Hot Property

by Sherryl Woods

  “And others.”

  He shook his head ruefully. “And we thought we had been so careful.”

  “Believe me, there were no rumors. I asked some of the most observant gossips about that. It was little things, an observation here, a comment there. They added up.”

  “I see.”

  Made bold by the crowd around them, Molly dared to ask, “Did you kill him?”

  Laughing brown eyes met hers. “You are very brave.”

  “Not so brave. There are witnesses everywhere.”

  “Foolhardy, perhaps.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I can’t deny you had the opportunity, probably even a motive.”

  “And what would that motive be?”

  “You’re in love with Drucilla. Allan might have proved troublesome, if you had aspirations to her and her money.”

  “I wanted Drucilla,” he emphasized. “Not her money. I have more than enough of my own. I have businesses in Panama and throughout South America. They are not suffering. I would gladly share it all just for her love. She is a remarkable woman. At my age, after a lifetime of travel and experience, it is possible to recognize such value. I doubt that Allan ever appreciated her as he should have. He was a cold, crass man.”

  “You still haven’t denied killing him.”

  He shrugged, a subtle lift of his shoulders. “Would my denial make so very much difference? You will reach your own conclusions, no matter what I say.”

  “Do you have any theories about who might have stabbed him? Was there an argument in the cardroom when you were there?”

  “No. If anything, there was a rather dull discussion of the upcoming baseball season. Allan was a Mets fan, I believe. Others preferred the Yankees. All rather tedious. Allan and I spoke in the corridor, and then I left. I presume he returned to defend his team.”

  A shadow fell across them just then. Molly looked up as Jack Kingsley pulled up a third chair. “Mind if I join you?” he asked, though he obviously wasn’t waiting for the invitation. “God, it’s hot out here.” The freckles across his brow, where his sandy hair had receded, stood out even more prominently than usual. He blotted his face with a rumpled handkerchief.

  “The kids look as though they’re enjoying themselves,” Molly observed, letting the conversation with Juan about the murder drop. “How long has Ocean Manor held the egg hunt?”

  “I started it when I came,” he said. “Used to do it at a condo up in Jacksonville when my own kids were small. There was some griping about the noise the first year, but after that everyone pitched in to help. Sometimes I think there are more grandkids here for this than come during the Christmas holidays.”

  “Are your own children here today?” Molly asked.

  “No, they’re too old for this. Both boys are in college now. One’s studying law at Yale, as a matter of fact. The other one’s in premed.”

  “You and your wife must be very proud of them.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’m most proud of. They’ve never gotten into drugs. Raising kids these days is a crapshoot, with all that stuff around. You’ll see for yourself, Mrs. DeWitt. Once Brian gets to high school, even junior high, you’ll have to watch like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t get mixed up in the wrong crowd. Hard to tell, too. They don’t wear signs around their necks announcing it. In my day, you could pick out the tough kids, the ducktail haircuts and black leather jackets, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. Today they look just like the kids next door.”

  Molly suddenly felt chilled, even though the temperature was already a humid eighty-five or higher. Only the reappearance of Brian, with Juan’s grandnieces in tow, warmed her. With dirt and grass stains from head to toe, he looked wonderfully normal. Francesca and Margarita were equally disheveled. Only Elena’s dress remained spotless, her patent leather shoes shiny, her long dark hair unmussed. She carried a basket filled to overflowing with brightly colored plastic eggs.

  “Tío, we won,” Francesca announced, twirling until she was breathless.

  “And what did you win, niña?”

  “Candy, of course,” Kingsley said, smiling at them benevolently. “What would Easter be without lots of chocolate bunnies, right, girls? Come along and I’ll see that you get your prizes.”

  Molly glanced at Brian. “Where are your eggs?”

  He kept his eyes on the ground. “I gave them to Francesca,” he mumbled. “She couldn’t find any.”

  Molly exchanged a glance with Juan, whose lips were twitching with amusement.

  “You are truly a gentleman,” he said to Brian.

  “Yeah, well, it’s just a dumb game anyway.”

  Not so dumb, Molly thought, if it taught him such a valuable lesson about chivalry.

  An interesting concept, chivalry. Juan Gonzalez, with his dignified, courtly ways, personified it. Would he have quietly provided Drucilla with an alibi for her own whereabouts at the time of the murder? In effect, that’s what his own alibi had done. It had excluded him from suspicion, but it had also taken her out of the picture as well.

  It was something a man deeply in love just might do.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  The phone rang at one-hour intervals throughout the night. Each time Molly could hear breathing on the line, but while that was menacing enough, there were no verbal threats. She successfully resisted the urge to call Michael and ask him to come back, but by morning she was shaken and exhausted. It took every ounce of determination in her to drag herself to the office.

