“I’m living in this country. That was my mother’s gift. Knowing what I do now about life in Cuba, how could I not be grateful? I’ll talk to Brian and see how he feels about it.”
Now that Molly had approved, it was between him and Brian. That was what he was telling her. It had nothing to do with her. Okay, she got the message. She could be as generous and understanding as any mother when it came to her son. If Michael asked her to bake cookies for the team, though, she was going to cram them down his throat.
“Do you still live with your family?” she asked, thinking again of that sweet, musical voice on the phone.
“No,” he said tersely, his face closed again. Despite the morning’s revelations, he was shutting her out, distancing himself from any hint that what was growing between the two of them might be personal. Though she could tell he knew exactly what she was asking, there would be no elaboration, no explanation. She supposed he didn’t owe her one, but a little clarification would have set the record straight once and for all.
Then again, maybe she didn’t want to know. Things between them were complicated enough. Michael O’Hara’s secrets were none of her business.
Naturally, however, the fact that he had secrets at all made her more curious about him than ever. Perversity, thy name is woman! Whoever’d said that had summed up her life fairly accurately.
CHAPTER 8
Molly did her best to forget all about Michael and the murder. She didn’t succeed worth a damn in either case. As a result her temper was frayed. When a producer called at midmorning with some petty annoyance about a location for his TV movie, she uncharacteristically bit his head off.
“I have a murder of my own to worry about. I don’t have time to deal with yours. Leave the body in the Everglades for all I care.”
Vince overheard her and grabbed his own extension. “Sorry, Greg. Molly’s under a lot of stress just now. Let me help. What do you need?”
She knew she ought to be grateful. Instead, she was merely irritated that Vince, of all people, was suddenly the voice of reason in the office. When he’d soothed Greg’s ruffled feathers, he hung up and stepped into her office. He lingered near the door, probably so he could flee if things got too tense.
“You okay?” he inquired cautiously.
“No. I feel so darned helpless. I ought to be doing something, but Michael…”
His brows rose suggestively. “Michael, is it?”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Vince.”
“Hey, I saw the way the man looked at you the other day. What’s the story? Is he single? Go for it, Molly. You’re not getting any younger.”
She groaned. “Twenty-nine is hardly ancient and I don’t need you as my social life guru.”
“Who better to give you advice than a man-about-town such as myself?”
“Vince, the kind of relationships you have I’m better off without. Has the word commitment ever crossed your lips?”
“Heaven forbid,” he said, looking horrified. “That doesn’t mean it’s not okay for some people. Boring people. Dead people.”
Despite herself, Molly smiled, albeit weakly. “You’re incorrigible.”
“But cute, right? Now about your cop, you have to send him the right signals.” He began to warm to his subject. “I mean, it does get a little complicated since he’s investigating this murder and all, but once that’s wrapped up, it should be clear sailing.”
“He has a live-in girl friend.”
“That could be tricky,” he said as if it were no more than a minor inconvenience. “Are you sure? Did he tell you that?”
“No, as a matter of fact, he didn’t. I called at dawn. Never mind why,” she said, when Vince started to interrupt. “She answered.”
“Could have been a housekeeper. Could have been a one-night stand. Did you ask?”
“More or less.”
“And?”
“In essence, he said to mind my own business.”
“In essence,” he mimicked. “What does that mean? You women are all alike. You get bent out of shape over something instead of just asking straight out. You gotta clarify things. The look I saw in that man’s eyes the other day was not the look of a man who is committed elsewhere.”
“So his attention wanders. Do I need that in my life? No.” She said it adamantly, but she wondered. Did she really want anything more than a casual flirtation? Not really. However, there was no need for Vince to know that. It might give him ideas.
“But…” he said.
“No buts. Attraction isn’t love. Chemistry isn’t commitment. And I’d like to drop this matter now. Go play golf or something.”
Vince sighed heavily, his expression one of disappointment. “Think it over, Molly. You want the advice of an expert, all you have to do is ask.”
That afternoon after going home early again Molly couldn’t shake Vince’s observation about Michael’s interest in her. She kept telling herself he’d been mistaken, that Michael had made it clear he would open his heart to her son, but not to her. Even so, with Brian in his room doing homework she had plenty of time to stew over the ambiguities. Wasted effort, she knew. She’d be better off trying to figure out the killer. She found her list and added a few notes. There wasn’t much.
She was still at the dining room table an hour later, lingering over a second cup of coffee, her tuna salad untouched. She was going over the list of suspects for the fourth time, when the front door burst open. Before Molly could panic, Liza Hastings breezed in, key in hand, an indignant expression on her face and her red hair standing up in a trendy flattop that had been moussed into place. Fortunately she had the perfect gamine face to carry off the style and the friendly, fearless personality to carry off barging in unannounced.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she demanded, flopping into the chair across from Molly and putting her bare feet onto the seat of another chair. Her toenails today had been painted a deep bloodred, perhaps in honor of the murder. Liza tended toward dramatic statements.
“I didn’t even know you were back in town,” Molly said. “The last I knew you were on a mountaintop in Tibet.”
