He put the gun in her hand, doubting it would fool a competent inspector, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances given the limited time he had. And maybe he would get lucky and an incompetent inspector would handle the case. Either way, Socialite Takes Own Life was a more palatable headline in a fancy town like this than Murderer Loose in Hamptons, all things being equal. If there were no more deaths, the investigation might just stop at that.
He took one last look at the dead woman’s bountiful chest and sighed. “What a waste.”
* * * * *
“Tiffany may be stupid. And greedy and jealous.”
And this was the defense from the man who loved her?
“But she’s not totally insane. Why would she plant a bomb?”
“I don’t know, Jeff, but Vik saw it. We’ve got to talk to her.”
“There might be some more innocent explanation, Mr. Fischer,” Vik offered. “Maybe she was doing it for somebody and didn’t really know what it was.”
It sounded like a stretch to Michael, but who the hell knew? It wasn’t bad enough he’d caught his current girlfriend with a bomb, now his exes were trying to blow him up too? He was starting to get a complex here.
“You’re the big Interpol agent,” Jeff accused. “Isn’t it more likely this all has something to do with you?”
“It’s possible.” Vik’s calm was one thing Michael admired a lot about his new brother-in-law. He felt as if his own was really slipping here. “But we won’t know until we talk to your ex-wife.”
“She’s gone, Mr. Reynolds,” one of the security guards came in to report. “The valet said she drove off about five or ten minutes ago.”
“Right after she planted the device,” Vik observed.
“Get the license plate and find somebody to overtake her. Bring her back.”
“Let me do it, Michael,” Jeff pleaded. “Please.”
“No way. You’re not objective about her. I don’t know what she might talk you into before you get her back here.”
“I’ll go,” Vik said, looking at the security guard. “If somebody will get me the details on the car. Quickly.”
“I’ll go with you,” Samantha offered.
Michael started to object at his little sister putting herself in a potentially dangerous situation but, seeing that her own husband just smiled at her, thought better of it. She could handle herself and if not, Vik would be with her.
“But only on the condition that if she needs to be physically restrained, I get to knock her out.”
Chuckling, Vik put an arm around Samantha and they followed the security guard out, promising to bring Tiffany back as soon as they could.
Jeff collapsed in an armchair, shaking his head. “Tiff, what have you done?” he mumbled. Then he lifted his head and said, “You know, I never stopped sleeping with her. Even when she was sleeping with you.”
Michael glanced uncomfortably toward Vanny. She was curled up by the fire, her legs underneath her, pumps kicked off, her green eyes wide and attentive as this whole drama had played out in front of her. But if Jeff was going to start making the same disclosures Tiffany had about their marriage, Vanny didn’t need to hear them. Jeff was a good guy. A good friend. And his sex life was his own business.
Even if he didn’t feel the same about other people’s.
“It wasn’t always her talking me into things either, Michael. I talked her into things. Sick things.”
Michael wanted to stop him, more for Vanny’s sake than for anything else, but of course he forgot he was talking about Vanny. Worldly and rig-wise, she didn’t hesitate to jump in with both feet.
“I’m sure that’s not true, Jeff.”
At her words, Jeff shot his attention to her. “It is. It is. You don’t know. She was so sweet when I first met her.”
Like hell. Tiffany was never sweet. She’d been a seductress from the moment he and Jeff had set eyes on her at a party years ago.
“I…” Jeff faltered then blurted out, “I liked to see her, having sex, fucking.”
Vanny got up before he could stop her and put a comforting hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Fucking other men.”
“Oh that’s not so bad,” Vanny crooned, prompting Michael to startle back and stare at her. She met his eyes and frowned, as if warning him to stay out of it. “A lot of guys like that. It’s not so uncommon. And for some women, well, probably all women, having sex with two guys is the ultimate fantasy, whether they act on it or not.”
Jeff looked up hopefully.
“Now wait just a minute here,” Michael interjected. Comforting was one thing, but he didn’t like how this conversation was going.
“Tiffany would probably like it if you joined them having sex.”
“You think?”
Michael scowled.
“Absolutely.” Vanny met his scowl with one of her own. “Just not with Michael.”
He cracked a smile. “Glad we’re on the same wavelength here, Vanny. And not with you,” he added.
“Me?” She laughed. “I have enough trouble handling one cock. I’m not stupid enough to try to juggle two.”
Jeff looked at her a little funny—Michael forgot how surprising Vanny’s earthy candor had been when he’d first met her—but then just shook his head, putting one hand to his temple.
“What I’m trying to say, Jeff,” she continued, “is don’t beat yourself up about sex. As long as consenting adults are involved, it’s nobody’s place to judge.”
“On the other hand,” Michael groused, “secretly recording somebody is not exactly consenting.”
“We never recorded you!” Jeff insisted. “Never.”
“I’m touched.”
One side of Jeff’s mouth crooked up. “I know. Fuck. I am such a pervert.”
“One man’s turn-on is another man’s perversion,” Vanny pointed out in that soothing voice that Michael was starting to get pissed off she was using with his pal. Seeing his woman have sex with another man? Shit! He wasn’t even sure he wanted her talking to another man. How perverted was that? His hand went up to his own temple.
