The Heiress’s 2-Week Affair

by Marie Ferrarella

  She couldn’t just stand around, killing time until Matt was free.

  Besides, if this turned out to be a wild goose chase, she didn’t want Matt wasting his time. He might grow impatient with the whole thing and tell her to leave it to the police.

  At which point, she’d be on her own. Something she normally was, but this one time, she had to admit she liked being partnered with him. Besides, it wasn’t going to be for that long. He’d be gone soon enough.

  At least that was the excuse she gave herself, the one that she decided would be acceptable to Matt if he called her out for going back on her word. She wasn’t going back on it, she insisted silently. She was just bending it a little.

  Besides, Matt knew her. He hadn’t really expected her to do nothing, had he?

  Natalie posed the rhetorical question to herself as she took a card out of her wallet. On it was the number of a local cab company. She needed to get to that motel quickly.

  Twenty very long minutes later, the cab arrived. Another minute after that, she was on her way over to Anthony Silecchia’s last known address, struggling to subdue her growing agitation.

  The ride there took less time than waiting for the cab had.

  “Want me to wait?” the cabbie asked as he brought his green-and-white vehicle to a stop at the curb. Beyond it was the motel. It appeared to be somewhat rundown, even from a distance.

  “No, thanks.” Getting out, she paid her fare. Natalie included a healthy tip because the cabbie hadn’t droned endlessly on and on during the ride but had let her have her solitude.

  Glancing at the money, the cabbie’s thin lips parted in a smile.

  “You sure?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned as he glanced once more at the surrounding area. “This ain’t the nicest neighborhood, Miss.”

  “I’ll be all right,” she assured him, stepping away from the cab.

  She didn’t have her usual second weapon strapped to the inside of her thigh because, after all, she’d attended a family funeral. But that didn’t keep her from bringing along her personal small handgun, housing it in her clutch purse.

  Natalie fervently hoped that she wouldn’t have to use it.

  Verifying Silecchia’s room number with the bored-looking clerk behind the desk in the rental office, Natalie hurried up the outer stairs.

  Room number 221 was in the middle of the second floor. It looked out onto the front parking lot.

  She knocked on the door. There was no response, no sound of someone moving around inside. Waiting a moment, Natalie knocked again. Still nothing.

  Dust-laden curtains hung at the window, drawn, but not meeting completely. She shifted so that she could see into the motel room. Squinting, she could make out the form of a man, his back to the window, sitting in a chair. His head looked as if it was dropped forward.

  She realized that the man’s hands were pulled back behind him. They were tied. Something was very definitely up.

  “Time to make an entrance,” she murmured, reaching into her purse for her weapon. She tried knocking one last time. This time, there was a frantic noise from within the room. As she peered in, she realized that Anthony Silecchia had twisted around and was looking straight at her. There was desperation in his eyes as he frantically tugged on the ties on his wrists.

  Natalie quickly studied the door. She judged that it wasn’t that sturdy. Backing up, she raised her leg and kicked the door as hard as she could. The wood groaned but ultimately stayed where it was.

  She tried again. It took Natalie three very strong kicks before the door surrendered, separating itself from the doorjamb.

  One forceful shove from her shoulder was all that was necessary. Natalie quickly let herself in.

  “Anthony Silecchia I presume?” she quipped, crossing to the man in the chair.

  Tucking the handgun she’d had out just a moment before into her waistband, she started to loosen the man’s ties. Or attempted to.

  That was when she heard it. The very distinctive click of a gun being cocked.

  At the same time she heard a husky, whiskey-lubricated voice order, “Drop it.”

  She knew that voice.

  Stunned, Natalie turned around.

  “I said drop it!” Lydia shouted at her. She appeared to be less than half a step away from being enraged. “And while you’re at it, raise your hands up over your head.” When Natalie didn’t obey, Lydia gestured with the gun she was holding. “Now,” she growled.

  For the time being, Natalie played along and did as she was told. “I thought you said you didn’t know where he was.”

