Ten million dollars was the amount Riley ended up transferring into the Bermuda account.
It was so small, compared to the amount left behind, that taking it to ensure Margaret and Emma’s future security wouldn’t make any difference to anybody. Riley knew that whatever happened, she could take care of herself. But Margaret and Emma were a different story. Margaret was nearly sixty years old and had spent her entire life in the rarified environs of the superrich. Money had always simply been there for her. Emma was young, with her future still to be provided for. They didn’t deserve the circumstances they were in. They’d had nothing to do with George’s crimes.
So Riley had done it. She’d siphoned off a tiny stream of money. For them.
Since then, she’d been as antsy as the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof.
She felt like a criminal. Was a criminal. She could tell herself that the money had originally been Margaret’s—no ill-gotten funds involved—all she wanted to, but the fact remained that transferring that money as she had done would get her in big trouble if it was ever found out.
She could go to jail.
“If the man who attacked you didn’t want Jeff’s phone because he’d found something on that cloud thing linking it to George’s files, then why did he want it?” Margaret said, snapping Riley out of her reverie and back to the present.
Riley was glad to leave the past behind. She focused with fierce concentration on Margaret, who was almost as pale as the toilet on which she perched.
“I don’t know,” Riley said again. “I only got a quick glimpse of a few things that were on it before I shut it down. There were three pictures of a couple of men moving around in the dark that looked like they had been taken right before Jeff died. Maybe they were of Jeff’s killers, maybe not. Maybe Jeff did end up downloading some of George’s files, and they were on his phone, and the scumbag somehow knew and wanted it for that reason. But the thing to keep in mind is, the man who attacked me and whoever killed Jeff are not necessarily one and the same person. I was attacked because he wanted Jeff’s phone.” Riley took a deep breath, and put it out there. “But I don’t think Jeff was killed for his phone. It was still on him when he died. I know, because I found his body that night and took the phone off him, just in case there was something on it that could lead back to us, to what we did. What are the chances that his killers would have missed the phone if that’s what they were after?”
Margaret stared at her, wide-eyed. “You found Jeff’s body?”
“He texted me to pick him up at Oakwood.” Riley had hoped to spare Margaret the details, but they were past that now. She told Margaret the whole story, concluding with, “The bottom line is that there’s no way Jeff knew that we found the money. Nobody could have killed him for that reason, because even if Jeff ended up downloading every one of George’s files he still would’ve had to make the connection from the calendar to Emma’s painting, and he never did. I’m sure of it. And nobody outside the family could possibly make that connection.”
For a moment Margaret seemed to mull that over. Then her lips quivered, and her eyes shone with a sudden welling of tears.
She said, “If we had turned George’s notebook over to the authorities as soon as we found it, Jeff would be alive right now.”
Her words hit Riley like a fist to the stomach. That was the truth that had been crawling around the edges of her consciousness and whispering to her in her sleep. That was the truth that had been staring her in the face ever since she’d found Jeff dead, the truth that she hadn’t wanted to see, had refused to recognize.
Unable to speak, Riley stared mutely at Margaret, aware that the dawning horror of realization was probably visible in her face. The tears that were now sliding down the older woman’s cheeks broke her heart at the same time as they brought tears to her own eyes.
“We didn’t know. We couldn’t have known.” The words forced their way out of Riley’s constricted throat even as Margaret covered her face with her hands. Heart breaking, Riley sank to her knees and put her arms around Margaret.
Holding on to each other, they cried.
Finally, when they were spent, when Riley sank back on her heels and they were both wiping their eyes with folded squares of toilet paper, Margaret gave a deep, shaky sigh.
“There’s something you don’t know.” Margaret’s voice was thick in the aftermath of her tears. Still on her knees on the hard tile floor, Riley looked a question at her, and saw that Margaret’s hands were clasped together so tightly her knuckles were white. Riley’s internal alarm-o-meter immediately started screeching at about a thousand decibels. “When I was in Bermuda with Emma, I went to the bank and withdrew some of the money. I know we agreed not to touch it for years, but—I took out thirty thousand dollars: I thought I might use it to pay Emma’s tuition. Because it’s her senior year, and—well, I don’t have to tell you. It’s in the suitcase in my closet right now.”
— CHAPTER —
FOURTEEN
The Palm Room was one of those places Finn would never have gone to voluntarily. It was dark and smelled of booze and perfume and he had no doubt at all that any cop with the inclination could make a dozen drug busts within his first five minutes inside. The pounding beat of the music assaulted his ears as soon as he cleared the second set of heavy steel doors through which customers had to pass to join the ranks of those privileged/connected/rich/good-looking enough to be admitted to the converted warehouse just off Katy Freeway. It was Friday, or rather Saturday now, almost 1 a.m., and the line to get in stretched around the block. The quartet of burly bouncers guarding the doors had to be persuaded to let him in by a flash of his creds.
Once inside, Finn prowled through the various rooms the 25,000-square-foot, two-level space had been divided into, a predator in search of a very specific prey. He was all but deafened by the blasting music and the underlying combined roar of clinking glasses and laughter and the voices of hundreds of people all talking at once. Out on the huge dance floor that was the centerpiece of the space, boots scooted and short skirts twirled as laser beams of colored light sliced through the darkness to highlight various couples getting down. A live band played on a dimly lit, raised stage. Fake palm trees pulsing with green Christmas lights filled the corners.
