“Or that meeting senators for trysts on their boats while the cops watch leaves them vulnerable to gossip, or even prosecution, for bribing with sexual favors.”
Toni froze. The bastard had set her up.
Jason leaned closer. “Or that the people they’re warning about danger might be the people they should be afraid of. So, I repeat, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I suspect that you’re trying to implicate me in something you did long ago. Are you taping this, Toni? Are you admitting to your husband’s murder?”
Toni took another step back and hit the counter behind her. “I’m telling you, somebody knows about us. Not me, us, Jason.”
“Then you’re in trouble.” Jason stood up. “I’m really sorry, Toni, you seem upset, but there is no us and this has nothing to do with me. I came out here for old time’s sake, but with you raving like this, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you not to call me again.” His voice softened. “You really should get professional help, Toni. I know you’ve been through a lot, but if you keep sharing these paranoid delusions with people, you could lose everything.”
“You could take care of whoever it is,” Toni said, making one last desperate play on his vanity. “You can find out who he is and take care of him. You took care of Lincoln. You can do anything.” She leaned closer to him and then heard footsteps in the hall.
“I can leave.” Jason stepped away from her. “And I can tell you that if you ever call me again, you’ll be sorry.”
“Jason—”
“Mommy!” Miranda threw herself through the door of the kitchen, a picture in starched green gingham and perky grosgrain bows. “Are we going to make cookies now?” She stopped, her perfect little mouth open, when she saw Jason. “Hello.”
“Hello,” Jason said, smiling at her. “You must be Miranda.”
“Yep.” Miranda hopped to the island on one foot, clearly scarred by her experience in church that morning. “Are you going to make cookies?”
“I’ve made enough cookies in my life,” Jason said, looking at Toni. “After a while you want something a little more substantial. Which I now have. And which I am keeping.” His eyes narrowed at Toni. “I mean it. If you’d like to keep what you have, don’t call again.”
“What are you—”
“You have as much to lose as I do, and I’m not just talking about your reputation in the community.” Jason nodded at Miranda and Toni felt her breath go.
“You wouldn’t,” Toni said.
“Of course I wouldn’t,” he said. “I would never hurt anybody. I never have. Have I?”
The silence stretched out between them as he stared into her eyes, paralyzing her, a rabbit to his snake.
“No,” she said.
He patted Miranda on the head. “Your mommy’s a smart woman.” Then he walked past Toni to the open back door, leaving without another word.
“He didn’t say good-bye,” Miranda said. “That’s not nice.”
“He’s not a nice man,” Toni said, staring after him. The bastard, walking into her house uninvited, setting her up, turning her down.
“We’re nice, aren’t we?” Miranda said, hopping again. “People like us.”
Miranda lived in such a simple world. And it’s going to stay that way, Toni thought. She was not the kind of woman people suspected of paranoid delusions. She drove a Mercedes, she kept time with a Rolex, she wore Escada, damn it. He was not going to ruin her life. She’d do whatever it took to stop him, to protect her life, to …
Miranda said, “Mommy?”
To protect her child. She was a good mother. Any good mother would do anything to protect her child. Even if Jason Salinger was smart and tricky as hell, he wasn’t immortal. And at this point nobody would be surprised if another body turned up in Gryphon Gate.
“People like us, don’t they?” Miranda said, switching to the other foot.
“Yes, sweetie,” Toni said. “We’re popular.”
And we’re going to stay that way.
* * *
“I can’t believe McClintock married a hooker,” Diane said as they drove away from the Vormeister house. “I can’t believe Camille McClintock was a hooker.”
“Hey, she was sixteen; he was twenty, about to ship off for ’nam, I can see it,” Leland said. “He was big on saving people, he saved her, she loved him for the rest of his life. I think it’s romantic.”
“Romantic,” Diane said. “So how many times did you see Pretty Woman?”
“I’m just saying—”
“I know, he died trying to protect her,” Diane said. “He’s one of the good guys.”
“He was,” Leland said. “Let’s get the guy who killed him.”
