Hot Money

by Sherryl Woods

  “But there were others before me,” he protested, albeit weakly.

  Molly recalled the expression on Roger’s face that day at the house as he regarded Clark with total contempt, the look of a man deeply betrayed on all levels. “None of them were Roger’s best friend,” she reminded him.

  An odd transformation came over Clark then. It was as if all of his own pain gave way to a cold, hard anger. Molly had never seen anything like it before in her life and it sent a shiver down her back.

  He raised his hand for the check, handed the waiter the money, and nodded at Molly, his expression already a little distant. “Thank you for joining me,” he said politely, but with absolutely no feeling in his tone. Even his gaze had gone blank.

  As he walked away from the table, Molly knew where he was going.

  She also knew what he was planning to do.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  Where the hell was Michael? Molly thought as she raced across the hotel lobby and out the door. She wondered if it was possible to arrest someone before they committed a crime.

  Clark hadn’t bothered with valet parking and was already heading for his car, his long-legged strides giving him a distinct advantage over her. Unless he chose to let her, she would never catch up with him on foot. Her only hope would be to follow in her car, using her cellular phone to try to reach Michael and Roger to warn them of Clark Dupree’s apparent intentions.

  Clark’s black Lexus sped from the parking lot, hitting the speed bump at full throttle. It was a wonder he didn’t knock himself unconscious on the roof, Molly thought watching him as she waited impatiently for her own car.

  Fortunately there was only one route off of the Key. If he was, in fact, headed to the Gables, she would have ample opportunity to catch up with him. As she turned onto Crandon Boulevard, heading northwest toward the mainland, she was already punching in Michael’s number.

  “Come on,” she muttered when he didn’t pick up immediately. “Dammit, Michael, pick up.”

  While she listened to the distant ring, she fumbled with her address book, trying to locate the Laffertys’ number. As soon as she found it, she disconnected the failed call to Michael and tried to reach Roger. Josie answered. She sounded thoroughly worn out.

  “Mr. Roger isn’t here, miss. He’s been coming home late most nights, if he comes home at all.”

  “Do you know where he might be?”

  “His office, maybe. Or the country club. Sometimes he goes by there.”

  “Thanks, Josie.” She hesitated, trying to find a way to warn the housekeeper about Clark without alarming her. “Josie, if Mr. Dupree comes by, don’t tell him where you think Mr. Lafferty might be, okay?”

  “Why not?” she asked, sounding puzzled. “They been good friends a long time now. Mr. Roger needs his friends around him at a time like this.”

  “Mr. Dupree is very upset about something right now. I just don’t think it would be the best time for them to talk. If Mr. Lafferty comes home, tell him the same thing. Please, Josie.”

  Fortunately the housekeeper had spent a lifetime taking orders from a woman even more of a mystery than Molly. She considered it her duty to follow instructions to the letter, no matter what she thought of them. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll tell him.”

  Molly tried Michael again. Still he didn’t answer. Where could he be? Whenever he wasn’t in the car, he carried that pocket-sized cellular phone with him. That wonder of the technological age was on its tenth or twelfth ring, when a tentative, vaguely familiar voice answered. “Bueno!”

  “Nestor?” Molly said slowly, fighting astonishment and confusion.

  “Sí. This is Nestor.”

  “Nestor, it’s Mrs. DeWitt. Where is Michael?”

  “Here,” he said, sounding distressed. “He and Mr. DeWitt, they are fighting.”

  “Michael and Hal are fighting?” she said, torn between incredulity and dismay. “You mean brawling? A fistfight?” It was beyond her comprehension.

  “No fists. They shout. Very loud. They do not hear the phone. I pick it up.”

  “Would you tell those two macho jerks to shut up? I need Michael now!”

  The urgency in her voice got through to him. “Sí. Sí. I tell them.”

  He put the phone down. Molly could hear his voice climb, issuing commands in Spanish. Then she heard Michael’s rapid-fire response, counterpointed by Hal’s querulous demands to know what was going on. His stubborn refusal to learn Spanish had put him at a distinct disadvantage, and he was clearly making his dissatisfaction known.

