Island Storms

by Sherryl Woods

  “You don’t think I’m going to see Ingrid Nielsen by myself, do you? The police would never forgive me if I got myself murdered.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Molly had been around enough movie sets to understand the charisma of power. Producers and directors exuded it, though some of them had to work harder than others to accomplish it. Even so, she couldn’t quite imagine Ingrid Nielsen with Allan Winecroft. Not even in the same room, much less in the same bed.

  Talk about odd couples. She was tall. He was short. She was young. He had been heading into his golden years at a downhill clip. She was a statuesque beauty of Miss Universe caliber. He, to put it politely, probably hadn’t seen the inside of a gym since high school required him to be there. Tennis had done nothing to reduce his flabby stomach. She spent her days languishing at the pool, fascinated with the latest tabloids. He spent his engaged in high finance. The only possible ground for mutual attraction was money. She wanted it. He had it.

  Unless he had to fork it all out to an irate ex-wife.

  “Okay, assuming for a minute that you’re right about an impending divorce,” Molly said thoughtfully as she and Liza waited to take the elevator to the eighth floor. “If Drucilla was about to take her husband to the cleaners, wouldn’t she be more likely to wind up with a knife in her back? Both Allan and Ingrid would have pretty powerful motives for knocking her off.”

  “Your divorce really must have gone more smoothly than most,” Liza countered. “Drucilla couldn’t afford to take the risk of a nasty divorce. The way I figure it, she probably had some skeleton hidden in the closet. By the time Allan Winecroft finished airing the family scandals, whatever they were, Drucilla would have been publicly humiliated. Worse, she would have lost access to his—by all reports—very deep pockets. With him dead, she gets it all and keeps her pure reputation. She’ll be married again by the end of the year, probably to some enterprising businessman half her age.”

  Molly recalled Michael O’Hara’s assumption that Drucilla had been awaiting the arrival of a lover when they arrived to question her. Could that have been the skeleton Drucilla would have killed to hide? “Was she having an affair?” she asked Liza as they took the elevator up.

  “If I knew that, so would everyone else. Then there wouldn’t have been much risk involved in exposure, would there? If she is, unlike Allan, she is very discreet. There’s never been so much as a whisper of scandal that could be substantiated.”

  “Then what makes you think Allan had any ammunition to take into court, especially if he was having an affair himself? Sounds awfully messy on both sides to me. Or maybe if there was no whispering, it’s because there was no scandal. Drucilla’s alimony would have been safe enough.”

  “No. More likely the old double standard. If he could prove she’d been playing around, his own tawdry little affair would be viewed sympathetically. Male privilege or something.”

  “So, who should we see first? I thought Ingrid, but maybe we should go straight to Drucilla instead.”

  “You’ve already seen Drucilla. She’s probably surrounded by her friends now or under sedation or something. I doubt if anyone’s in there weeping with Ingrid. She could probably use a sympathetic ear.”

  As the elevator doors slid open, Detective O’Hara started to step inside. He took one look at Molly, who’d gotten out without thinking. If she’d been smart, she’d have stayed right where she was and gone to some other floor. Any other floor. He gave her one of his I-don’t-believe-this looks and let the elevator leave without him.

  “Explain,” he said succinctly as her only route of escape vanished.

  Since Molly knew he wouldn’t like the explanation, she introduced Liza instead. It was an ideal diversionary tactic. His eyes lit up with an interest Molly found herself envying. She knew better than to think it had anything to do with the murder. Liza always had that mesmerizing effect on men. She radiated the kind of energy that attracted them, though their efforts to evoke a response from her were usually wasted. Liza’s trail of broken hearts was legendary, and those were just the ones on the island. She didn’t have time for romance, or so she claimed. Molly suspected that her own heart had taken a beating years before and she’d adopted a self-protective shell as a result. Whatever the real story, she’d never shared a word of it with Molly despite their immediate and confiding friendship that began when Molly and Brian moved in across the hall.

  The detective’s attention wandered only briefly. All too quickly, he focused on Molly again. Under other circumstances, she might have found that satisfying. “Your apartment’s on five,” he said.

  “Yes. And you don’t have one. Why are you here?”

  “Police business.” He glanced at Liza. “And your apartment?”

  “Right across the hall from Molly,” Liza informed him cheerfully. “Want to drop by and see my collection of African masks? They’re quite extraordinary.”

  “I’ll bet they are. Perhaps we should all go take a look.” He regarded Molly quizzically. “Unless you had other plans.”

  “Well, I was going…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind. It can wait.”

  “Actually, we were on our way to visit a friend,” Liza said. “Ingrid Nielsen. Do you know her?”

  The detective gritted his teeth. “No, but I have the distinct impression I should. Why?”

  “Well, for one thing she is absolutely beautiful,” Molly said hurriedly before Liza could give them away. She’d only made that promise to Michael hours before. He was not going to be thrilled that she’d forgotten it already.

  “And?” he said.

  “And what?”

  “I’m sure you weren’t going to see her because she’s beautiful. What’s her connection to the case?”

  “Who said there was a connection?”

  “You did.”

