Hot Secret

by Sherryl Woods

  “Well, then? Anyone capable of murder?”

  He considered the question thoughtfully. “Daniel has the temper for it,” he said finally. “Laura’s probably calculating enough. Duke might do it to protect himself. I don’t know about the others.”

  “Veronica?”

  “Not a chance,” he said without hesitation. “She vents all her anger with words. She’d cut a man to ribbons with that sharp tongue of hers, but then she’s ready to kiss and make up. She even sent a bottle of champagne to me after she publicly shredded a scene of mine day before yesterday.”

  Satisfied that his observations jibed with her own, Molly picked up the pace. Maybe the heat would sweat some of the alcohol out of the writer’s system.

  Minutes later, she delivered a reasonably sober Jonathan Fine to Laura. She felt almost guilty for doing it when Laura promptly began berating him. Jonathan pulled himself together sufficiently to defend the pages of script she wanted cut.

  “Do you want this movie to make a bit of sense?” he finally snapped in exasperation.

  “Of course, but we can handle some of this in cover shots, second unit stuff. We don’t need dialogue.”

  “Maybe we should have hired a cast of mimes,” Jonathan retorted.

  From her place beside Jeannette, Molly cheered the return of his fighting spirit.

  “You look pleased with yourself,” Michael noted, coming up behind her.

  “Just watching a shift in the balance of power.”

  “Laura Crain?”

  “Yep.”

  “Who’s that with her?”

  “Jonathan Fine, the screenwriter. She’s been giving him fits from the beginning, but today she seems even more tense than usual. Want me to introduce you, or would you rather wait for one of her better days?”

  Michael watched Laura’s tirade with evident fascination for several minutes. The look on his face might not have been so worrisome if Molly hadn’t known how attracted he was to volatile women. During one unforgettable scene at the soccer field, she’d seen for herself how quickly Bianca’s temper flared and how Michael had seemed to enjoy the passionate bout.

  “Michael?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll introduce myself,” he said and crossed the room.

  Laura listened, her expression wary, as he showed her his badge. “I don’t have time for this,” she snapped.

  “Make time,” Michael countered in a friendly but adamant tone. He pulled up a chair.

  Molly was prepared to gloat, but unfortunately Sergeant Jenkins arrived just in time to take the wind out of her sails.

  “You and me,” he said, gesturing toward the door. “Out there.”

  “We could talk here,” Molly said hopefully. She wanted witnesses. Jenkins looked capable of a little police intimidation. He’d probably stop short of outright brutality.

  He shook his head. “Now.”

  Molly followed him into the hallway. “I came straight down to the station when you called,” she said hurriedly, hoping to forestall some of his anger. “You were just leaving.”

  “I know. I know. I saw you lurking around out there in the hall. Don’t think I don’t know who’s responsible for getting O’Hara over here. Don’t expect him to bail you out.”

  “I don’t expect anything from him.”

  “Then maybe you’ll explain to me what the hell you were doing at that motel on Eighth Street yesterday. Unless you’re having an affair you’re trying to keep secret, my guess is you were paying a call on one of my prime suspects. Why’d you go chasing after Francesca after I’d specifically told you to keep your nose out of this investigation?”

  “You seem to know it all. Why bother asking me?”

  “Because I want to make a point. I get very irritated when amateurs mess with my case. My ulcer starts acting up. There’s not enough antacid on the face of the earth to make it quit, and that makes me cranky. When I get cranky, I start making calls. Official calls. Are you catching my drift here?”

  “You’d like me to stay out of your way or you’ll call my boss.”

  “You’re mighty quick for a white girl.”

  “Could I ask one question before I go?”

  “Certainly,” he said magnanimously.

  “Why is it that only one person in that motel room is on your list of suspects? The way I’ve got it figured, both of them have motive and opportunity.”

  His gaze narrowed. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning Giovanni has an obsession with his star model and he was at the scene of the crime,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll follow up.”

