On the count of three I will get out of the car, I told myself.
I was still sitting there on three.
On the count of ten.
It took me a full five minutes before I worked up the courage to wrench myself out of the car. “Ow ow ow ow ow,” I whimpered. Why bother being stoic when there’s no one around to witness it? Using the key I’d kept when I was fired from CRS—because, as any inmate will agree, you never know when a key is going to come in handy—I let myself in to the office. I’d wanted to talk to Belinda Wernke, to see if I could wheedle Rhonda’s ex-husband’s address out of her, but the office was empty and eerily quiet. Had they all gone home early? Then I heard the clunk of a closing file drawer in Rhonda’s office.
Rhonda! My heart went into spasms.
But Rhonda was dead. Or was she? Nothing she did would surprise me, including her rising from the dead as a vengeance-seeking zombie.
I tiptoed to Rhonda’s office door, which was ajar. Poking my head around the corner, I peeked inside. The man going through Rhonda’s files looked up, startled. I twitched in shock, and the devils gleefully started up with the jackhammers.
The man was large and barrel-chested. He had a swirl of salt-and-pepper hair, beetling black brows, and a butt chin. He looked the way Beethoven would have looked if he’d lived in a century when guys wore aqua fleece shirts over gray gym pants. This was Rhonda’s ex-husband, Frederick Cromwell. Last time I’d seen him, he’d been threatening to spray-paint me back to the Stone Age. Now I was alone with him in an empty office.
I experienced the same sensation as when a stairway ends before you’re expecting it and you klutz-stumble down the last step. This was the guy I’d wanted to see. Only not just this instant.
“Who the hell are you?” he growled.
“I’m—where is everyone?”
“Gave ’em the day off.”
“You did?”
“This used to be my company, until my ex-wife stole it from me. Now I’m getting it back. I’m Frederick Cromwell.”
“That was fast.” Under the circumstances, pretty nervy of me.
He grinned, suddenly a bit sheepish, and the scariness got toned down a notch. “Yeah, I know, I’m jumping the gun. It’ll all have to go through the courts. But that’ll take months, and in the meantime the business will go down the tubes. So I’m performing an illegal lifesaving operation.”
I noted that Frederick had discovered Rhonda’s stash of Chivas Regal, the stuff she brought out when she was wooing new clients. Judging from the ice melting in his tumbler, Chivas had been keeping Frederick company for a while.
“Hey, I know you.” He pointed at me with his glass. “You’re the one who yelled at me in the parking lot the other day.”
I nodded. “I wanted to call the cops on you. But everybody just stood there giggling and cheering you on.”
It suddenly occurred to me that this man might still harbor deep feelings for his ex-wife, that I was whipping the scar off an emotional wound, exhibiting all the sensitivity of someone waving a Krispy Kreme in front of a dieter. “I’m sorry,” I muttered, “I didn’t mean—”
Frederick snorted. “You think I didn’t know Rhonda’s employees hated her guts? She treated people like floor mats. That’s what we were arguing about that day—her employee turnover rate was affecting the company’s bottom line. Not to mention the fact that she was cheating on her taxes so outrageously even a blind accountant could have spotted it.” He slugged down the last of his drink, eyeing me over the rim of his glass. “You look like a smart cookie. Why are you still around?”
“I’m not. Rhonda fired me on Monday.”
“Don’t tell me. She said your work wasn’t up to snuff so she didn’t have to pay you.”
I stared at him, surprised. “Something like that.”
“Typical.” Opening Rhonda’s middle drawer, he took out a CRS company checkbook. “How about if I write you out a check? How much did she owe you?”
“I worked here six weeks.”
“So we’ll throw in two weeks extra for pain and suffering. What’s your name?”
“Mazie Maguire.” I was starting to like Frederick. But he still wasn’t off the hook as far as I was concerned. A guy can be a mensch but still be a monster.
“How much was Rhonda paying you?”
