White Hot (26 page)

Deegan’s grin faded. “About like you’d expect.”

“Ah. Flared nostrils and no comment.”

He managed a thin smile. “Pretty much. They were deciding whether to see him in the hospital when I left.”

Mollie resisted a knee-jerk negative reaction. She didn’t know what had occurred between Croc and his parents. Maybe they, too, had done the best they could with what they had and had simply tried to save a nineteen-year-old son bent on self-destruction. On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine her parents kicking her out and not seeing her for over two years. They weren’t always tuned in the way other parents she knew were, practicing what their friends sometimes called “healthy neglect.” Discipline was never much more than a knitted brow, and she and her sister had had more freedom early on than most of their friends. But they knew they had their parents’ unconditional love. They took it for granted, as, Mollie thought now, children should. But they instinctively appreciated and never abused that love. It just wouldn’t have occurred to them to do so.

Such was not the case, it seemed, in the Tiernay household.

“What did Kermit do to get tossed out?” Griffen asked.

“He embarrassed the family.” Deegan’s tone was neutral, even a trace of sarcasm impossible to detect. “He flunked out of Harvard for no reason anyone could understand. He just chose not to do the work. Then he had the gall to ask for a year off to sort things out and work odd jobs. My parents said he could go to school or get out.”

“ ‘Get out’ as in ‘you’re on your own but we love you and want to keep in touch’ or ‘get out’ as in—”

“As in ‘we disown you.’ ”

She grimaced. “Ouch.”

“Was he abusing drugs or alcohol?” Mollie asked.

“He got drunk maybe twice that I can remember, but that wasn’t it. He didn’t have his act together at nineteen, and my parents decided the only way he would ever get it together was if they severed all ties. They truly thought they were doing the right thing.”

Griffen snorted in disgust. “There has to be more. Was he lighting cats on fire, screwing the household help? You don’t just toss a kid out and sever all ties because he wants to wash cars for a year. I mean, why not give him the year?”

“Kermit has always had a vivid imagination,” Deegan said. “He’s sensitive, maybe too sensitive. He went against the grain.”

“Yeah, well, now he’s snatching brooches out of people’s pockets.” Griffen shook her head, just not getting it, and turned to Mollie. “How’s this sitting with Tabak?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to him without a cop around since he’s seen Croc…Kermit.”

“Well.” Griffen shook her head, as if trying to shake off the tensions of the past hour. “We’ve got a party to plan—unless you want to cancel.”

Mollie thought a moment, then shook her head. “No, let’s do it. We won’t invite the world, and we’ll keep it low-key. If the police have their thief, there’s no need to worry about him striking again, and it’ll prove that whatever ax he had to grind with me, I wasn’t intimidated. And if they don’t have their thief—” She settled back, breathed in the warm, scented air. “Then maybe he
will
strike again.”

“And we can catch him in the act,” Griffen said.

Mollie eyed her young intern. “If you don’t want to be involved—”

“No. It’s okay. In fact, it’s perfect. My parents would approve, carrying on in the face of adversity and all that, and Kermit…Croc…” He faltered, his only display of emotion. “I think he’d understand, too.”

“Good.” Griffen sat up and dug in her big leather bag for a clipboard and her laptop. “Then let’s get to work.”

Jeremiah found Mollie on her back in the pool, her toes pointed, her head tilted back, blonde hair floating out around her. Not sure how to work the gate release in the Jaguar, not wanting to scare the hell out of her, he’d called from the driveway, and she’d opened up. She must have scooted right back into the pool. He could see the portable phone on her chair, which was covered, he noticed with a tug of amusement, with a towel covered with the busts of various composers. He recognized Beethoven’s scowl.

“Any news to report?” she asked, barely moving in the still, azure water.

“I’m just back from my apartment. I checked in with the guys and asked them to look after my critters. All considered, reptiles are low maintenance. Albert started to regale me with tales of eating snake in the jungles of southeast Asia.”

“Think he has designs on yours?”

“He assured me not.”

She went very still. “And Croc?”

“Kermit Tiernay is making steady progress. He should be able to make a limited statement to the police tomorrow. It’s not easy to talk with your jaw wired shut, and he’s still swollen, which doesn’t help.”

“Nothing more from the police?”