  “Molly?” Michael said finally. “Where are you? What’s going on?”

  She summarized her suspicions as succinctly as possible.

  “I’ll call Abrams,” he promised. “I’m on my way. Molly, don’t you dare get in the middle of this. Turn around and come home.”

  “Not on your life. I will not let Clark Dupree waltz in and kill Roger while you rally the troops.”

  “How do you intend to stop them? By talking them both to death?”

  “Very funny. I’ve already warned Josie not to tell Clark where Roger might be. In case he does come home before Clark gets there, I’ve told her to warn him.”

  “Good going, but that’s enough. The police will take it from here.”

  “The police will take it from here if you stop arguing with me and get moving. Otherwise, I figure I’m on my own. I’m almost to the Lafferty house now and Clark was ahead of me.”

  He sighed deeply, clearly sensing that her formidible resolve had kicked in. “Promise me you’ll stay out of the line of fire, amiga. If you go getting yourself killed, we’ll never know how all this flirting will end up.”

  Molly knew exactly where all the flirting was headed. She just didn’t know the timetable. She intended to be around for the finale, though. “I’ll be careful,” she promised.

  She heard Hal’s shouted demand to know what was going on just as the phone clicked off. Her car phone rang within minutes.

  “Molly,” Hal said, sounding breathless.

  Either the fight had taken its toll or he’d raced to his own car phone. He was definitely on the road. She could hear the sounds of traffic, the impatient blaring of his horn.

  “Where are you and what is happening?” he demanded.

  She gave him an abbreviated version of the same story.

  “Clark Dupree is going after Roger? I don’t believe it.”

  “Why? Because attorneys never turn into criminals?” she inquired sarcastically. “I could name a few who engage in criminal behavior all the time.”

  “Not murder,” he said piously. “And we’re talking about Clark Dupree here. He’s a model citizen.”

  “A model citizen who was intending to rape the Everglades. A model citizen who was having an affair with his best friend’s wife. I actually think he was in love with Tessa. He flipped out when he realized Roger might have killed her.”

  “Then let the police and the shrinks have at him. Go home to your son.”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to do … if they get there in time. Hal, I can’t talk to you and drive at the same time. We’ll talk later.”

  “Molly! Molly, don’t you dare hang up on me!”

  She ignored the order.

  It was less easy to ignore the panic and desperation she’d heard in his tone. Maybe she was going to have to admit at last that Hal DeWitt still loved her enough to be terrified for her. Her own feelings toward him were less clear and now was certainly not the time to analyze them. The only thing that did occur to her was that while Michael clearly worried about her, he usually trusted her to use her head in a crisis. That pretty much summed up the difference in the two relationships. Hal still thought she had no more judgment than a head of lettuce.

  As she rounded the corner onto Roger’s street in the Gables, she saw Clark’s car turning into the drive, saw the guard wave him in, and realized that she hadn’t thought to tell Josie to warn the guard. She took t
he turn into the driveway on two wheels and squealed to a stop right behind the fancy black car. There was no sign of Roger’s car. Hopefully he still hadn’t come home.

  “Clark!” Molly shouted as she climbed out of the car.

  The guard cast a startled look in her direction. It was a new guard, one she’d never seen before, though Clark obviously had.

  “Is something wrong, miss?” he said, coming toward her.

  “He’s after Mr. Lafferty. I think he’s planning to kill him,” she said. “The police are on their way.”

  Just then Clark spun around as if he’d heard the words she’d spoken in a deliberate undertone. He looked distraught. “Why did you come?”

  “I had to try to talk you out of doing something you’d regret for the rest of your life,” Molly said, staying behind the door of her car. It offered scant protection, but it was better than nothing, especially since it was clear that he’d traded his briefcase for a gun. He held it steadily in front of him, aimed in her direction. The guard was trying to inch around behind him, so Molly forced herself to keep talking.

