Hot Money

by Sherryl Woods

  “And you?” Molly asked Helen Whorton, who championed half a dozen causes, though she focused most of her attention on the needs of the area’s major teaching hospital. “I seem to recall that you were both trying to raise money for diabetes research.”

  “Alzheimer’s,” Helen corrected tersely, her arthritic hands nervously twisting the pale mauve chiffon scarf that the designer no doubt had intended as a wrap to cover saggy older arms. Her eyebrows, which had risen after several face-lifts, gave her a perpetual air of surprise. The skin under her chin was smooth, however. She probably considered it a fair exchange.

  “Wasn’t there some argument?” Molly inquired with the innocence of a newborn.

  “A minor disagreement,” Helen murmured, glancing around with a look that a suspicious mind might have interpreted as desperate. “I really must find George. I can’t imagine where he’s disappeared to.”

  “Don’t fret, dear,” Patrice told her. “I’m sure he and Clark are somewhere together, probably trying to tell the police how to do their jobs.”

  Molly wondered if George Whorton and Patrice’s escort, attorney Clark Dupree, were having any better luck at that than she usually had. Before she could become too distracted by that speculation, she took one last stab at eliciting an honest reaction from the women before one of them wised up and told her to take a hike. She turned to Caroline Viera, the youngest of the three and the wife of a major banking figure. Her acceptance in this particular set of old Miami society was silent testimony to her husband’s commanding position.

  “Were Tessa and Roger close friends with you and Hernando?”

  “Roger and Hernando are business associates,” the petite, elegant woman, who’d recently made an annual best-dressed list for the second time in a row, said coolly. “I knew Tessa only by reputation.”

  “You’ve never served on any committees with her?” Molly asked, surprised. She’d thought committee work was a way of life in this crowd.

  Caroline arched one carefully sculpted brow disdainfully. “I have little time for committees. I have a business of my own to run.”

  “Of course,” Molly said at once, surprised that she’d forgotten that Caroline Davis-Whitcomb had built an impressive list of professional credentials before marrying Hernando. A few decades ago, she would have given all that up after the wedding, using her skills when called upon on a slew of committees. Obviously, however, Davis-Whitcomb

  Inc. had continued to thrive after the marriage and Caroline was proud of the fact.

  “Public relations, isn’t it?” Molly added.

  “Advertising and public relations.”

  “Isn’t tonight’s event one of those you handled on a pro bono basis?” Molly asked. It was all beginning to come back to her now. Liza actually had described the elaborate arrangements necessary to keep Caroline and Tessa apart yet focused on the same goal.

  Caroline hadn’t built a million-dollar PR business by not knowing her stuff. In her best public relations manner, she shrugged indifferently. “At my husband’s request, I believe I did have someone assigned to help out. The firm often does that for worthy causes.”

  Before Molly could even formulate another question, Patrice linked her arm through Helen’s. “Darlings, I believe I see George and Clark going into the courtyard. Surely Hernando cannot be far away. Shall we go see what they’ve learned?”

  The three brushed past Molly in a whisper of chiffon without so much as a farewell. She could understand their rush. What puzzled her more was why none of the three had asked a single question about her discovery of the body, a fact that had surely made the rounds by now. Unless, of course, one or all of them knew everything there was to know about exactly how Tessa Lafferty had ended up in Biscayne Bay and didn’t much care about Molly’s own role in tonight’s sad events.

  Molly walked outside where it was quieter. She was still toying with the concept of one of the three being a murderer, bringing her list of suspects up to a more respectable five, when Liza found her. She looked absolutely spent, as if every ounce of her normal vivaciousness had drained away.

  “This could very well be the worst night of my life,” she announced wearily, rather than with her more typical dramatic flourish. Without regard for propriety, she hiked her narrow skirt up well above her knees to permit more freedom of movement and paced in an agitated circle.

  “Liza, you’ll have to pay extra to replace the lawn, if you keep that up,” Molly said finally, regarding her friend closely for some hint that it was guilt, not simply distress, that had her in such a state.

  Liza gave her a rueful smile, stopped in place, and allowed her skirt to slither back down over slender hips to where it belonged. She ran her fingers through her cropped hair, currently darkened to a shade of auburn that wouldn’t clash with her dress. The gesture left the modified flattop in erratic spikes. “How could this happen, tonight of all nights?” she demanded, as if she expected Molly to have an answer.

  “If a woman’s going to be murdered, it might as well be someplace with a whole houseful of suspects,” Molly retorted.

  Liza glared at her. “Are you implying that this was premeditated?” she said sharply.

  “I’m not implying anything,” Molly soothed, her concern growing over Liza’s oddly defensive behavior and that unexplained absence. “I’m just saying that there are five hundred people here, any one of whom had the opportunity to kill Tessa. It sure as hell beats shooting her in her own living room with that private security guard you told me they have on duty standing at the front gate. Why did Roger hire that guard anyway? You’d think the Dobermans would be message enough for any burglar contemplating a break-in.”

  “The neighborhood’s changing.”

  “Are we talking about Coral Gables, that bastion of the rich?”

