like he ripped off his investors to the tune of over four
million dollars. He was probably double-crossed by one of his
associates.”

“Tovar and the others, they...they really
believed I was conning them? That I compromised the program?” I
felt my dismay rise at the thought that the people I trusted to
look after me actually believed I was capable of betraying them. “I
never did!”

I sensed a presence to my right. Jeff sat
down beside me. His face was taut. I could sense the undercurrent
of tension as he leaned forward, his fists clenched.

“Marigold, I need to know something.” His
tone was serious, but no longer angry. “It’s important. Did you
send Lincoln an email yesterday?”

“An email? No,” I shook my head. “Why?”

“You didn’t send him an email about getting
together with him?”

“I don’t understand. I didn’t send anyone an
email yesterday. And I certainly didn’t send one to your brother
about getting together. Why would I do that?”

“We can check your computer,” he warned me.
That threat didn’t change anything. I was still adamant that I
hadn’t contacted Lincoln.

“Go right ahead and check it. I had no reason
to send your brother any kind of email.”

“Well, if you didn’t send it, who did?” Jeff
sounded genuinely baffled.

“Do you have a copy of it? Can we see it?”
Tom wanted to know.

“Sure.” Jeff headed off to retrieve his
laptop from the condo down the hall. He was back in less than two
minutes.

“Here we are,” he told us, placing his open
machine on the table in front of us. We all leaned forward for a
closer look at the opened note. It was forwarded from Lincoln, and
contained my email address, along with the digital information on
date and time. “Lincoln sent me a copy earlier today.”

“Huh,” said Nancy, as she read over Jeff’s
shoulder. “That’s weird.”

“There’s only one problem, boss,” Terry
announced. “At the time this email was sent, Marigold was with us,
playing pool down at the clubhouse.”

“She was?” Jeff sounded surprised.

“There were plenty of witnesses.”

“It’s true,” Tom agreed, pointing to himself
with his thumb. “I was there and I can assure you she never was out
of our sight at any point in time.”

“Maybe she sent it on an automated schedule,
so she’d have an alibi.”

“What? Why would I need an alibi?” Numbly, I
gazed down at the email with my name and Internet address on it. I
couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “This can’t be happening. It
just can’t be. It’s like Jared’s murder all over again.”

“Excuse me?”

“All these strange things happening to me
again...it’s like some bizarre dream.”

“I don’t believe she did it. I want to see it
on her computer,” Nancy decided. She went and retrieved my laptop
from my bedroom desk.

“It had to come from her computer, Nance,”
Jeff informed her, “because the email to Lincoln was encrypted. The
only way anyone would be able to fake an email from her is if he
hacked into her computer. And he’d have to know her passwords.”

“Maybe we missed something, boss.” Rocky was
staring at the two laptops. “Maybe this isn’t just some jerk trying
to rip off clients. Maybe this jerk is a hell of a lot smarter than
we are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Marigold, when you picked the passwords for
this computer and the encrypted email account we set up for you,
what did you use? Your birthday? Your favorite nursery rhyme?
Your....”

“My old work address for the laptop,” I
admitted, knowing that it was a dumb thing to do, but I knew I
wouldn’t forget it. “It’s 128Mariner, which was the building number
and street in Newport where I had a suite. And for the email
account, I used my old phone number without the area code, the one
I had on my business cards -- 555Rose.”

“Did Jared ever have access to your computer
back then?”

“I...I don’t know. It never occurred to me
that he would want to, but one day, when he thought I was in the
kitchen, I saw him using it.”

“Someone has always remained a step ahead of
you,” Tom pointed out. “It’s like he always knows where you are at
any given moment in time.”

“We sent that watch on a cross-country
journey, thinking we had fooled the bad guy,” Rocky sighed. “But
maybe all that time, he knew where Marigold was because he was
already tracking her by tracking us.”

“So,” Jeff wanted to know, “why send Lincoln
a fake email that purported to be from Marigold? What would be the
point?”

“We’d have to figure out what the bad guy
gained from the play.” Tom sat in his chair, pondering the
possibilities. He suddenly leaned forward, as if struck by a bolt
of lightning. “You started to doubt Marigold, Jeff. You went from
having a crush on her to acting like a complete idiot.”

“I did what?” Jeff sputtered. I could tell he
was appalled.

“Oh, suck it up,” Nancy instructed him.
“Admit you have feelings for her. The minute you thought she might
be more interested in your brother, you went ballistic.”

“I did not!”

“You did too! You acted like a jealous fool!
You attacked her and got her all discombobulated! She was ready to
flee this place, just so you wouldn’t think she was a
gold-digger!”

“Guys....” Terry tried to interrupt the
heated conversation, but the arguing went on.

“I’m not about to be taken down the garden
path like some lovesick little boy, Zemaki! I have a right to look
out for my own interests and not get embroiled in some....”