by Dee Holmes
Now he wondered if that intense focus was directed toward getting things settled at her brother’s so she could return home and get away from him.
That possibility annoyed him, and he cursed himself. He should be pleased if she made the first move to end their involvement. It was what he wanted. Wasn’t it? Of course it was.
To Molly, he said, “We don’t have to do that today. Tomorrow—”
“Today. There’s no reason to postpone it. Vern lived there, and so there has to be more information about him there than anywhere else. Pascale thought I had a notebook that I didn’t have. Maybe that’s where it is.”
“The police already searched his apartment. They didn’t find anything. And, by the way, while you were dressing, I thumbed through the album. Mostly they’re pictures of his wife and kid. Vern was too smart to leave anything incriminating lying around.”
“He was, wasn’t he? He was very smart. I just wish he’d been as smart about his health.” Molly paused, quiet for a few seconds and then sighed. “I want my brother to leave a positive legacy, and I’m the only one who can give him that. He certainly sacrificed enough in his life to deserve to be remembered for more than being a hit man. If he’d been hired to kill someone, whoever did the hiring is going to hire someone else. Someone is set to die, and I want to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Hunt glanced over at her. A zillion questions clamored in his mind, most of them reminding him he was totally clueless. Here he’d thought she’d been thinking about him this morning, and instead she’d been concentrating on her brother’s reputation. His ego collapsed as if it had taken a direct hit. “You seem to have it all figured out.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Right up to saving some poor bastard’s life. You do realize this hit wasn’t contracted on some choirboy.”
She turned toward him, her eyes sharp. “That doesn’t mean he deserves to be murdered.”
“I didn’t say that. But the question of making sure nothing happens to him is not your responsibility. Sean and the police will handle it.”
“And what have they done so far?”
“They’re doing what they can with what they have, Molly. That’s how police work. One step at a time.”
“So far I’m unimpressed. The first time I heard about any notebook was from Pascale.”
“Because the police didn’t know about it until Pascale tried to snatch you. Besides, the cops aren’t trying to impress you. Their intention is to not screw up by acting before they have the evidence.”
“Then maybe I can help things along. Pascale wanted that notebook badly, so obviously it’s important to him.”
“Probably. Since Pascale and your brother had a falling out when Vern crossed over to Solozi’s outfit, the notebook may have inside information on Pascale that Vern knew would send him to prison.”
“Blackmail?”
Hunt nodded. “Now, with Vern dead, Pascale is desperate to find the notebook.”
“Before someone else does,” Molly mused. She opened the glove compartment and took out the map they’d studied when they arrived in Fernwood. She glanced at the street sign they passed and then looked back at the map. “Take a left at the next intersection. Ludlow is three streets away.”
He followed her directions. They located the apartment house, a well-maintained brownstone in a middle-class neighborhood. Hunt was a little surprised. Not that he thought Wallace couldn’t have afforded a nice place, but the encounter with Myrtle had left the impression of some two-floor walk-up with a palm reader’s sign in one of the windows.
Molly was out the door before Hunt had a chance to stop her. But he caught her at the front entrance. “What’s the big hurry?”
“I told you, I want to get this done and over with.”
“No sale. You’re as prickly as a cat who rolled in a buzzy bush.”
“I decided that after my encounter with Pascale, I needed to pull myself together and look after Vern’s interests.”
“Which are?”
“Finding the brother I loved and spent nineteen years looking for. I had him for a few hours, and now all that’s left are his things. Pascale gave me pictures—those showed me a side of Vern that couldn’t be hired to murder people. He played tennis, he collected exotic fish, and the woman from the aquarium store told me how Vern worried when one of the fish wouldn’t eat. Does that sound like some wild-eyed killer?”
“No one said he was a wild-eyed killer.”
“But a killer.”
“Yes.”
She drew herself up. “Are you coming or do you want to wait out here?”
He rolled his eyes. “Lead the way.”
Inside, they climbed a wooden staircase, turned a corner and stopped in front of the third door. Molly took the key from her purse and Hunt plucked it from her hand.
“I can do it.”
“Humor me, okay?”
He unlocked the door and, keeping Molly behind him, eased it open.
“Son of a bitch.” he muttered in disgust.
“What is it?”
“The cops didn’t do this. Someone else has been in here.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MOLLY STOOD FROZEN in the doorway, her gasp of horror and outrage barely audible. Her hands covered her mouth.
Ahead of her, Hunt walked cautiously into the room. He’d left his suit jacket in the car and had rolled back the cuffs of his shirt. His hands on his hips, he shook his head in obvious disgust.
The room looked as if a cyclone had blown through it. Furniture overturned. Cushions slashed. Desk drawers dumped, their contents flung everywhere. An armchair supported a tipped-over brass floor lamp. The parchment shade was crushed and wet under the broken aquarium. Fish lay lifeless and smelly on the hardwood floor.
Hunt opened windows, while Molly turned away, nausea roiling through her stomach. He came back to her side and urged her to sit down in a chair he had moved closer to the breeze blowing into the room.
