Extreme Exposure

by Alex Kingwell

  She turned to go, but Emily said, “I wanted to clear something up with you.” Celia arched an eyebrow, immediately defensive. Emily said, “What do you know about the insurance settlement Amber was about to receive?”

  “Not too much. I know she was looking forward to the payout. I think she might have been thinking about taking some courses. And now the insurance company won’t pay until this case is wrapped up. Why do you ask?”

  He asked, “Did Amber have any concerns about the settlement?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Emily said, “One other thing. What happened to your driving under the influence charge?”

  Paling, she pitched her reply low. “What are you talking about? What charge?”

  Emily said, “Apparently, it was something Amber was concerned about.”

  “Somebody’s spreading lies.” Grabbing Emily’s elbow, Celia steered her to the side. “And they’d better be careful. That’s slanderous.”

  He stood beside Emily. “Did Amber talk to you about it?”

  Recovering now, Celia’s initial alarm was turning to anger. “Of course not. There’s nothing to it.” The cell phone she was holding in her hand rang. Turning aside, she answered the call, listened for a minute before launching into a lecture on the risks of not acting quickly in a seller’s market.

  He doubted they would get much more out of her about the rumored charge. Her denial had been vehement, but he had expected that. Was it possible Jason Hatt had made it up to divert attention? There had to be a way to find out more about it.

  When Celia hung up a minute later, she said, “I’m very busy these days, and I have to get Amber’s house on the market. I’ll have to stage it. That means packing up that bottle collection. I started last week, but I was rushing so much I broke one of them and cut myself.” She showed them a small cut near her thumb.

  Emily’s mother approached, said to Emily, “You should get back in the kitchen. Lunch is about to be served.” She turned to Matt. “I’ve put you next to Celia. She’ll be good company.”

  He was sure for a moment that he had misunderstood, that Emily wasn’t being banished to the kitchen, but Celia took his arm.

  “I’ll help in the kitchen,” he said, looking at Emily. She would be there. That’s where he wanted to be.

  Celia tightened her hold on his arm. “Oh, no, you won’t.”

  Emily smiled. “It’s okay. I’ll see you soon.” She walked off, leaving him to think that somehow she’d got the better end of the deal.

  * * *

  Three hours later, with most of the guests and kitchen staff gone, Emily plopped down on the patio sofa and stretched out her legs. Matt sat down beside her, lifting her legs and putting them across his lap.

  “How was dinner?” she said, trying to ignore the shiver of pleasure his touch brought. He smoothed her skirt over her knees, rested those big hands on her legs.

  “The food was great, the company not so much.” Leaning back, he hooked an arm over the sofa. “Celia spent most of the time trying to talk everybody at the table into buying what I gathered was her newest listing. She kept insisting it had good bones, which I took to mean it needed major renovations. By the time dessert came around, I was ready to buy it just to shut her up.”

  She chuckled. “Sounds like Celia. She’s so much like my mother it’s scary.”

  “The sherbet was good, by the way. Not too soft, not too firm. Just right. A highlight of the meal, in my opinion.” A smile crinkled his eyes, and he caressed her legs. It made her dizzy, the feel of his fingers through the thin fabric of her skirt.

  He was wearing a white shirt and tan chinos, and was clean-shaven, but that impression of primal power still radiated from him. Suddenly, she wished everyone would leave so that they could be alone. The urge to touch him was like a raw hunger. A moist heat between her legs intensified. Hands shaking, she sipped white wine from the glass in her hand.

  Across the lawn, her mother chatted with Harold, who had his arm around her waist. After a minute, her mother went inside and the judge came over.

  “Am I interrupting?”

  Smiling, she swung her legs down to the ground and invited him to sit.

  “How are you? Tired out?” he said.

  “I’m fine. Did you enjoy the party?”

  The judge pursed his lips together. “Not my thing, but if it makes your mother happy…”

  She must have looked surprised, because he said, laughing, “Don’t tell your mother. She’ll put me out to the curb if she finds out I’m not one hundred percent gung ho on these sorts of things.” He leaned in, whispered, “Too stuffy.”

  Looking at her, Matt said, “But the food was great.”

  She took another sip of wine. “I hope my mother thinks so.”

  MacDonald reached over, took her hand. “Don’t worry about your mother. She can be hard to please, as you and I both know. But she is very proud of you and loves you dearly.”

  “Thank you.” She had no idea if she believed that, but it was a nice try. Maybe she’d underestimated him and his ability to read her mother.

  “I understand you’re thinking about going back to law school,” he said. “If you want to switch schools and need any references, I may be able to help.”

  “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “And I want you both to come up and see the house. That’s an order.”

  She said, “That would be great. Mother says the view is to die for. In a few days, I promise.”

  He stood up, put on a mock-serious face. “I’m holding you to that.”

  After he’d gone, she turned to Matt. “I always thought he was after mom for her money, but I may be wrong. He’s growing on me.”

  “What made you think he’s interested in your mother’s money?”

  “Just something Amber once said. She could read people.”

