Hot Secret

by Sherryl Woods

  She drove west as far as Le Jeune, then circled around to come east on Calle Ocho. She passed a park where old men sat playing dominoes. Occasionally the games erupted into violent arguments, but today, in the hot, late afternoon sun, it looked peaceful enough.

  Store signs in this section of town were no longer in English. Along with cafés with walk-up windows selling café cubano and made-in-the-USA Havana cigars, bodegas, restaurants, farmacias, and stores selling statues of the saints, there were also several discreet motels where Latin men took their mistresses for afternoons or evenings of lovemaking.

  Hidden behind a line of palm trees, Molly spotted the one where the Italian model and her quick-thinking photographer had reportedly fled the night before. She pulled into the parking lot of the one-story, pale blue stucco motel. Almost all of the spaces were empty. Apparently most of the men who frequented motels such as this did so during the week. Sundays were, no doubt, reserved for families and the sanctity of marriage. Amen.

  As she contemplated her next step, second thoughts began sprouting like weeds. She couldn’t very well start banging on doors. Nor was she thrilled about walking into the lobby and demanding to see the guest register. She doubted one existed anyway. Her only hope was to find a greedy desk clerk and hand over sufficient cash to loosen his tongue. It all seemed a little tawdry and melodramatic, but she was too curious about the model to back out now.

  She clutched twenty bucks and one of her business cards and marched into the tiny reception area, noting that the tiled floor had been swept clean and the furniture polished to a gleam. A bored, overweight clerk glanced up from his racing form, took one look at her, and hurriedly dropped the paper. His smirk was the dirtiest thing in the place.

  “English?” Molly inquired hopefully.

  “Sí,” he said, still leering. “You need room? One hour? All evening?”

  Molly laid the twenty-dollar bill on the counter. “I need information.”

  He regarded the money with interest at first, then with great sorrow. He shook his head. “Sorry, senora. No information.”

  She hadn’t really expected him to be forthcoming. After all, the people who frequented this place expected total anonymity. A clerk who blabbed about the clientele wouldn’t last long. At the same time, the Italian was hardly likely to be a regular customer and this man was equally likely to know that.

  She placed her business card with its county logo where he could see it. Her thumb just happened to cover the name of her department, leaving her level of official authority open to speculation. For the first time, he began to look uneasy.

  “I’m looking for a man, a photographer. He’d have lots of camera equipment with him. Also a beautiful model. Italian. They came here last night, very late.”

  He listened intently, but she couldn’t tell from the blank expression in his eyes if what she was saying didn’t register or if such a couple simply hadn’t checked in. He glanced around warily, then put his hand over the twenty.

  “I not tell you this, sí?” he said urgently.

  “Sí,” Molly agreed.

  “Numero ocho.”

  “They are still there?” she said, and realized she was startled that Officer Jenkins hadn’t been here and scared them away.

  “Si, si.” He hurriedly nabbed the money and shoved it into his pocket. He glanced at his racing form and reached for the phone.

  “Gracias,” Molly said to his T-shirt-clad back.

  Outside she had the creepy feeling that the clerk’s lecherous eyes were still on her as she walked along the side of the motel hidden away from the street. A bed of bright red geraniums ran along the wall, the last blossoms wilting in the summer sun. Number eight was at the end, its door freshly painted in pristine white. The drapes were drawn tightly.

  Taking a deep breath, Molly knocked hurriedly before she could lose her nerve. She could hear the faint sounds of people scurrying around inside, then sensed someone’s gaze on her through the peephole. She knocked again.

  She could hear the hushed sounds of what could have been an argument, then the door opened a crack. The face that peered out at her had the calm tranquillity of a Madonna. Only the eyes, dark brown and round as saucers, gave away any hint of fear.

  Molly poked her card through the opening in the doorway. The door closed while the chain was removed, then opened again.

