Volcano (20 page)

With that reassuring thought, he pushed her onto a mosquito- netted bed and departed.

Unprotestingly, Penelope merely curled up on the sagging mattress beneath the heavy netting, closed her eyes, and, swearing to get even in the morning, slept.

Somewhere around dawn, Penelope woke and remembered the name of the angry man she'd seen leaving Emile's estate. Jacobsen. His name was Jacobsen, and he was a big- time contractor. She'd have to remember to tell Charlie.

“Go there and
die
,” Penelope muttered into her pillow as the hand resting on her breast took on a life of its own.

Her head wasn't ready to awaken, but the rest of her was already aroused and responding to the large male body wrapped around hers. She'd hoped he would just politely roll away on his own.
Polite
wasn't in Charlie's vocabulary.

The hand lingered, playing a tempting tune along sensitive nerve endings. She had too much self-respect to do this. She had nothing whatsoever in common with Mr. Charlie Smith except this overcharged sexual energy that had come out of nowhere. She didn't want to know what sex with Charlie Smith was like. She wanted to solve his problem—which had somehow become her problem too—and get out of here.

She refused to listen to the awakening voice whispering inside her head that said she'd never know what sex with Charlie was like until she tried it.

Scrambling out from beneath the covers, and batting back the mosquito netting, she escaped the trap of bed and man and her own repressed longings.

Charlie watched her go with a lot more than regret. He wasn't a kid who needed instant gratification. He could deal with a morning erection without dying of it. But he wanted a lot more from Penelope than physical gratification. What he really wanted was to take the comfort she offered and forget the horrors of the real world for just a few minutes. Maybe then he could face the day with the strength he needed.

He'd never wanted a woman for that reason before.

Shaking his head at the mess his mind had become, Charlie crawled out of the sagging bed and looked around as he'd been too tired to do last night.

Jacques hadn't led him astray. The place was sparsely furnished but well tended. The bed and a wicker chest were the only furniture in the room, but they were well made, clean, and more respectable than some places he'd occupied in his misspent youth. Miss Penny should have appreciated the clean sheets, if she'd been awake enough to notice.

Hearing her in the shower, he stumbled into the main room. An apartment-size electric stove, a sink above a single cabinet, and a table apparently made of tree trunks with polished boards for a top indicated the kitchen area. A hammock hanging from the timbered ceiling and the island version of a futon marked the living quarters. After a careful inspection, he discovered the telephone hiding beneath a towering stack of cotton fabric. Whoever owned the place sewed for a living.

Rummaging through a cabinet nailed to the wall, he located coffee and a metal pot. He had the coffee boiling by the time his new chief operating officer appeared from the minuscule bathroom.

She had all that thick black hair loosely clipped into a stack that Charlie hoped would topple at any moment. Without any forethought on his part, his gaze dropped to the perfect breast he'd held in his hand so briefly that morning. She'd covered it with a loose linen camp shirt, but even through the pockets, he could see that she hadn't harnessed herself in one of her damned bras. Maybe, just maybe, Miss Penny was loosening up.

He shouldn't care. He'd known her type back in college, the sorority girls with their preppy clothes and their noses stuck in the air. They'd wiggle under a successful football player eagerly enough, but not one with a busted knee and no prospects. At the time, he'd been putting himself through school on a scholarship and whatever he could earn in his father's struggling construction company. He'd driven an old Plymouth that the cheerleaders laughed at, worn Sears jeans and Goodwill shirts they'd pried off his back and paid their own money to replace with designer duds. He'd thought it funny while he was riding high on NFL prospects. He hadn't appreciated their condescension after the knee incident. Maybe he'd just grown surly with age.

Penelope Albright was no different from those college cheerleaders. She'd already stated her opinion of his choice of clothes and sunglasses. He could just imagine her opinion of his vintage GTO. She was the kind who dated the frat boys, the ones with BMWs and Tommy Hilfiger jeans. Just because they were trapped together in this foreign setting wouldn't change her attitude.

He'd stay well away from Miss Penelope from now on. If he'd seen the hammock last night, he would have slept in it.

She eyed him warily as she sipped the coffee he handed her. “Telephone?”

He almost had to smile at her one-track mind. “Behind the futon, underneath the stack of cloth. I'll move the table over there so you can set your computer on it.”

She nodded and scanned the cabin much as he'd done earlier. “Nice. Food?”

