“I never saw her without them. They were her style trademark.”
“That makes robbery a possible motive,” Dawson said.
Keely held her breath. Instead of exploring the scenario further, however, Gifford turned to Max. “Have you ever seen Ms. O’Brien lose control? Lash out at someone or something?”
Keely’s startled gaze met Max’s and, in that instant, she glimpsed a flicker of doubt. He’d witnessed the destructive result of her flashback—could she be capable, under provocation, of breaking a woman’s head?
“Shall I take your silence as a positive response?” Gifford’s voice was creamy with satisfaction.
Keely could almost hear the clang of a cell door slamming shut. “Thanks for your support,” she hissed under her breath.
“I don’t believe Keely would hurt anyone.” Max’s face set into a rigid mask. “Am I free to go?”
“Don’t leave town.” Gayla studied him for a long moment. “I’ll probably want to see you both tomorrow—after I’ve interviewed other people and corroborated your statements.”
“I’ll bring my lawyer.” Without looking in Keely’s direction, Max pushed himself to his feet. He staggered, but regained his balance and left the studio without looking back. Dawson followed him out.
Keely groaned under her breath. Her tongue had just delivered the coupe de grace to any chance of a relationship with Max, working or personal. Then the import of Gifford’s warning sunk in. The detective would talk to Ida. She’d question Officer Jelke and Mimi. Each would confirm that Keely hated Flo Netherton. Those comments, added to Keely’s earlier loss of control—which she had no doubt Max would divulge when flanked by his attorney—and the damning window of opportunity created by Max’s dallying outside the studio…
“I’ll be honest with you, Ms. O’Brien. Things don’t look good. Broken equipment, vandalized car, a dead body. You’ve had more trouble today than most soap stars have in a lifetime.”
“I didn’t kill her.” Keely pressed icy fingers against her lips, knowing her denial sounded mechanical. “She was dead when I found her.”
Gayla had the last word. “To a cop, forfeiting credibility is like losing your virginity. No amount of talking or wishing can get it back.”
Chapter 18
Ida Burke surveyed the sea of videotapes. “Hopeless!”
“I told you to go home, Ida.”
The phone shrilled in the reception area. “Don’t answer it!” Keely softened her voice. “We’re not taking calls today.”
“What about appointments?” The receptionist’s plump fingers tugged on the golden teddy bear hanging from a chain around her neck. Today’s ensemble featured a hot pink suede jacket, complete with a row of tassels across the chest, and bell-bottoms.
“No one will be making or keeping appointments. I’ve been isolated by society’s quarantine. The only people venturing near will be inoculated by vulgar curiosity or press badges.”
Seated cross-legged in the filing room, Keely picked up a tape. According to the open engagement book on her lap, Margo had taped a sweet sixteen birthday party on March 3rd. She marked the entry with a red felt tip pen and placed the tape in a box.
Ida hovered in the doorway. “My conscience won’t let me leave you with this mess!”
“Just go, before you’re contaminated by my disease.”
Ida squared her shoulders. “I’m staying. Now that you mention it, I feel a bit of a temperature coming on.”
“Ida, you’re a doll and I appreciate your loyalty. Please go. Honestly, I’ll be okay.”
“You look exhausted.” Ida scowled. “How late did those flatfoots keep you up last night?”
“Late enough.” Ida had missed the opportunity to see Detective Gifford’s delicately arched feet in the red strappy sandals that matched her smart blazer.
She wondered whether her watchdog/guardian still sat in an unmarked car at the curb. Gifford had informed her someone would keep an eye on the place overnight, but that hadn’t kept Keely from waking up at intervals, bathed in a cold sweat.
“Why don’t I sort bills and correspondence at my desk?” Ida suggested. “My bones are too old to sit in that fashion. If I tried it, you’d have to rent a crane to lift me off the floor.”
Keely jumped up and embraced Ida. “Thanks. You’re the only ray of sunshine in a bleak world.”
They carried armloads of jumbled papers to the reception area which Ida had restored to near normalcy, but neither woman had yet summoned up the nerve to venture into the studio. Keely feared seeing bloodstains, of glimpsing again those sprawled limbs, the black velvet band holding back a spill of ash blond hair.