  She left him with his mouth gaping and a murderous look in his weary, bloodshot eyes. He slammed his fist into the wall and took off for the stairwell. She had a hunch he was worried that he’d break her neck—to say nothing of several sections of the Florida criminal code—if he waited for the elevator.

  • • •

  “How are you and Sergeant Jenkins getting along?” Molly asked Michael that night. He had wangled a dinner invitation out of her late that afternoon. He’d brought along all the files on the case, probably just to remind her how much work she’d been responsible for having dumped in his lap. He’d also suggested she stop by the film office for her own file on Greg Kinsey and GK Productions. The file was crammed with publicity about the director and the film, along with copies of their shooting permits and schedules.

  “Better than the two of you,” he said. “He seems to find you worrisome.”

  “I’m sure you were able to commiserate with him on that score.”

  “I tried giving him some tips on handling you.”

  “Oh, really? How fascinating. Just when did you come up with these helpful hints?”

  “About three days into that last case. I decided if I was going to survive with my sanity intact, I was going to have to find a way to work with you, instead of butting heads with you all the time.”

  “Which no doubt explains tonight’s dinner invitation,” she said wryly.

  He smiled. “Exactly. You and I are going to discuss every single person involved in this case. You will offer your wisdom and insights. Then you will leave the rest to me.”

  “Happily.”

  His eyebrows lifted a fraction, but he refrained from comment.

  Fortunately, Brian chose that moment to come barreling through the front door with two of his friends. His blond hair was damp from a recent swim and his bare feet were covered with sand. “Hey, Mom, what’s for dinner?”

  “No ‘Hello’? No ‘How was your day, Mother?’” Molly inquired with a grin.

  “Sorry, Mom. Did you catch any bad guys?”

  Michael chuckled. “Maybe you ought to have a chat with your son about the exact nature of your job description.”

  She shot him a rueful look, then turned back to Brian. “You forgot the sun tan lotion again, didn’t you?”

  He blinked and stared at her. “How’d you know?”

  “Mothers know everything.”

  “Come on, really.”

  “Because you’ve got more freckles on your nose than you did when I saw you this morning. Now go out on the balcony and brush off the sand.”

  Brian glanced down as if the fine coating of sand had mysteriously appeared. He brushed at it.

  “Brian, not in here!”

  “Sorry.” Brian poked Michael in the arm, then gazed at him hopefully. “You gonna stay for dinner?”

  “That’s the plan,” Michael told him. “You guys been practicing your soccer?”

  “Yeah. We’ll be ready by Friday. Kevin’s got an awesome move to show you.”

  “Awesome, huh? I can hardly wait.”

  Brian and his friends detoured to the balcony, swiped at the sand, then went on to his room. Michael gazed after them. “You know how lucky you are?”

  “Brian?”

  “Yes. He’s a great kid.”

  “I know it. Some days he’s the only thing that gets me through.” She regarded Michael oddly.
“The way you feel about kids, I’m surprised you haven’t gotten married and had a few of your own.”

  He shrugged. “It takes a lot to put up with the kind of lifestyle a cop has. I’ve never been willing to put any woman through that.”

  “I’m sure Bianca would have been more than willing.”

  “Maybe. It never came up,” he said in a way that put an end to the conversation.

  Since Molly was inclined to keep probing, it was probably just as well the phone rang.

  “Mrs. DeWitt?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Jeffrey Meyerson.”

  His breathless tone immediately grabbed Molly’s attention. “What’s wrong, Mr. Meyerson?” she asked.

  At her deliberate mention of Jeffrey’s name, Michael glanced up from his stack of papers.

  “It’s Veronica,” he said, sounding rattled. “She’s been hurt.”

  “Hurt how? Was she in an accident?”

  “She fell. They’re taking her to the emergency room at Mount Sinai now. Can you meet us there?”

  “Certainly. How badly is she hurt?”