Diane turned down Toni’s street. “I wouldn’t count on it being a guy.”
“Somebody pretty hefty got Vormeister’s body into that sand trap,” Leland said. “And there were some strong guys on Aaron’s list. Jerry Lynch could have done it.”
“Aaron’s list,” Diane said. “There’s another problem. I got the definite feeling that Aaron might have thoughts of turning a profit on those notebooks.”
“Blackmail?” Leland said. “Is he that dumb, to try blackmail when somebody is killing to keep a secret?”
“Money makes people stupid,” Diane said as she pulled into Toni’s driveway. “And once they’ve got it, they’ll do a lot to keep it.” She waved her hand at Toni’s mansion. “Mrs. Sinclair does not strike me as the type to willingly downgrade to smaller quarters.”
“Boy, you’ve really got it in for her,” Leland said.
Diane opened her door and got out, trying to loathe Toni Sinclair for her many deficiencies and not because Leland was defending her.
Leland got out and slammed his door. “You know, we have no evidence she’s guilty of anything.”
“Sure we do,” Diane said as she headed for the house. “The way she dresses her kid is a crime.”
* * *
Tiffany hit the fourth-floor landing of her fifth-floor walk-up and saw Jason sitting on the top step by her apartment, his trademark lock of dark brown hair falling over his brow, his eyes deceptively sweet behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “Jason!” she said, and went to him wondering if he’d killed anybody lately.
He leaned down and kissed her firmly, his hand light on her cheek. He definitely kissed better than Danny. Of course, carp kissed better than Danny. “You rat,” she said against his mouth. “You told me you had to leave and wouldn’t be back until next weekend.”
“I couldn’t leave you,” he said, that rich, dark voice oozing over her. He shifted on the stair, and she sat beside him as he slid a warm arm around her. “Besides, I wanted to know how it went this morning. It sounded like it was going to be a hoot.”
“Oh, that’s romantic.” Tiffany pouted. “You only come to me for laughs.”
“I come to you because you’re irresistible,” Jason said, his eyes fixed on her lower lip. “Can we go inside? Your stairwell smells like garbage.”
Imagine how bad it’d be if I really lived in a place called Umbanda House, she thought, but she kept the pout in her voice as she said, “You’ll have to do better than that. I’ve had a very hard day.”
“Really.” Jason grinned an invitation at her. “Let me in and make me a drink, and you can tell me what happened in the land of the rich and ridiculous.”
That’s what you really want, Tiffany thought, and then he leaned in and kissed her again, and she thought, Well, that and sex.
Fifteen minutes later she was settled in her chair with an orange juice laced with water that Jason thought was vodka. He, on the other hand, was drinking real bourbon.
“So,” he said, sitting down on her dilapidated couch across from her. “What happened at the church? Did the comedy group do their thing?”
“Oh, they just beat some drums and danced around and said stupid things.” Tiffany bent over to put her drink on the floor and waited to see whether the church or her cleavage
would get his attention.
Jason raised an eyebrow. “Stupid things?”
So much for cleavage. Tiffany got up and moved to the couch. If he wanted information, he was going to have to work for it. “I don’t want to talk about them, Jason. Tell me I’m beautiful and I’ll forgive you.”
“You’re beautiful,” Jason said and kissed her. “So what did they say?”
“Hmmm?” Tiffany smiled up at him, projecting inanity. “Oh, Parker Upshaw yelled at Jerry Lynch that the church had a bug in it.”
“A bug?” Jason said, looking innocent.
“A roach,” Tiffany said, and Jason started to laugh. “Hey, roaches aren’t funny. They’re really hard to get rid of.”
“Oh, just call them something else and they go away,” Jason said, clearly amusing himself. “What else?”
“One of the guys said something to that nice Mrs. Sinclair,” Tiffany said. “Which is ridiculous, because she’s so good that she’s all right-to-life for animals and save the whales. Or at least the deer and the swans.” Tiffany smiled at him and then sat up, galvanized by an idea. “Oh. Wait. Those PETA people do terrible things sometimes. Do you suppose she’s the murderer?”
