“I’ll wait for you, Danny,” Tiffany said, putting a thrill in her voice.
“Yeah.” Danny moved toward her.
“No.” Tiffany stepped back, one hand blocking him, the other over her heart. “I can’t bear it. Just go, and leave me with my memories.” Like, you kiss like a fish.
“I’ll be back.” Danny saluted her and went out the back door.
“God, I hope not,” Tiffany said, and was considering ways to worm the information she needed out of Jason when she heard the scream.
* * *
Across town at the police station, Diane Robards tossed the file on the desk in front of Leland Ford and said, “We’re missing the big picture here.”
“Okay.” Leland leaned back and put his hands behind his head. It did nice things for his black T-shirt, which Diane was pretty sure he knew. “What’s the big picture?”
“Vormeister was killed and dumped in the sand trap,” Diane said. “Who benefits?”
“Anybody who told Vormeister a secret and regretted it later.” Leland yawned. “We did this. You’re just pissed because somebody cleared his Palm Pilot.”
“That hasn’t made my day any better,” Diane said, sinking into her desk chair. “But they’d been telling him secrets for years. Why kill him now? What suddenly made him dangerous? Was he threatening them? You knew him. Did he change suddenly?”
“No. He was talking about writing a book, but he wasn’t threatening anybody.”
Leland stretched again and Diane thought, He’s not showing off, he’s tired. This case was probably the biggest thing he’d ever been involved with. He’d probably been working round the clock, trying to make it his big break. I’d have done the same thing at his age, she thought. “Tell me about Vormeister,” she said, to give him an in. “What was he like?”
Leland stifled a yawn. “Well, he wasn’t the kind of guy who hurt people. He was like one of those guys who takes cars apart just to see how they work. He’d talk to you, and you’d tell him everything because he really wanted to know. And as long as I’ve known him, he never told me anything about anybody here.”
“He has all this information, he’s practically the father confessor of Gryphon Gate, and he never tells anybody?” Diane shook her head. “He must have told his wife.”
“Nah,” Leland said. “Nice woman, but she’s one of the biggest gossips we’ve got. Anything he told her would have been all over the place. That’s probably why he kept his notebooks in code.”
“Did we get anything from those notebooks?” Diane said.
“You left them at the house,” Leland said, rubbing the back of his head.
Diane sat up. “What?”
Leland shrugged. “I thought it was dumb, but the techs left the notebooks at the house.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Diane said and picked up the phone. When she hung up a few minutes later, she said, “They didn’t take them because they couldn’t read them. Idiots. We’re going to have to go get them.”
“Well, it’s a fair bet nobody else can read them either,” Leland shrugged. “We’re at a dead end.”
“No, we’re not. Send them over to the Defense Intelligence Agency at Fort Meade. It might take awhile, but if DIA can’t decipher them, nobody can.” Diane took a paper out of the file. “And we’ve got this: Jordan found a handkerchief at the scene with an A monogram.”
“We don’t have anybody—”
“Anka, Aaron, or either of the Armbrusters,” Diane said, “but they don’t strike me as the monogrammed-handkerchief type. My money’s on Toni Sinclair. Toni, short for Antoinette. Toni, who is also blocking the development, which is the only money I see in this picture. Toni, who also was singled out in that ridiculous church service this morning.”
Leland began to look more wide-awake. “I don’t think Toni Sinclair would—”
“Three of them,” Diane said, overriding him so she wouldn’t have to hear him defend that label-flaunting twit. “Gervase, Jerry, and Toni. Why those three?”
“You think God is trying to tell us something?” Leland said. “Maybe you shouldn’t work on Sundays.”
“I think somebody is trying to tell them something,” Diane said. “Maybe not Gervase, since it’s long past time somebody told him to keep his pants on. But the other two? I think they told Vormeister something they regretted.”
“Okay, say that’s true,” Leland said. “What was Lance McClintock doing in this mess?”
“My favorite part.” Diane picked up another folder and took out a fax. “Jordan found this in his desk.” She passed the fax across to Leland and watched while he read it.