I told him and he chuckled. “You could make more money shoveling sidewalks. I used to give bonuses, raises—I made my employees feel valued.” He gestured around the office. “This used to be mine. I’m the Cromwell in Cromwell Research. I built up the company myself. I worked ninety-hour weeks. I didn’t have time for dating. I would have loved kids, but I never had time to find the right woman. Then Rhonda came along, applying for a job here. Boy, was she good at selling herself. ‘I have a great work ethic, I like challenges, I’m a self-starter.’ She really knew how to shovel the shit. So I hired her as an assistant. She turned out to be terrific. She was a whiz at the computer stuff, the clients loved her, and she always looked great. I think she spent everything I paid her on shoes and clothes.”
He picked up the bottle of Chivas, raised his eyebrows at me.
I nodded a yes. People drink more if they drink in company, and when they drink, they blab. Frederick found a glass in Rhonda’s credenza and splashed in enough whiskey to get me looped for a week. I took a wimpy little hummingbird sip.
Frederick slugged his down like painkiller. “You know, Mazie, not to speak ill of the dead, but …”
My ears positively writhed in delight. I love that phrase! People utter it as a sort of curse breaker, then they go ahead and spill the most slanderous things about the deceased person.
Frederick didn’t disappoint me. “Rhonda did her best work out of her clothes. Her third day here, we both stayed late, then she seduced me right on top of my desk. God, it was hot! After that, we were going at it every chance we got. The supply closet, the men’s room, any empty office we found—it was fabulous. Until I went and spoiled everything by asking her to marry me.”
He went to the window, flipped open the blind, looked out onto the street. It was completely dark now. Oakland Avenue was bumper-to-bumper with homebound commuters. A silence grew. Frederick was closing down, lost in his private memories, probably regretting what he’d told me.
He couldn’t button down now! Not when things were starting to get juicy. I had to keep him talking.
Ve haf vays to make you talk! Yeah, but what were my ways? Oh, right—sweet-talk and soft soap.
I snatched a photo off the wall. It showed a bikini-clad Rhonda posing on the deck of a sailboat. I babbled the first thing that came to my tongue. “She sure was pretty! And such a gorgeous figure! She looks amazing!”
Frederick took the photo and studied it, his expression one of mingled scorn and sadness. “Rhonda didn’t always look like this. She had a lot of work done, I mean a lot. Once we were married she started whining about how she needed a tummy tuck and boob implants. So she’d look good for me, she said. None of it was cheap, but hell, if it made her feel sexy, I was the one who benefited, right? She went to this clinic down in Chicago for a—what do they call it when they suck the fat out of your stomach?”
“Liposuction?”
“Yeah. Then it was some Belgian hotshot here in Milwaukee for her saddlebag thighs, and another doctor who gave her pouty lips. That pretty boy Kennison did some damn procedure or other, and then she found some quack who injected body fat into her facial lines. There were a lot of others—I forget what all she had done.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “Once she had her new twenty-year-old body I was too old and ugly for her.”
I poured us both more Chivas. Frederick looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “You’re not trying to get me drunk, are you, young lady?”
“Of course not.” I gave him the wide, innocent eyes. “But I’m Irish and we drink at our wakes. It helps folks cope with the pain. Then we stand around the coffin telling stories about the deceased—”<
br />
Frederick gave a bark of laughter. “Stories? You want stories about my ex-wife? How about the story of how she became my ex-wife?” He downed the drink I’d poured him.
He wasn’t slurring, but his cheeks were flushed, and his eyes had a glassy sheen. He began to pace, leaving footprints on Rhonda’s pride-and-joy white carpet. “When I found out Rhonda was sleeping around, I filed for divorce. I was up front about it. I told Rhonda exactly what I was going to do. Second stupidest thing I ever did.”
“Honesty is overrated, huh?”
“Damn right. So Rhonda came in to the office while I was off at a conference. She keyed into the server, drained my whole database, client list—everything—and sent it to her own computer, encoded. Then she wiped out my hard drive and had a locksmith come in and reset every lock in the building. When I got here and discovered I’d been locked out of my own office, I completely lost it—I busted down the door, threatened Rhonda in front of all the employees. Man, did she work that to her advantage! She got a restraining order, she got a shark lawyer, and she got my company, too.”
