To the Limit (17 page)

"And where were you all night, young man?" she asked in her best mother of the house voice as she grappled with the shower curtain.

"I quit answering to women a long time ago—and I've never answered to little girls. You find everything you need?"

"I'm good. Thanks for the five-star digs. What's up?"

"Your girl was at the Hog's Breath last night. Partying pretty heavy according to Jimmy."

"Jimmy?" She wrestled with her phone and a towel and blinked shampoo out of her eyes.

"The bartender. Happens that Jimmy sometimes does some legwork for me. He'd heard I'd been putting out some feelers, so he called.
Just
called, because he just heard I was needing info. Anyway, your girl took a shine to Jimmy and invited him to come back to her suite at the Ocean Key to party a little more. A boyfriend type put the kibosh to that idea with some sharp words and roughed her up a little."

"He hit her?" The uneasiness Eve felt over that news outdistanced her excitement at getting her first solid lead on Tiffany.

"Yeah. He hit her."

Since she'd first heard Lance Reno's name in her conversation with the casino boss at Atlantic City, Eve had figured that the lead singer in Dead Grief was the boyfriend. She asked anyway. "I don't suppose he caught Prince Charming's name."

"Nah, but I got a description. Got a pen?"

She was losing the battle with the shampoo. "Got a memory. Shoot."

"Latino maybe. Black straight hair in a pony all the way to his ass. Under six-foot—late twenties, early thirties."

It was Reno all right. Eve felt her uneasiness over Tiffany's situation grow, then spike up another notch when Uncle Bud continued.

"There was another guy with them. Big. Silver cross in his ear. Shaved head. Lots of tattoos. Full of attitude. Mean."

That had to be Gorman. "OK—so," she groped for a washcloth, wiped her stinging eyes. "Any chance you've got connections at Ocean Key?"

He grunted. "Honey, there's not a place on U.S. 11 don't have a connection. Try the bell station. Ask for Randolph. If you're lucky, he's working today. If not, call me back."

"You're a peach."

"Yeah, yeah. Sweet as syrup. Call your mother."

"Quit smoking."

She'd ducked back into the shower and rinsed the shampoo out of her hair and eyes. Then she got herself together and headed out—to find a note on the windshield of her car.

She didn't bother to look around her. She knew that whoever left it was long gone.

You're dead, of course. Or perhaps someone you love will die. Who will go first? I wonder. Watch out for traffic.

In the heat of an eighty-degree morning, a chill spread through her entire body. In its wake rolled white-hot anger.

Damn him! It was one thing to threaten her. It was another to threaten the life of someone she cared about. And do it in such a cowardly way.

"Dammit!" she swore loud enough that a neighbor poked her head out her front door.:

"You OK?"

Eve swung around, saw the concern on the face of an elderly woman wrapped in a cotton housecoat.

"Did you see anyone around here? Last night? This morning?"

The woman shook her head and, evidently deciding Eve was all right, ducked back inside.

...
someone you love.

Oh God. She fumbled for her cell phone and dialed Uncle Bud from her call log.

"Thank God." She breathed a sigh of relief when he answered.

"What's up, little girl?"

She leaned against her car, rubbed her temples, and told him.

An hour later Eve pulled up to the Ocean Key Resort Hotel. Uncle Bud now knew to watch his back. She'd also called Ethan and filled him in on the latest—including the incident with the van that had almost hit her. So much for chalking it off as a drunk driver.

"You'll stay exactly where you are," she insisted when Nolan, on speakerphone, informed her he was coming to the Keys.

Fifteen minutes' worth of arguing later and she'd calmed the waters by threatening to stop updating her brothers if they reacted with macho mania every time she did.

"Trust me to take care of myself," she'd pleaded, and finally gotten them settled down.

Distancing herself from thoughts of her unknown attacker, she marched into the lobby of the upscale Ocean Key Resort Hotel. There wasn't anyone at the bell station when she walked in, so she turned her attention to the registration desk.

"Ring Tiffany Clayborne's room for me, would you please?" she asked a perky blond clerk who looked like she might be a surfer in another life. She was all white teeth and toasted tan.

"I'm sorry, but Ms. Clayborne checked out this morning."

All the authority, finesse, and pleading in the world couldn't pry Tiffany's destination out of the clerk. Who'd have figured Ms. Surf and Turf would have a head on her shoulders?

Eve headed back to the bell station. It was still empty, but a tall sixtyish-looking man in a bell uniform exited an elevator right then rolling a full luggage cart.

Eve followed him out the door. "Randolph?"

He was indeed Randolph. All six long, rangy feet of him.

But for the gray beard and his height, he was another Jimmy Buffett look-alike. Must be something about the sun and tequila this far south that produced so many clones.

Randolph's beard was neatly trimmed, his graying hair just long enough to pull into a little tail at his nape. His uniform was dark green; his hands were huge. He had a tendency to answer almost every question with a question—like he needed confirmation of what he was saying. Eve didn't doubt what he said one bit—especially when he smiled at the mention of Uncle Bud and told her everything she wanted to know for the grand sum of twenty bucks.

"Called the limo service for them myself. Settled the four of them into the stretch, you know? Told the driver to take them to the airport. They left at, oh, let me think, six this morning?"

Three hours ago. "Did you happen to catch where they were going?"