“Nothing.”

“Any word on when Croc will be released from the hospital?”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know.” He bit off the words, not angry at the question or anyone, just frustrated with his fruitless days, his own worries. He hated worrying. Better just to gather information, jot it in his notebook, chew on it, and write it up. “I don’t even know if he has a place of his own. He needs an attorney…
damn!”

Mollie dropped her feet and stood in the pool, the water up to her neck. The burn from her necklace was healing fast, some of its redness already gone. She swirled her arms through the water, studying him. “Croc hasn’t asked for your help?”

“No.”

Jeremiah dropped into a chair in the sun and watched her splash backwards, kicking her feet up in front of her, not swimming so much as playing in the water, stretching, perhaps easing out some of her own tension. He could feel it coiled in him. A long, hard day that had yielded more questions than answers.

But there was, he thought, something very sexy about being fully clothed around a woman in a swimsuit. Hers was turquoise, the color of the water, and thus made her look even less clothed.

She flipped over onto her stomach and swam over to the edge of the pool, hoisting up her forearms. Water dripped down her face, and her hair was slicked back, making her eyes seem even more bottomless, the lashes ever blacker. “So, have you reached any conclusions about the attack on Croc?”

“I don’t have enough information yet.”

“But you have theories,” she said.

“Theories are the easy part.” He knew he sounded short and grumpy, didn’t care. Of course, she didn’t seem to care, either. “It could have been a random attack. It could have been an attack by a professional. It could have been an attack by an amateur. It could have been intended to kill him, scare the hell out of him, scare the hell out of someone else, mislead him, mislead someone else.”

“These someone elses. Meaning who?”

“You, me, the police, the real jewel thief if it’s not Croc.”

“The real jewel thief? How would an attack on Croc mislead the real jewel thief?”

Jeremiah shot to his feet, unable to sit still. “I don’t know. My point is, we can speculate endlessly and end up right back where we are, knowing next to nothing.”

She stretched out her arms, still hanging onto the edge of the pool, and eased her behind up as she did a slow frog-kick that struck him as intensely erotic. But she was preoccupied with her sleuthing. She didn’t think like a cop or a journalist. She wasn’t bound by their professionalism, their cynicism, their ethics, and she was seldom impartial or removed from her emotion. Yet it would be a mistake, Jeremiah knew, to underestimate the keenness of her mind, her ability to see nuances and layers that others might miss. She was, he remembered, a woman who could unravel the intricacies of a symphony and zero in on the essence, the appeal, of a particular client.

Still, right now, he had to admit he was more interested in that wet, slim body. He watched her, feeling the heat of the afternoon, of his own body.

“Speculating,” he told her, “will make you crazy. You have to force yourself not to go beyond the facts.” He moved to the edge of the pool, squatted down in front of her. “And the facts still have you in the thick of things. I just can’t figure out how or why.”

“Because Croc is Kermit Tiernay, my intern’s older brother.”

“That’s one reason. You’re also still the only known common denominator, the only victim of violence, the only person who’s received a threatening call.”

She dipped her chin under water, studying him. “I’m just a publicist who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I hope so,” he said.

Her eyes widened in irritation. “Are you still keeping an open mind about me? You think it’s possible I’m lying?”

He frowned. “Mollie, I simply said I hope you’ve just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can take that at face value.”

“Then you don’t suspect me,” she said stubbornly.

He scooped up a handful of water and flicked it playfully into her face. “Go up and get dressed. If I go up with you, we might not make it back down here until morning. I promised Croc I’d be back this evening.” He eased to his feet, felt the day’s dramas all the way to his bones. “I still can’t get my head around the little bastard being a rich kid.”

“You took him on his own terms. Maybe that’s all he wanted from you.”

“Maybe.”

She climbed out of the pool and grabbed her composers’ towel, so caught up in her own thoughts she didn’t notice him watching her. Her wet suit clung to her curves, her flat stomach. Water glistened on her arms and legs. She slung the towel over her shoulders. “I’ll be down in ten minutes, tops.”

She made it in seven. She had on a little sheath of a sundress, in dark blue, and sandals, her legs bare, her hair pulled back and still damp. She’d dabbed on pale lipstick and a touch of mascara, and Jeremiah couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to put this woman on a plane to Boston ten years ago. Except that if he hadn’t, there’d be no hope for them now. She’d needed those ten years. Probably so had he. And that still said nothing about the next ten years.