  Greg’s model, if that was indeed who she was, was wearing a skimpy bandeau top and shorts, a revealing outfit Molly wouldn’t have dared ten years and ten pounds ago. Thick black hair fell in exotic waves to her shoulders. Her face, with its angles, full pouting lips, and soulful eyes, was a photographer’s dream and any man’s fantasy. There was an earthy sensuality about the model that was all the more astonishing because she couldn’t have been much older than seventeen or eighteen.

  Molly glanced into the dimly lit interior beyond her and recognized the photographer she’d met the night before—Giovanni if the taxi dispatcher had gotten it right. He was angrily puffing on a cigarette held between thumb and forefinger in European fashion. He didn’t seem pleased by her ingenuity in finding them.

  “Why have you come?” he demanded over the sound of Spanish announcers describing a soccer match on TV.

  “To speak with your model,” Molly said.

  “She speaks little English.”

  Molly didn’t take his word for it. She turned to the girl and smiled. She received a tentative smile in return. “You speak English?” Molly asked.

  “Yes, I speak some,” she said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Francesca.”

  “You knew Greg Kinsey?”

  Tears shimmered in the girl’s eyes. Her words spilled out in a torrent of English and Italian, all mixed together in a way that was beyond Molly’s comprehension. The tears tracked down her lovely face and splashed onto her bare shoulders. The photographer lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness and glared at Molly as if the girl’s distress were all her fault.

  She led the girl to the bed, murmuring soothingly until she began to calm down.

  “Tell me why you and Greg argued,” she urged.

  Huge brown eyes, still filled with tears, stared back at her in obvious confusion.

  “Argued,” Molly repeated. “Why did you fight?”

  “I’ll tell you why they fought,” the photographer snapped, taking impatient strides across the room. “He was no good. He made promises.”

  “What sort of promises?”

  He shrugged. “A role in his picture, fame. Who can say what it would take to turn a young girl’s head? He made good on none of these promises.”

  Molly began to see why her pretense of having work for Francesca at the hotel the previous night had met with such disdain. “They fought about this last night?”

  The photographer began another tirade, only to be interrupted by Francesca. “No,” she said softly. “It was not that way.”

  Molly held the girl’s trembling, ice cold hands. “What way was it then? You tell me.”

  “I loved him. I wished to stay with him. Here, in Miami. He told me to go home.”

  The photographer suddenly looked defeated. “He was a fool,” he murmured in a way that told Molly that he himself was enchanted by this child-woman. Had he been furious that the director had rejected her? Or that he had dared to take her as his lover in the first place? Had he been angry enough to kill Greg?

  “Were you there when they argued?” Molly inquired.

  “No,” he said at once. “I came after …”

  “After what?” she said.

  “After they argued,” he said swiftly. Too swiftly?

  As if he’d guessed her thoughts, he said, “He was alive when we left.”

  Francesca was nodding as well. “He was alive.” Her voice broke as she added softly, “It was the last time I saw him so.”

  “And you left together?”

  The photographer glanced at Francesca as if trying to communi
cate with her silently. To Molly he said simply, “We left together.”

  Molly gazed into Francesca’s troubled eyes and knew that the photographer was lying. But why? Was he protecting the woman he loved with the fabricated alibi? Or himself?

  It was beginning to seem that there must have been a steady stream of people in and out of that trailer, all in a scant matter of minutes—Veronica, Francesca, Giovanni, and, if those three were to be believed, the killer.

  Although she didn’t entirely dismiss the girl and the photographer as suspects, she asked, “Did you see anyone else near the trailer?”

  Francesca shook her head. “No one.”

  “The policemen was at the end of the block,” Giovanni said. “Otherwise, no one.”

  Molly recalled where the off-duty officers had been stationed to keep out curiosity seekers. The side street where Veronica’s trailer had been was cordoned off at both ends of the block with guards at each end. Others stood guard along the stretch of Ocean Drive where the actual filming was taking place in front of a Deco hotel.

  “How did you get past the policemen in the first place?” she asked.