“You okay?”
She nodded, wondering if she’d ever be completely okay again. At the same time, without Hunt with her, these past few days and past moments would have been impossibly difficult and wrenchingly painful to deal with.
“Stay here while I take a look around.” He was gone a few minutes. “Bedroom is the same. Kitchen isn’t as bad. Whatever they were looking for, they must have assumed wouldn’t be in the kitchen. Here. Found this in the refrigerator.”
He handed her a can of ginger ale, and when she made no move to open it, he popped the top. The can was icy, and Hunt urged it to her mouth. She took a sip and the fizziness danced on her tongue, refreshing her sandpapery mouth. She took another drink before handing it back.
He took a long, long swallow and then put the can aside.
“All this time it’s been like this,” Molly murmured as much to herself as to Hunt.
Hunt was examining some papers he’d picked up. He stopped and looked at her. “All this time what’s been like what? What are you talking about?”
“Since Vern died. His apartment has been like this.”
“Probably not. The police searched it, but Sean said someone had beat them to it. My guess is this was done around the time Pascale grabbed you.”
“I think I interrupted them.”
Hunt scowled, righted another chair, then sat down opposite her. “Molly, I’m missing something. You interrupted who?”
In that instant, Molly knew she should have mentioned making the phone call and the odd response. How silly she’d been then. My God, she’d just thought the man was rude when in fact he was probably some goon who’d come to search Vern’s apartment.
“Molly?”
Again, she covered her face with her hands.
Hunt pulled them away and cupped her chin, but when he tried to get her to look at him, she wouldn’t. “Sweetheart, you’re scaring the hell out of me. Interrupted who? What’s going on?”
She had to hold him; she had to
be in his arms. She needed him to anchor her. She slipped onto his lap and locked her arms around him.
Hunt’s hands went to her hips, then her bottom. Molly squirmed closer. He worked his hands beneath the material of her skirt and found the satin panties.
“What the hell am I doing?” he muttered almost to himself before yanking his hands away and pulling her dress back into place. He moved his hands higher. His voice was gruff when he said, “Talk to me, Molly. Come on.”
She swallowed. “I called here the morning after Vern died.”
Scowling, Hunt leaned back so that he could see her face. “You called this number? Why?”
“I thought Vern might have asked a neighbor to feed his fish or bring in his mail and that I might get lucky and find someone here so I could ask some questions.”
“Questions about what?”
She gave him a withering look and got off of his lap. He didn’t try to stop her. Molly folded her arms across her chest, unsure whether she was disappointed or hurt by Hunt’s lack of intuitiveness. He didn’t get it. After all she’d told him about her past, all the angst and desperate sense of isolation she’d felt from Vern. Still, he didn’t get it.
“About my brother, for heaven’s sake. The brother the whole world knows better than I do.”
His scowl deepened, as if he knew what was coming.
“If you give someone the key to your apartment, that means you trust them. I thought if I talked to someone Vern trusted, they could give me some answers about him.”
Hunt shook his head. “You hoped some neighbor was going to say he was a saint who bought food for the homeless?”
She stiffened at his obvious scorn. “I don’t know what I was expecting. I was having a hard time dealing with Vern’s death.”
“So you called and chatted with some jerk who was probably connected to Pascale. What revelations did he make?”
“Stop being so snide. The man was rude and hung up on me.”
“What a surprise,” Hunt muttered, rolling his eyes. “Did you tell him your name or that you were his sister?”
“Obviously I didn’t know who they were.”
“Did you identify yourself?” he asked, undeterred.
She paced the room, weaving around the items scattered on the floor. When she stopped, a few feet between them, she asked, “How can you make an ordinary statement sound like top-secret information?” When he lifted one eyebrow and stared at her with a “You’re stalling” look, she snapped, “All right! Yes, I told him my name.”
“Damn!” Hunt raked his hand across his face, looking weary and frustrated. “No wonder Pascale honed in on you like a missile. He had a name, he read the newspapers, figured you had Vern’s important things, put two and two together, made his appearance, found you and bingo. You sent him an invitation!”
Molly resumed her pacing, her irritation with him twisting like a corkscrew. She whirled on him, her hands planted firmly on her hips, her eyes furious.
“Well, I’m sorry I’m such a idiot, Mr. Gresham. I should have asked the expert ex-cop exactly what to do. Unlike you, I’m not suspicious of everyone I meet or talk to. Of course, if I were, then your volunteering to protect me would have been much easier, wouldn’t it? I certainly wouldn’t have gone off with Pascale if I were as brilliant as you. Only a simpleton would have trusted someone because they showed her pictures of her brother.”
He reached for her. “Molly…”
She stepped away. “And don’t patronize me with platitudes and empty apologies. Might I remind you that without those moments with Pascale, we wouldn’t know about this notebook?”
“I can’t argue with that,” he said softly.
His comment took the punch from her argument. Suddenly she was tired and wishing she could be anywhere but where she was. She fiddled with the ring Hunt had given her, thinking she should take it off and hand it back. Pascale had been clearly skeptical that Hunt was her husband. No one was fooled. The ring was as much of a farce as everything else between them.
