“If they watched the gate at Angler’s Reef, they probably assumed that we went home to Connecticut.”
“Wait till they realize we weren’t chased off.” I gave him a tired smile. “Boy, is Margie going to go bat crap crazy.”
“If we play our cards right, they won’t know until it’s too late.”
At quarter after one, I drowsily closed the drapes of our hotel room and flopped onto the king size bed, half asleep. I could barely keep my eyes open. Kenny joined me a few minutes later.
“Goodnight.” He kissed my neck and settled back on his pillow.
“Goodnight,” I mumbled back.
I felt myself falling into that dark abyss where delightful dreams and horrifying nightmares were there for the taking. I was too exhausted for any drama. All I wanted to do was give my battered body and mind to recover. Just let me lie here, floating between worlds, until my aches and pains subside.
I didn’t awaken until just before nine, when Kenny gave me a nudge. “Come on, Sleeping Beauty. Let’s grab some breakfast and hit the road. We don’t want to keep Alice and Paul waiting.”
“If we must,” I told him, stretching my arms and legs under the covers. I hated to get out of my glorious little cocoon.
“We must.”
Forty minutes later, satiated with scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon, we made the short drive to Surfside. Kenny parked the rental car on the street and we walked to the condo building.
The concierge on duty called Alice. “She said she is waiting for you. Take a left out of the elevator. Four-oh-seven.”
“Thanks.”
She met us at the door. Barely five feet tall, her gray hair was short and stylish, swept away from her face. It really set off her blue eyes.
“Come in, come in. I’ve got Paul on Skype.” Alice led us through to the living room that overlooked the pool and the beach.
“This is beautiful,” I told her, standing beside the balcony. I watched the waves roll into shore. “You must love living here.”
“I used to,” she replied, not mincing words. “Paul told me that you two believe that hit-and-run was staged.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Are you calling me a liar?” That accusation came out of nowhere, catching me off-guard.
“Only if you are,” I shot back.
There was something about Alice that I found unnerving. Even without the lawyer-speak, I could tell she was determined to mislead us. Why?
Chapter Twenty Five
Silent and morose, she watched me for several long minutes without speaking. I couldn’t wrap my head around her attitude. When I looked at Kenny, there was no way to know what he was thinking. He wore a benign expression on his face.
“Alice.” I heard Paul’s voice breach the tension. “Please cooperate.”
“No,” she insisted adamantly. “I will not share my secret with them.”
“It’s for the best,” he promised her in a cajoling voice. “You’ll feel better.”
“I won’t.”
“Please? Do it for me?”
Watching her, I knew it was for naught. Alice had no interest in helping us catch Philip Grimshaw’s killer. That could only mean one thing.
“She can’t tell us, Paul, because she actually committed a crime. That’s your secret, isn’t it?” I demanded. “They caught you doing something and if you confess, you can be prosecuted.”
“It was an accident,” she said dully.
“What was?” Kenny probed gently. “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”
Reluctantly, she sat down on the sofa and stared down at her hands that were tucked into her lap. “I was coming home from Johnny’s party. He was supposed to be following me. I had invited him over for a nightcap.”
“You were hooking up,” said the man from Mercer Security. “That’s not a crime.”
“No, it’s not,” was all she would say. As the minutes ticked on, Kenny grew impatient with her.
“I’m not a dentist, Alice. I can’t do extractions. You’re going to have to decide whether or not you’re going to cooperate, because if you’re not, this is just a damn waste of time!”
“What does it matter what I did?”
“A man is dead, Alice. We’re trying to find his killer. Doesn’t that matter to you?” demanded the exasperated investigator. “Paul?”
“She...she never told me what her secret was,” he acknowledged, watching her as the call was streamed to his computer.
“What was Johnny’s crime again?” I wondered, turning to the attorney back in Connecticut.
“He killed a woman,” Paul reminded us. “And Margie arranged for the corpse to be dumped out at sea.”
I studied the woman sitting on the sofa. She pretended she was cool, calm, and collected, but her hands gave her away. With her fingernails deeply embedded into the flesh on her knees, Alice was barely holding herself together.
“Oh my God! They got both of you birds with the same damn stone!” I cried. “He thinks he did it and you think you did it.”
“I did do it,” she confessed. “When I made the turn into the parking lot, I didn’t see the woman on the sidewalk. She came out of nowhere. I heard that horrible sound when my car...hit her...and....” Wracked by violent sobs, Alice broke down as the details emerged. “As soon as I realized what I had done, I stopped the car. By then, she was lying in the road and there was blood everywhere.”
“You saw the blood?” I had to admit this confession threw off my theory on the murder of Philip Grimshaw. Or did it? Apparently, Kenny didn’t buy it.
“Did you check the woman for a pulse?”
“No, I...I just fell apart when I saw her lying there in the street. I’d had a couple of glasses of wine on Johnny’s boat and I was feeling no pain, even after the drive from Islamorada. It was three in the morning, for God’s sake!”
Kenny and I exchanged glances. He sat down on the slip-covered sofa and patted her hand. I walked over to the dining room table, retrieved her laptop, and set it down on the coffee table, so Paul could join us. Kenny was already interviewing her.