“What the well dressed housebreaker is wearing,” one of the crime scene technicians had cracked. Last evening had blurred into a nightmarish swirl of voices, impressions, and the paralyzing feeling of dread. One moment Max was telling her in his seductive baritone how much he was attracted to her and the next, her world had been flattened by a killer quake.
Keely left Ida to her task of shuffling papers and returned to the storage room. Mindless work, better than thinking. She tried in vain to recall the happy atmosphere of the events as she checked them off in the engagement book.
When Keely heard voices in the outer room, she froze. Ida must have let in a reporter.
Well, Ida could just get rid of the intruder. Hoping the enterprising person wasn’t armed with a camera, Keely got up on her knees and stretched out her hand for another tape.
“Well, Stan, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.”
Keely’s head snapped up. Max leaned against the door frame, muscular arms folded across his chest. In the early morning hours, she’d alternated between self-castigation and anger at Max for walking out on her, but now, Keely felt only inordinate relief.
She couldn’t tell him that. Remembering their first meeting at the police station—it seemed like months ago—she snapped, “You do a rotten Gary Cooper, a pathetic Oliver Hardy—is there any impression you can do successfully?”
“Laurel and Hardy’s sight gags were terrific, but like Chaplin’s, they often contained an undertone of pathos or tragedy. To me, that’s the essence of true comedy.”
“Tragedy is the essence of comedy? In that case, I should be laughing my head off after last night.” Avoiding his gaze, Keely dropped another tape into the box.
Max crossed the room, crouched down to face her. He held a folder in his right hand. “Keely, we’re in trouble.”
Keely picked up another tape, stared at the label. It might have been written in hieroglyphs for all the sense she could make of the letters. “Thanks for the news flash.”
Max grabbed her wrist. She tried to pull away, but his grip remained firm. “Don’t shut me out. Someone’s raised the stakes to murder—a lot more serious than losing a business.”
Keely gazed at the fingers which held her prisoner. Sturdy and powerful, natural extensions of the strong hand of the man kneeling before her. She felt sick to her stomach.
“Why didn’t Gifford believe me?” she whispered.
“It was too much of a coincidence, Flo ripping us in print and then being killed in your studio. Gifford’s frustrated, we’re her only suspects. We alibi each other—”
“I’m the one squirming on the hook.” Keely raised her chin, looked at Max through a blur of tears. His face suddenly dear, precious, his familiar masculine features a rock to cling to on a heaving landscape. “You think I did it, don’t you?”
“No. You poor kid.”
The tenderness of his smile reflected in his eyes. Keely blinked rapidly. Sympathy always devastated her self-control.
“I am the most likely suspect,” she murmured. “I went in alone, I was angry at Flo—”
“I don’t believe you killed her, Keely.”
“After what happened in Doug’s apartment last night, I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” she said dully. “Sometimes it seems like I could have done it. Gif
ford made the scenario sound so plausible…”
Max still held Keely’s wrist. He released her, but his face with its arrogant Roman nose loomed distractingly near. “I’ve already talked to Detective Gifford this morning.”
She swallowed. “What did you tell her?”
“You couldn’t have done it. Flo was killed long after we met at the Seetons. We were only separated at the studio for a few minutes. Gifford’s calling this a crime of impulse, passion. I didn’t hear voices raised in anger—there wasn’t time for you to have a confrontation with Flo.”
Keely felt an immense weight drop from her shoulders. “Why did you walk out last night?”
“I apologize.” Max touched the knot on his forehead and winced. “My head had been beat on like a rocker’s bass and when you jumped on me for not coming to your defense, I faded.”
“I’m the one who owes you an apology.” This time Keely initiated physical contact, running her fingers lightly across the back of his hand. “I have no right to expect loyalty after the suspicions I’ve entertained about you. I’m sorry, Max.”
He smiled and the store room brightened. “Apology accepted. Now we have to convince Gifford and her pet gorilla that we aren’t in collusion. To that end, I’ve been doing a little investigating of my own.” Max indicated the folder. “The key to everything seems to be Flo. A woman who skewered the rich in print, yet continually sought out their company.”