“Barbi in San Diego?” he said, handing it back. “I don’t—”
“McClintock married a Barbara Clegg in San Diego forty years ago,” Diane said. “That’s the only marriage he has on record.”
“So he’s not married to Camille? I can’t see him killing over that.”
“It’s not addressed to him,” Diane said. “It’s addressed to Barbi at his and Camille’s fax number. And I don’t think he was Barbi.”
“Camille got the fax?” Leland began to look less skeptical. “And the colonel intercepted it. He was definitely the kind of man who’d protect his wife at all costs. And the guy served tours in every war in the last half century, so he’d know how to do it. But I don’t see him dumping Vormeister’s body in a sand trap.”
“Big picture,” Diane said. “Here’s what I think. Camille tells Vormeister her secret, whatever it is. Vormeister passes it on to X. Then X sends Camille a poison-pen fax just to watch her squirm, the same thing he or she did with the others. But this time McClintock gets it, knows that the only person Camille would talk to is the person everybody talks to, and confronts Vormeister. Vormeister is appalled, tells McClintock he wouldn’t do that, which McClintock already knows. So, he says, who did you tell? Vormeister goes to confront X, X knows Gryphon Gate would never forgive a poison-pen, so X kills Vormeister to keep the whole thing from blowing up in his or her face. Then he or she waits for McClintock by the pool, since that’s where McClintock always goes to smoke, hits him with a taser, beats him to death, and walks off into the dark.”
“A taser?” Leland said.
“The autopsies showed identical marks on the bodies, small puncture wounds about four inches apart. Whoever killed them stunned them with a taser first and then smashed in their skulls while they were helpless.”
“No.” Leland looked ill. “We have a real assortment of wackos here, but nobody that nuts.”
Diane shook her head. “I don’t think whoever did this is nuts. I think she is just very determined to protect her secret.”
“She?” Leland said.
Diane shrugged. “Or he.”
Leland looked at the fax again. “Why didn’t McClintock tell us about this? Oh. Right. Protecting his wife.” He pushed himself out of his chair. “Okay, let’s go talk to Camille McClintock.”
“Not just Camille,” Diane said. “Those three who were targeted in the church? What do you want to bet those weren’t just public faxes?”
“Four poison-pen victims?” Leland nodded. “Those nuts don’t usually stop with just one, do they?”
“They usually don’t stop with just four.” Diane got up and grabbed her suede jacket from the back of her desk chair. It had been her favorite until Toni Sinclair had looked at it with such contempt. Diane shook the jacket out and could almost hear Toni sneering, “Off the rack.”
“Something wrong with your jacket?” Leland said.
“No,” Diane said and shrugged it on. “This is a great jacket. Let’s go get those notebooks.”
And after that they were going to go make Toni Sinclair’s Sunday even more miserable than it already was.
* * *
When Tiffany got to the bar, Babs Blackburn had stopped screaming and was pointing to the pretzel dish in horror.
“Oh, jeez, Ms. Blackburn, what’s wrong?” Tiffany said, back in bubbl
ehead mode.
“That,” Babs said, looking like an expensive deer caught in headlights.
Beside the pretzel dish sat a little green frog, its red toes gripping the bar, paralyzed with terror. Its eyes bugged out, giving it a striking resemblance to Babs.
“Oh, that’s just a tree frog,” Tiffany said. “They’re all over out here.” She went over to the bar, scooped the little thing up, and took it to the terrace doors to set it free. Wrong wetlands, frog, she thought as she goosed it in the direction of the golf course.
“That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen,” Babs said, easing her way back to the bar and to Vanessa, which proved Babs had no sense of self-preservation, since the tree frog couldn’t hurt her, but Vanessa had been known to make grown men weep with terror.
“You and me both,” Vanessa said, not looking scared at all. “Little bastards are making my life hell. Tell me you killed it.”
“Sure,” Tiffany lied. “Now, how about another martini?”
“We’ll have our next one at dinner.” Vanessa slid off her bar stool. “Ready, Babs?”