The mezzanine overlooking the dance floor was lined with people leaning against the rail watching the action below.
“Can I get you a drink, sir?” a waitress asked, her voice raised to be heard over the din. She looked to be barely of legal drinking age, a pretty, dark-haired girl with a lithe, tanned body all but bared by a tiny pair of black shorts and a long-sleeved white shirt that failed to provide her with any degree of modesty because it was unbuttoned, rolled up as high on her torso as possible, and tied in a knot between her breasts.
Finn shook his head. He could have used a beer—he could have used several beers—but he was working.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Cowan.” He had to raise his voice to be heard, too.
“Riley?” She swept a speculative glance over him. Her name tag read Katie, and she was carrying a round tray with a couple of bottles of Lone Star beer on it, which was probably what had made him think of the beverage in the first place. “She’s probably over there in the Sports Bar.” She pointed across the dance floor. “That’s where the big spenders hang out.”
Finn nodded, tucked a couple of singles into the squat, heavy highball glass that was already brimming with them on the tray, and, skirting the dance floor, headed in the direction Katie had indicated.
She—meaning the object of his search—hadn’t really said anything incriminating, Finn reminded himself in an effort to retain the necessary degree of objectivity.
Ah, but it was what she didn’t say.
His gut had been telling him all along that she was involved in this thing up to her eyeballs. What he’d heard tonight had confirmed every twinge of instinct he’d had.
After a long, exhausting, and ultimately fruitl
ess day of running down all the intelligence he could get his hands on concerning the recent activities of the men whom Riley’s confessions had pushed to the top of his hit list, he had returned with Bax to their hotel rooms about two hours previously. Leaving an out-of-the-loop Bax securely tucked away in his own room for the night, Finn had headed downstairs again to collect an envelope waiting for him at the front desk. The envelope had contained the CD from the sound amplifier recorder that he had affixed to the roof of the police cruiser that had spent the night in Margaret Cowan’s driveway. Voice activated, it had served as a supplement to the bug in Riley’s phone, the effectiveness of which was hampered by the fact that it covered only its immediate vicinity. The sound amplifier recorder captured everything that had been said in Margaret’s house from the time the cruiser had arrived until it had left that morning after the ladies were all out of the house. The cruiser was there again tonight, with the recorder busy doing its thing.
The CD had contained maybe forty minutes of actual conversation. He had kicked back in the armchair in his room and listened.
The lawyer left; Emma had a breakdown; Riley and Margaret talked, but revealed nothing he didn’t already know; Margaret talked to Emma, presumably in the teen’s bedroom, again revealing nothing new; then, at 2:07 a.m. according to the voiceover on the recording, Riley and Margaret talked once more, with Margaret saying, “Was Jeff killed because—?” and Riley answering with, “Shh.”
That had been followed almost immediately by the sound of a door closing. After that, the recorder had picked up a few barely intelligible words masked by a muted roar. There’d been more talk in the morning when they’d gotten up, typical getting-ready-to-go conversation, but it was Riley’s middle-of-the-night exchange with Margaret, coupled with that masking roar and underscored by some information he’d received earlier, that had brought him out to the Palm Room in search of her.
He knew what that muted roar was: running water. He knew what its purpose was: to mask a conversation. It was a guess, but he thought it was a good one: Riley and Margaret had continued the conversation that had been interrupted by Riley’s sharp “Shh” in the bathroom. With the water running—the purpose of which could only have been to foil any listening devices.
Given Riley’s propensity for messing with electronics, he did not imagine that the running water had been Margaret’s idea.
And there would only have been a need for running water if the conversation was something Riley absolutely did not want anyone to overhear.
In his experience, people weren’t that wary without a reason.
“Was Jeff killed because—?”
The answer he did not hear tantalized him. It also pissed him off.
His anger was directed more at himself than her.
He’d known from the moment he’d watched her take that phone off Jeffy-boy’s body that she had something to hide.
But he’d let the fact that she was a woman—a young, beautiful, sexy woman who seemed to possess the effortless ability to turn him on to his back teeth—influence him.
Which was why, even before he stepped through the garage-sized open door of the Sports Bar—the name hung in neon over the opening—he was feeling grim.
He glanced around. It was a smallish space, maybe twenty two-person tables, most of which were occupied, with half a dozen big plasma TVs fastened to the wall—all tuned silently to various sports games; headsets for anyone who wanted to listen hung on hooks beneath the TVs—and a long mahogany bar with a mirrored wall behind it, a green glass lighting fixture hanging above it, and a dozen bar stools in front of it. Another of the scantily clad waitresses flitted from table to table, serving drinks and what looked like tiny bags of popcorn. The bar stools seemed to be all occupied, mostly by men. Two bartenders, one male and one female, were busy pouring drinks.