  “I know how terrible it must be for you, knowing that Roger killed the woman you loved, but the police will catch him and the courts will see that he’s punished.”

  An odd expression passed over his face, an expression that suddenly had Molly doubting everything she’d surmised over the past couple of hours. Stunned by how badly she’d misread things, she simply stared as he began moving toward her.

  “I added it up all wrong, didn’t I?” she said with dawning understanding. She was conscious of every slow, careful movement behind Clark as the guard got into position. “You’re not here to kill Roger because he murdered Tessa, are you? You want him dead because he saw what really happened that night.”

  “Very good, Mrs. DeWitt,” he said as if she’d mastered a very difficult lesson. “I thought I had you fooled. It was only as we talked that I realized you were right, that Roger must have seen everything, including the fact that Tessa and I struggled, that I grabbed up a rock, knocked her unconscious, and dumped her into the bay.”

  “But he told no one what he’d seen that night,” Molly reminded him, trying not to glance in the direction of the guard who was just about ready to pounce and strip Clark of his gun. “He remained your friend, despite everything you’d done to him.”

  Clark’s laughter sent chills down Molly’s spine.

  “Friend? If he was there that night, he knew what it would do to me to wait for him to reveal everything. He wasn’t being noble, Mrs. DeWitt. He was torturing me, making me wait, letting the guilt work on me.”

  “That’s right,” said a voice from behind Molly. As Clark’s attention shifted, she recognized the cool, controlled voice of Roger Lafferty, sounding more certain than he had at any time since the devastating events of Saturday night. “And now you’re going to pay.”

  Molly whirled around just in time to see the flash of gunfire, smell the acrid scent of gunpowder. Expecting a volley of shots to be fired, she hit the ground, but there was only the one blast and then quiet fell behind the protective gates that had failed in their job to keep this household safe after all. She dared to peek and saw that Roger Lafferty had laid the gun on the trunk of her car and was slumped over. She glanced around the car door and saw Clark Dupree on the ground, the security guard hovering over him. Clark was writhing, clutching his leg, so the wound probably wasn’t fatal.

  Molly reached into the car, grabbed her cellular phone and called 911, just as Michael’s car turned into the driveway. Hal’s was right on its tail, despite the fact that he must have been speeding the whole way to keep up. She was surprised there wasn’t an entire fleet of Coral Gables patrol cars in their wake.

  Michael took in the scene at a glance, retrieved Roger’s gun, then pulled her into his arms the instant he was assured that the key players were disarmed. “I see you have everything under control,” he said dryly.

  “Not quite,” she admitted, understanding now why she could never walk away from whatever the future might have in store for the two of them. Michael was strong, but more than that, he gave her strength. “I had it wrong. Clark was guilty, after all. Roger saw him murder Tessa. That’s why Clark came over here to kill him.”

  She glanced at Roger and saw a broken man, a man who had lost everything that ever mattered to him in a period of a few days. “The only thing I don’t understand is why you didn’t try to save her,” she said to him.

  Roger regarded her wearily. “Don’t you see? I couldn’t. I felt so betrayed, so angry. In the end, you see, I am every bit as guilty as Clark.”

  Hal had gone to Clark’s side and Molly heard him ask if he wanted a lawyer. “I’ll call someone for you,” he offered.

  Clark shook his head. “No. It’s over for me. There’s no point in doing anything other than pleading guilty. I can certainly do that on my own.”

  Molly figured it would be a new experience since he usually plea-bargained his clients out of paying for their crimes.

  Hal turned finally and walked slowly in her direction. Michael looked from Molly to her ex-husband and back again. He gave her shoulders a squeeze and went to explain what had happened to Detective Abrams, who’d just arrived on the scene. Molly was left alone to face her ex-husband.

  Pale and clearly shaken, Hal shoved his hands into his pockets. His gaze surveyed her hungrily as if he needed desperately to assure himself that she was really all right. “You’re okay?” he asked, as if he feared his eyes might deceive him.