  “I never…”

  “Your face gave you away. Unless my detecting skills are rusty, which they rarely have time to get, you’re still worried about being considered a suspect despite my reassurances just this morning. That means you’re probably ignoring my advice to leave the investigating to me…again. Are you following me so far?”

  She nodded reluctantly.

  “How am I doing?”

  “You’re on the money,” she conceded grumpily.

  He beamed. “Swell. Then the only thing left to figure out is what this Ingrid Nielsen has to do with Allan Winecroft’s murder. Suppose we all drop in together?” He turned back down the hall. “Which apartment?”

  “Oh, what the hell,” Liza said, leading the way. “The more the merrier.”

  Molly wasn’t so sure about that. Michael didn’t look very merry.

  His mood improved considerably when Ingrid Nielsen opened the door, her blond hair pulled back from a face so stunning that any agency in New York would have hired her as a model in an instant. Thick lashes rimmed eyes of navy-blue velvet. She was wearing an oversized hot-pink T-shirt that barely reached her knees and clung to every lush curve of her young, tanned body. What he couldn’t seem to pull his gaze from, however, were the tears tracking down her cheeks. She swiped at them with a fistful of crumpled Kleenex.

  Liza didn’t waste time being coy. She drew the girl into a hug. “I’m sorry. You must be feeling absolutely lousy.”

  Ingrid didn’t even spare her a glance. Her frightened eyes were riveted on Michael.

  “This is Detective O’Hara,” Liza said briskly, ushering them all back into the living room. “He’s going to find Allan’s killer.”

  The announcement brought on a fresh onslaught of sobs, all the more devastating because the young girl made not so much as a whimper of sound. Michael stared at her with the bemused expression of a man totally at a loss. Molly almost felt sorry for him, until she realized that his attention had already moved on.
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  His gaze went to the silver-framed photograph of Allan sitting in the middle of the huge marble coffee table and froze there. She could see the pieces click into place. A fresh arrangement of long-stemmed apricot roses sat beside the photo. The florist’s card had been crumpled, then smoothed out. Molly edged closer for a better look. She wasn’t surprised to see that the flowers had been sent by Allan. Posthumously, though? Maybe the man had placed a standing order and no one had thought to cancel it. At forty bucks or more a dozen, a greedy florist might be reluctant to cancel the order himself until he was told to.

  “Ms. Nielsen,” Michael said quietly, “what was your relationship with Allan Winecroft?”

  “He was…” she began, but her voice choked up on her. She cleared her throat and looked him straight in the eye. “We were going to be married as soon as he divorced that bitch down the hall.”

  Molly winced at the blunt description of Drucilla. Michael’s face remained stoically impassive. “Did he have any immediate plans to do that?”

  “He told me it had to be handled carefully.”

  Which meant, Molly thought, that Allan had been dragging his heels. Why? She voiced the question aloud.

  “Because the old witch controlled all the money.”

  If the others were as stunned as Molly, they did a better job of hiding it. If all their suppositions about the source of the Winecroft money had been wrong, it played havoc with any motive Drucilla might have had for murder. She could have dumped Allan in a heartbeat. “I thought he had been CEO of a big corporation in New York,” Molly said.

  “That’s true, but it was her company originally. He took it from a nothing little business started by her father and turned it into a conglomerate. He deserved all the credit and she knew it, but she still controlled the purse strings. He told me all about it. If she’d cut him loose, he would have lost everything.”

  “Then where was he getting the money to pay for this apartment?” Liza blurted, not fearing to rush in where Molly wasn’t about to tread.

  Ingrid shrugged, obviously not one to question a gift horse. “He had a few things going on the side, I guess. I never asked. Or maybe he took the payments out of petty cash. It’s not much of an apartment, compared to what they own. I asked him to get a bigger place, but he said he couldn’t afford it, all because of that awful wife of his. I hope you arrest her,” she said to Michael. “She probably killed him just for spite. She didn’t want me to have him.”

  Molly glanced around at the expensive furnishings, the decorator touches. There had been one brief moment when they’d first walked in when she had felt sorry for Ingrid. She’d seemed like a girl who’d innocently gotten caught up in something sordid and was now paying the price. Now Molly wondered if she wasn’t just a grasping, spoiled brat, perhaps even more of a manipulator than the woman she sought to replace. It dismayed her how often ugliness turned up when the veneer of beauty was scraped away.

  Having surmised Ingrid’s true colors, Molly wondered if Allan had provided for her in his will. If so, perhaps Ingrid had tired of waiting to share wedded bliss with him and gone for the payoff. She decided against asking straight out about the contents of any will. The girl would only lie. She seemed more than capable of protecting her own hide.

  “What will you do now?” Molly asked, managing to sound sympathetic.

  “Do?”

  Getting a job was clearly a concept with which Ingrid wasn’t familiar. “Will you be able to stay on here?” Molly persisted. “Or will you need to go back to modeling?”

  Michael O’Hara shot her an approving glance.

  “I’m getting too old to model,” Ingrid said, too quickly. “Besides, I’m sure Allan arranged for me to keep this place in case anything ever happened to him.”

  “Your name was on the deed?”

  Ingrid managed to look demure. “He was a very considerate man.”