They took the Jaguar to the hospital, and Mollie, saying she was tired from her swim, let him drive. “You just want to see if I can really handle this thing,” he said, grinning at her.

“Not true. If that truck of yours doesn’t intimidate you, nothing will.”

On their way, she told him about her “spontaneous” cocktail party tomorrow night. She, Deegan, and Griffen had worked on it that afternoon. “Deegan didn’t stay—he went back to the hospital to see his brother.”

“You’re baiting him,” Jeremiah said.

She glanced sideways at him, mystified. “Who, Deegan?’ ”

“The thief. If he’s still out there, this ‘spontaneous’ party is a way of baiting him.”

She sat back, miffed. “So what if it is?”

He shrugged. “So what is right. Let’s just not be disingenuous.”

“I.e., don’t lie to you.”

“I.e., don’t bullshit me. And don’t bullshit yourself.”

“You do feel free to speak your mind, don’t you?”

“Always, Mollie,” he said without remorse. “Not just with you.”

“Must be from growing up in a swamp. I mean, if you’re surrounded by poisonous snakes and alligators and big ugly bugs, you learn pretty quick to tell it like it is.” She glanced over at him, the glint of the devil in her eyes. “Am I right?”

He smiled. “From a certain point of view.”

When they arrived at the hospital, he was surprised to find it wasn’t crawling with reporters. Word was out about the police finding Leonardo Pascarelli’s necklace on “Blake Wilder,” but not that Blake Wilder was Michael and Bobbi Tiernay’s long-missing older son, Kermit. Helen Samuel was either being remarkably discreet or not tipping her hand. Knowing her, Jeremiah suspected the latter.

Croc was looking marginally better, definitely more alert. His father, still in his business suit, was at his son’s bedside and when he glanced at Jeremiah and Mollie, tears shone in his eyes. The resemblance between father and son was there, in the way their eyes crinkled, in the lines of their jaws. Jeremiah just hadn’t seen it when he’d met Michael Tiernay at his mother-in-law’s cocktail party.

“We can wait outside,” Jeremiah said.

“No—no, it’s all right.” Michael smiled tentatively. “You’ve been a better friend to Kermit in the past two years than I have. Please, stay. I…well, there’s no excuse. If I’d wanted to find my son, I could have found him.”

Croc moved the arm with the IV in it. His lips were swollen and cracked, but he managed to say through his wired jaw, “Forget it.”

“Kermit, whatever you need—a place to stay, an attorney, anything—you let me know.
You
tell
me.”
His voice faltered, and he blinked back tears. “I’m in it for the long haul this time, son. It won’t be so easy to get rid of me.”

“Dad…” Croc spoke haltingly, barely able to get the words out. “Thanks.”

Mollie took a step forward. “What about his mother?”

“She got as far as the elevator before she had to turn back,” Michael Tiernay said without looking around at her. “It’s difficult…I don’t know if you can understand, or I can explain. We were afraid he was dead. We would believe it one day, and then decide it couldn’t be true the next.”

“He never got in touch with you?”

“No. We’d made it clear we didn’t want him to unless it was on our terms. We thought—” He broke off, a proud man fighting for composure. “We thought we were doing the right thing. Helping him become independent.”

“Mr. Tiernay,” Mollie said gently, “I’m not in a position to judge you.”

“You should judge me, Mollie. We cut our son out of our lives. We insisted our friends and family do the same and cut him out of their lives. He was a troubled nineteen-year-old boy, difficult, hypersensitive, recalcitrant, failing at everything he did, refusing to live by our rules and standards. We didn’t see another choice.”

“What would have been another choice?”

Such a simple question, Jeremiah thought. Michael Tiernay gave a bitter laugh. “Love him.”

“But you didn’t stop loving him—”

He shook his head. “I don’t mean love as a feeling. I mean love as something we do. And we stopped. If he had been engaged in criminal activity, drinking and doing drugs, perhaps our alternatives would have been starker. But he wasn’t. He was simply…” He smiled meekly, turning back to his son. “He was simply a pain in the ass.”