  Jeannette took one look and began fussing over her. She poured a cup of strong, black coffee and brought it to Molly’s desk. “It looks as if you need this, yes?”

  Molly held her head up with effort. “Keep it coming and I might survive.” She was too groggy to be sure why she wanted to, unless it was to figure out if Juan Gonzalez was trying to protect Drucilla because he was convinced of her guilt.

  “What’s on the agenda for the day?” she asked Jeannette.

  “Larry Milsap called.”

  Molly groaned. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. He’s lost the permits again.”

  “No, actually, he wants to stop by to discuss an ad he’s doing next month. He was thinking maybe Brian would like to be in it.”

  Molly’s flagging spirits revived ever so slightly. Brian would be thrilled. “What’s the product?”

  “He didn’t say. He’ll be here at eleven unless I call to cancel.”

  “I should be able to stay awake that long.”

  Jeannette looked troubled. “More calls?”

  Molly nodded.

  “You told the police?”

  “Not yet. I made a note of the times. I doubt if they could have traced them. There wasn’t time.”

  “Maybe you should get one of those call screeners from the phone company. That would tell you the number calling, yes?”

  “Jeannette, you’re a genius. Why didn’t I think of that? I’d forgotten that they’d finally been approved.” She dragged out the two volumes of the phone book—A to K and L to Z—muttering about the ongoing frustration of always picking the wrong tome to locate a listing. In one moment of absolute fury the previous year, she’d cut apart the white and yellow pages in each volume, then put all the white pages together in one functional book and all the yellow in another. This time, however, she actually found the phone company customer service number on the first try. Within minutes she had arranged for the caller-ID service. By the time she hung up, she was actually looking forward to the next middle-of-the-night call.

  After that the day improved considerably. To her astonishment the meeting with Larry Milsap began on time. He breezed in wearing jeans and a flowered Hawaiian shirt, his brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Despite his inattention to clothes and his maddening disregard for details, he was a genius at production. There was an unmistakable “look” to anything he did on screen. If his talented eye had spotted something special in Brian, Molly was too much the proud
mother to disagree. They arranged for a screen test for Brian the following week.

  “It’s a formality, sweetie. He’ll be perfect,” Larry said, packing up his briefcase and heading for the door. “The kid already has a mouth on him. I could probably give him the product and let him ad-lib some of that sass, but the agency will provide a script. Thanks, hon. You’re an angel.”

  Molly took the sweetie, hon, and angel in stride. He was the first person in days who hadn’t asked about the murder. By the time he left, she actually thought the day was going pretty well. She ate lunch at her desk, read a script for a producer scheduled to begin shooting in July, and helped Jeannette catch up on the filing. It was nearly four when Vince buzzed her desk. Startled by the unexpected formality, she stuck her head into his office. “What’s with you? You usually just shout.”

  The words were out before she took a good look at his expression. She had seen Vince look smug, sullen and superior, but this was the first time she’d seen him so somber. It somehow answered her question and made her very edgy. She stepped inside.

  “What is it?” she asked, standing in front of his desk, her hands clenching the back of a chair. “Something’s the matter, isn’t it?”

  “Sit down.”

  His mood was contagious. She suddenly felt very serious herself. “Maybe I ought to stand.”

  “Suit yourself. I just got off the phone with the county manager.”

  When he paused to let the significance of that sink in, she prodded, “And? Did he cut our budget? Eliminate the entire parks department? What?”

  “He says you’ve been meddling in that murder investigation.”

  “So?”

  “He wants it to stop.”

  Molly had a hard time accepting the notion that the county manager had nothing better to do in the midst of a near-catastrophic budget crisis than meddle in her private life. “Why does he care?”

  “I’m not sure why matters. He’s the boss.”

  “Not good enough. What the hell does he expect me to do? Somebody has to look out for my interests. First, I’m considered a suspect. Then somebody starts warning me that I’m in danger. Am I supposed to sit quietly and wait until I become the next victim or land in jail?”

  Vince looked startled by that. “Do you honestly think someone might be after you?”

  “Vince, I don’t know. These calls shake me up. I had more last night that I haven’t even told the police about yet. I actually considered tucking a butcher knife under my pillow. Then I thought about Allan Winecroft and decided against it. I figured it might end up in my back.”

  “Is the caller threatening you?”

  “He didn’t last night, but it’s pretty obvious that someone thinks I know something about the murder.”

  “All the more reason to sit tight and let the police do their job. I assume they’re taking the calls seriously. You want me to call the director?”