  “I think she’s more shaken up than anything. It’s not the fall I’m worried about.” “Oh?”

  “I’m almost one hundred percent certain that she fell because someone shot at her.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  “Someone fired a shot at Veronica?” Molly repeated, dismay spreading through her. “Where? What happened? She wasn’t hit, was she?”

  Before Meyerson could provide any details, Michael had snatched the phone from her hands. She glared at him but retreated. This was his job, after all. At least the police angle belonged to him. Her job, in Vince’s eyes anyway, probably included preventing incidents such as this.

  With the incisiveness of an outstanding detective, Michael asked several terse questions. Unfortunately, Molly couldn’t hear the replies, and Michael wasn’t nearly as generous about repeating them aloud as she had been. Curiosity was killing her.

  Five minutes later he hung up the phone, his expression grim. “Let’s go.”

  Molly responded at once to the sense of urgency in his tone. “Just let me see if Brian can go over to Kevin’s for a while.”

  She made a quick call, then went through the apartment to get the boys from Brian’s room. “I have to go out for a while. Kevin’s mom said you can stay at their apartment until I get back. You’ll have dinner there. Okay?”

  “What’s going on?” Brian said, looking from her to Michael and back again. “Another dead guy?”

  He was clearly fascinated. The other two boys looked equally hopeful. They were at an age when the more gruesome something was, the better they liked it. She’d worried for a while that her precocious son’s fascination with blood and gore was abnormal. After getting to know a few of his friends, however, she’d realized all eight-year-old boys were exactly alike.

  Molly shook her head. “No, there is not another dead guy. There was an accident. Veronica Weston was hurt. We’re going to the hospital to see her.”

  All three boys looked disappointed. They were only too ready to go to Kevin’s.

  As soon as she and Michael were on their way in his car, a mud-splattered wagon with soccer gear jumbled in the back, he said, “I’ll drop you at the hospital. Then I want to swing back to the hotel and take a look at the scene.”

  Molly wasn’t about to be left out of the search. She offered a more appealing alternative. “We could reverse that. I could look with you, then we could both go to the hospital.”

  “I thought Veronica would be your primary concern.”

  “She’s okay. Meyerson said so. I’ll do her more good if I can help find the person who fired the shot.”

  “If there was a shot.”

  Molly recognized the set to Michael’s jaw. “You didn’t believe him, did you?”

  “I’m not sure. I believe she fell. I believe she probably even heard something. A shot? I don’t know.”

  “Why would she say something like that, if it weren’t true?”

  “Publicity. Sympathy. Maybe to divert suspicion.”

  “Meaning?”

  “If she could convince police that someone shot at her, then we’d have to accept the possibility that she’s a potential victim, not a suspect. Carry that one step further and maybe the shot that killed Greg was actually meant for her. It would divert our attention from Kinsey’s background.”

  Molly stared at him blankly. “Where’d that farfetched idea come from?”

  “It’s not so farfetched. It happened in her trailer. It was late at night. The shot was fired from some distance. Maybe all the killer saw was someone moving and fired before he or she realized it wasn’t Veronica.”

  Molly considered Michael’s unexpected theory. She turned to stare out at Biscayne Bay as they sped west across the Rickenbacker Causeway. The splashy setting sun had cast pink shadows on the water.

  It had never occurred to her that Greg’s death might have been accidental, that he might simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Though Michael was right that it was possible, something about the theory didn’t ring true.

  “You say the shot was fired from a distance, right?”

  “From outside the trailer anyway. Not from the steps or inside.”

  “So it would take a real marksman?”

  He glanced over at her. “Probably. What’s your point?”

  “The bullet hit Greg in the middle of his forehead, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, say I’m a sharpshooter and I’m essentially firing at a shadowy figure. Wouldn’t I be able to see that it was a man or a woman, or at least guess that from the height? Veronica’s barely five feet three. Greg was six feet, maybe even an inch or two taller. Besides, wasn’t the door open? No glass was broken. And the bullet was from a small-caliber gun. It wouldn’t be accurate from any great distance, right?”