  “I got lucky,” Lydia snapped impatiently. “And this is none of your damn business. I know who you are,” she shouted angrily. “You’re that blond tart’s sister. Thought you fooled me, didn’t you?” she accused.

  There’d been no attempt at any deception. “Matt told you my name when we first came over,” Natalie reminded the woman.

  Lydia didn’t appear to remember, or if she did, she gave no indication. Instead, the bloodshot hazel eyes shifted over to the nephew she’d caught off guard and tied up.

  “I want that ring back, Anthony. Do you hear me?” She cocked the trigger. “I want it back. It belongs to me!”

  Anthony looked at his aunt as if she was insane. “I don’t have any damn ring, you crazy old hag.”

  “Not any damn ring,” Lydia shouted into his face. “The damn ring. The Tears of the Quetzal. It’s mine,” she screamed at him. “I earned it. I was nice to that horrible bastard with the cold hands. Real nice,” she emphasized.

  Natalie felt nauseous. The thought of Lydia and her father together made her stomach turn and threatened to bring up her hastily consumed lunch.

  “The ring doesn’t belong to you,” Natalie told Lydia as calmly as possible. The calmer she sounded, the more agitated Lydia became.

  “The hell it doesn’t. What doesn’t belong in this picture is you. You stumbled into the wrong damn place this time, girlie. I’m going to get rid of you as soon as Anthony tells me where the ring is.” A nasty, cold smile curved her thin, cracked lips. “Maybe even before. That’ll teach you not to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  As she spoke, she shifted the small gun barrel so that it could deliver a nice sized hole to whatever area she chose.

  Chapter 15

  Natalie raised her hands as she was told and kept a watchful eye on the gun in Lydia’s hand.

  “You don’t want to do this,” she said to the woman.

  Something almost maniacal flashed in Lydia’s eyes. “Oh, yes I do.”

  She meant it, Natalie thought. The woman really was crazy. “Did you kill Candace?” she asked Lydia bluntly.

  Lydia cocked her head as if that could make her think better. She reminded Natalie of an aging bird.

  “If I had, I’d have the ring, wouldn’t I? No, he killed her. Anthony,” Lydia declared, momentarily shifting both her line of vision and her weapon, pointing both at her nephew.

  Taking advantage of the woman’s momentary distraction, Natalie moved to grab her.

  But Lydia was surprisingly agile for a woman in her deranged state.

  “Uh-uh-uh,” she cautioned in a singsong voice. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The red lips parted in a cold smile. “Not unless you want to die a few minutes earlier.”

  Natalie was aware that the disheveled, bedraggled Anthony was frantically tugging on the ropes around his wrists—and getting nowhere.

  “Aunt Lydia, get these damn ropes off me and stop talking crazy. I don’t have the freakin’ ring, and I didn’t kill that woman. When I got there, she was already dead. And the ring was gone,” he insisted.

  Natalie could just picture Matt’s cousin ready to eagerly pull the diamond off her sister’s dead hand. She stifled her rage. That wouldn’t help her get out of this situation.

  “I got the hell out of there,” he swore, pleading with his aunt.

  “Do you drive a navy-blue sedan?” Natalie
asked suddenly. Just yesterday, a woman had called in on the tip line. She’d said that she was walking her dog in the vicinity of Candace’s condo around midnight the night she died and had seen a navy-blue sedan peeling away.

  Confusion mingled with fear in his eyes. “Yeah, what about it?” Anthony whined.

  “She’s looking for her sister’s killer, that’s ‘what about it,’” Lydia taunted, talking to him as if she were the one with superior intelligence. “She doesn’t care who she pins it on, as long as somebody pays. Your cousin Matt brought her sniffing around.” When Lydia frowned, her mouth pointed downward. “Never did like him.”

  The woman was incredible, Natalie thought in disgust. She remembered what Lydia had said when Matt handed her the hundred-dollar bills. “But you took his money.”

  Lydia tossed her head proudly. “I always take the money.” And then her expression changed, her eyes narrowing into slits. “Okay, I’m getting bored. This is where you check out. And don’t worry, I won’t miss. The only thing my worthless husband taught me was how to shoot and get what I aimed for.”