  She shook her head. “Detective O’Hara was hanging around on an unofficial basis, but he can’t be there all the time.”

  Vince’s eyebrows rose. “Maybe he’s just using the calls as an excuse to stick close. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  “Trust me, the man is all business.” There was no need for Vince to know that both she and Michael had recognized the potential for more intimate things developing. At the moment, though, the mysterious Bianca stood squarely between them.

  “He’s practically engaged,” she added for good measure. It was a reminder to her as much as to Vince.

  “The woman must love knowing he’s hanging out with you.”

  “I doubt if she’s thrilled,” Molly admitted. Or maybe she was projecting her own jealousies onto the other woman. Perhaps Bianca was one of those saintly, understanding souls who had enough self-confidence to weather any competition without turning green with envy. Besides, no one had said Molly was any competition, least of all Molly. She’d learned long ago to be careful what she prayed for. She’d once wanted Hal DeWitt and been granted that misguided prayer.

  “Maybe she’s making the calls,” Vince suggested.

  “The calls are the reason he’s there. I doubt she’d give him an excuse to linger.”

  “No. No. Maybe she didn’t start them, but maybe she’s checking up on him now, calling to see if he’s around. You know how these possessive chicks get.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said nobly. “But it doesn’t surprise me that you do. Forget this fascination of yours with Michael O’Hara’s girl friend for a minute. I’m more interested in figuring out who put a bug in the county manager’s ear.”

  “From what you just said, maybe the girl did it. Benitez did suggest you take a little time off, get away for a while. That’d be a good way to get you out of the picture. He says you have leave coming.”

  Molly stared at him incredulously. “He checked my personnel records?”

  “Apparently so.”

  Molly finally sat down. “Vince, don’t you think that’s a little odd? Doesn’t the county manager have more important things to worry about than whether I have a few days of leave accumulated?”

  “Frankly, I had the feeling he was less concerned about your vacation time than he was about my cutting you loose unless you got your nose out of police business.”

  “Cutting me loose?” Her voice rose to a shrill tone she didn’t recognize. She forced it down. “Does that mean what I think it means?” That, more than a simple phone call, would certainly explain Vince’s sober expression.

  “You got it. He recommended that I fire you if you didn’t cooperate. I told him it was a ridiculous request, that I couldn’t let you go without cause, but he wasn’t buying. He suggested I try insubordination for starters. I got the feeling more heads would roll if he wasn’t satisfied.”

  “Meaning yours?” She could feel her hands turn to ice.

  Vince shrugged. “There are only so many of us around over here, and he’s been looking for an excuse to shake this place up again.” He shook his head. “As if last year didn’t turn us inside out.”

  Molly’s temper, usually slow to rise, was rapidly reaching the boiling point. She leaped up and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get to the bottom of this. I won’t let my career, or yours, for that matter, be jeopardized because some jerk downtown is getting pressured.”

  As she stormed out, she heard Vince’s chair crash against the wall. He caught up with her in the parking lot. He was sweating profusely. “Come on, Molly,” he coaxed. “You’re going to back off, right?”

  “That wasn’t what I had in mind.”

  “Come on, you know blowing off steam won’t solve anything. Think about it. Look, I’ll even buy you and the kid a couple of tickets for California. You could make it a business trip, save the vacation time. Make some contacts, schmooze with the studio execs. Somebody needs to do it soon anyway.”

  Molly was beyond being cajoled or bribed. “Not on your life. I’m going to find out exactly who is responsible for having the county manager make that call. If I have to, I’ll make so much noise the officials at the Metro Building will think they’re in the middle of an LA earthquake.”

  “Oh, shit,” Vince murmured, but he didn’t try to stop her.

  She used her car phone to call police headquarters in search of Michael. It was entirely possible, even after their improved rapport, that he’d decided to exert a little official pressure on her. She didn’t think he’d have the gall to suggest that she be fired, but maybe the county manager had simply gotten carried away.

  He picked up on the first ring. “O’Hara.” His terse tone indicated his mood was about as pleasant as her own.

  “I need to see you. I’m on my way.”

  “Molly?”

  If she hadn’t been so furious already, she might have considered his insulting failure to recognize her voice as a reason to snap. “Yes,” she said tersely. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
/>   “I’m heading out the door in five. Can’t it wait?”

  “Unless you’re going to investigate the murder of a top county official, no.”

  “You sound upset,” he said cautiously.

  “Bingo. No wonder you get so many commendations. Bye.”

  “Wait. Molly! Molly, are you listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll meet you at the soccer field. The kids have a game in an hour. We should have time to talk. Bring Brian and we’ll have dinner after.”