Hot Money

by Sherryl Woods

  Michael took the flashlight from her trembling grasp and shone it onto the water in front of where they’d been sitting. At first it seemed she must have been mistaken as the glare picked up no more than a few strands of seaweed, a tangle of mangrove roots, a curved arm of driftwood. As the light skimmed across the surface and back again, Molly’s heart suddenly began to thud.

  “There,” she whispered. “Move it back a little. See?”

  What at first seemed to be no more than seaweed moved sensuously on the water’s surface. It was a distinctive three-carat diamond that finally caught the light, broke it into a hundred shimmering rays and removed any lingering doubts about the exact nature of Molly’s discovery.

  “Oh, my God,” Molly whispered, her gaze fixed on the glittering ring that she herself had once coveted at a charity auction. Though her stomach was pitching acid, she forced herself to look again, just to be sure.

  Michael’s arm circled her waist. The flashlight wavered in his grasp and the light pooled at her feet, instead of on the water. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “As well as anyone would be after discovering another body,” she said in an aggrieved tone. “For someone not even remotely interested in signing on for homicide investigations, I have a nasty suspicion I’ve seen almost as many murder victims as you have in the past few months.”

  “Don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions? We have no way of knowing whether the woman was murdered until we get the body out of there.”

  “Trust me,” Molly said. “Tessa Lafferty would never willingly ruin her hairdo, to say nothing of her designer gown. If she felt ill, she would go home, send the dress to the secondhand store on consignment, and then climb between her two-hundred-dollar sheets and die. If she’s in that water, it’s because someone heaved her into the bay.”

  “I know that name. Wasn’t it on the invitation to this shindig?” Recognition spread across his face, then dismay. “Isn’t Tessa Lafferty the woman Liza described as an idiot?”

  She glared at him. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Nothing. I’m just asking, purely for purposes of clarification, if it’s the same woman.”

  “It is,” Molly conceded, then jumped to her friend’s defense. “But Liza would never kill her just because she didn’t want some Latin singer that Liza has the hots for to sing at this bash.”

  “Did I say she would?”

  “No, but I know how you think.”

  “Do you really? How is that?”

  “Like a cop.”

  “Then I suppose you won’t mind obeying an official police request.”

  She regarded him warily. “Which is?”

  “Go into the house and call the police.”

  “You are the police.”

  “Not here. Will you just go make that call?”

  “Only if you promise that Liza will not be on the list of suspects you turn over to the Miami police.”

  “Sweetheart, you and I are on that list of suspects. Now move it.”

  Molly didn’t waste time arguing that they provided tidy alibis for each other. She was more concerned with warning Liza that inviting a homicide detective to a charity function was just about the same as inviting trouble.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  With Michael’s hand clamped firmly around her wrist, Molly was more or less obligated to leave the murder investigation in the hands of the proper authorities, members of the Miami Police Department who arrived with sirens blaring. Damn the man, beyond insisting that everyone remain on the grounds and seeing to it that the security guards enforced the rule by barricading the routes to the parking lot, he didn’t ask a single question of anyone himself.

  “It’s not my jurisdiction,” he said for the tenth time when Molly mentioned that a few casual inquiries surely wouldn’t offend the Miami police.

  What she didn’t say was that asking a few questions would help to keep her mind off the image of Tessa’s body being untangled from the mangroves, then placed rather indelicately on the bank awaiting further examination by the medical examiner before its removal from the grounds. Tessa hadn’t been in the water long enough for her body to be distorted or ravaged by fish as it might have been had she remained undiscovered, but that didn’t make it any less distressing to see her poor, bedraggled, lifeless form lying there. Because she needed a distraction, Molly pressed Michael for some sort of action.

  “But what about Liza? Don’t you feel any obligation at all where she’s concerned? I don’t even know where she is. Shouldn’t we at least find her?”

  “Any obligation I feel toward your friend was pretty well wiped out when I forked over the money for the tickets to tonight’s affair.”

  Molly scowled at him. “That was not the sort of obligation I was talking about.”

  “I know,” he said succinctly.

  Refusing to admit aloud that she was worried by Liza’s inexplicable absence ever since the discovery of the body, Molly pleaded, “At least let me find her and talk to her. She’s bound to be distraught. Who’ll want to donate more money to all these environmental causes after this?”

  “From what I hear, any publicity is good publicity when it comes to raising public awareness of a cause.”

  “Spoken like someone who’s taken PR one-oh-one. I know there are those who believe that as long as the name is spelled correctly, public relations benefits will be reaped, but I’m not sure that applies to a murder investigation. If this gets ugly, the coalition that sponsored tonight’s event is bound to be tainted by it. Besides, Liza is my friend. I want to be supportive.”

  She also wanted very much to be reassured that Liza had spent the last hour or so in the midst of this throng and not off on one of her solitary nature hikes around the grounds. She left that thought unspoken. Michael was sharp enough to figure it out anyway, just as he’d noticed the handful of yachts docked at the boat landing and notified the guards to block that route of escape as well. Now, unless someone dived into Biscayne Bay and swam away, the suspects were pretty well contained on the grounds. She didn’t want to think about how far away the killer might have gotten in that time before the body was discovered.