  “Gregory had introduced me to them,” Francesca said. “He had given me a pass.” She reached into her huge purse and rummaged around, finally extracting a slip of bright yellow paper. “You see? It gave me permission to enter.”

  GK Productions had issued permanent passes to all those connected with the film. Guests of the cast and crew were given similar slips with specific dates filled in and initialed by Laura Crain. No one was allowed on location without one of those slips.

  Molly studied Francesca’s slip and noted that it had been signed by Greg himself, not Laura, and that it was open-ended. It was unlikely that either of the guards would have argued with the director’s authority, despite whatever instructions Laura had given them.

  “You have one of these as well?” she asked Giovanni.

  He shook his head. “I came onto the street through an alley. They did not see me.”

  Which meant that anyone could have done the same, Molly deduced. So much for the sanctity of the set. The list of suspects did not have to be limited to those connected with the film, after all. Anyone determined enough and familiar with that alley access could have slipped onto the street and away again without ever being seen by one of the guards.

  Molly sighed. Instead of filling in gaps of what she knew, it seemed she was only raising more questions.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” she told them. “Will you stay on here?”

  “The police have told us to stay, yes,” Giovanni said. “We wish to cooperate. I did not like this man Gregory Kinsey, but I have respect for his work. I did not wish to see him die.”

  “Then the police know you are here?”

  “They know, yes.”

  “Will you stay here or move back to Miami Beach?”

  “Here is best. There are no memories for her. Hopefully it won’t be for long.”

  Molly noticed that Francesca was twisting a rosary in her hands. If the strand of beads was wound much tighter, it would snap. Francesca’s eyes were filled with sadness, and suddenly Molly realized that she was perhaps the only one who truly mourned Greg Kinsey.

  She placed her hand over the girl’s. “If you would like to talk, call me,” she said impulsively. “I’ll leave my card on the dresser.”

  Francesca bit her lower lip to stop the trembling. She nodded. Giovanni stepped closer and laid a hand on her shoulder. He murmured something in Italian that drew her gaze up to meet his. She smiled tremulously.

  “That is better, cara mia,” he said. He glanced at Molly as she went to the door. “Francesca will be fine. I will see to that.”

  Feeling more exhausted than ever, Molly quietly shut the door and walked to her car. As she pulled out of the lot and headed east on Eighth Street, she caught a glimpse of the driver of a car just turning into the motel. Unless she was very much mistaken, the driver was Otis Jenkins. She doubted the detective was there to rent a room. If Francesca and Giovanni blabbed about her visit, she was going to be in even deeper hot water with the Miami Beach Police Department.

  So what else was new? She didn’t regret tracking down the model and the photographer one bit. It gave her more pieces of the puzzle to use when she tried to explain things to Vince in the morning. Unfortunately, the only piece of information her boss was likely to be interested in was the name of the killer, and she was no closer to knowing that than she had been before.

  At home Brian and Liza were in the dining room with some sort of contraption rigged up on the dining room table. Water was everywhere. Molly eyed the mess warily. “What is it?”

  “A desal … a desal something,” Brian said, regarding it proudly. “Pretty awesome, huh, Mom?”

  “A desalinization device,” Liza corrected. “It’s a winner, if I do say so myself.”

  “It’s awesome,” Molly agreed, trying to sound enthusiastic, rather than thunderstruck. “I don’t suppose either of you considered putting some plastic under it, so the water wouldn’t destroy the finish on the dining room table.”

  Liza and Brian glanced guiltily at the spotted surface. “Think of it this way,” Liza said. “He’ll probably be able to sell this thing to the government and make a fortune. You can buy a new table.”

  “Is it finished?” she inquired cautiously.

  “Yeah. It’s great. Want to see it work?” Brian asked.

  She sat down. “Go to it,” she said more enthusiastically. If sacrificing the dining room table meant her son never had to know how little she understood science, it was a small price to pay. Last year’s project, which had gotten a paltry C-minus, had nearly robbed her of her sanity. This one looked like an A to her.