  Michael grinned. “Exactly. You’re starting to think like a cop.”

  Molly didn’t waste time basking in the rare compliment. More concerned with the implication, she immediately asked, “Then we can rule out any kind of mistake in Greg’s death?”

  He shook his head. “You can’t rule it out, but you can assume it’s pretty damned unlikely.”

  Minutes later they had traveled back across Biscayne Bay on the MacArthur Causeway, then straight east to Ocean Drive. Michael pulled into a parking space a block from the hotel.

  “Where was Veronica when she heard the shot and fell?”

  “From what Meyerson said, they’d been for a walk along the ocean. They had crossed the street and were about to go into the hotel.”

  “Did the shot come from behind them, in front of them, or from the side?”

  “That’s the problem. He has no idea.”

  “Then you can’t actually expect to find a bullet out here.”

  Michael shrugged as he slammed the car door and locked it. “We can always try.” He held out his hand. “Let’s go.”

  Though the sun was rapidly sinking in the west, the summer night was still light enough for them to see clearly. Molly was all set to start searching the sidewalk on her hands and knees, but Michael headed straight into the hotel lobby and looked for the bell captain.

  “I understand Ms. Weston took a fall outside the hotel tonight,” he said. “Did you see it by any chance?”

  The older Hispanic man—Rolando, according to his nametag—nodded. “Sí! I saw her.”

  “Can you show us?”

  “Sí!” He hurried through the front door and led them to a spot in the middle of the sidewalk, just to the left of the entrance.

  “Who called for an ambulance?” Molly asked.

  The old man shook his head. “No ambulance. I go inside to call right away, but the gentleman, he tells me ‘No.’ He say they will take a taxi to the hospital. Does this make sense? No. Muy loco.”

  Molly shot a puzzled glance at Michael. “Wh
y would he do that? I know he said she wasn’t seriously injured, but wouldn’t he want to be certain?”

  “I guess that’s something else we’ll have to ask him,” Michael replied. He turned back to the bellman. “Did you see anything else? Someone running away, perhaps? Someone who looked suspicious?”

  “No, senor. Nothing. It is very quiet tonight. Very hot. People don’t come so much, not until later.”

  “Any police around?”

  The old man shook his head.

  “Okay. Gracias, amigo.” When they were alone, Michael said, “Let’s take a look around. It’ll be like hunting for a needle in a haystack, but maybe we’ll get lucky, if there really was a bullet.”

  They combed the sidewalk across the street, the paved roadway, the sidewalk in front of the hotel, even the front porch and the side of the building. There was no trace of a bullet or any mark that might have been left by one.

  Michael finally gave up. “Let’s get over to the hospital. When we get there, though, you go in and talk to Veronica, while I take Meyerson aside. I don’t want them hearing what the other one’s saying. We’ll compare notes later.”

  Molly regarded him intently. “You still think Meyerson’s mixed up in Greg’s death, don’t you? You think he invented this as some sort of smoke screen.”

  “Let’s just say I’ve never been entirely satisfied with his explanation about his arrival in Miami and the length of time it took him to get to the hotel.”

  They drove into the parking lot at Mount Sinai, where the best view of Biscayne Bay was wasted on empty cars. In the emergency room Michael flashed his badge around and the triage nurse sent them back to the cubicle where Veronica was being treated.

  The actress lay on a stretcher, looking a little wan, but otherwise fit. Not one hair was out of place. She took one look at Molly and demanded, “Can you spring me from this place? Jeffrey has this crazy notion that they should keep me overnight for observation. I absolutely refuse to spend one minute in one of those tacky, indecent hospital gowns.”

  “I think it makes sense, dear,” Meyerson said, his tone placating. “You’ve had a terrible flight.”