Hot Secret (3 page)

Molly stared at him. “You intend to finish the picture?”

The assistant director met her gaze evenly. “There’s a helluva lot at stake here. Besides, it’s what Greg would have wanted. We all owe it to him to pull together and see that his last film is a fitting tribute to his genius.”

The sound of distinct clapping came from the trailer’s open doorway. “I couldn’t have said it better,” producer Laura Crain said as she stepped inside. Her brown eyes were red-rimmed, but her narrow face was utterly composed.

Molly couldn’t tear her gaze away from Laura’s performance. Gossip on the set and in the tabloids had linked Laura and her boss romantically from
the first day of production. The chemistry between Greg and the older producer had been obvious to anyone observing them in the same room for more than a few seconds at a time. The long, soulful glances, the steamy stolen kisses, the briefest of touches that occurred too often to be accidental.

From what Molly knew, Greg Kinsey never made a film without making a conquest in the process. Forty-year-old Laura Crain, with her stylishly cut frosted hair and nearsighted squint, had apparently been chosen as beneficiary of his affections on this production. Had the thin, hyperactive producer known that the romance was doomed to end in the next couple of weeks? Or had she, like all the others in his past, assumed she would be the one who lasted?

Whatever her emotional turmoil over Greg’s death, Laura Crain wasn’t about to let it show. She was quite possibly the best actress of them all, Molly decided, watching her move to Hank’s side. With her clipboard in hand, she methodically went over a dozen scheduling details as if the murder had been no more than a minor glitch in an otherwise routine day.

Hank listened for several minutes, then gently placed a hand over hers. “Stop,” he commanded softly. “There’s not a damn thing we can do tonight and you know it, so you might as well give it up. Go tell the crew to start breaking for the night. They can get the equipment loaded. They might as well get a decent night’s sleep, once the cops are through.”

Laura stared at him helplessly, tears shimmering in her eyes. “But …”

Hank’s gaze locked with hers. “It’s okay, babe. You hear me? Everything is going to be okay.”

A fresh batch of tears finally spilled down Laura’s cheeks. Hank stood up and awkwardly pulled her into his arms. As Molly watched, Laura’s shoulders shook with silent sobs.

Of all the people affiliated with the production, Molly had worked with Laura most closely, but she didn’t feel she really knew her. Laura was one of those women who never seemed to relax around other women, as if she viewed them all as competition, no matter how farfetched that idea might be. Even so, Molly felt she had to say something to her now, offer some sort of consoling words.

She crossed the trailer. “Laura, I just want you to know how very sorry I am about Greg. I’m here to help you in any way I can.”

Laura whirled on her, her eyes flashing furious sparks. “Help? It’s because of you that this happened. Greg would be alive today, if you hadn’t convinced him to bring this production to Miami. We could have shot it anywhere, but he told me how persuasive you were, how accommodating.” Her voice turned even more spiteful as she added slyly, “I wonder exactly how accommodating you were.”

“That’s enough!” Hank said firmly to Laura, when Molly could only stand there gaping. He shot an apologetic look at her. “Molly, maybe you could go out and see what’s happening. The sooner the police talk to all of us, the better. I need to call Duke
Lane at the hotel and tell him what’s happened. Then I’ll go talk to the crew about the schedule.”

Since there was nothing to be gained by standing there defending herself against Laura’s ridiculous accusation, Molly left.

Outside, the temperature remained in the mid-eighties. The breeze off the Atlantic barely stirred the muggy air. It was still preferable to being inside the trailer where the temperature and the atmosphere were both icy.

Molly found the off-duty officer still standing outside Veronica’s trailer and introduced herself. “Who’s in charge of the investigation?” she asked him.

“Sergeant Jenkins. He’s inside.”

“Any chance you can find out what sort of timetable he has in mind for questioning everyone?”

The officer was past being anxious to please, but still too much a rookie to know how to dismiss her with the haughty glance his superiors had perfected. “I’m not supposed to leave here,” he said, rather than refusing outright.

Molly glanced from him to the door and back again. “I’d say you can take two steps, open the door and poke your head in. If you’d rather not, I could do it myself.”