  Later, with the science project safely in its box and Brian tucked into bed, she fell gratefully into her own bed. But instead of getting some much needed sleep, she spent another restless night pondering the intricate web of lies being spun around Greg Kinsey’s death.

  Love—or some of its darker permutations—had made suspects of a wide variety of people connected with the director. Even though she was convinced if they could unravel the lies they would identify the killer, she had no idea which thread to tug on first.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  Sitting in the Metro/Dade film office in the old Vizcaya estate gatehouse with Molly and Jeannette, Vince waved a handful of newspaper clippings in their faces on Monday morning. It was the first time Vince had been in the office before nine in all the years Molly had worked for him.

  Vince explained to anyone who asked that he had to stay later in the evening for all of the office’s West Coast contacts. Those who didn’t ask already knew that he tried to fit at least nine holes of golf into the early morning hours. When nothing was on his calendar, he went ahead and played the full eighteen. It took a crisis of major proportions for him to schedule anything before noon. Molly supposed the murder qualified.

  As the clippings fluttered, Molly managed to catch mastheads from half the major papers in the U.S., plus a couple from overseas. The headlines in English were not encouraging.

  “It’s a disaster,” he said, confirming her own quick analysis. His expression was accusing. “How could you let this happen? The reason I sent you over there to baby-sit this production was to keep everybody happy. I assumed you knew that also meant they should stay alive.”

  Jeannette shot Molly a sympathetic look as Vince’s tirade went on. “I’ve had calls from the county manager, half a dozen different local mayors, to say nothing of tourism officials and the film liaison in Orlando who can’t wait to snatch victory out of the jaws of our defeat,” he said. “Are you trying to destroy this office?”

  “Excuse me?” Molly said incredulously.

  Jeannette muttered under her breath in Creole. Molly had a feeling that if she’d known exactly what the Haitian clerk was saying, she would have echoed it. Their boss had a way of viewing all calam
ities in relation to the safety of his own neck.

  “I did not kill Gregory Kinsey,” Molly reminded him slowly and emphatically. “I could hardly cover up the man’s death. Did you want me to dump the body in the Everglades and hope that nobody noticed the man was missing? Maybe I should have finished directing the picture myself.”

  Vince gaped at her sarcasm. Finally his shoulders sagged, and he dropped the clippings on his cluttered desk. “No, of course not. How are we going to handle this, though? Do you realize that I had half a dozen calls at home over the weekend from producers we’ve been trying to lure to south Florida? They’re all very nervous.”

  “I think you can safely reassure them that we do not have a serial killer on the loose who’s targeting Hollywood directors,” Molly said dryly.

  “You don’t know that.”

  Molly rolled her gaze heavenward and prayed for patience. “Okay, Vince, what would you like me to do?”

  “We have to solve this thing as quickly as possible if we’re going to minimize the damage. Talk to that cop friend of yours, the one who worked on the murder in your building.”

  “I have talked to him. It’s not in his jurisdiction. He’s with Metro, not Miami Beach.”

  “But he’s good, right?”

  “He’s good.”

  “Then I’ll take care of it.”

  Molly didn’t like the sound of that. She had a strong hunch Michael would like it even less. “What are you going to do?” she asked cautiously.

  “Don’t give it another thought,” Vince said, looking more cheerful. “Just get the hell over to GK Productions and do whatever you can to keep them from packing up and fleeing to L.A. to finish this in the studio. Take Jeannette with you,” he added magnanimously. “She can answer phones, take dictation, whatever they need.”

  Molly cast a look at the thirty-year-old Haitian woman with the close-cropped hair and regal bearing. She was the bane of Vince’s existence. Her round mahogany face was totally devoid of expression, but Molly could detect the twinkle in her eyes. Jeannette loved to mutter darkly in Creole whenever Vince irritated her. He was convinced she was putting a curse on him. Because she was damn good at her job, he couldn’t fire her, but he grabbed at any opportunity to send her on whatever assignments he could justify out of the office.