  “Molly, just let the police solve this case as quickly as possible without any of your amateur interference. That’s the best thing you can do for Liza,” he said.

  “I thought you said my instincts about these things were good.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Just a few short weeks ago, as a matter of fact.”

  “I must have been in a state of shock after seeing you heading straight into the clutches of that film director’s killer. Close calls always muddle my thinking.”

  “Michael!”

  “Molly!”

  “Oh, never mind,” she grumbled. “I’ll wait right over there.”

  He grinned. “No. You’ll wait right here, with me.”

  If she’d been five years old, she would have sulked. As it was, she stuck with what she hoped would appear to be nothing more than mild disappointment.

  “I’ll make it worth your while,” Michael added.

  She regarded him doubtfully. “How?”

  He touched one finger to her chin, tilted it up, and covered her mouth with his. The kiss—or maybe it was simply shock—took her breath away. Michael was not prone to public displays of affection, unless she counted the one time she’d seen him patting his ex-lover’s fanny in parting. As a result, she wasn’t wild about the intent behind the kiss. She had a feeling it had less to do with seduction than it did with distraction. Whatever the dubious intention, however, it momentarily wiped the murder out of her mind. Right at the moment, she couldn’t ask for more than that.

  “Isn’t this a conflict of interest or something?” she murmured eventually, her back pressed against wallpaper that the guidebook she’d picked up indicated was some nineteenth-century French woodblock pattern.

  “Not that I know of,” he said. “For once we’re bot
h on the same side and operating in the same official, or should I say unofficial, capacity.”

  “But you are a policeman, despite the fact that you aren’t on duty, and you did discover the body.”

  “You discovered the body,” he corrected. “I just happened to be around at the time.”

  “A technicality. Michael, aren’t you the least bit curious about what’s happened here tonight?”

  “Curious, yes. Anxious to get involved, no. You seem to forget I have a caseload as tall as the Freedom Tower as it is. I don’t need to chase ambulances, like some starving attorney. You also seem to forget that every time you stick your nose into one of these incidents, your ex-husband and your boss go through the roof. Do you enjoy taunting them?”

  “Hal DeWitt and Vincent Gates have absolutely nothing to do with this. Liza is my friend and I want to help her solve this thing quickly so she can minimize the damage to the cause. It’s rare to get a coalition of environmentalists all working together this way and I want it to be successful for Liza’s sake. Maybe I even owe it to Tessa Lafferty, too,” she said, warming to the noble sound of that.

  “Why? Because you didn’t contradict Liza when she described the woman as an idiot, a statement, I might add, that could put your friend on the short list of suspects? I read all the time about the nasty, vicious competitiveness that fund-raising spawns. Vizcaya itself got its share of headlines just a year or so ago because two groups of supporters couldn’t agree on anything. You’re not on this committee. You’re not responsible for your friend’s actions. Therefore, as far as I can see, Tessa Lafferty’s death has nothing to do with you. Play it smart for once and keep it that way.”

  Molly realized she couldn’t very well tell him she was feeling guilty because she herself had coveted that diamond ring Tessa was wearing. She vaguely recalled from long ago Sunday school lessons that coveting what your neighbor had was a significant sin. It was probably not one that a man who dealt in homicides could relate to very easily. Admittedly, it was also a pretty flimsy excuse for involvement in a murder investigation. Protecting Liza was another matter altogether. Liza had stood by her when she’d been under suspicion in the murder of their condo president. Molly owed it to Liza to do the same for her now.

  Momentarily thwarted from doing any significant, obvious sleuthing, however, she gazed around the central courtyard where the police had gathered everyone who fit into the open space. Others were crammed into the surrounding rooms, much to the distress of the museum’s curator. A few guests had been allowed onto the terrace under the watchful eye of two policemen.

  With Michael looking on, Molly moved through the crowd, conducting what she hoped was a casual search for Liza. When she finally spotted her across the terrace going over the guest list with a uniformed officer, Molly sighed. “Thank God,” she murmured.

  “You didn’t really think she’d skipped, did you?” Michael asked, clearly surprised by her apparent lack of faith.

  “No, of course not,” she said loyally.

  He regarded her intently. “Molly, was something going on between Liza and the Lafferty woman that the police should know about?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Molly?”

  “You already know Liza detested her. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I suppose,” he said skeptically.

  Desperate to change the subject, Molly pointed out Tessa’s husband to Michael. “See. He’s right over there. Isn’t the husband always the prime suspect in a case like this?”

  Sixty-year-old Roger Lafferty didn’t look like a man who’d just committed a murder. He looked stunned. He was sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by friends. His normally jovial, round face looked suddenly tired and crumpled, as if all of the air had been squeezed out of him.

  “How was the marriage?” Michael asked.

  “Okay as far as I know, though how he managed to stay married to her is beyond me. From what I’ve heard, Tessa was not easy to live with even before she turned menopausal. Since then, she’s been a holy terror.”