"You know the slim guy? The one with the long hair? Him and the big dude, they were talking about all the clubs they were going to hit when they landed in the Big Apple."

So Tiffany was headed for New York. Eve could have kissed Randolph. Instead she asked another question.

"Gut instinct, Randolph—did you notice anything wrong with the picture?"

"Wrong?"

"Was everybody on board with where they were going? Any bickering? Or were they just one big happy family?"

"Didn't see any smiles, if that's what you mean. Rich kids. Go figure. Mostly they just seemed stoned."

"All of them?"

He let out a breath. Thought. "Maybe not. Maybe just the girl. The staff talks, you know? Carmen—one of the day maids? She was saying one day when she cleaned the room that the men, they were mostly gone. The girl? Not so much. She was too out of it most of the time, passed out in bed." He shook his head. "Lost cause, that one."

"Anything else?"

He firmed his lips, sniffed. "Boy with the hair? Seemed like he just led her around like a rag doll."

"Led her around? Like he was helping her?"

A deep furrow formed between Randolph's bushy brows. "No. More like he was, you know, pushin' her around? Got no time for those types who think they've got to handle women." He shook his head. "But then, she was so out of it, maybe it just seemed that way?"

"Did she look like she was in trouble?"

"That girl was way past trouble. That girl was wasted."

"Happy wasted? Sad wasted?"

"Lost wasted," he finally said with a sad shake of his head and no question at all in his tone. "Those guys she was hanging with? My bet is they could lead her a whole lot deeper into the wasteland."

Lost wasted.

And heading deeper.

All the way back north on Highway 1, she couldn't shake the chill that had run down her spine when she thought about Randolph's words.

If she could have saved time, she'd have flown directly to New York City from Key West. A quick call to the Key West airport from Ocean Key, however, confirmed that there were no direct commercial flights to New York. Several phone calls later and it was obvious she could make just as good time driving back to West Palm and catching a flight there.

OK. That was fine. She needed some think time anyway. Wouldn't hurt to grab a change of clothes. Yet all the way home, her sense of urgency over Tiffany Clayborne kept hitching up by degrees.

...
Someone she loved...

Someone she loved could die.

It was beginning to seem less and less like a stretch: what if that someone was Tiffany?

Chapter 11

new york city

Eve had broken a few speed limits on
the drive back to West Palm. Her apartment had felt cool and dark when she'd let herself in. She'd checked her voice mail, reconfirmed her flight time, then thrown some things into a suitcase.

She'd made a quick call to Uncle Bud on the drive to the airport to let him know she'd arrived safely back in West Palm and to caution him again to watch his back, just in case. She waited until her flight was called, however, to call Ethan.

"I'm about to catch a flight to New York.... Because that's where Tiffany's headed.... Yes. I know. She's a mover. Look, I've just got a few minutes, but I wanted to check in and I need you to check out some things for me. Got a pen? ...

"OK," she'd added when he'd said, "Shoot". "Lance Reno, Abe Gorman. Those are two of the guys Tiffany is running with. I don't have anything on the third. And find out what you can for me on Roger Edwards, too, would you? ... Yeah. Clayborne's man." She'd been thinking about Edwards quite a bit. Something about him didn't feel right.

"I don't know," she admitted when Ethan asked what she was thinking. "Something just feels funny about this whole thing and I want to double cover my bases. If you turn up anything interesting, give me a call. Oh, and while you're at it, might as well run a check on his executive assistant, too. Jazelle Taylor.... Yes. I know. I'm thorough. I am
not
anal. And Ethan—so you know, I'm beginning to wonder if this thing with Tiffany might be linked to whoever's after me....

"Nothing solid, no. Just a feeling. Look, I've got to go. Check in on Uncle Bud now and then, OK? And you'd better call Mom and tell her to get on him about his hip. It's giving him trouble again. And you guys be careful, too. Make sure the folks ... well, just watch out for them, OK?"

She couldn't do anything else about her situation, so she'd used the flight time to make a plan of action to find Tiffany. She needed to make something happen fast, and other than a destination, she had little to go on. If she remembered right, there were, however, two distinct possibilities for leads in New York. Margaret Reed and Katrina Hofsteader.

Margaret Reed had been Tiffany's nanny. After her mother died, Margaret had been the closest thing Tiffany had had to a parental influence. During her childhood, if Clayborne hadn't been jet-setting around the world on business or pleasure, he'd been holed up in his crystal castle. Margaret was currently employed as a nanny by a prominent cable TV talk show host. If anyone understood Tiffany, Eve was betting it was Margaret. Eve remembered Margaret as being a warm, friendly person and was glad that Tiffany had had the woman in her life.

Katrina Hofsteader, a twenty-something daughter of a Frankfurt industrialist, also looked like a good bet. Katrina was a close friend of Tiffany's although Eve had never met her. Tiffany and Katrina had participated in competitive equestrian events in Europe together for several years. Eve knew through Tiff that Katrina kept a co-op apartment in SoHo and spent time there when she wasn't staying in the family's Aspen condo or Tuscan villa. God forbid she'd have to land at home in Frankfurt long enough to account to anyone.

Eve was checked into the West Park Hotel on West 58th and on the phone in her hotel room at four o'clock that afternoon. Fortunately, both Margaret and Katrina were listed in the phone book. Eve dragged a hand through her hair as she waited for Margaret Reed to pick up. She got an answering machine instead.