“That was last month. I’ve been in Brazil since then. I wanted to see the rain forest before it all vanished. I got back late yesterday afternoon. I’ve been asleep ever since.”
“I’m not surprised,” Molly said. Just the recounting of Liza’s frequent adventures exhausted her, even as they fascinated her. In another life, devoid of parental expectations and coming-out parties, she would have enjoyed such an impetuous, daring existence. “I’m glad you’re back. I really need your advice.”
“Not until you tell me everything that happened Tuesday night, and I do mean everything. I ran into Rhea Wilson downstairs. She said Allan Winecroft was stabbed to death and that you’re a prime witness.”
As Liza listened, she grabbed Molly’s untouched mound of tuna salad and wolfed it down. Her expression reflected her increasing astonishment as Molly concluded, “Which makes me a possible suspect.”
“You can’t be serious,” Liza said finally. “It’s ridiculous. Anyone who knows you knows you’re incapable of murder.”
“Detective O’Hara doesn’t know me. Besides, he doesn’t seriously consider me a suspect even though my fingerprints are all over the weapon. At least, he says he doesn’t. I’m sure he’s just trying to keep an open mind. I guess if you’re a policeman you can’t afford to dismiss anyone too early in an investigation.”
“He’s wasting his time on you,” Liza declared loyally. “But you do have a point. If no one else turns up, it would be just like them to take the easy way out and arrest you. I guess we’d better come up with an alternative. Tell me again exactly who was there for the bridge game?”
“Here, I’ve made a list.” She shoved the paper across the table, grateful to have an ally. “Allan and Dr
ucilla. They played against Roy Meeks and me. Tyler Jenkins and his wife played the Davisons. I didn’t know the two couples at the third table. I think one of the women owns a boutique in the Square, the one with all the Italian designs that can only be worn if you’re under twenty-five and weigh less than a hundred pounds. Just looking in the window depresses me.”
“How do you know she owns it, if you’ve never been inside?”
“I heard somebody asking her about the shop at the pool one day. You must know who I mean. You bought that denim outfit in that store.”
“Three fourths of my clothes are denim. It travels well. Weighs a ton, though. Maybe I should switch to linen. That would be the environmentally correct thing to do, wouldn’t it?”
Molly was undaunted by Liza’s conversational diversions. Eventually she always came back to the topic at hand. “I’m afraid I’m not up on environmentally correct attire,” Molly said. “I just know you have to iron linen.”
Liza wrinkled her nose. “That is a problem. So, which outfit?”
“The one with the skirt the size of a postage stamp. How do you have the nerve to wear that out in public?” Molly wondered, then decided that digression must be catching.
“It doesn’t take nerve. It takes dieting.”
Molly glanced pointedly at the scattered crumbs on a now empty plate.
“There are no calories in tuna fish. Every dieter knows that.” Liza plucked up a wayward bit of celery and popped it into her mouth. “Okay, now, let’s get serious. We’ll never figure out the murderer, if we don’t concentrate.”
“I’m supposed to stay out of it,” Molly reported dutifully.
“Who says?”
“The police.”
Liza was unimpressed. “Well, you can’t just sit back and let them send you to jail, can you? Besides, we’re just having a private conversation. It’s not as if we’re out knocking on doors or something.”
“I suppose,” Molly said, doubting that Michael would see it that way. Of course, it was a private conversation. He’d never even have to know. If she picked up any tips from Liza, she could dutifully pass them along.
“Okay,” she said, suddenly more cheerful, “what do you know about Roy Meeks?”
“Isn’t he the one who walks the beach every morning at precisely seven fifteen, rain or shine, no matter what the tide is? Compulsive, if you ask me. Write that down. It could be important. How did you get roped into playing with him anyway? He’s too old for you.”
“It was hardly a date. Claire Bates came down with the flu the morning of the game. She called me at work and asked me to take her place.”
“How did she pick you?”
“I ran into her at the mailboxes the other night. She mentioned the bridge games. I said I’d played in college, not well, but endlessly. I guess she remembered.”
“But there must be others who usually substitute. Did she try them first?”
“I don’t know. What’s your point?”
“Maybe she wanted you to be there to take the rap.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Claire Bates is a sixty-four-year-old widow who sings in the church choir. Does that sound like someone who’d stab a man in cold blood and pin the rap on someone she barely knows?”
“You make her sound like some dowdy frump without a brain in her head. May I remind you that she’s head of some high-tech personnel search firm. She spends at least two hours every morning downstairs in the workout room and four weeks every year at an exorbitantly expensive California health spa. She’s gorgeous enough to appear on the cover of Lear’s, and she could probably run circles around the two of us.”
“Maybe me. Not you. You climb mountains. I don’t even use the steps.”
“You’re missing the point again. What makes you think she didn’t have the hots for Allan?”
“Liza!”
“Don’t look at me like that. Face it, most things do come down to sex. They don’t refer to it as the war between the sexes without good reason. When couples aren’t in bed, they’re usually battling.”
