Fat Chance (21 page)

“It’s great.”

“She has no idea what it is,” Liam said. I turned to find him standing in what I thought might be the doorway, his arms raised, wrists resting against the framing.

Waving his arms in an inverted arc above the box shape, Harold said, “It’s a window seat. Mr. Sam said you’d be able to watch the sunset from here.”

Leaning over, I peered out and checked the view. The sun wasn’t due to set for another couple of hours, but I got the gist. I could almost see myself seated on a padded surface, fluffy pillows at my back and my computer cradled in my lap. It looked like a very cozy place to hunt for Rolex parts, Lilly fashions, and unloved Betsey Johnson dresses.

“It’s going to be fabulous,” I said, making Harold beam. “It’s almost seven. You should call it a day.”

“I don’t mind long hours,” he said proudly.

“She’s giving us the boot, Harold,” Liam said.

God, it was like he could read my mind.

“Oh, right. Sorry, Miss Finley, I didn’t mean to be a bother.”

“You’re not a bother.” Liam, on the other hand, was a big bother.

Harold insisted on carrying my chair out to the beach, while I uncorked my wine and generously filled one of the two glasses. They should have been washed first, but there was no running water, so the alcohol would have to serve as a sanitizer. Taking my bag and my glass, I headed out the new sliding glass doors, which, unlike their predecessors, opened and closed with a whisper. A large floral arrangement of two dozen pale pink roses and a few fragrant Stargazer lilies, with a few sprigs of greenery, sat off to one side.

Slipping the handle of the bag up on my wrist, I bent to pull
the envelope from the plastic tine. I nearly spilled my wine trying to get the card out, and when I did, I was sorry I’d expended the effort.

“He’s persistent.”

The unexpected sound of Liam’s voice so close to my ear startled me. This time I did spill my wine. A big red stain made a burgundy stripe right down the center of my pale blue belted dress. In a final insult, two drops splashed off a paver and stained the bow on my left shoe.

“Thanks a lot,” I grumbled. “Do you have any idea what these shoes cost?”

“Probably more than my first car. I am sorry,” he said with absolutely no remorse. “I didn’t mean to make you jump.”

“You did, and you ruined my dress and my shoes.”

“I’ll pay for the cleaning.”

“You bet you will,” I said as I kicked off my shoes and headed toward the beach.

Liam caught up to me. “What’s wrong?”

I quickened my pace. “You just ruined a dress I’ve worn exactly once and a killer pair of Coach shoes.”

“Hey,” he said, moving to my right and gently but firmly grabbing my uninjured arm. He stepped in front of me, effectively blocking my way.

I stared straight ahead, at the dark hair covering his chest then tapering into a V as it disappeared into the waistband of his button fly jeans.

Crooking a finger beneath my chin, he tilted my head up. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve had a long day. I just want to sit on my little strip of beach, have a glass of wine, and relax.”

He shook his head. “Is it the flowers from the pilot?”

Glancing around him, I called, “Harold, take those flowers home to your wife.”

“I can’t take those,” he said. “They’re yours.”

“I don’t want them. If you don’t take them, they’ll end up in that Dumpster.”

“Well…um.”

“She means it,” Liam said without taking his eyes off my face.

“Okay, then. Thank you, Miss Finley.”

Harold shuffled off.

“If it isn’t the pilot—”

“It isn’t. I’m just tired and I want to be left alone.” I shrugged out of his hold.

Liam lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Fine. Just tell me why you’re treating me like the enemy.”

“Because right now, at this moment, you are.”

I
SPENT AN HOUR
on the beach enjoying my wine and solitude, then I dragged the chair back up to the patio. I left it there, not really caring if someone stole the nine-dollar item.

Neither the wine nor the solitude had resulted in answering the question that was at the forefront of my mind: How did Jill Burkett’s skeleton end up in my house?