Vanny appeared to be the only one who wasn’t having trouble with this conversation. “Can I get anybody some tea?”
The phone rang and Michael picked it up. He listened to Vik on the other end, his mouth tightening. “Yeah,” he finally said and hung up the receiver.
God, this just kept getting worse.
Jeff wouldn’t be having any threesomes with Tiffany.
* * * * *
Given the sophistication of the failed bomb, Vik had called a contact in the FBI to run the investigation instead of the local police. They quickly sent out a team to examine Tiffany’s body as well and another one to question the victim’s fellow party-goers, although Damien Reynolds had used his influence to limit the group who would be questioned before they even arrived.
Vanny seemed amazed. “You mean the party’s going to keep on going on after all this?”
Michael shrugged. “We’ll provide a guest list and if anything seems off, the FBI can question a guest later. For now, Father’s interested in not causing a scandal.”
“But a woman’s dead. A woman who planted a bomb here right before that. You can’t sweep that under the rug.”
Vik assured her, “It won’t be swept under the rug. But for now, a low profile on this whole thing is probably good for the investigation.”
“Exactly right.” A man in a tux came into the library. “Hi, Vik. Nice to see you again.”
They shook hands. “And you dressed for the part,” Vik said.
“We all did. Orders straight from the top. Damien Reynolds didn’t want it to look like cops were showing up to his party. There’s a bunch of guys circulating now.”
“Anybody I know?”
“Not sure.”
Vik turned to the group. “This is Agent Joe Carter.” He introduced each one in turn, after which the agent dire
cted his attention right to Jeff.
“Mrs. Fischer was holding a gun in her hand. We won’t know without the proper tests, but this could be a suicide.”
“Tiffany didn’t commit suicide. It’s impossible. Absolutely impossible.”
“Religious beliefs, Mr. Fischer?” the agent asked.
Michael answered, “No. Just a very healthy id, if you know what I mean.”
“Let’s put it this way,” Samantha chimed in, “if you crashed in the Andes Mountains with Tiffany onboard, you can be sure she’d be the first to get out her knife and fork so you better watch your back.”
“Samantha,” her husband cautioned.
“What? It’s the truth. She’d be more likely to eat a plane full of fellow passengers, dead or not, to stay alive than she would be to kill herself. That’s what Michael meant, isn’t it, Michael?”
“I’m afraid so, Agent Carter. It’d be extremely difficult for anyone who knew Tiffany to believe she’d commit suicide. She wasn’t, well, saying she wasn’t that type doesn’t seem strong enough. She had a very strong sense of self-preservation.”
“She was a completely self-involved bitch who thought the whole world revolved around her.”
The agent shrugged at Samantha’s elaboration. “Sometimes, when that kind of type finds it doesn’t, they can get a little down.”
“Not Tiffany,” Jeff added his opinion.
“We ran your ex-wife’s prints through the database. Did you know she had a record?”
Jeff traded surprised looks with Michael. “No. For what?”
“Prostitution, under the name of Cissy-Lou Hankel, some twenty-two years ago. She must have been no more than a child, though it said she was eighteen on the report.”
“Tiffany was a Botox addict.”
“That’s enough, Samantha,” Michael said. “No. Nobody knew that.”
“At the time, she was suspected in a homicide as well. Her pimp. But since the guy wasn’t exactly an upstanding citizen, I’m not sure anybody pushed the investigation that hard.”
“Any evidence of criminal activities after that?” Vik asked.
Agent and ex-husband both answered no, with varying degrees of emphasis.
“She was just a normal woman. Beautiful and spoiled maybe, but she wasn’t some kind of master criminal,” Jeff insisted.
“So how does she end up with this?” Vik asked, handing the explosive device to Carter. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
The agent handled it, brought it close to his eyes, looking at something. “Yep. Looks Russian.”
Vik nodded. “Was Tiffany of Russian descent?”
Jeff shook his head no. “Scotch Irish, I think, though I guess there was a lot about her I didn’t know.”
“There’s something else we should mention, Agent Carter.” This from Vanny, still curled up in an arm chair, mostly observing the scene rather than contributing to it as she had not known Tiffany.
At the very last second, Michael realized what she was going to say and his warning look didn’t stop her.
“There was another bomb planted. Over two weeks ago. On the Treasure Driller.”
The agent cocked his head and she answered his unspoken question. “That’s the off-shore oil rig I worked on in the Gulf of Mexico. Michael’s company owns the rig and the bomb was on it when Michael was there. So maybe these two things have something to do with each other.”
“The bomb in that case was very different, Vanny,” Michael said hastily. “Nothing like the sophisticated device Tiffany planted tonight. The bomb on the rig was probably homemade. Just somebody trying to cause trouble.”
“Which is why Michael thought I planted it,” Vanny volunteered, causing the whole room to regard her in surprise and Michael to put his hand up to his temple again. “But I didn’t.”
He quickly went to her chair and took her hand. Damn if he knew why, but he did. “Of course you didn’t. And I doubt the two situations have anything to do with each other.”