The conference phone on Rhonda’s desk rang and we both jumped. The answering machine picked up and Rhonda’s Persian cat voice purred a greeting. This is Rhonda. Leave a message and I’ll call you back.
It was beyond creepy. It was as though Rhonda had just stepped out of the room for a moment. Her fragrance still hung in the air; a silver earring lay next to her phone; a pair of her Manolo Blahnik heels was jammed under her desk.
Frederick, now on his third Chivas since I’d arrived, said softly, “I still can’t believe she’s dead. I hated her, but …” His eyes welled and he blinked. “I guess I never quite got over her, either.”
“How did you find out she’d been killed?”
“Someone from the Shorewood police department came by Wednesday morning. I was still listed as Rhonda’s next of kin. So first they were all sympathy and concern, and then before I knew what was happening, the cops were looking at me all squintyeyed and asking ‘Where were you on the night your ex-wife was murdered?’ ”
“Umm, where were you?” I dared ask.
He gave me a sly smile. “I’ve got an e-libi.”
“Excuse me?”
“The night she was killed, I was sending emails between nine o’clock and midnight. So I couldn’t have been anywhere near Rhonda. The times on my emails prove I had to have been on my computer.”
“Right.” I smiled back. “Where is home, by the way?”
“A condo on East Capitol.”
Hmm. Only about five or ten minutes from Rhonda’s house.
He gestured toward the file drawers. “I’ve been going through her records. CRS is hemorrhaging. I don’t know where Rhonda got the money for her cars, her vacations, her parties. She’s been living like a billionaire.”
Should I tell Frederick what I suspected about Rhonda extorting money in exchange for ratings? Probably not necessary—if he was as sharp as he seemed, he’d soon discover that for himself.
Frederick began pacing again, absentmindedly straightening the paper in the copy machine, clicking a ballpoint, running a finger along the top of the computer monitor, as though reclaiming these things for himself, “Did I mention that Rhonda got the house, too? My house, the one my great-grandfather had built, that beautiful old Victorian on Cumberland. It burned me up to drive past there and see how Rhonda was letting the place go to hell. Too lazy to clean the gutters or paint the trim. All she ever did was lie out in the sun, displaying herself like a piece of meat on a grill. I’d just get this urge to strangle her.”
Realizing what he’d said, he shot me a look. “Figure of speech.”
When he turned his back, I poured my drink into a wastebasket. “I should go,” I said, starting to feel nervous about being alone in a deserted building with a guy who was: a) plotzed; b) yo-yoing between rage and self-pity; and c) possibly a strangler.
Frederick tried to park a haunch on the edge of Rhonda’s desk, but he missed and lurched sideways. “Whoops! Who moved the desk?” He nudged one of the office chairs with his foot, sending it spinning across the room. “Know the first thing I’m going to do, Mazie? Get rid of this damn white furniture. And you know what the next thing is?”
He looked at me expectantly.
“What?” I said.
“Get my name back. When Rhonda was awarded the company, she had a clause put in that I couldn’t use the name Cromwell in a competing business. Do you believe the nerve?”
Actually, I did.
Frederick Cromwell raised his glass in a salute and winked at me. “Here’s to getting your own back.”
Chapter Sixteen
A kiss is still a kiss—unless it’s under duress.
—Maguire’s Maxims
The bronze Fonz stands above the Milwaukee River near the Wells Street bridge. The Fonz, of course, is Arthur Fonzarelli of Happy Days, the sitcom that made Milwaukee famous. The statue has become a tourist attraction so popular that no visitor is allowed to leave the city without having at least one thumbs-up photo taken with the Fonz.
Labeck and I had agreed to meet near the Fonz at seven. It was half past seven now. If he didn’t show up in five more minutes, I’d assume he’d bailed because it was too risky. Maybe I ought to call him. I powered up my phone and was about to dial Labeck’s number when someone called my name.
Labeck stepped out of the shadows. Then he was in front of me, pulling up my collar, taking my bare hands in his and chafing them. “You’re freezing. I should have thought of a place to meet indoors.”