  “Fine.”

  “You deliberately led Clark away from Brian, didn’t you?”

  “You mean by taking him to the Sheraton?”

  He nodded.

  “That was part of it. If he had had anything desperate in mind, I didn’t want it to happen around Brian. But to be honest, it was more than that. I also could see he wouldn’t talk where we were and I had to know what had really happened to Tessa.”

  “You couldn’t wait to read it in the paper like the rest of us?”

  She shook her head. “From the minute I found her body, this wasn’t some news story to me. It was personal. If it could happen to Tessa in the middle of a fund-raiser, then it could happen to anyone.” She drew in a breath and admitted what was at the heart of everything. “It could happen to me.”

  His gaze narrowed. “Don’t you see? That’s what terrifies me.”

  “I know you worry. I can’t blame you for that. But when I look for the answers behind something like Tessa’s murder or Greg Kinsey’s or Allan Winecroft’s, I feel in control again. I feel like I’m getting an edge up on anyone who might ever try to hurt me or Brian.”

  Hal nodded slowly. “I guess I can understand that. It’s a scary world out there these days. We all need to do whatever we can to be in control of our lives. I suppose that’s all I was doing by filing this custody suit.”

  Molly stepped closer and touched his cheek, wishing that it had never come to this sad state of affairs between them, but knowing that there was no way to go back. “Maybe there’s a solution for us short of taking this to court. Now that we both understand where we’re coming from, next time, if there is a next time, I will bring Brian to stay with you. That way we’ll both know that he’s out of harm’s way.”

  “You’ve never been willing to do that before,” he said, sounding surprised by the gesture.

  “Because I was always afraid you wouldn’t bring him back,” she admitted. “Do we have a deal, Hal?”

  He cupped her face in his hands and for an instant she was certain he intended to kiss her. Instead he merely leveled an intense gaze directly into her eyes, then smiled faintly.

  “We have a deal.” He brushed a kiss on her forehead. “I suppose it doesn’t hurt that you have a cop standing by, if things get really out of hand.” He shot a grudging glance of respect at Michael, who was hovering a discreet distance away. “Take care of her, O’Hara.”

  Michael slid his arm around her
waist. “She doesn’t need me to do that, DeWitt. She can take care of herself.” He grinned down at her. “Right, amiga?”

  Darn right.

  Nature always has the last word.

  John Stewart Collis

  Watch for the next Molly DeWitt

  romantic mystery, HOT SCHEMES.

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  The deafening music pulsed to a Latin beat at Sundays on the Bay. Molly DeWitt had long since given up any attempts to carry on a conversation with Michael O’Hara, whose attention seemed to be focused more on the horizon than on her anyway. His beer sat untouched, warming in the sun. As near as she could tell, with his eyes shaded by his favorite reflective sunglasses, he hadn’t even noticed the five scantily clad women at the next table. That’s how she knew he was far more worried than he was letting on.

  “Still no sign of your uncle’s boat?” she shouted over the music.

  He glanced at her briefly, shook his head, then turned his attention back to the water. His it, even in the midst of some particularly gruesome homicide investigations.

  Molly understood his concern. It was now after 4:00 P.M. Tío Miguel should have been back by two o’clock, three at the latest, from his regular Sunday fishing trip. By then he would usually have enough snapper or grouper for the family’s dinner, plus extra to share with friends up and down the block in their Little Havana neighborhood.

  The rest of the week Tío Miguel worked nights delivering the morning newspaper door to door, then took out fishing charters, usually wealthy Latin Americans and their Miami business associates.

  A small, olive-complexioned man with dark-as-midnight eyes, Miguel García had an unmistakable wiry strength even though he was about to turn sixty-five. Molly had met him several months earlier at dinner at Tío Pedro’s, yet another of Michael’s uncles. She had been instantly charmed by his softspoken blending of English and Spanish and the pride in his voice as he talked of Michael’s accomplishments in Miami.