Vik and Carter wore identical expressions. Some cross between skepticism and weariness. The FBI agent spoke first. “Do you know the statistical chances of one individual encountering two hidden bombs in less than a month just coincidentally?”
Vanny jumped up from the chair. “Well, Michael didn’t plant them!”
Michael grinned, probably for the first time since this whole mess began, at her impassioned defense of him.
“I wasn’t trying to suggest that, Miss Donald. What I was suggesting is that it’s almost impossible for the two events to be coincidental. I would say Mr. Reynolds, or maybe Reynolds Industries, is our target.”
“Oh.” She sat back down. “I already figured that.”
“Can I see the guest list?”
Vik handed it to the agent, who scanned it. “Is there anyone on this list nobody could identify?”
Just then, something occurred to Michael that hadn’t before. “I knew of everybody on that list, most of them business acquaintances to be honest, even if I didn’t know them on sight. But there was a guest here who came into the room when Tiffany and I were talking. I couldn’t quite place him. He said she’d dropped her purse and handed it to her.”
“I didn’t see Tiffany with a purse,” Samantha offered. “If I know her, she probably checked it with her coat, so she had her hands free during the party. She liked her hands free.” This last Samantha directed to her husband with a wry look.
“She didn’t have a coat on in the car when we found her,” Vik noted. “And I didn’t see a purse either.”
“Maybe she ran out of here and forgot to pick it up. We’ll check on that. If her purse is still here, then that could mean the man you saw, Mr. Reynolds, might be involved. So we’ll have you sit down with a sketch artist.”
“Shouldn’t I just go back to the party? Maybe he’s still here.”
“You could, but if he’s the man we want, I doubt he would be. Still, that’s a good idea. If he is still here, maybe we could rule him out.”
“But how could Tiffany leave without her purse?” Vanny asked. “What about her car keys?”
Michael leaned down and dropped a peck on her cheek. “Valet,” he whispered with a smile.
She smiled back. “Oh you rich people!”
“I know,” Samantha said. “When Vik met me, I didn’t even know how to make coffee or cook an egg.”
“Still don’t,” her husband cracked, earning a poke in the ribs, which he graciously accepted with a laugh.
When Michael and Vanny circulated around the party again, to their surprise, the man who had interrupted his conversation with Tiffany was still there. He pointed the unprepossessing fellow out to Vik, who ushered the guy out of the room for a little conversation with Agent Carter. When he came back, though, Vik said the fact that the guy was still here probably meant he wasn’t involved.
“Who was he?” Michael asked.
“A Texas businessman. Heinrich Kohler.”
“Oh right. That guy. He owns some electronics security company in Houston. My father thinks he’s a good contact for us since we bought Transcoastal. I was supposed to have dinner with him while I was there, but I got distracted.” He glanced at Vanny by his side. “Probably why Father invited him tonight. He seems pretty harmless though, and I doubt he knew Tiffany. Not her type.”
“Speaking of which,” Vanny said. “Jeff seemed pretty down.”
“He is. But it’s probably the best thing that could’ve happened to him.”
“That’s kind of cold, Michael. Don’t you think you can love somebody even if they’re all wrong for you?”
They had both forgotten Vik was there, but he coughed audibly. “I’m going to go find Samantha.” And then he was gone.
It was on the tip of Michael’s tongue to say he didn’t believe in love. His standard response. But the words weren’t there. And not just for the reason that he tended to stay silent on that subject around women.
“Let’s forget all
this for a minute and do what we came here to do. Celebrate.” And he pulled her into a dance.
It was their first dance of the night, what with everything going on, and, by the by, their first dance ever. She was good at it, as he’d known she would be.
“I noticed your rhythm from the start, back when you were Shelly,” he whispered in her ear as they twirled around.
“I didn’t plant the bomb, Michael,” she said in a rush, and he pulled back to look at her, not halting the dance.
“Of course not.”
“Did you ever think I had?”
“I don’t know. The truth is…the truth is I liked you so much on the rig, before I knew, that I wasn’t thinking straight when I found out the whole story. Your father. Shelly. The whole thing.”
“But it’s not the whole thing, Michael. You asked me why I picked you up that night and I said it was because I wanted to.”
He gripped her tighter.
“But that’s not true. I slept with you because I wanted to. But I picked you up for a different reason.”
He said nothing, pulling her closer, still dancing.
“I copied some files for Transcoastal management. The ones who didn’t want the sale. They said it would help my father, but of course it didn’t.”
He still said nothing.
“Are you mad at me?”
“Is that your last criminal disclosure?”
She hit him on the shoulder and he let out an exaggerated ouch.
“I knew from the first, Vanny. Even that night. I saw my iPad in your purse, before you managed to slip it out again. And they weren’t even real files. Just dummies we set up as a routine matter on deals in case of corporate espionage.”
“You rat! And you never told me! You let me feel guilty all this time?”
He kissed her, passionately, not caring that fifty people saw it. “I was waiting for you to tell me. And now you have…”
“Now I have. Where do we go from here?”
He didn’t answer.
By mutual consent, when the dance was done, they headed straight upstairs.
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