  “There are old-money rich and then there are the other kind,” Liza pointed out. The tension in her voice seemed to be easing, as if she felt she were on safer turf. “Tessa was convinced that half the houses in their neighborhood belong to big-time drug dealers now. Roger wanted to make sure some disgruntled druggie didn’t come barging into their house by mistake.”

  “Are you sure there hadn’t been threats against him or Tessa?”

  Liza looked startled by the implication. “I’m not sure of it, no,” she said slowly. “But why would either of them be in any kind of danger?”

  “Obviously one of them was.”

  “Unless Tessa’s death was an accident,” Liza said hopefully. “Maybe she stumbled, hit her head, fell into the bay, and drowned. You know how high her heels were. I’m surprised she didn’t fall flat on her face every time she tried to take a step on this grass.”

  “She was found in the water next to one of the most deserted sections of the estate,” Molly reminded her. “Why would she have gone all the way over there alone? Surely you don’t suppose she needed a respite from all of the adulation being heaped on her as a result of tonight’s success?”

  “I have no idea, but that brings up something else,” Liza said, a speculative gleam in her eyes that should have made Molly instantly suspicious. “What were you and the hunk doing over there?”

  Molly refused to feed Liza’s insatiable need to meddle in her love life, or lack thereof. “Having a quiet glass of champagne.”

  “Right,” Liza said skeptically.

  “That’s all,” Molly insisted, though there was no mistaking the defensive note in her own voice now. She would not admit, even to her very best friend, that she had followed Michael to that isolated spot in the wild hope of sharing a steamy romantic interlude.

  Perhaps, she thought suddenly, Tessa had indulged in a similar fantasy. Not with Michael, of course, but some other guest?

  “Liza, was Tessa still having an affair with Hernando?”

  “Hernando? Surely by now he had wised up.”

  “Then someone else?”

  Liza regarded her as if the very idea of Tessa as a femme fatale were ludicr
ous. “I’m surprised her own husband shared a house with her. I can’t imagine some other man finding her passionately exciting. That thing with Hernando must have been a fluke.”

  “You’re prejudiced,” Molly pointed out, not quite ready to divulge what Jason Jeffries had told her about Tessa’s penchant for using and discarding men. “Think about some of the men involved with this particular fund-raising project. How did she get along with them? Did she flirt, bat those false eyelashes of hers? Did they come on to her?”

  Liza’s expression turned thoughtful. “I suppose there was a certain chemistry between her and old man Jeffries. I always thought it was because they were highly competitive, but maybe there was an edge of passion to the outward expressions of hatred and distrust.”

  “Maybe once upon a time,” Molly confided. “He just told me he and Tessa used to be married.”

  “Now there’s a picture,” Liza said, her expression far less astonished than Molly might have liked. “I thought he had better sense.”

  “I believe he views it as a youthful indiscretion. You weren’t surprised about their marriage, were you?”

  Liza actually paused to consider the question. “Now that you mention it, no. I think I’d heard it before.”

  “Who told you? He said Tessa liked to keep it a secret.”

  “Unless they were married in a wedding chapel in Vegas, divorced in the Dominican Republic, and never passed through Miami in between, it wasn’t a secret,” Liza said flatly. “Have the police questioned you yet?”

  “Not really. I gave a statement about discovering the body to Detective Abrams when they first got here, but that may be it for me. I think Michael would prefer it if I never got within a hundred yards of the police. He suspects it will only whet my appetite for investigating the murder myself.”

  “Which, of course, it will,” Liza observed.

  Molly scowled at her. “What about you? Liza, I have to ask. Where were you earlier?”

  The question seemed to take her friend by surprise. “You mean when Tessa was killed, don’t you?”

  Molly winced at the look of betrayal in Liza’s eyes. “Yes.”

  Liza sighed heavily. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “But …”

  “I can’t.”

  “What if the police ask?”

  “They did. I was the first one they questioned. After Roger, of course.”

  Molly didn’t like the sound of that. “Why?”

  “They didn’t say, but obviously you weren’t the only one wondering about where I’d been. And I suspect Roger told them that Tessa and I were at odds over the way this fund-raiser was being run.”

  “At odds? Isn’t that a little like suggesting the troops in Vietnam were a mere military presence?”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “Yours, but everyone knows you and Tessa couldn’t stand each other. Roger’s testimony won’t be the last they hear along those lines. You said you blew up at her at the last committee meeting. I assume there were others present.”

  “A whole roomful,” Liza admitted. “Okay, so there is a block of time I can’t account for. I suppose that means I had opportunity and a possible motive, but you have to admit that makes a pretty weak case. When was the last time someone killed someone just because they were terminally dim-witted?”

  Molly moaned. “Liza, you have to stop saying stuff like that.”

  “Why? It’s the truth. Do you know how much money that woman wasted on invitations because she just had to have one that was die-cut and embossed so it would make a statement? Four thousand dollars, that’s how much. She didn’t even use recycled paper, for heaven’s sake. When I heard that, I hit the roof.” She took to pacing again, her temper heating up all over again. “And I’ll tell you what statement it made. It said she was more concerned with her own ridiculous image than she was about the environment. She should have been shot.”