I recorked the wine, laid the glasses on the floor of the backseat, and got behind the wheel. I headed south, to the Italian Renaissance–style hotel that dominated one hundred and forty acres of primo beachfront. It wasn’t just a hotel. It was The
Breakers. Built by Standard Oil tycoon Henry Flagler, it has hand-painted ceilings and stunning medieval tapestries hanging on the walls. Originally the private retreat of the American elite, it hadn’t lost any of its charm or flavor in its one hundred plus years. The newest additions were a third golf course and programs for the spoiled children of the rich and famous. My favorite thing about The Breakers? The food, especially Sunday brunch, which ran seventy-five dollars. Running a close second was the spa. Best in south Florida, and even better if you opted for the outdoor, oceanfront hot stone massage.

I turned into the hedged driveway of The Breakers, self-parked—a rarity for me—then grabbed a file folder to hide as much of the stain as possible. I went to find Liv. I didn’t want a crab puff as much as I wanted some club soda to try to salvage my dress. I might be in a contemplative funk, but that didn’t mean I was going to sacrifice a dress I’d watched like a hawk, then swooped in on at the last moment and outbid my arch eBay rival, ClothesHorse2.

The Breakers was opulent and buzzing with conversation that was carried on the soft music from a three-piece band. I peered out into the courtyard. Liv’s party was in full swing. I smiled for the first time in a while, happy to see the event so successful.

A waiter carrying an empty tray as if it held the crown jewels opened one side of the beveled glass doors. I stopped him and asked if he would get me a bottle of club soda. I knew he would. The Breakers’ staff is renowned for their attention to their guests.

Technically, I wasn’t a guest, but he didn’t need to know that. I waited by the door until I caught Liv’s gaze. She had a wireless headset on and a clipboard in her hand and somehow made that
work while dressed in a sleek silk gown and matching drop pearl earrings.

Discreetly, she made her way around the fountain to where I waited. “I’m glad you came. Want me to have Jean-Claude make you a plate? We have free-flowing Cristal as well.”

I pulled the folder away from my chest as if it was hinged. “I’m not fit to mingle with hoity-toities.”

“Miss your mouth?”

“Liam did it.”

Her exotic eyes grew wide. “He threw wine on you?”

“He startled me. It was an accident.”

“I’m sure he apologized.”

“He did, and I bit his head off.”

Liv shook her head like a disappointed teacher. “So now it’s your turn to apologize.”

“I know. I will, just not tonight.”

“Something wrong?”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure what.”

Liv reached out and touched the back of my hand. “Carlos was the guy, right?”

I nodded, and the waiter appeared with my club soda. I thanked him, then gave Liv a smile. “Go enjoy the fruits of your labor. I’m going to slip into the ladies’ room and blot this stain.”

She gave me an air kiss. “Call me in the morning. Maybe we can all get together for dinner or drinks or something.”

“I will. The courtyard looks beautiful. You did a great job. Love what you did with the candles.”

“Thanks.”

I walked across the lobby to the ladies’ room. The attendant gave me a white washcloth and offered to help me, but I was just as content to work on the stain myself. The room smelled of lav
ender with an undertone of night jasmine. Not a heavy perfume, just enough to continue the feel of luxury contained in every square foot of the Palm Beach landmark.

I heard the flush of a toilet, then one of the stall doors opened. I glanced up from my blotting and found myself staring at the reflection of Terri Semple in the mirror.

T
ERRI WAS VERY ATTRACTIVE,
tall, and slender, with dark blond hair twisted into a messy updo. She was tanned and moved like a goddess in an off-the-shoulder white gown with gold trim and embellishments.

When she went to wash her hands, I saw it. Her engagement ring included a five-carat pink diamond, courtesy of Harry Winston, that was set in platinum. I was surprised her arm didn’t drag the ground under the weight of that sucker.

We did that little wordless, awkward, eyes-met-so-you-have-to-acknowledge-each-other thing.

“Good evening,” she said with just a hint of Midwest accent in her diction.