Babs had evidently unearthed a buried instinct, because she was now looking at Vanessa as though she were another, bigger red-toed frog, but she nodded and followed her fiancé’s ex-wife into the dining room and certain disaster.
Always go with your instincts, Babs, Tiffany thought. Aside from your boobs, they’re pretty much all you’ve got. When Babs and Vanessa were safely out of sight, Tiffany looked around the bar and saw only a threesome at a table across the room—Toni Sinclair, Renée Lynch, and Rachel Vormeister—completely absorbed in their conversation, now that Babs wasn’t screaming anymore.
Tiffany took out her cell phone and hit her least-favorite number on her speed dial. “It’s me,” she said when the ringing stopped.
“Interesting morning.” The voice on the other end was dry, low, and disinterested.
“One of my freelancers got creative,” Tiffany said.
“Explain.”
“Danny doped Laura Armbruster, who then took it upon herself to bust Roman Gervase’s chops.”
“Why?”
Tiffany leaned on the shelf behind the bar, keeping a wary eye on the threesome. “My guess is Laura was either trying to cure him of his werewolfism, or trying to get him to stay home with his wife so she’ll stop boffing Laura’s husband. It’s hard to tell with Laura.”
“And Toni Sinclair?”
Tiffany stifled the urge to ask, “How did you know that?” Her client always knew everything. “She was set up. Either Peter Armbruster wanted her warned, or my buddy Jason is jerking her chain. One of them paid that idiot Tyrone to scare her. But that doesn’t explain why Parker Upshaw would go ape and bust Jerry Lynch.”
“Jason. That would be your book-editing friend, Mr. Salinger.”
“If Jason Salinger is a book editor,” Tiffany said, “I’m a virgin.”
“We believe Mr. Salinger placed a call to Mr. Upshaw this morning shortly after the reverend called you.”
“He did?” Tiffany faked a heartbroken sigh. “Here I’ve given him all my trust and devotion for two whole months, and this is how he repays me. Romance is dead.”
“So are Doctor Vormeister and Colonel McClintock. Do you have any information that ties those deaths to our problem?”
“Not directly, no,” Tiffany said. “The waters here are murky, so it’s hard to tell. But Parker Upshaw is Senator Carbury’s best buddy. I wonder what Jason has on Upshaw that could make him threaten Toni Sinclair?”
“Perhaps you could ask him.”
“Sure. Then you can pull my body out of the Potomac. Do you think Jason sent those faxes inviting people to the church? Because, if so, I’m impressed with his ability to see into the future. Nobody knew we were doing the service until Armbruster called me this morning.”
“We believe that your new friend Anka sent the invitation faxes in order to have access to the empty houses.”
“Well, that would explain why she slipped out the back when the fun started. She must have thought that mess was a gift from God. How many houses did she hit?”
“We believe three.”
“We believe.” Tiffany’s exasperated sigh went straight into the phone. “Do we know anything?”
“Mr. Salinger sent a message to Senator Carbury asking him to meet Mrs. Sinclair on her boat yesterday, and he signed her name to it, then alerted Detective Robards that there would be an assignation.”
Tiffany straightened. “Carbury again.”
“Yes. It is gratifying to finally draw close to our problem, isn’t it?”
“Why would Jason want Carbury caught by the cops on Toni’s boat?”
“Exactly. And why would your Mayor Drysdale be so interested in Senator Carbury that he’d watch from a helicopter with a surveillance expert by his side?”
Tiffany rolled her eyes. “Don’t read too much into that. He was probably hoping Carbury was meeting Vanessa there so he could catch her bribing a politician and have her executed. Honest to God, these people are—” She broke off as Roman Gervase came in from the golf course. “Well, hi there, Mr. Gervase!” she said, letting the hand with the cell fall behind the bar.
“Set me up a whiskey sour, Tiffany,” Roman said, passing by her on his way to the bathroom. “I’ll be right out.”
“That would be our surveillance expert?” the dry voice on the phone said when Tiffany picked up the phone again.