“Tell me something, Alice. When did Margie and Ed Hawley show up?”
“They got there just a minute or two later. They must have left the boat right after I did. Johnny said that he was going to take a quick shower,” she told us, averting her eyes. Was that because she was embarrassed, or was it because she couldn’t bear to witness her old friend’s disappointment? A lonely, middle-aged woman having a rendezvous with a man after a party was hardly the stuff for which we pilloried people.
“So you didn’t actually check to see if she was still alive?”
“No. Any fool could see she was dead!”
Kenny didn’t bother to correct her. He merely continued asking questions.
“What happened next?”
“Margie told me to go back to my place and wait,” sniffed the distraught attorney. “She wanted my car keys, so she could take it to the car wash.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“I was desperate and upset! I wasn’t thinking clearly!”
“What kind of damage did your car have?”
“The next morning, when I looked at it, I could see the fender was dented and the paint was scraped.”
“The paint was scraped?” I was taken aback by that revelation. “Why would the paint be scraped if you hit a human being?”
“What?” She was like a sleepwalker going through the motions. Alice’s blue eyes lit on me, but I didn’t think she really saw me.
“Kenny?” I glanced over at him. “Am I right about that?”
“I believe you are, Miz Scarlet. What do you think, Paul?”
We expected an answer, but there was only silence. We turned our gaze on the laptop screen. Paul had stepped away.
“Paul?” Kenny called to him, but there was no answer.
“Where has he gone?” I wondered.
“I knew he would never forgive me when
he found out!” Alice burst into another round of tears.
“Here it is!” Paul hailed us. “I knew I still had it!”
“Had what?” Kenny asked, leaning toward the laptop.
“It’s the email that Philip sent me. He told me that he thought he knew what they blackmailed Alice with, and he was going to speak to her about it.”
“He never contacted me.” She shook her head, looking puzzled.
“Can we check his email and phone records to confirm that?” I wanted to know. I, for one, wasn’t confident that she was telling the truth. What if she really did kill that poor woman? Maybe having killed once, she decided to kill again, just to keep that secret from surfacing. I was prepared to accept that reality except for one small problem. She had made a clean breast of it here, in her condo. What could she gain from admitting one killing and not the other?
Maybe it’s because one was an accident and the other was premeditated murder. Or maybe it’s because she thought she didn’t know she got an email or phone call from Grimshaw.
“Are you sure you didn’t hear from him?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
Were those blue eyes deceptive? I couldn’t tell. I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“Paul, what’s the date on that email?” Kenny took out his notepad, prepared to jot down the information.
“December 5th. Why?”
“December 5th? Oh!” Alice sat back, surprised. “I was in St. Catherine’s, recovering after my surgery!”
“Good heavens, she’s right. She had a spinal fusion done on her back.”
“I didn’t bring my laptop.”
“Where was your phone while you were in the hospital?”
“I left it at home, because my hospital room had one.”
“Did anyone have keys to your condo?”
“No. I mean I...well, I left my key with the concierge, so that the dry cleaners drop off my clothes, but....”
“Kenny, could Margie have gotten a hold of it?” I inquired, suddenly feeling my stomach go queasy. “Could she have intercepted that communication from Philip?”
He understood the implication right away. “And that’s why he was murdered.”
It was highly likely that Grimshaw’s demise was the result of an unfortunate fluke that put Alice’s keys into the hands of Margie Grimshaw. Had the black widow pretended she was helping Alice while she was in the hospital?
“Misty!” Alice uttered that name with deep regret. “I forgot she works part-time at the concierge desk!”
“So,” the man from Mercer Security gazed up at her, “Margie probably has a copy of your key? Shall we test that theory?”
“Camera time, Captain Peacock?”
“Most definitely camera time, Miz Scarlet.”
“I don’t understand,” Alice said.
“We’re going to catch Margie in the act. I’ll place some concealed cameras around your condo and we’ll see if she does indeed spy on you when you’re out.”
“You can do that?”
“I can do more than that. We’ll also salt the mine and make sure she finds something incriminating, something that causes her to panic. It’s going to take a few days to set it up. Do you think you can hold yourself together in the meantime?”
“Are you absolutely sure I didn’t hit that poor woman?”
“Let’s put it this way, Alice; by the time we’re done with Margie, you will have proof of your innocence.”
“But how?”
“We’ll let Margie and her accomplices find out that you’ve hired Mercer Security to find that dead woman’s body. We’ll convince them that you’re prepared to go to the police and make a full confession.”
“They won’t dare let Alice do that,” Paul chimed in, “because she’ll roll over on the blackmail scheme.”
“Exactly.”
“Wow, it’s ironic, isn’t it?” I sighed. “If Alice hadn’t gone in for surgery, she’d have talked to Philip and this whole case would have been about the con, instead of a killing.”
“When do you plan to set this up?” Paul wanted to know. “Doesn’t Johnny Zee have his big boat party this weekend?”
“Tomorrow,” was Kenny’s reply. “And yes, it’s a perfect time to shake things up.”