  “What about the other guests? Was she feuding with any of them?”

  Molly was thrilled with the question, not because of the content but because it was proof that he was getting hooked after all. It was possible to take the cop out of his uniform, but obviously he couldn’t shut off his analytical mind.

  “Jason Jeffries,” she said at once, seizing the first name that popped into her mind. She wondered why. She barely knew the philanthropist, though she certainly knew his reputation for largess. Lines from needy organizations practically formed outside his office, like starving ants parading toward a bowl of sugar.

  “The man Liza expects to hand over big bucks to save the manatees?” Michael said.

  “That’s the one.”

  “He’s here tonight?”

  “Right over there,” she said.

  Jason Jeffries had pinned the detective in charge of the investigation against a pillar. That was no mean feat, given Detective Larry Abrams’s impressive stature and the fierce gleam in his eyes. Jeffries had him cornered all the same and was demanding that everyone there be released immediately.

  “Not bloody damn likely,” one policeman just behind Molly muttered wearily when he overheard the demand. “We’ll be lucky if we get out of here by dawn.”

  Thank God she’d had the foresight to arrange for Brian to stay overnight with a friend, Molly thought. There would be no need for her son to know about the murder before morning when she could tell him herself. Relieved on that point, and before Michael could stop her, she turned to the officer.

  “So,” she began as casually as if she were merely inquiring about the weather. “What’s the cause of death? Has the medical examiner determined that yet?”

  “You’ll have to wait for that information, just like everyone else,” he said stiffly.

  Molly interpreted that to mean he didn’t know.

  “I heard she was strangled,” a woman standing just behind Molly said in a conspiratorial whisper. Though she was a tiny, birdlike woman, she cast a defiant look at her scowling husband, a man Molly recognized as the chief financial officer for one of the remaining solvent banks in town.

  “Shut up, Jane,” Harley Newcombe snapped. “I doubt whatever you overheard in the ladies’ room came from the medical examiner.

  “Women are nothing but a damn bunch of gossips,” he added, looking to Michael for sympathetic support. He glared at the hapless Jane again. “I told you we had no business coming tonight. These people all hate each other. There was bound to be trouble of one sort or another.”

  Michael’s gaze narrowed. “What do you mean, they all hate each other?”

  “The infighting in this crowd, especially among the wives, makes one of those high-profile family feuds over money look like sandbox bickering. I never saw anything like it before in my life. You think men play down and dirty in business? That’s nothing compared to the way these women go at it.”

  He shook his head in obvious male bemusement at women’s ways. Molly was tempted to point out that at least half of the people at this affair and on the board of the charitable organizations involved were men, but Michael had latched on to a skimpy clue and clearly intended to shake it until it yielded real evidence. She was so grateful for that she kept her mouth clamped firmly shut.

  “Was Tessa Lafferty involved in the feuding?” he asked.

  “Hell, she’s the one who started it from what I’ve heard,” Newcombe said, his disgust evident. “Typical catfighting when you get a bunch of women together.”

  “Harley Newcombe, that is not so,” his wife retorted with unexpected spunk, saving Molly the trouble. “It’s the men who stuck their noses into things and made everything complicated. That horrible, overbearing Jason Jeffries has to control everything he’s involved with. He treated Tessa like she didn’t have a brain in her head.”

  “Why shouldn’t he treat her any way he damned well pleases? He’s coughing u
p most of the money.”

  “He gave a single donation—” she began.

  “For a hundred thousand.”

  “And that entitles him to run things? This coalition had raised three times that before he ever got involved. If you ask me, that awful man is trying to buy his way to sainthood. It’s probably penance for some horrible sin he’s committed in the name of the almighty dollar.”

  “Just drop it, Jane. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. If you could manage money, I wouldn’t be covering all those bounced checks of yours every month.”

  Since it was clear that the conversation was rapidly disintegrating into a familiar family squabble, Molly again turned her attention to the generous, if difficult, Jason Jeffries. She spotted him lurking in the shadows near the buffet table, apparently consoling himself with food after his failure to get his way with the detective.

  Obviously a man who’d ignored physicians’ warnings about obesity, cholesterol, and smoking, he stood with a cigar in one hand and a croissant mounded with rare roast beef in the other. His expression couldn’t have been described as content, but it was darned close to it.

  Molly slipped away from Michael’s side while he continued to cross-examine Harley Newcombe. She approached the robust philanthropist, whose old family money came from paper goods or adhesive bandages or a combination of all those indispensable items that survived economic blips, recessions, and even the occasional full-blown depression. His bushy black brows, which almost met in the middle above dark, piercing eyes, rose slightly at her intrusion.

  “You after my money, too?” he groused.

  A puff of tobacco smoke hit Molly square in the face. She barely resisted the urge to snatch the offending cigar out of his hand and stomp on it. She settled for saying, “You don’t have enough to make me put up with your smoking.”

  A chuckle rumbled through him. He tapped off the embers and put the cigar aside. “You’re a sassy little thing. I like that. Half the people in this place are scared to death of me.”