“Hi,” I said, trying desperately to think of some way I could strike up a conversation, and then ease into grilling her like the catch of the day.

She had the home court advantage. If I said the wrong thing, Martin Gilmore’s fiancée could have me banned from the property faster than I could say boo.

As she shut off the water, she smiled again, this time revealing seriously bleached teeth. They were so bright that they matched her dress. Teardrop diamonds dangled from her earlobes. Another giant diamond teardrop hung from a thick gold choker.

The jewelry she was wearing was worth more than the treasuries of several emerging nations. She could probably hock a couple of pieces and end world hunger.

“Have a nice evening,” she said as she accepted the cloth offered by the trained-to-be-invisible attendant.

Opening a small evening bag constructed of gold links, she removed a tube of lipstick and did a touch-up to the color on her dark red, chemically plumped lips. Just out of curiosity, I glanced in her purse and almost laughed when I saw a Tiffany compact sharing space with three shoestring ropes of licorice the same shade as her lipstick.

“Hang on,” I said.

Her response to my request was a tight, impatient smile. “Yes?”

This was wrong in so many ways. My confidence was as soggy as the front of my dress, but I couldn’t let this opportunity pass. “You’re Terri Semple, right? We have a mutual
aquain-friend.
Melinda Redmond.” So
friend
was a stretch.

She eyed me up and down, and even though she didn’t say a word or change a thing about her expression, I knew I’d come out on the short end of the inspection. “Melinda’s a wonderful person,” Terri said.

She began to pivot on the balls of her Gucci Sevigny sandals
with the darling ankle cuff and four-inch heels that left her just shy of six feet tall. “I’m Finley Tanner.”

Bye-bye pivot. “You’re the one who bought Melinda’s old house, right?”

“Actually, it belonged to my father,” I said. Babbled, really. I waved my hands in a pointless attempt to erase the inane detail. “We have something in common,” I began again. “I’m assuming the police spoke to you about Carlos Lopez and his, um, photos?”

“Yes.”

“Had he been in contact with you?”

She stepped a little closer, and I found myself backing up. If I didn’t stop soon, I’d topple into the big basket of soiled washrags.

“I haven’t spoken to Carlos in years. He’s part of my past. A past that was painful and difficult to overcome. Unlike you, I didn’t have a doting mother or Jonathan Tanner in my life.”

Doting mother? Obviously, she’d never met my mother. And how had she remembered Jonathan’s name so quickly? Maybe she was one of those people who remembered names. Maybe I was getting paranoid. “I was blessed,” I replied. “I don’t mean to dredge up unpleasant memories; I’m just trying to get some information on Jill Burkett. The two of you were in…
lived
with Melinda at about the same time?”

“I don’t remember her at all.”

“Really?” I asked, tilting my head to the side to try to get a better read on the woman. Not possible; she’d already shown her hand when she’d said my stepfather’s name. She was as cool and controlled as a statue. “Abby Andrews had some very vivid and, well, unkind things to say about her. She specifically recalled Jill being very cruel to you.”

Terri’s smile slipped into a sneer just for a fraction of a sec
ond. “That’s quite possible. I simply don’t remember, nor do I want to. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I don’t want my fiancé to become concerned.”

Neither would I if I had a fiancé who came with hundreds of millions in banks all over the world that could and would buy me anything and everything. “I didn’t mean to keep you. Enjoy the event.”

She was almost to the door when I said, “Perhaps I could discuss this with you at a more appropriate time?”

“I don’t think so,” she said, then regally removed herself from the room.

I felt a little feisty after being dissed by that woman. So she’d hit the marriage lottery, but geez, she acted as if it had been her birthright instead of some freak occurrence. Just to make myself feel superior, unlike Terri, I tipped the attendant.

I
ARRIVED HOME TO
find a sealed manila envelope tilted against my door. I recognized the bold, masculine handwriting as Liam’s, so I picked it up and carried it inside.