“Do you think Greg Monaco is part of the gang?” I looked at the others. “We still have the problem of identifying the man with one brown eye and one green eye. If he’s not actually the killer....”
“Did you say one brown eye and one green eye?” Alice went pale.
“Yes, why?”
“That’s not Greg. That’s Greg’s son.”
“No, I met Jack. He’s not the guy.”
“Not Jack. Greg has three boys. Jack is the youngest. Jim and Joe are older.”
“How old?” Kenny’s interest was piqued.
“Oh, I think Jim’s in his early thirties. Joe’s the oldest by three or four years. He’s a wildlife guide who takes people out on excursions and lets them get up close and personal with alligators and other swamp things in the Everglades.”
“Is he the one with the brown eye and green eye?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “I only met him once, but once was enough, believe me!”
How much did she know about the man I came face to face with in the Hartford parking garage? “It sounds like you didn’t care for him.”
I waited for her answer, barely able to contain my excitement. We were getting closer to identifying the killer of Philip Grimshaw. How would the take-down unfold? Too bad Larry’s not here. I’d love to see her cuff Margie and toss her in the back of a police cruiser.
“He’s weird.”
Kenny looked up from his writing. “He’s weird in what way?”
“I don’t know if I can put my finger on it, but he just made my skin crawl.”
Alice didn’t like the guy. Somehow she had figured out Joe Monaco was a dangerous man.
“Do you happen to know if Joe is a hunter?”
“Well, I don’t know about that, but he is an alligator wrangler.”
“Does he carry a big knife?”
“He came on Siren of the Seas one weekend, filling in during a tournament for his brother Jack. He was in charge of the bait, and when he handed me a pole, the sight of that poor fish made me throw up.”
“I thought that it was normal to use some live bait.”
“Not this way. He sliced up the poor fish so that it would bleed out in the water. There was blood all over the deck. Johnny was very upset.”
“You went out on the boat?” Paul suddenly cut into the conversation, steering Alice away from the subject of Joe Monaco.
“It was before you and I started seeing each other,” she admitted with a shrug. “It didn’t mean anything.”
The man on the screen didn’t respond. I studied Alice. She seemed to be upset too, but why?
“Oh.” I stood up quickly, not sure I wanted to spill the beans. Alice’s dilemma placed her between a rock and a hard place. Like any victim of blackmail, she’d had to make a difficult choice. Now she was prepared to keep on lying about it.
“Oh what?” Kenny demanded. Those eyes of his had recognized my reaction and decided that it was an avenue worth pursuing. “Scarlet?”
“Kenny.”
“You have something to share.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. I suggest you cough it up.”
“No, I’m guessing.”
“Guess out loud.”
“I’d prefer not to do that.”
“That’s all the more reason for you to answer my question, especially if it impacts this case.”
I recognized the impasse for what it was. Like a fox terrier, Kenny had caught the scent of a trail and was prepared to follow it until he caught his fox. How far was I willing to go to protect Alice? Truth be told, I felt sorry for her. She had had a fling with Johnny Zee. That much was obvious. But her motive for it was another story.
>
“I was just thinking that maybe Margie and her accomplices forced Alice to seduce Johnny Zee.”
“Oh, right.” Kenny rested his notepad on his knee and turned his full attention to the mortified woman sitting next to him on the sofa. “That makes sense.”
“Is...this...true?” came the voice from the laptop. Paul’s vitriol-laced words made Alice cringe. “Well?”
When she glanced over at me and I saw those blue eyes, I recognized how deep the wound went. She had gotten close to the real estate mogul in order to help Margie and her friends blackmail him. Had she done the same thing to Paul Dubinsky?
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause trouble between you two,” I told her.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m an adult. I had my reasons for doing what I did. It’s no big deal.”
“On the contrary,” Paul corrected her sternly, “it’s a very big deal.”
“But not in the way you think,” said Kenny, redirecting Paul’s attention. “Isn’t that right, Alice? You were given a choice between betraying your old friend from law school or your rich friend with the big boat. You chose the lesser of two evils and went after Johnny Zee.”
She was so choked up, she couldn’t answer. She must love Paul so much that she was willing to compromise herself to protect him.
Chapter Twenty Six
“Did...did you do that?” Hope springs eternal. The besotted attorney moved closer to the camera of his laptop, trying to catch a glimpse of her. “Alice?”
“What else could I do?” she sniffed. “Either way, they were going to ruin someone I care about. I didn’t want it to be you!”
“Well, that’s our cue,” Kenny decided, rising to his feet. “You two need to talk things out. We’ll be in touch soon, after we do a little more digging.”
“No, no.” I wasn’t quite done with Alice. “The night you had the accident, Johnny Zee was supposed to follow you up from Islamorada, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.” Her cheeks flushed, giving her away.
“You followed their instructions. You invited Johnny to your place so that you could seduce him.”
Those words earned me a nuclear glare with power enough to take out North Korea, but with a murderer on the loose, I couldn’t afford to back down. I steeled myself against her wrath and pushed on.
Miz Scarlet and the Acrimonious Attorney Page 22