  Just as Lydia was about to squeeze the trigger, the door banged open for a second time in less than fifteen minutes. It crashed against the opposite wall. Startled, Lydia jerked her head around to see who was behind her.

  It was all that Natalie needed.

  She lunged at Lydia, tucking her head down and aiming for the woman’s hips. They both fell to the stained, tattered carpet. With a death grip on her weapon, Lydia’s finger jerked, firing the gun. Behind her, Natalie heard Anthony scream. She didn’t get a chance to look up to see who had come in until, straddling Lydia, she pinned down the woman’s toothpick-thin arms.

  “Matt,” she cried, relief flooding through her. “And you brought reinforcements.” Natalie’s smile went from ear to ear. “Nice to see you.”

  “You, too,” he wisecracked, in order to hide the swell of emotion he was feeling. If he’d been half a minute later, she might not have even been alive. He felt like strangling Lydia with his bare hands. But instead, he stepped aside and let the two policemen he’d brought with him take over.

  “I’m bleeding to death!” Anthony all but shrieked. “Help me, Matt!

  Matt took Natalie’s hand and helped her up to her feet. He glanced toward his cousin. It looked as if the bullet had hardly grazed him. There was a bullet hole in the wall right behind him.

  “It’s a flesh wound, Tony. Suck it up.” One of the policemen untied Anthony while the other led Lydia away. She was cursing at everything in sight, most venomously at him. Matt completely ignored the woman. His attention was focused on Natalie. “And as for you—” He didn’t know whether to hug her because she was alive or shake her because she could have been killed. So he just held onto her shoulders for a moment, exhaling a rather loud breath. “I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

  He had to understand. “It’s not a matter of trust. I just wanted to spare you some unnecessary work. In case you haven’t noticed, your Aunt Lydia is a loon,” she said, looking as the woman was being led out the door, “and she could have made the whole thing up. I just wanted to make sure she hadn’t.”

  And then the circumstances suddenly dawned on her. How had he managed to come in the nick of time? “I thought you said you didn’t know where Anthony was staying.”

  “I didn’t,” he confirmed. “But I figured my brother Scott would, so I gave him a call.” He looked at her, his eyes saying volumes. “Lucky for you I did.” And lucky for me, he added silently.

  Natalie saw no reason to dispute that. “Lucky,” she echoed, walking out. Both Anthony and Lydia were being placed in the backseat of the police car. Within seconds, they would be on their way to the police precinct.

  “Find out anything?” Matt asked her, bringing her attention back to him.

  Turning her head, she realized that they were less than a couple of inches apart—and she had this overwhelming desire just to lay her head on his shoulder. “Anthony admits to being at my sister’s condo. According to him, she was already dead.”

  “You believe him?” Matt asked. He was inclined to. His cousin was a lot of things, most of them unsavory, but he sincerely doubted that the man was a killer. He was too much of a coward for that.

  Natalie shrugged, not sure what to believe. “We had a tip from a dog walker who saw someone driving a car like Anthony’s away from the scene about midnight. The ME thinks Candace was killed before then.” She looked at the departing police vehicle. “Frankly, right now, my money’s on your aunt. She’s crazy enough to have done it and spacey enough not to remember doing it.” She looked back at Matt. “I want to be there when they question her.”

  He had no doubt that she would get her way, even though this still wasn’t supposed to be her case. “I’m sure you’ll pull it off.”

  Natalie nodded. Suddenly, she felt as if her facade was crumbling. She looked up at the man beside her. “Thanks for not trusting me and coming to the rescue.”

  He grinned, for the moment forgetting the agitation he’d experienced when he couldn’t reach her on her cell phone.

  “Anytime.” And then he grew serious. His eyes swept over her as if to reassure himself. “Did she hurt you?”

  Natalie shrugged. “I’ll probably have some bruises. She’s a very bony old lady, but no, she didn’t.” She took a deep breath, as if to fortify herself. “Could have been a lot worse if you hadn’t shown up.”