Keely’s temperature had risen a few degrees. A symptom of the plague or a more pleasurable condition? “You believe me?”
“It’s not a question of belief,” Max said quietly. “But of faith.”
Faith, one of the loveliest words in the English language! “Gifford’s not going to award us good conduct medals and cross us off her suspect list without sufficient reason.”
“Exactly.” Max opened the folder. “As soon as I realized Flo had Feast of Italy in her gunsights, I called my Uncle Tony. His firm does background investigations for corporate headhunters. I hoped he’d come up with ammunition that would enable me to fight back. I received his report this morning.”
Keely gazed at the folder as if it were the Holy Grail. “Let’s hear it.”
Max eased down into a sitting position beside her. “I’ll give you the edited version. Flo’s father owned the controlling interest in a chain of drug stores. Until she went away to college, her life as a rich kid was fairly uneventful, but Berkeley was a hotbed of activity in the sixties and she dove right in. She wrote inflammatory articles for an underground student newspaper and took as her lover the leader of ‘Strike Back,’ a radical protest group notorious for the violence of its methods.”
Keely envisioned a younger Flo in the arms of a hard-eyed, hard-muscled rebel under a painted peace sign on the filthy wall of a commune.
“He was killed by police during a confrontation and Flo’s daddy managed to extricate his little girl by tossing around money and influence in equally lavish portions. Flo, still in shock, was hustled back to respectability and a hastily arranged marriage to a shoe magnate.
“Ten years later, Hubby was killed in a car accident. Daddy died and Flo found herself in control of two fortunes. She occupied herself with charity work until she came to Lake Hope and bought the newspaper.”
Keely stared at the pile of unsorted tapes—snatches of lives recorded for posterity. She thought of a woman losing the person for whom she’d abandoned every standard and felt again the searing heat of the rage which had consumed Flo Netherton.
“That explains the needles in her social column,” Keely murmured, “the malice she felt toward the wealthy.”
Frowning, Max tapped the folder. “It’s still not clear to me. She was one of the rich herself.”
“But she’d been on the other side! The police, the symbol of the system she’d tried to overthrow, killed her lover and she survived only by compromising with that same system. How she must have hated herself, hated everything and everyone who reminded her of what she’d lost.”
“Such insight into a woman you met only a few times! Why did she have a grudge against you, Keely? You’re not one of the rich. You’re a working woman, trying to make a living.”
“I’m not a victim,” Keely said slowly. “I didn’t fit into the categories Flo created in her mind. She spoke bitterly of spoiled society princesses and I think she saw me as a willing handmaiden to upper class excesses. She was especially scornful of the money wasted on theme weddings.”
“If she meant to punish society’s mavens, she certainly succeeded with that poison pen of hers.” Max shook his head. “Having to invite her to an affair must have been like luring a tigress in to share your dinner, never knowing when the beast will turn and sink its fangs into you.”
Keely touched Max’s arm, let her hand rest there, enjoying the warmth of his skin beneath her finger tips. “We’re suspects in her murder.”
Max’s gaze travelled up to her face, settled on her mouth. “We’re innocent.”
“Innocent,” she whispered, achingly conscious of him.
Max leaned forward until his breath warmed her cheek. She looked into blue, blue eyes, found herself mesmerized by the intensity of his gaze. She didn’t remember moving toward him but their mouths met, their bodies surging together eagerly. Tapes clattered as the pile was knocked to the four winds again, but Keely was only conscious of the solid warmth of Max’s body, the shoulders broad enough to bear any burden, his mouth demanding, yet tender.
She wanted to rip away the black rimmed buttons of his shirt and peel back the cotton. Her fingers ached to explore the tautness of his belly and below. Her body became a Fourth of July sparkler, fizzing, hissing, throwing off brilliant sparks of light as Max’s hands caressed her.
Keely exulted in her supple surrender to his embrace. His mouth tasted of the thousands of different flavor combinations he’d sampled and she could go on kissing him until she died and not exhaust the possibilities to savor—
“KEELY!”