Knowing him, it was probably full of dry-cleaning coupons or some equally stupid thing that, in spite of my best efforts, would charm me right out of my thong. God, I was starting to wonder if I had some sort of superpower when it came to picking a man to obsess over. Of course, that’s minus the ugly tights and a silly cape, since everyone knows a cape makes a woman my height look even shorter. Why was it I kept falling for the wrong men? Not that I was admitting I’d fallen for Liam. I was starting to believe that if I was dropped into a room full of eligible, handsome men, I would find the worst possible match before I downed my first Cosmo.

I looked around my apartment and reassessed my opinion of myself. Here it was a beautiful Friday night, and what were my plans? Microwave popcorn and channel surfing. Topped off by some possible internet time. I was getting closer and closer to the bleak future of an unmarried, unhappy woman with sixty-four cats as company.

I fell face-first onto my never-made bed, stifling my groan in the pillow. I had half hoped to see Sam’s car in the lot, but apparently, he had plans as well. Rolling over, I winced as the skin pulled around the itchy stitches.

“Enough,” I told myself, getting up on my elbows. “Do something.”

I slipped off my still-damp dress to discover that the wine had seeped through and discolored the white lace that trimmed my new bra. Thank you, Liam. The irony that the man had ruined my bra without ever touching me wasn’t lost on me. I changed into jeans and a cute baby T with rhinestone accents. Barefoot, I took my stained clothes into the kitchen, plugged the sink, tossed the dress and bra in, and dumped a couple of liters of club soda over everything.

I made a pot of coffee. Once I had a nice steaming mug, I settled into the couch and powered on my laptop and the television. After a few minutes, I muted the TV. Liam’s package sat on top of my skeleton files, so I debated which to tackle first.

“Who are you kidding?” I asked myself as I slipped my nail under the flap and broke the seal. Patience is a virtue, just not one I possess. Clipped to the top page was a short note apologizing again for making me spill my wine. A nice person would call him and say all is forgiven. A naughty person would add,
“Come on over.”
I couldn’t trust myself, especially when the mere sound of his voice raised my blood pressure several degrees.

The first few pages were documents from the North Carolina Department of Corrections. The more I read about all the horrible things Carlos had done—and knowing that they were probably just the tip of the iceberg—the less I was able to muster any sadness at his passing.

Earlier, while browsing through the stuff for the class I’d yet to attend, I’d read a statistic that on average, criminals got away with four crimes for every one they got caught committing. If that was true, Carlos committed his first felony in vitro.

While I was perusing Carlos’s criminal record, I was half-heartedly watching an eBay auction for a pair of killer Jimmy Choo ankle boots. They retailed for six twenty, and the bidding was already up to three hundred with more than six hours to go. Too rich for my blood.

Blood that stilled in my veins when I reached a report from the Florida authorities that conclusively matched Carlos’s fingerprints to the 1996 robbery
and
my break-in. He’d been positively identified as Doe96-5. There was a memo attached to the report stating that a clerical error had resulted in a failure by North Carolina to enter Carlos’s prints into the AFIS system. Had they done that, Carlos would have been identified the night I’d come home to find the resin skeleton hanging in my closet.

The next item was the ME’s report on Carlos. I tossed it aside unread. He was dead. That was enough.

Still suffering under the annoying suspicion that I was missing something parked right under my nose, I decided to make a bulleted list. It needed to be done, and besides, the Jimmy Choo bids had climbed to five fifty.

“You people are fools,” I admonished the unseen eBay bidders. “They’re listed as slightly worn and you’re bidding the price to near-full retail. Amateurs.”

I took a big gulp of coffee and tried to decide how best to organize my thoughts. “Start with what you know.”

(A) I knew the skeleton was Jill Burkett, even if I couldn’t tell anyone until I found a way around exposing Melinda’s insurance fraud.

(B) I knew Terri Semple wouldn’t help me, and now that I was over being snubbed, I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t. Not when I had that big, glaring,
totally not my fault
blight on the record of my own past.