“I don’t know.” Jason sat back. “She’d have to be unbalanced.”
“I bet she would to save the deer,” Tiffany said, working dumb blondity with everything she had. “The colonel was going to shoot the deer and drown the swans or something. Maybe she thought it was her duty to kill him.”
Jason shrugged. “She must be nuts. Better keep an eye on her. Those kind will do anything.”
Tiffany let her shoulders slump. Boy, you are out to get her. “That wouldn’t explain Mr. Vormeister though. So I guess not. He was always taking notes on people, but Toni doesn’t have any secrets, she’s all perfect mother and citizen of the year.” She smiled at him. “Which is a good thing, because otherwise she’d be really suspicious, don’t you think?”
“I think I don’t care.” He pulled her back to him and kissed her.
“Oh, Jason, you’re so good at this,” she whispered in his ear, telling him the truth for the first time that day.
The phone rang and she started to get up, but Jason caught her. “Let the machine get it,” he said, and she giggled and let him pull her back down onto the couch. Behind them the phone rang again and again while Jason’s hands moved over her. The machine clicked on, her message played, and then she heard a no-nonsense voice say, “Tiffany, this is Detective Diane Robards.”
Tiffany jerked away and sat up as Robards gave her contact information and asked her to call. She met Jason’s eyes and he nodded, so she picked up the phone.
“Detective Robards, it’s Tiffany,” she said. “What’s up?”
“I understand you were friends with Anka Kovacik?”
Were? And another one bites the dust. If somebody didn’t quit killing off all her leads, she was never going to finish the job. “I just met her a couple of days ago,” she said, and then paused, pretending that the verb tense was just sinking in. “What do you mean, were? I still am. I mean, I still know her.”
“We just found her in Toni Sinclair’s koi pond,” Diane said. “Weighted down by a lot of jewelry and a bag of deer chow. She floated to the top when the deer chow dissolved. I’m at the Sinclair house now, so if you could—”
“I’ll be right there,” Tiffany said and hung up. She sniffed once and turned back to Jason, her face crumpling in grief. “A friend of mine was just murdered,” she told him, and he stood up and put his arms around her. “It’s so awful.”
“I’ll wait here for you,” he said and kissed her cheek. “You go find out what happened.” His warm eyes smiled into hers, and she thought, You are good, sonny, but you’re not asking any questions, which is just not human nature. What do you know about a drowned bimbo thief?
“Thank you, Jason,” she said, letting her lip tremble. “It means a lot to me to know you’ll be here.” And not out murdering any more of the population.
“I’ll always be here for you, honey,” Jason said. “You go find out what’s happening and then come back and tell me all about it.”
“All right,” Tiffany said, pretty sure she wouldn’t be reporting anything he didn’t already know. Men, she thought, you can’t trust any of them.
Then she went out to the Sinclair house to lie to the police.
11
“WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE GET the fish away from the body?” Diane said, exasperation showing in her voice. She was too damned tired to care.
The photographer was capturing Anka in all of her dead glory. Or at least trying, but the fish kept swimming over the woman’s face. Mostly they were interested in the globs of soggy deer chow floating on the surface of the water. A leather briefcase was tied haphazardly to Anka’s chest, but it had popped open, possibly in the struggle with her killer. Jewels winked from rocks, and gold glimmered in the clear water.
One of two large bags of Purina Mills Deer Chow floated on the surface, nearly empty. As pellets had spilled from a large split in its side, it grew too light to keep Anka’s lower body pinned down. Her legs had floated to the surface while the briefcase and a full bag of congealed pellets still held her face beneath the water.
Diane’s team awaited, ready to descend on the scene and find the tiniest clue to nail the son of a bitch—or just plain bitch—who’d done this. Diane glanced across the pond at Leland, who was questioning Bertha, Toni’s maid. As though he sensed Diane’s gaze, he looked up and gave her a quick, sympathetic smile before returning his attention to Bertha.