Max took his time in removing the enticing banquet of his mouth from Keely’s. Dazed, she turned her head. Ida’s plump hands gripped the teddy bear dangling around her neck in a stranglehold. “For a horrifying moment, I thought Anna Marie had gotten out of her bed and tracked me down.”
“Talk, you said. I just want to talk to her.” Ida directed the words to Max but her fascinated gaze was fixed on Keely’s flushed face. “I heard noises and thought you might need me.”
Conscious of Ida’s amusement, Keely brushed her lips with the back of her hand. She felt as if her mouth was outlined in neon bright lipstick. “Everything’s under control.”
“I can see that.” The receptionist had recovered her customary aplomb. “You two were doing just fine on your own.”
Keely got to her feet, scorning Max’s proffered hand, and brushed at the dust marking her butterscotch slacks. “We were planning strategy,” she said primly.
Max, comfortably seated on the floor, uttered a loud guffaw and Keely blushed again. “Go away, Ida.”
“All right, I’m going.” Ida grinned. “I’ve got to get out more. The most exciting part of my life are the show specials on my shopping club—and those Collectable Collection nights are looking pretty dull right now.”
“Mimi had good reason to be terrified.” Keely frowned, seeing the salon owner’s frightened face instead of the traffic. “She let slip that someone threatened to burn down her salon.”
“Apparently you and Doug weren’t the only recipients of mysterious phone calls.” Max braked, allowing the engine to idle. Today he’d abandoned the catering van in favor of a black Ford Bronco. “If our theory is correct—and God help us if it isn’t—someone’s targeting the wedding service providers. We find out who and why and we just might wriggle off Gifford’s top ten list.”
He’d stopped in front of “Jessica’s Garden.” Jumping out, Max hurried around to hold the passenger door open for Keely.
Gazing at the flower-filled
windows of the shop, Keely felt an unexpected need for support. “While I’m talking to Jessica, what will you be doing?”
“Questioning the gnome who made cakes for both weddings.”
“Gunter?” Keely smiled involuntarily. “I doubt if you’ll get anything out of him. He prefers making sugar bells to conversation.”
“He’ll talk to me,” Max said grimly.
Her partner possessed enough confidence for the two of them, Keely thought as she entered the humid atmosphere of the florist’s shop. A bell tinkled merrily, signalling her arrival.
“Be right with you!” a voice caroled.
Keely moved aimlessly. On previous visits, she’d feasted her soul on the breathtaking colors and perfumed air, but last night had changed her outlook. She was a murder suspect and Jessica no longer a friend, but a source.
Refrigerated cases lining the wall held cut flowers in milky white vases. Poppies jostled in the coolness with roses and open-throated snapdragons. Buttercups and pink campion flanked an arrangement of saucy parrot tulips. Geraniums and African violets bloomed on cedar tiers and ferns stretched out feathery tendrils to brush Keely’s shoulders as she passed. Ficus trees competed with crape myrtle for floor space.
Keely was studying a hanging spiral of grapevine entwined with ivy when the curtain at the back twitched and a frail woman in a cranberry shaded smock emerged, wiping her hands on a towel. “Sorry for the delay,” she said gaily. “How may I help—”
She stopped in mid-sentence, color draining from her round face as she recognized her visitor.
“Hi, Jess.” Keely pretended to admire a potted jonquil. “Got a minute and a cup of coffee?”
Jess pushed back feathered black bangs and shot a nervous glance toward the plate glass windows. “Of course, Keely. You know me, always ready for a chat.”
Keely found herself hustled behind the curtain into the work room where her hostess dropped her arm as if she’d just learned that Keely had leprosy. “You know where I keep the cups. I have to finish these delphs before I can take a break.”
In the cupboard above the sink, Keely selected a chunky pink mug that proclaimed “For Florists, Life is a Bed of Roses” and poured coffee from the pot kept perpetually simmering. She walked over to the plastic-covered table where Jessica conditioned flowers and composed spectacular arrangements.
Wedding Chimes, Assorted Crimes Page 18