He decided there was less to lose by asking himself than giving her permission to venture inside. Molly’d been right. It took him exactly two steps to reach the door. After one swift glance to make sure Molly hadn’t followed, he opened the door a discreet crack and called to the sergeant.

A minute later a tall black officer who looked as
if he’d played tackle for the Dolphins loomed in the doorway. He leaned down, listened intently, glanced at Molly, nodded, made a terse comment she couldn’t hear, then shut the door. Firmly.

“He says he’ll let you know when he’s ready to take statements,” the off-duty officer told her, an undeniable glint of satisfaction in his eyes. “Meantime, he says, don’t go far.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She spotted an open table at the café across the street. “I’ll be right over there, whenever he needs me.” There wasn’t a chance in hell that she’d go back to the trailer for another round with Laura Crain. She glanced back at the policeman. “If any reporters want a statement from my office, can you direct them across the street?”

He looked hesitant, but finally decided that wouldn’t be breaking any of the rules drummed into him about crime-scene protocol. “I’ll send ’em over. You might make out a list of everyone from the production company who was on the set tonight. It’ll save Jenkins some time.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she said, then walked back to the café and settled down to wait.

Apparently, Sergeant Otis Jenkins did not regard her as a primary witness. Nor did he seem all that interested in the list she had diligently prepared. Perhaps he’d merely decided to save the best for last. At any rate, by the time he finally got around to strolling across the street and joining Molly, she was awash in a sea of iced tea. It was a wonder she didn’t slosh. Her nerves jangled from all the extra caffeine.

Sergeant Jenkins didn’t waste a lot of time on preliminaries. Nor did he try to finesse any surprise answers from her. He merely announced that he’d already zeroed in on the killer. All he wanted were any of Molly’s observations that might help him clinch the case.

Since catching a killer took time—unless he was foolhardy enough to stand around with a smoking gun still in his hand—Molly regarded the policeman skeptically.

“Was there an eyewitness?”

“Not to the shooting,” he admitted.

“What, then? Fingerprints on the gun?”

“How about I ask the questions?”

“Ask away,” Molly invited.

“Did you hear the argument between Gregory Kinsey and Veronica Weston?”

“I heard the noise, not the content,” she said. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Molly realized exactly where Otis Jenkins was heading—straight out on an obvious limb.

After the way he’d deliberately snubbed her earlier, she could hardly wait to saw it off.

CHAPTER
THREE

“I don’t think there’s any question about who’s responsible,” Sergeant Jenkins told Molly with a certain amount of grim satisfaction written all over his face. He resettled his bulky frame in the cramped plastic chair, trying to find a comfortable position. He finally gave up and perched on the edge of it.

“Given the timing, the fact that Kinsey and Veronica Weston were overheard arguing all day long, and the fact that he’s lying on the floor of her trailer, it all adds up to one thing,” he concluded, snapping his little black notebook shut.

Before he could say what that one thing was Molly stepped in to question his addition.

“Where’s the murder weapon?” Molly interrupted as casually as if she were inquiring about the location of the Atlantic Ocean across the street. “Was it in the trailer?”

Jenkins looked slightly miffed, a surefire indicator
that she’d hit on something that was equally troubling to him. “Don’t worry. We’ll find it. And when we do, I’m sure we’ll find Veronica Weston’s prints on it.”

Even though she couldn’t dismiss the fact that Veronica was every bit as absent as the gun used to kill Greg, Molly shook her head. She was absolutely certain of Veronica’s innocence.

“I don’t think so,” she told the disgustingly smug detective. “Besides, all the killer would have to do is toss it in the canal along the MacArthur Causeway or take a midnight ride into the Atlantic and toss it overboard. Odds are you’ll never find that gun. So much for means.”

Jenkins cast a pleading glance heavenward. “God, I hate people who think they know everything just because they watch reruns of
Perry Mason.”

Molly scowled at him. “Forget Perry Mason. All it takes is a little common sense. It’s pretty obvious you haven’t got diddly beyond opportunity and, believe me, that’s pretty shaky. What’s Veronica’s motive supposed to be? Gregory fought to give her this role. It was a break she badly needed. Why would she kill him in the middle of the production?”