Yet last night had felt so real, so wonderful and fulfilling. She shrugged off the memory—an aberration, a few cherished moments with Hunt all wrapped in one night.
Picking up the ginger ale can, she took a swallow and put it back down. “I know you don’t understand me or my take on all of this, but you’ve never had anything like this happen to you. It’s just one horrible discovery after another. I’m almost glad I haven’t found Francine and Brandon. She’s probably some horrible witch who gets pleasure out of hurting people.”
Hunt drew her close and, when she tried to push him away, held her fast. Finally she relented. She hated arguing with him; she even hated being at odds with him.
Hunt said, “Shhh. I should have tried harder to see this the way you do. And I shouldn’t have expected you to do things the way I would have. I know this has been rough, but you’re trying to re-create an image that—”
She stiffened, gearing up for another defense of her brother. Hunt retreated.
“Okay, okay. Maybe beneath it all, Vern was a swell guy. Obviously he loved you and cared about you. Can’t that be enough?”
She wanted it to be, but their separation and her work to find him had been her life. Now her need to know about him was all that she had left. “Is it enough for you that Kristin loved and cared about you? Losing her has changed your life, too.”
“That’s different.”
He tried to pull away, but this time Molly wouldn’t let him. “Different only in that your shock and anger were directed at the cancer. You had the answers and couldn’t change them, but I bet you tried.”
He gave her a hard look, and she knew she’d hit a nerve. Hurrying on, she said, “I bet you insisted Kristin get a second and even a third opinion. I bet you looked into alternative treatments all the while telling yourself you were wasting time, but unable to stop. And I’d even wager you made a few furious phone calls when you didn’t get answers. You loved her, and you desperately wanted someone to tell you it was all a mistake, a misdiagnosis, anything that would mean she wasn’t going to die.”
She took a shaky breath. The paleness she saw in his face, the raw truth his eyes revealed told her more than words that Hunt had been as desperate in his denial of Kristin’s cancer as Molly had been of her brother’s career.
“Perhaps that’s why you were so determined I face the truth about Vern.” Molly pressed her hand against his heart and felt the pound of truth. In that moment she hurt for him and all that he’d gone through, all that he’d lost and been unable to prevent.
In a soothing voice, she said, “Hunt, don’t you see? You at least had answers, as cruel and horrible as they were. I have no answers and no way of knowing if they could have been changed. Vern had no time to tell me why he became what he was. So I’m left with endless questions.”
Hunt pushed away from her, turning so that she couldn’t see his face. His voice was low and bitter and ragged with pain. “I hated her for dying. I hated that I couldn’t do anything, that some goddamn medical test was screwed up and Kristin was paying for that with her life. For months after the funeral, I lived in a rage I couldn’t shake. It didn’t matter how much I drank or how many women I had sex with or how much I was told that my reactions weren’t unusual, the fury didn’t go away.”
Then he sagged into a chair, throwing his head back and staring at the ceiling. “I can’t believe I’m saying all this to you.” Then, as if he’d broken some self-induced code of silence, he said bitterly, “I never talk about Kristin and what happened.”
“We did before,” she reminded him gently. “You told me about the house and the diagnosis.”
“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” he said, sounding astonished.
Molly felt honored that he’d been so open with her. Even with his sister, Molly knew he’d been closemouthed. “Kristin is an off-limits subject,” Denise had told her shortly after Molly learned Hunt’s wife had died.
Molly perched on
the arm of his chair and placed her hand on his arm. “Maybe it proves that in some fundamental way we are alike. We’ve both lost people we loved. It’s made us angry because it came when we thought life was at its best.”
Hunt had noted the change in direction the conversation had taken. In some strange way she had made them emotional allies. Hardly a position of strength for him, nor did it help his denial of anything between them. He sighed. Maybe she was right. “You’re wrong.”
She gave him a direct look. “No, I’m not, but you don’t have to agree with me for me to know it’s true.” Then in a segue of logic that made Hunt’s mind spin, she added, “Like last night, you said you didn’t want to make love with me, but I knew you did.”
“Yeah? And I suppose that came from your vast storehouse of knowledge about sex.”
She reached up and patted his cheek, not at all put off by his remark. “I know about you and that’s enough.”
Hunt cursed and moved away from her. The August breeze blew in the smell of someone cooking on a grill, the sound of laughter and a dog barking.
Finally Molly said, “If whoever I spoke to that day had searched here and found what he wanted, then Pascale wouldn’t have approached me. You said the police already searched. Pascale’s men must have come back here. In fact, since Pascale and Vern were enemies—” She grabbed Hunt’s arm, her excitement racing. “I just thought of something.”
“What?”
“The pictures. I bet they were taken from here after I called. Once they found out who I was, Pascale wanted something he could use to work on the grieving sister and gain my trust.”
Hunt looked thoughtful, then nodded. “Possible. He got the photos and then used the album as the bait to get you to go out to the car with him.”
“Yes.”