“No—you can’t be seen indoors. You shouldn’t even be outdoors.” Labeck’s photo had been all over the evening news. “Where did you stay last night?”
“At Bob’s.”
Bob was Bob Schultz, a cameraman on Labeck’s news crew and one of his best buddies. I knew Bob would endure torture—say, watching the Packers bomb in the playoffs—rather than turn Labeck over to the police.
Labeck sniffed my breath. “Have you been drinking?”
“Holding an Irish wake with Rhonda’s ex, Frederick Cromwell.”
Heads ducked against the wind, we set off south along the Riverwalk. The old warehouses and factories that had once lined the banks of the Milwaukee River had been converted into shops and outdoor restaurants along a wide boardwalk, with mooring places for yachts and boats below. We had the walk to ourselves tonight, the blustery weather keeping everyone indoors, except for a few hardy souls drinking on restaurant terraces.
I filled Labeck in on what I’d learned from Frederick—about the way he felt Rhonda had screwed him out of his own company, how her death meant he would probably get his company back, and how he’d let slip the remark about wanting to strangle Rhonda.
“The guy sounds unbalanced,” Labeck said. “You shouldn’t have been hanging around a deserted office with him.”
“You have to admit, he had a reason to kill Rhonda.”
“Yeah. And the thing about the emails. He couldn’t have murdered Rhonda because he was emailing that night? Give me a break. Do you know if he has a laptop or iPad?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“The guy probably still had a key to Rhonda’s house, too,” Labeck said. “So he lets himself in while she’s out, sits there in the dark sending out emails on his tablet, waits until she comes home, then kills her. Seconds later he goes back online, taps out some more emails, then drives back to his own place.”
“The ex-hubby in the living room with the shoestring.”
“The what?”
“Clue. Didn’t you play that board game when you were a kid? Frederick even looks a lot like Professor Plum.”
“Mazie, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re babbling about.”
We stopped and hung over a railing to watch a water taxi chug past on the river, its running lights reflected in the dark, choppy water. Snow flitted through the air, schizophrenic flakes that blitzed up, down, and sideways. The thi
rty-foot-tall glass flame atop the gas company building on Michigan Avenue was flickering.
When there is a flickering flame, watch out for the snow or rain.
Everybody in Milwaukee knows the color codes for the gas flame: red means warm weather ahead; blue means no change; gold means cold. The flame had been erected atop the gas company skyscraper back in the days before televised weather reports. It was visible from nearly every point in the city, and even served as a navigation aid to Great Lakes freighters. Not exactly the eighth wonder of the world, but still, it added a bit of color to the cityscape. No worries, Milwaukee—the gas company’s got your back.
“If Frederick brought his laptop over to Rhonda’s, he would have had to use her wireless network, wouldn’t he?” I asked. “That ought to show up somewhere.”
Labeck didn’t answer. Abruptly he pulled me closer, bent his face toward me, and brushed his lips against mine. His lips were warm. His nose was cold. The light touch of his lips deepened into a hot, demanding kiss. I forgot that I was freezing, forgot the snow, forgot the back demons. All I was aware of was the delicious sensation of Labeck’s body pressed against mine, his hands cupping my face, his heart thumping against my own galloping heart.
“You folks have a good night now,” called a cheery female voice from nearby. “I’d tell you to stay warm, but it looks like you’re already doing that.”
Wrenching myself away from Labeck, I looked up. A police officer winked at us before turning back to her beat along the boardwalk. As soon as she was far enough away, I grabbed Labeck by his jacket collar.
“You saw her coming! You grabbed me and kissed me so she wouldn’t see your face! You used me!”
“You seemed to be enjoying it.”
“That’s not the point! You didn’t kiss me because you wanted to kiss me. You—all those times when you could have kissed me, you didn’t. And you only kissed me just now because you had to, like when your mother makes you kiss your maiden aunt.”
“Mazie, that’s bat crap! When did I fail to kiss you?”
Crazy for You: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 10