  “And very generous,” Molly observed. “I’m sure you’re right. He must have worried, though, at his age, that something could happen to him and you would be left with nothing. An apartment like this is expensive to maintain. Did you ever talk about that?”

  Ingrid’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “You mean a will, right? Well, of course he had one. Any man in his position would. We never discussed the contents, though, not specifically.”

  “So you don’t know that he left you anything besides the apartment?”

  A fresh batch of tears appeared, as if on cue. “What does any of that matter now?” she whimpered. “All that matters is that he’s dead.”

  By this time, though, Molly doubted if anyone in the room believed the performance, except possibly Ingrid herself.

  * * *

  “Fascinating,” Liza said, the minute the door had closed behind them. “Molly, I had no idea you could cross-examine anyone like that.”

  “Me, either,” Michael admitted. It wasn’t said with the sort of admiration Molly would have preferred. “Was I wasting my breath this morning? What the hell possessed you to go traipsing up here on your own without telling me what you were up to?”

  “You’d have told me to stay out of it.”

  “Damn right, I would. After last night, you should know better.”

  Liza stared from one to the other, obviously confused by the crackling tension arcing between them. “What happened last night?”

  “It was nothing,” Molly murmured.

  “Then why did you wake me from a dead sleep to tell me about it?” Michael demanded. “You were practically incoherent.”

  “I had an attack of nerves, okay? That’s all it was. That’s hardly incoherent. By the time you got over here I was just fine.”

  “Fine? I don’t think so. Let me remind you one more time that amateur snooping is the fastest way I know to go from witness to victim.”

  Molly shivered but remained defiant. She wasn’t going to allow this whole awful situation to make her run and hide or stop looking out for her own interests. “Look, I got Ingrid to admit that she’s probably better off with Allan dead than she was with him alive. That makes her a suspect, right?”

  “Yes,” he said grudgingly. “But you’ve also warned her that we’re on to her. Any evidence we were likely to get could wind up buried so deep now that we’ll never find it.”

  Liza patted his cheek consolingly. “Don’t look so glum, Detective. I’m sure you’ll be able to find whatever you put your mind to. Now, come along and tell us what else you’ve discovered today. I’m sure if we all put our heads together we can have this solved in no time.”

  “I have lots of help from my fellow officers, thanks.”

  “Ah, but they don’t know the cast of characters the way we do, do they?”

  “No,” he said, barely controlling a sigh of regret.

  “Then come along. Molly makes a great café cubano. While she’s doing that, we can all get better acquainted.”

  Molly had a feeling things were spinning out of control. Liza had a way of taking charge that wasn’t always appreciated. “I’m not sure getting better acquainted goes along with police procedure,” she said, offering the detective an out she was sure he’d grab. He’d obviously seen more of her in the past few days than he’d cared to.

  “That’s your trouble, Mrs. DeWitt. You don’t understand a damn thing about police procedure. I think getting acquainted is definitely in order.”

  He even led the way to her apartment. When he walked through the door, Brian took one look at him and said, “Oh, wow, you haven’t arrested Mom, have you?”

  “Not yet,” he said with a pointed glance in her direction.

  Molly took the hint and practically ran into the kitchen. To her dismay, the detective was only one step behind her. When she toppled the can of Cuban coffee onto the floor, he picked it up and took over. His movements were efficient and practiced. When the powerfu
l coffee was brewing, he turned toward her again.

  “Why won’t you leave this investigation in my hands?”

  “Because I’ve learned through the years not to count on anyone but myself. There are fewer disappointments that way. If things get screwed up, I have no one to blame but myself.”

  “In this instance, there is more at risk that way. Assuming that you’re not the killer, which I do assume, by the way, then the real murderer could get very nervous at all your snooping. For all we know, he or she could already think you know too much. We’ve been over this before. If you insist on pursuing this, the only way I’ll be able to protect you is by putting you under guard. Frankly, I don’t have the manpower to waste on a meddlesome woman who insists on jumping into the path of danger.”

  “Thanks,” she muttered, thoroughly miffed. Meddlesome woman, indeed.

  “You know what I mean. You work for the county and know every bit as much as I do about the budget crunch, I’m sure.” A wicked gleam put sparks in his dark-brown eyes. He took a step closer. “Unless, of course, you’re hoping I’ll move in, just to protect you.”

  “Detective O’Hara,” she protested.

  “Michael, please,” he reminded her, inching closer still. She could smell his after-shave. It was a spicy scent she particularly liked. If he’d meant to intimidate her, it wasn’t working. On the contrary, she was likely to throw herself into his arms in another humiliating second.

  “It appears we’re going to be better acquainted than I ever dreamed,” he murmured, deliberately provoking her.

  Reacting on cue, Molly gritted her teeth. “I do not want you—or anyone else—to move in here to protect me.”

  “Actually, it could be convenient,” he said thoughtfully, his gaze locked with hers. “It’s a long drive from Little Havana. It would save me time if I just bunked on your sofa.”

  “I’m sure the county can still afford to pay for your mileage.”

  “I was talking time, not money. Just think what clues I could pick up if I lurked about the halls at all hours.”