Speaking of which, I opened my email and sent Patrick yet another request to stop with the flowers. I would never know, or care, if he replied: I’d put the lying bastard on my Blocked Senders list. Any emails from him would go rot in cyber hell.

(C) I knew Carlos had been involved in at least one of the robberies in Palm Beach during the nineties. Chances were good he’d been involved in all of them.

I tried to remember some of what Abby had told me. What I remembered most was that Jill and Carlos had been tight. It wasn’t a huge leap in logic to assume that Jill might have been his accomplice. Tapping my fingernail on the edge of my in-need-of-a-refill coffee mug, a question repeated in my brain.

Maybe the recent reduction in my caffeine consumption was screwing with my problem-solving skills. Okay, so
skills
was a bit of a stretch. When it came to solving a murder, I did some of my best work accidentally.

As I went into the kitchen, I vocalized the question, hoping that hearing it aloud might shake an answer free. “How did Carlos and/or Jill know what to steal?” A third accomplice, maybe? Someone with a knowledge and appreciation of the finer things?

I was just about to go back to my bulleted list when someone
knocked on my door. Probably Sam; he often dropped in after a date when he saw lights blazing.

Couldn’t have been much of a date. Not if he was home a few minutes after nine. Getting up on my tiptoes, I was surprised to see Melinda on the other side of the door. And she didn’t look happy.

I undid the locks and opened the door. “Hi,” I greeted her as she breezed past me, leaving a trail of perfume in her wake. “Please, do come right in,” I muttered.

She stood in the center of my living room, arms crossed, Dooney & Bourke dangling off her forearm. Her face was scrunched, and her eyes narrowed, making it perfectly clear that she was pissed. “I
thought
we had an agreement.”

“On…?”

Huffing out a sharp breath, she answered, “About the skeleton thing. Terri called me, terribly upset after you accosted her at the charity benefit.”

It was my turn to get a little huffy. “First off, I didn’t
‘accost’
her. I accidentally ran into her in a public bathroom. Secondly, if anyone has a right to feel put down, it’s me. During our brief—and I’m talking
maybe
sixty seconds interaction, she was quite the statuesque snot.”

“Because she has a lot to lose if you keep poking around in the past. You’ve changed. The Finley I used to know as a child was much more considerate.”

Anger gurgled in the pit of my stomach. I felt like Jan Brady, only instead of “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha,” my concerns were overshadowed by Terri, Terri, Terri. Screw that. Planting my hands on my hips, I met and matched Melinda’s steely blue eyes. “Tell Terri I said to pull up her big girl panties and get over herself. As for you,” I added, my voice quivering with fury, “you’re hardly in a position to cast stones about being consider
ate. Thanks to me, Tony made sure you didn’t end up in jail for shooting Carlos. And I haven’t told anyone about your little insurance scam.
Yet
.”

My not-intended-to-be-subtle threat effectively wiped some of the antagonism off Melinda’s face.

I stepped to the side. “I want you to leave. Now.”

Silently, her spine straight, she headed to the door, slamming it hard enough to cause a mini earthquake inside my apartment.

Guess I was off her Christmas card list. Melinda’s overreaction lent credence to my lingering feeling that something about her wasn’t quite right. Nothing else explained her odd behavior. Throwing herself between Terri and me made no sense. Her actions were too over-the-top to qualify as a de facto mother protecting her child. Especially since Terri wasn’t a child but rather a woman creeping up on her midthirties.

In a very lame imitation of Jack Nicholson, I went to my computer and said, “You just screwed with the wrong marine,” as I logged into the Dane, Lieberman mainframe.

Melinda might have attitude, but I had unfettered access to vital records and could run credit and background checks. I had the skeleton file, police and medical reports, at least a dozen other information sources, and internet search skills that would make Bill Gates proud. I switched to a Scarlett O’Hara impression, taking a bit of license with the famous movie quote. “With God as my witness, I will find whatever it is you don’t want me to find.”