  He laughed shortly, draping one arm protectively around her shoulders. Grateful that he’d acted on impulse.

  “It was the funniest thing. Right in the middle of going over the revised expense report for the new surveillance equipment, I had the oddest feeling suddenly come over me. A premonition I guess. I had this very clear image of you—and you were in trouble. I just ‘sensed’ it.” His voice had a mocking quality to it because he was the type who usually didn’t believe in those kinds of things.

  “Maybe you’re taking Candace’s place,” Natalie theorized. “When Candace and I were younger, I swear each of us knew when the other was in trouble or even needed the other. When we grew up, that didn’t happen so much. I think we were both just blocking that sixth sense out.” Her expression grew very serious. “But the night Candace was killed, I had this horrible, icy sensation slice right through me. I was just falling asleep, and I bolted upright.”

  She shrugged. “But I thought I was just having a nightmare, so I let it go. Maybe it wasn’t a nightmare. Maybe it was Candace, trying to reach out to me one last time for help.”

  Matt didn’t try to argue her out of it. Neither did he agree outright. There were things in this world, he had come to know, that just defied logic and straightforward explanations. Like his suddenly feeling that she’d needed him.

  “Maybe,” he finally echoed. He looked around the motel parking lot. “Where’s your car?”

  “I took a cab from the police station. I didn’t want to waste time going home to get my car,” she explained. “I was afraid that maybe, if he had killed Candace, your cousin would bolt.”

  Matt nodded. In her place, he would have thought the same thing. “Worked a little magic on the computer to get the address?”

  Her smile struck him as almost shy. Something stirred within him, and he recognized it for what it was. Not just yearning, but deep affection. “More like worked a little magic on the computer tech.”

  “Poor guy probably couldn’t say no to you.” A fond smile curved his mouth. “I know the feeling.”

  She thought of the letter she found beneath his pillow that awful morning. “As I recall, you said no in your own way.”

  He made no comment. Instead, he asked her, “Need a ride?”

  She was feeling suddenly very vulnerable around Matt, but it would take time to get a cab to come and pick her up. “Yeah.”

  Matt opened the passenger door for her and waited until she got in.

  They went to the police station where Natalie filled in an annoyed Det
ective Parker on the latest details regarding her sister’s case. In exchange for this information, Parker grudgingly allowed her to sit in on the interviews. Anthony held fast to his story that he had nothing to do with Candace’s murder, that she was already dead when he got there.

  Lydia, however, rambled on and on. Finding holes in her story and discovering that she believed the ring really belonged to her, the detectives began to believe that she had been the one to end Candace’s life. When Parker finally confronted her and asked if she shoved Candace, causing the heiress to fall backward and hit her head on the marble coffee table, Lydia merely shrugged and said “Maybe.”

  Lydia was booked for Candace’s murder within the hour.

  “But then where’s the ring?” Matt voiced the question out loud that was on both their minds.

  Upon leaving the precinct, he’d brought Natalie back with him to The Janus. He needed to pick up his wallet, he told her, explaining that when he couldn’t reach her on her cell phone, he’d left in a hurry, inadvertently leaving his wallet in his desk. He wanted to get it before he filled her in on his agenda.

  Following Matt to his office, Natalie shrugged. “Who knows? She might have it, or she could have lost it, along with her mind. As far as I’m concerned, if the ring is lost, well, good riddance. It’s brought my family nothing but bad luck.”

  Opening the middle drawer of his desk, Matt took out his wallet and tucked it into his pocket.

  “Maybe not.” He took her arm and gently guided her back out again. “In an odd sort of way, it brought you and me together.”

  She was very aware that he was touching her and drew away. She might as well start getting used to the separation. “But for how long?”

  They were out on the casino floor now and perforce, he had to get closer in order for her to hear him above the din. “That depends.”

  She felt his breath along her neck and throat. Not a good thing when she was trying to harden herself. “On what?”

  “On how long you’ll have me.”

  Those were the last words she expected to hear. Natalie came to a dead stop and looked at him. “Have you for what?”