  “He seems decent.” He grabbed a glass of beer from the low table in front of them, took a sip. “He must have some money if he’s building a house.”

  “You’re probably right. I bet those suits he wears don’t come cheap, either.”

  They watched the judge join Celia and another woman who were seated at one of the circular tables.

  He said, “But I will tell you one thing. He is enjoying himself. I would say these types of gatherings are very much his type of tea.”

  “You could be right.”

  He said, “I like your friend.”

  “Nicky’s great, isn’t she? I’ll have to call her when this is all over.”

  “How do you know each other?”

  “We met in high school, in chemistry class of all places. She was having a lot of troubles with her father—her mother’d disappeared—and we just clicked. Shared misery, I guess.”

  “What do you mean, disappeared?”

  “When Nicky was five, her mother took off one day and was never seen again. She’d left a note. I think it really messed Nicky up for a long time—I’m talking years. Her father’s a doctor and he put a lot of pressure on her and her sister to make something of themselves.” She stroked the stem of her wine glass. “In Nicky’s case, that pressure backfired. She ended up doing some time in juvenile detention.”

  “For what?”

  “She had this stupid boyfriend and they stole a boat together. And crashed it.”

  “Yikes.”

  She bristled. “But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. She’s gotten her act together now. She works with kids in trouble and she’s very good at it.” They talked about Nicky for a few minutes then he said, “Celia seemed to be a bit uncomfortable with the questions, don’t you think?”

  “I think she was lying about the DUI. But I can’t see what it has to do with Amber’s murder.”

  “What if Amber found out and threatened to reveal it?”

  “You don’t murder your sister over that, do you?” She took another sip of wine. “And other people must have known about it.”

&n
bsp; Matt frowned. “You’re right. We know Jason did. There must be others.”

  “I’d like to know how much the insurance settlement is worth. Aunt June, Amber’s mother, will probably inherit, but she’s already loaded.”

  “What about Celia? She’ll inherit eventually.”

  She said, “Celia is pretty motivated by money, I’ll give you that, but I don’t think it would be enough to kill her own sister.”

  Finishing the beer, he put the glass down on the table in front of him. “We have to find out more about the settlement. Do you think Amber’s personal papers are still in her house?”

  “I don’t have a key, and I don’t think I can ask for one without a lot of questions.”

  He had a mischievous grin on his face.

  She shot him a stern look and shook her head from side to side. “We can’t break in, if that’s what you’re thinking. Amber had the place locked up pretty securely. I don’t think your little course will help us there.”

  The grin widened. “We’ll have to deceive the heavens to cross the ocean.”

  “What the heck does that mean?”

  “It’s an ancient Chinese military strategy. The idea is to hide your real goal with a fake goal, until the real goal is achieved.”

  She rolled her eyes, ignored the flutter in her belly that his playful mood ignited. “And this helps us get into Amber’s house how?”

  “Let’s say we wanted to help Celia, who is very busy at this time of year, as you and I and everyone else at this party probably knows by now. We could offer to pack up the bottle collection.”

  Nodding, she looked over at Celia, who was still talking to the judge and the other woman. “We certainly wouldn’t want her to risk further injury.” She stood up. “I’ll go tell her the good news, get that key.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sitting in the parked car in Amber’s driveway two hours later, Matt turned to Emily. “Sure you want to do this?”

  “I haven’t been here since she was murdered. I didn’t realize it would be so hard.” She spoke in a low monotone and her eyes were wet. “But I have a lot of good memories, too.”

  Not knowing what to say, her reached over and touched her shoulder.

  She took a deep breath and opened the car door. “Let’s do this.”

  The grass needed cutting, but the small yellow bungalow looked well kept. The front door, painted a bold eggplant, showed personality. At the front door, Emily riffled through six or seven pieces of mail from a box beside the door. Aside from a letter, it was all junk mail. She said, “Somebody must be picking up the mail. This doesn’t strike me as a lot.”

  The front door opened onto a small foyer and beyond that a hallway. The air was stuffy. Slipping off his shoes, he stepped onto the hardwood floor. The kitchen was to the left, a cramped room with barely enough space for the circular table next to the window.

  To the right was the living room, another small room, painted white but brightened with yellow and purple cushions on the sofa and chair. There wasn’t much furniture but it looked fresh and inviting. On the wall to the left of the doorway stood the antique bottle collection, dozens of them in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes arranged in a custom-built shelving unit bolted to the wall. A box on the floor held three bottles. More flattened boxes stood against the wall, along with a bag of packing peanuts.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?” Emily pointed to one of the bottles on a middle shelf, an aqua flask embossed with a girl on a bicycle. “This one’s my favorite.”

  Looking up, he pointed to an oval flask with a short stubby neck in a rich green color. “I like that one. The scroll work is nice, but the color does it for me.” She turned to look at him, smiling. “Just like your eyes.”

  Her reply was an eye roll. “That sounds like a cheesy pickup line.”

  He smiled at her, but she didn’t return it. He had a sense she was drawing back into herself again, although it could have been because this was the first time she’d been in Amber’s house since her cousin’s death.