  “Liza!”

  Molly’s protest apparently penetrated. Liza sighed heavily. “Jesus! I know I shouldn’t say stuff like that, but it makes me so furious …”

  “How furious?” Michael inquired lightly as he joined them.

  Molly and Liza both swallowed hard, then tried to explain at once.

  “Hold it! Stop!” he said when he could finally get a word in. “You don’t have to convince me that the remark was entirely innocent, but you’d better be careful where else you say things like that. The detective in charge of this case is a by-the-book kind of guy. There will be a lot of pressure, given the status of those attending tonight. He is going to be very anxious to see that it’s solved in a hurry.”

  “I tried to tell her,” Molly said.

  “I know. I’ll shut up,” Liza promised. “I just had to get that off my chest.”

  “In the future vent your anger in the privacy of your own home,” Michael suggested mildly.

  Hoping to distract him from a full-blown lecture, Molly inquired, “What’s happening in there? Have the police narrowed the list of suspects down yet?”

  “That’s not something they’re sharing with me.”

  “What about the cause of death?”

  “I’m not on the need-to-know list for that either.”

  Molly glared at him. “What good is being at a murder with a policeman if he won’t tell you anything?”

  “Maybe next time you’d prefer to be escorted by your ex-husband. I understand he loves this sort of thing.”

  The dig struck home. Hal DeWitt loved being around money and power. It gave him the perfect opportunity to suck up. Molly was sure the only reason he was absent tonight was because Liza’s name had been on the invitation and he’d guessed Molly would be in attendance.

  “If you’re going to ruin a reasonably pleasant conversation by bringing up my ex, I think I’ll take another walk around the grounds until the police want me.”

  To her chagrin no one tried to stop her when she strolled off in the direction of the catering tent. It was too bad, too, because she was just in time to see society caterer Neville Foster launch into a shouting match with one of the hapless servers who’d been in charge of shaving off wafer-thin slices of rare roast beef earlier in the evening.

  “What do you mean it is missing?” he screamed, hands on narrow hips. “How could you be so careless, so inept?”

  “It was there earlier,” the man insisted stubbornly, refusing to be intimidated by Neville’s outrage. “I recall lighting the candles myself.”

  “So you are saying that one of the guests just happened to walk off with an antique silver candlestick tucked in her purse?” the caterer inquired so sarcastically that Molly winced. “What would anyone at this affair need with such a candlestick? No doubt they own pieces three times as valuable.”

  Molly glanced at the other end of the buffet table where a heavy, ornate candlestick still held a softly glowing candle. She could think of one distinct reason someone might need such an object. It would make a dandy murder weapon.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  The expression on Michael’s face was not particularly welcoming when Molly came tearing back around to the terrace where she’d left him and Liza comparing notes on the murder.

  “Where did you run off to this time?” he inquired testily.

  “You won’t be quite so cranky when I tell you what I discovered,” Molly retorted.

  “Try me.”

  “I’ve found the murder weapon. Well, I haven’t found it exactly, but I know what it was.”

  He refused to look impressed. “Considering that no one has established that Tessa Lafferty was murdered, that’s quite a feat,” he said.

  She decided to ignore his stubborn denial of something everyone else on the grounds accepted as true. The police were certainly treating the death as if it were a homicide, even if the word hadn’t been used yet. That was enough for Molly.

  “A silver candlestick is missing from the buffet table,” she said, deciding no embellishment
was needed. Michael would get the implication. She noted the reluctant spark of interest in his eyes with satisfaction.

  “Are you trying to suggest that Tessa Lafferty went for a stroll with someone toting along a heavy candlestick?” he inquired doubtfully. “Wouldn’t she have noticed?”

  It was a reasonable question. Molly had already thought of it. She had an answer. “If the murderer was a woman, it could have been in her purse.”

  Michael cast a significant look at the tiny evening bag in her hand, then glanced at Liza. She carried no purse at all.

  “Okay, yes, mine’s too small,” Molly conceded. “But we won’t know about the others until we look.”

  “You’re wasting your time. There’s not a woman in the place carrying a purse large enough to conceal more than a tube of lipstick and maybe a solid gold compact,” Liza chimed in.

  “Have the two of you spent the evening checking out every woman’s purse?” Molly shot back irritably. If she couldn’t find a logical means for the killer to have gotten that candlestick from the buffet table to the murder site she saw her discovery’s importance diminishing.

  “No. I have a thing for observing likely places to conceal a murder weapon,” Michael countered. “It’s just one of those things cops do instinctively.”

  Molly caught the slip and beamed. “Then you do agree, albeit somewhat belatedly, that it was murder?”

  “I agree that’s one possibility,” he conceded with obvious reluctance.

  “That’s a start,” Molly said, gleefully determined to pursue what was clearly the best lead they had. “If the candlestick was the murder weapon, then maybe somebody arranged a rendezvous with Tessa, sneaked up behind her, and knocked her out. Anyone could have slipped through the shadows with that candlestick without anyone noticing. I’ll bet it’s at the bottom of the bay even as we speak.”