“Let’s leave Claire Bates and your twisted philosophy about relationships out of this for the moment and concentrate on the people who were playing bridge the other night. You must know more about Roy Meeks than I do. He seemed like a pleasant enough man. He never once looked as though he wanted to throttle the Winecrofts, despite their nonstop bickering.”
“If he’s the one I’m thinking of, he’s a retired psychiatrist.”
“That’s what Mr. Kingsley said.”
“I knew it,” Liza said triumphantly. “Freudian, I’ll bet. Don’t you think he looks the type?”
“Because he has a beard?”
“No. It’s those dingy sweaters. I can just see him in some dark, musty room listening to people’s secrets. He’s probably one of those psychiatrists who attribute all emotional problems to deep-seated hatred of the mother or to premature separation from a pacifier. Listening to the Winecrofts probably made him feel nostalgic.”
“What about the Davisons? Do you know them?”
Liza’s expression brightened. “Sure. He teaches political science at the University of Miami. She teaches creative writing at Miami-Dade Community College. He’s the real academician. Publish or perish and all that. She just wants to get kids excited about writing. They’ve been married for thirty years. They had a house in Coral Gables in the early seventies. When the kids went away to college, they moved here. They’re depressingly normal. No skeletons in the closet that I’ve ever heard of. Nobody even complains about their grandkids when they come to visit. Actually, for kids, they’re pretty cute.”
“Capable of murder, either of them?”
Liza shook her head slowly. “I can’t picture it.”
“Do all these couples socialize outside the bridge games?”
“Dinners occasionally. I think I saw them lined up by the pool one day. Tyler and Allan play…played…tennis together. They might have been doubles partners, in fact.”
“Any rifts you’ve ever heard about?”
“None. Couldn’t you tell that night if everyone got along okay?”
“After the initial greetings, the only people who spoke above a whisper were the Winecrofts. These people take their bridge very seriously. They can’t wait to turn the results in to The Islander for publication. Maybe the mood changes once the final hand is played, but I didn’t stick around that long. All that bickering made me uncomfortable. I couldn’t wait to escape.”
“Which brings us back to Drucilla. Why aren’t the police concentrating on her? Isn’t the soon-to-be-wealthy widow always the most likely suspect?”
“I know she hates losing, but blowing a bridge game is hardly grounds for homicide. Besides, she says she went home right after I did. Allan was alive when she left.”
“She says,” Liza mocked. “And you believed her? As for a motive, how about divorce?”
“She wouldn’t divorce him over his lousy bridge bid either.”
Liza scowled at her. “No, forget the bridge game,” she said impatiently. “Molly, you really need to spend more time at the pool. That’s where you really find out what’s going on around here.”
“When would you suggest? By the time I get home from work, the only people out there are as exhausted from working all day as I am. The only thing they’re interested in is cooling off. They swim. They leave. They don’t hang around to gossip.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Liza said, scowling.
“Like what?”
“That judgmental tone. I’m not a gossip. I can’t help it if sound carries out there and I’m naturally curious about human nature.”
“Fine. We won’t get into a discussion of the ethics of eavesdropping or the admissibility of hearsay evidence. If you know something relevant, just spit it out.”
&
nbsp; “Okay, don’t get testy.” Liza paused dramatically. “Picture this. Allan Winecroft was about to divorce his lovely wife of thirty-five years for Ingrid Nielsen, the beautiful bimbette in eight-twenty-six.”
Molly stared at her, sure her mouth must be hanging open. “That’s just two doors down the hall.”
“I know. Tacky, huh? Installing his mistress right under his wife’s nose takes a certain amount of nerve.”
“Are you sure about this? Surely even Allan had better taste than that.”
“Check the deed on the apartment. The buyer’s name was printed in the paper, when the apartment was sold two years ago. I saw it myself: Allan Winecroft. I don’t know if he bought it as an investment or for Ingrid, but she’s in there now.”
“Maybe he was just renting to her.”
Liza rolled her eyes. “Molly, you are so middle-class.”
“Well, she could be renting,” Molly said defensively.
“Right. And he was over there at midnight fixing the plumbing.”
“How do you know he was over there at midnight?”
“The Loefflers, the couple across the hall, told me. I saw him myself, after that. I wangled an invitation to their apartment for dinner.”
“You spied on him?”
Liza shot her a look of disgust. “I did not spy. I spent the evening with a perfectly lovely couple. Mr. Loeffler told me all about dry cleaning.”
“Dry cleaning?”
“He owned a whole chain of dry cleaners in Ohio before they sold out and moved here. He even told me how to get that raspberry stain out of my cream silk blouse. It was fascinating.”
“I’m sure,” Molly said. “But not nearly as fascinating as the comings and goings in the hall, I’m sure.”
Liza just grinned, refusing to be insulted.
Molly ignored her smug demeanor. Refusing even to consider what Michael would have to say, she picked up the dishes, carried them into the kitchen, and headed for the door. When Liza didn’t follow, she said, “Don’t just sit there. Let’s go.”
“Where?” Liza said, but she was already on her feet, ready for action.
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