  “You can’t blame a guy for trying,” he said, realizing it was getting harder for him to keep a distance. Standing in front of him, her T-shirt hugged her body, emphasizing a small waist. The impulse to put his hands around her, to trace his hand along that gentle curve, overwhelmed him. Stepping back, he looked away. She had no idea of the fire burning in his belly.

  She said, “Let’s search for the papers first.”

  After putting the mail on the table in the kitchen, Emily led him down the hallway. The same hardwood in the living room, a golden oak, continued down the hallway into the bedrooms. “She used one of the bedrooms as an office. Probably the best place to start.”

  The office was tiny, barely one hundred square feet, with a single bed against one wall and a small desk with a modern chair and a white rollout filing cabinet tucked underneath. Two bookcases mounted on the wall above the desk held paperbacks. White sheers covered the windows.

  He said, “When you said she was neat, you weren’t exaggerating. I could take a few lessons from her.”

  “Messy, are you?” She switched on the overhead light.

  “Certainly not this tidy. Or do you think Celia took away a lot of stuff?”

  Emily shook her head. “Her house was always like this. Well, except for when she was having drug problems. Even then it was pretty neat.” She pointed to the filing cabinet. “It shouldn’t take long to search. I was wondering if she had a will, if that would tell us anything.”

  “It might, if there is one.”

  Emily pulled out the filing cabinet. Amber’s neatness, not surprisingly, extended to her filing system. She riffled through two dozen files, arranged alphabetically, including banking, correspondence, medical bills and records, warranties, and witnesses. There was no separate file for her will.

  She grabbed a file labeled “insurance,” sat on the bed, and started sifting through the papers. Matt looked through the rest of the files, selected banking, and sat at the desk. After a few minutes, not seeing anything that jumped out at him, he picked a file marked “house and auto.”

  When he looked up a few minutes later, Emily had a puzzled look on her face.

  He said, “See something?”

  “There are a lot of letters, most from the same law firm. The last one was six weeks ago. I think she was close to getting her insurance money. It looks like it was over five million dollars.”

  He put down a letter he was reading. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “But it’s weird. There’s a lot of stuff circled and she keeps writing ‘notes’ in the margins, but I don’t see any notes here or any file marked ‘notes.’”

  He walked over and stood beside her, leaning in for a closer look. “Maybe she kept them somewhere else.”

  “But where? Another thing, the letters are arranged by date, newest first, but some of them are out of order. That’s not like Amber.”

  “Do you think somebody looked through them?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  He read through a few of the letters. “The lawyer’s cut was thirty-four percent.”

  She put down the paper she was reading. “That’s what, one point seven five million? A lot of money.”

  “It seems a little high, but it could be normal. Did she write any letters to the lawyer challenging him on that fee?”

  “Not that I can see. But now that you mention it, I don’t see copies of any letters she wrote, which is kind of weird considering she kept everything else. Wouldn’t she have kept copies of her own letters?”

  “You’d think. Maybe she was on to something, or she thought she was, and was scared enough to make a separate file. Any idea where she’d hide it?”

  She thought for a minute. “She does…I mean, she did have a hiding place. After she was off the drugs, she confessed she’d had a place where she kept a stash.” She frowned. “But I have no idea where it is.”

  “Here? In this house?” At he
r nod, he said, “It shouldn’t be too hard to search.”

  They started with the office bedroom, searching under the bed and in the closet. A careful search turned up nothing in the closet but clothes, Christmas decorations, and two vacuum cleaners, a new stick model for cleaning hardwood floors and an older canister style in an avocado green for carpets.

  A thorough search of the master bedroom and kitchen turned up empty. He offered to do the bathroom and found nothing. An hour later, after a search of the basement, they came back to the office and sat down on the bed.

  He said, “Could she have had a safety deposit box?”

  “I didn’t see anything about one in the banking file, but maybe she did.”

  “What about her computer?”

  “The police took it. I asked about it a couple of weeks ago.”

  He said, “We should check the attic.” He walked into the hallway, where there was a square opening cut into the ceiling. While Emily grabbed a flashlight from a kitchen drawer, he brought a chair, stood on it, and pushed up the piece of plywood covering the opening. It opened with a loud creak, as if it hadn’t been used in years.

  Putting the flashlight in his mouth, he grabbed the edges of the opening and pulled himself up. Sitting with his feet dangling down, he cast a careful eye around. There was nothing but soft bats of pink insulation.

  Emily’s voice came from below. “Anything?”

  Putting the plywood back in place, he dropped down to the chair while Emily steadied it. “Nothing.”

  He said, “Maybe she has a trick hiding place, like a hollowed-out book or a hidden safe behind a picture.”

  “Could be. Now that I think about it, she did mention it was clever.” She rolled her eyes. “Maybe too clever.”

  They tackled the books in a small bookshelf in the hallway next. Finding nothing, they started on the pictures on the walls. Half an hour later, after returning a painting to a wall in the living room, he sat down on the sofa. “If there is a place she kept stuff, I don’t think it’s in this house. We’ve been here for three hours.”