Diane felt a thrill like a shot of espresso dart through her veins. She touched her hair self-consciously, painfully aware that she probably looked like she’d been to hell and back. Leland had the nerve to look good, even when he looked tired. She knew she just looked haggard. Damn men.
She steered her thoughts back to the scene. Jordan, her longtime associate, was taking a sample of the water. “What’s it look like?” she asked, kneeling beside him.
“At this point, death by drowning. My guess is someone slammed her in the head with a heavy object and rendered her unconscious. There’s bruising around her right temple, see?” He pointed to the dollar-size mark. Then he gestured at the many statues around the pool. “Maybe with one of these, which we will determine. Then he—or she—pushed her in the pond, weighed her down with the briefcase, and dragged the bags of chow over for extra insurance.” He pointed. Bits of the paper bag on the concrete bore him out. “I suspect she was unconscious until she took her first breath of water,” Jordan continued. “We won’t be sure until we can get her out of there.”
Diane could well imagine the horror of that kind of death. The look on Anka’s face didn’t help. The photographer signaled that he was done and Diane’s team moved in to claim the body. As the body bag zipper slid closed over the victim’s blank, sightless eyes, Diane tried to piece together what she knew.
Bertha and Miranda had been making cookies in the kitchen when Bertha heard the pump in the koi pond making strange gurgling sounds. Luckily, she’d left Miranda in the kitchen while she investigated. The deer chow had been sucked into the pump’s intake, jamming the valve. Bertha had noticed the lumps floating on the surface seconds before taking in Anka floating just below. After regurgitating the cookie dough she’d been nipping from the bowl, she’d returned to the kitchen and called the police. No one had heard a thing, of course. No one had seen a thing.
Diana’s headache had increased tenfold. The good thing about another murder, she supposed, was that she had another opportunity to find a clue. Her mother had always taught her to look at the bright side.
Clouds had been building up all day, and now they scooted across the sky with alarming speed. So far, only two waves of light rain had fallen, each lasting a few minutes. More would come, Diane was sure of it.
“Captain Robards,” Carnegie said, bringing an older man over to her. She recognized him as Silas Macgruder, neigh
borhood busybody. A cop loved busybodies.
“I saw a man hanging around here an hour ago,” Silas said without preamble. “Young feller, probably in his twenties, medium build, dark hair falling in his face. He knocked on the front door, and when no one answered, walked around to the side. I didn’t see him come out.”
Diane stemmed her impatience. “Did you think to alert the authorities?”
He nodded toward Carnegie. “I called the security office, left a message. Nobody was there.”
Carnegie’s face flamed red. “I’ve been on patrol! You’ve taken Leland, and that rookie’s more interested in checking his profile in the mirror than patrolling. It’s put a lot of pressure on me.”
Pressure. He didn’t know from pressure. Diane ignored Carnegie and turned her steely gaze on Silas. “Did you recognize him at all?” When Silas shook his head, she asked, “Did you see a vehicle?”
“None. Security around here is getting downright lax. Frightening, I’ll tell you.” He shot a contemptuous look at Carnegie. “Might as well move to a middle-class neighborhood.”
Diane stemmed an outburst from Carnegie by quickly saying, “Mr. Macgruder, I’ll need you to accompany this officer down to the station to give us a description for our sketch artist. You may very well have seen the murderer.” Maybe a triple murderer, she thought hopefully. Would it be that easy? She was willing to bet that Silas’s description would match the one Miranda had given them of the “rude man in the kitchen who didn’t say good-bye.”
Carnegie was still choking on excuses when Diane rejoined Leland and Bertha.
“I should be inside with Miranda,” Bertha complained, wringing her hands. “I’m sure she knows something’s going on.”
The look Leland shot Diane was subtle, but she read him instantly, with a certainty that longtime partners develop. He’d gotten everything he could from Bertha, the look said. She could go inside now.
“Wait,” Diane said as soon as Bertha had turned. “One more question. According to your statement, you found the woman in the pond and immediately went back inside to call police. Didn’t you check to see if she was still alive?”
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