“And local werewolf,” Tiffany said, keeping an eye on the door. “You know, it occurs to me that being thought of as the local nutcase would not necessarily be a bad thing for a surveillance expert. He could go anywhere he wanted at night, and, as long as he howled, people might not see what he was up to.”
“People see what they want to see.”
“Not me,” Tiffany said as the rest of Roman’s foursome staggered in. “I see dull people.” She beamed at the newcomers, uniformly covered in plaid and sweat. “Gee, you guys look like you played hard!” And got put away wet. “I have to go, Mom,” she said into the phone as they settled in at the bar.
“Do not call me ‘Mom.’”
“And give little Bobby and Gail big hugs for me.”
“Tiffany.”
“Yes?”
“Be very, very careful with Jason Salinger.”
“I will,” she said and made a kissing noise into the phone. “Bye now.”
“That’s really nice,” one of Roman’s golf buddies said to her as he looked at her T-shirt. “Calling your mother.”
“Well, I’m an old-fashioned girl,” Tiffany said and picked up the martini shaker ready to pour.
And listen.
* * *
When Toni got home, she dropped her purse on the hall table and went out to the kitchen to see if she had chocolate chips. Of course she had chocolate chips. She had a Viking range, she had a Sub-Zero refrigerator, she fed endangered deer, she entertained senators to save the wildlife and her lifestyle, so she sure as hell had chocolate chips somewhere. She was rummaging through Bertha’s baking cupboard when she noticed the back door was ajar and heard a chair scrape behind her.
She turned and saw Jason Salinger sitting at the granite-topped island and screamed before she could stop herself.
“Hi, Toni,” he said, smiling at her, his deep, rich voice going straight to her bones. “Got your message.”
“How’d you get in here?” she said, trying not to shriek at him again.
“Your security stinks,” he said. “But then, it always did. What do you want?”
He looked the same as he had two years ago, maybe a little heavier, but his dark hair still fell over his forehead, his eyes were still hot behind his wire-rimmed glasses, and he could still turn her on even while he terrified her. Which meant he was probably still the same immoral opportunist who’d do anything and anybody to get his way.
Thank God. Now all she had to do was convince him he was in danger, too, and he’d take care of the
bastard with the fax machine. She leaned across the island, trying to look earnest and appealing. “Somebody’s sending me threatening faxes. Saying they know about you. About us. You’re in danger, Jason. That’s why I wanted you to meet me at the boat where it’s private, so we could figure out a way to fix this. I know you can fix this.”
“Well, honey, I went to the boat, but when I got there, you were entertaining a branch of the legislature.” Jason grinned at her and she lost her breath. The bastard still had it. “Good to know you’ve become politically active,” he said.
Toni narrowed her eyes. Hot or not, he was up to something. In fact, she was pretty sure he’d sent Carbury that invitation to the boat and signed her name instead of coming himself. Don’t accuse him, she told herself. You need him.
“I try to do my part to protect the environment,” she said. “Just like we did two years ago, protecting the helpless. Lincoln was a pervert. He targeted children on the Internet. You were right to kill him, it was a duty as a human being—”
Jason’s face hardened, and Toni realized how much he’d changed. Not a boy anymore, she thought, and wondered what he’d learned since the last time she’d been with him.
“Tell me,” Jason said softly, “that you haven’t said that to anybody else.”
“Of course not,” Toni came around the island and grabbed his arm and felt the muscle there tighten under her grip. That hadn’t changed either. “But it’s a defense for both of us. If this—”
“Okay.” Jason detached her hand from his arm, and she stepped back, stung as much by the flat tone in his voice as by his rejection of her touch. “First, talking dirty to cheerleaders on the Internet is not a death penalty offense, especially since most of the cheerleaders he was talking to were probably other middle-aged men.”
Toni blinked at him. “Jason, I—”
“It amazes me how delusional people are about things like that,” Jason went on, looking at her with barely disguised contempt. “It never occurs to them that, since they’re lying about who they are, the person on the other end is probably lying, too. Or that since they’re cheating, their spouses are probably cheating, too.”
Toni stepped back again. “Jason—”
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