His quarry leaned against the far end of the bar with her back to him. Standing as she was under one of the lights, there was no mistaking the bright blaze of her hair. It hung loose around her shoulders in a profusion of waves. Her dress was black, short, sweater-girl tight, and glittery with sequins. The way it clung to her ass should have been against the law. She was wearing sheer black stockings, mile-high heels. The burly older guy in a business suit and a cowboy hat who was spilling over the bar stool beside her was running his hand up and down her bare upper arm as they talked.
Watching that, his grim got a whole lot grimmer.
He walked over, leaned against the bar beside her. Close, so she’d know somebody was there.
She turned a little, glancing his way, and met his eyes. The sooty black of her lashes framed big green-hazel eyes as they widened. Her lips parted in transparent surprise.
Then she smiled, a dazzlingly genuine I’m-so-glad-to-see-you smile that hit him with the approximate incendiary effect of a surface-to-air missile.
If he’d been standing upright, it would have rocked him back on his heels. As it was, his heart kinda jumped. His balls definitely tightened.
And his grimmer grim morphed into something way hotter and more dangerous.
She’d been about to say, Thank you for the ice cream.
Then he smiled a not-nice smile and said, “I don’t like it when people lie to me, Mrs. Cowan.”
His gray-blue eyes were hard as steel. His posture appeared deceptively casual as he rested one elbow on the bar, his big body seemingly at ease, his heavy shoulders wide enough to block most of her view of the goings-on on the dance floor in the main room beyond him. In his FBI-typical dark suit and white shirt—tonight he was minus the tie—he looked exactly like what he was: a federal agent. He also looked tough and in a bad mood and not like anyone you wanted to mess with.
He was so close his arm brushed hers. Looking at his expression, she knew he’d gotten that close on purpose.
And that purpose wasn’t to try to make her little heart go pitty-pat.
His words made her stiffen. On her other side, Don Osborne was, thankfully, talking to Chip the bartender as Chip set Don’s third scotch on the rocks in front of him. That, plus the pulsing music, was almost certainly enough to keep him from overhearing.
Unlike Finn’s smile, her answering one was sweet as sugar. “I don’t like it when people try to intimidate me, Agent Bradley.”
His eyes narrowed. Her smile sweetened.
“So you want to tell me how that phone really got in the bathwater?”
Her heart skipped a beat. She prayed her sudden spurt of alarm didn’t show.
Just because she kept her voice necessarily low didn’t mean it was any less hostile. “I don’t want to tell you anything at all. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m at work. Excuse me.”
As she turned away from him, he straightened to his full height and caught her arm.
“You took the SIM card out. Don’t deny it.”
Her stomach clenched, but she wasn’t about to show it if she could help it. Even as she flashed a let-go-or-die look at him, Don swiveled his stool in her direction and frowned.
“There a problem, Riley?” he asked, glancing from the hand on her arm to Finn. What he saw in Finn’s face made his weather-beaten features harden.
Riley shook her head.
“I’m an FBI agent,” Finn said. His tone had a you want trouble, I’m it edge.
It was all she could do to resist the urge to kick him.
“He’s investigating what happened last night. He just wants to ask me a few questions,” Riley said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll walk him out and answer them for him on the way.”
“That’s fine. You do what you need to do.” He patted her arm again. “Like I said, I’m awful sorry about Jeff.” He looked at Finn. “This here’s a real fine lady. Think the world of her. You be sure and treat her like it.”
Finn’s hand tightened on her arm. Riley couldn’t see his face, but getting him out of there while the getting was good seemed like the best option.
“Thanks, Don,” she said. “I’
ll see you before you leave.” Smiling at Don, Riley moved away from the bar with Finn a step behind her, still holding on to her arm like she was a prisoner and he was marching her away.
“You know, you didn’t strike me as the type to go hunting a sugar daddy,” Finn said in her ear.
They’d just stepped outside the Sports Bar into the main room. It was louder, darker, and way more private.
Giving him the poisonous look she’d been holding back on, she jerked her arm from his hold.
“Keep walking. Don’s my boss. Actually, my boss’s boss. He owns the Palm Room,” she hissed at him. To her relief he fell in step beside her as she headed for the exit. “He’s married with five children and ten grandchildren. It’s been really good of him to give me a job and keep me on despite all the horrible things that have happened, and I appreciate it. But even he has his limits, and having an FBI agent hanging around because of me just might be it. Since I really don’t want to get fired, I’d appreciate it if you’d leave.”
“Want to get rid of me? Answer my questions.” He stopped walking. As she turned to glare at him, the smile he gave her verged on the diabolical. “Let’s start with what’s on Jeff’s phone.”
“I don’t know what’s on Jeff’s phone,” she blazed back. Her voice must have been louder than she’d intended, because several patrons at the surrounding tables glanced at her.
Aware that to a number of them she was undoubtedly a recognizable figure, she clamped her lips together, turned on her heel, and started walking again. Not that she expected to be able to just walk away from him. She was pretty sure that wherever she went, he meant to follow.
But the closer she could get him to the door, the closer he would be to leaving. She was good friends with all the bouncers. If he’d been anybody else, she would have happily had them escort him out. But throwing out a federal agent probably wasn’t something she even wanted to attempt.
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