His expression suggested he couldn’t imagine why women did anything. He glossed over the problem. “Lady, by the time the night’s over and we press charges, I guarantee we’ll have means, motive, and opportunity pinned down.”

To be sure she got the message, he ticked them off on his fingers. “If she came into town with a gun, we’ll know it. If she bought one here, we’ll find
the record. There’s your means. She was in that trailer. There’s opportunity. The man was pushing her on the set, disregarding her opinions. I have half a dozen witnesses or more who’ll swear in court that she hated the man’s guts.”

“Having a professional disagreement hardly translates into hating his guts,” Molly shot back. “Besides, what about the fact that he was still alive when she left the trailer?”

The words were out of her mouth before she even realized consciously that she actually was able to provide Veronica with a nearly airtight alibi. Greg had been alive when Veronica crossed that street! Suddenly there wasn’t a doubt in her mind about that.

Just as suddenly, the detective’s gaze was riveted on her. “How do you know that?”

Molly considered her answer carefully, trying to determine exactly why she was so certain. It went beyond mere intuition, though she never dismissed that either.

“Because I was sitting right here listening to them arguing,” she told him finally. “You could hear them blocks away probably.”

Jenkins nodded. “That’s what everyone’s said. Like I said, the woman’s guilty as sin.”

“No. He was still shouting when the door of the trailer slammed.”

As she described the moments before she and Jerry had discovered Greg’s body, Molly tried to recapture the exact sequence of events. Even as she described what she remembered, she had the feeling
that she was missing one crucial detail, but for the life of her she couldn’t recall what it was.

“The next thing I knew, Veronica was walking across the street,” she told Jenkins. “She was with me every second until four, maybe five minutes before we discovered the body. Besides that, she was the one who sent me looking for Greg. Would a woman who’d just killed a man do that? Where’d she hide the gun? She wasn’t carrying a purse and I guarantee that flimsy chiffon number she was wearing didn’t have pockets suitable for concealing a peashooter, much less a firearm.”

Sergeant Jenkins did not give up easily. “It’s hard to say what any of us would do given the right circumstances or how cleverly we might be able to conceal something. Now, let me see if I have this right. You’re claiming that Veronica Weston couldn’t possibly have shot Kinsey because you were with her up until a few minutes before you found the body, right?”

“Exactly,” she said, pleased that he’d caught on so quickly. Before he could remind her how many seconds were required to pull a trigger, she added, “And during those minutes I was a lot closer to her trailer than she was. I would have noticed if she’d gone back.”

The detective’s gaze narrowed. “How well did you know the victim?”

Molly was shaking her head before the question was out of his mouth. “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re not going to pin it on me. My job depends on keeping people like Gregory happy, not shooting them in cold blood, no matter how often I might want to.
And I happened to like Gregory Kinsey and his films.”

“No motive?” he said, subtly mocking her.

“No motive,” Molly concurred. “And for the record, no means. I don’t own a gun and wouldn’t have the foggiest idea how to shoot one.”

“I’m so relieved. I don’t suppose you have any inside knowledge about someone who, in your educated opinion, does have a motive?”

Molly wished with all her heart that she had an answer for him, if only to wipe the smirk off his face. Unfortunately, she didn’t. “No,” she murmured reluctantly.

“Excuse me? I couldn’t quite hear that.”

She glared at him. “No, I do not know who had a motive.”

“Thank you. You may go home now. We’ll be in touch about having you make a formal statement.”

“Sorry. My boss has other ideas.”

He stood up and loomed over her. “Unless your boss is the president of the United States or maybe the governor of this state, it might be best if you remember that I’m in charge around here now.” He waved a finger under her nose. “I’ve read about you, DeWitt. You were up to your earlobes in that case over on Key Biscayne a few months back. Nabbed yourself a few headlines, so now you think you know it all. Well, I don’t want you messing in my territory. Got it?”

Molly decided she did not like Sergeant Otis Jenkins. She did not like his superior, mocking attitude. It was obvious he intended to make her job as difficult as possible. Maybe he thought it was fair
play, since she’d just shot a significant hole in his case against Veronica.