If he wasn't so damned worried, he'd enjoy this. A woman who didn't ‘t chatter first thing in the morning. Amazing. “Cereal and goat's milk.” She wrinkled her nose without replying, and he grinned. His opinion, expressed more succinctly. “Toast and guava jam.”

She nodded in approval. “If you're offering to cook, I accept. Set up the table, and I'll get to work.”

She was relegating him to beast of burden. It had happened often enough for him to recognize the attitude. Right now, he really didn't care. She was doing what he wanted her to do. He'd willingly play the part of ape-man for a while, if that's what it took to find Raul's murderer.

“Is there some way of notifying the police about the cabin in the rain forest?” she asked as he hauled the table across the room.

“Is there some point?” he asked with more acidity than she deserved.

“Identifying the body for certain. Tammy has to be told, but it doesn't seem right without more proof.”

“He was wearing the watch I gave him last Christmas. How much more proof do you want?” Charlie slammed the table, ashamed of his ill humor but unable to tone it down. He didn't want to believe he'd lost Raul. Raul was his right hand. Raul was the turtle to Charlie's rabbit. Many a time Raul's slower pace had forced Charlie to stop and think things through more clearly, saving him untold amounts of time and money. Who the hell would he rely on now?

Penelope didn't flinch at his tone. “The watch could have been stolen. You owe it to Raul and to Tammy to verify that the remains are his. And to bury them.”

“Damn, see if I offer you any more coffee,” he muttered, unburying the phone and tracking the line to its source.

“What's coffee got to do with it?” she asked in genuine puzzlement.

“Turns the motor on, apparently. Here, give me your modem cord. Maybe if you get to work you'll shut up.”

She shut up without further prompting. Throwing him the phone cord, she went in search of an electrical outlet. The cabin apparently had two: the one to the stove and another behind the futon. Charlie mentally groaned as he glanced up to see her bent over the back of the sofa, looking for the plug. She'd chosen shorts for a change, fitted ones. A backside like that deserved a place in the
Playboy
Hall of Fame.

Unaware of the flight his mind had taken, Penelope slid back into the seat and opened the laptop, sufficient reminder that he had his own job to do.

He couldn't spend the day watching her work. Toasting the bread in the skillet with some lard from the cupboard, he flipped the pieces onto a plate, left the plate beside Penelope, and ambled off in pursuit of eggs. He'd seen hens in the yard.

By the time he'd fried the eggs, she'd finished her first piece of toast and gone through a second cup of coffee. She also had the tiny piece of junk she called a printer spitting out paper.

He handed her more toast. “What's that?” Slapping an egg on his bread, folding it into a sandwich, and biting a chunk out of it, Charlie reached for the paper as it fell out.

“List of the Foundation's board of directors. Frequently, major stockholders are on the board. I'll start looking them up next.” She watched him with a quizzical expression as he read through the list.

Charlie nearly swallowed his egg sandwich whole. “Don't bother with the others. Start with Emile and this Sam Jacobsen.” Jacobsen! He should have known.

Penelope glanced up at him with an odd expression. “Why did you choose Jacobsen?”

He didn't like the way she asked that. Now wasn't the time to remember she'd arrived on the same flight as Jacobsen. Coincidence, or not? “I'll answer that if you tell me why you asked,” he replied with suspicion.

She looked a little startled at his vehemence. “I just asked because last night I remembered his name. He's a client of my employer. I saw him at the airport and again yesterday, leaving your stepfather's estate.”

Hit from two directions, Charlie didn't know which way to turn. Penny knew Jacobsen but didn't work for him. Jacobsen was at Emile's—just before the explosion. This didn't look healthy at all. Did he really want to believe Jacobsen killed Raul?

Penelope's expectant look forced Charlie out of his wallow of grief and confusion. He shrugged. “I'm helping someone sue Jacobsen, he hates my guts, and he's returned the favor by serving papers on me that have closed down all my bank accounts. I have a payroll to meet next week, and if I don't, all the men working on the hotel in Orlando will walk. I imagine he figures I'll sell the St. Lucia land to get the cash to keep my company running.” Charlie's brain ticked quickly. “If we can put Jacobsen together with Emile...”

Nibbling at her toast, Penelope punched a few more keys on the computer. “Credit records. Sometimes there are balance sheets attached.”

She ate as the machine did its job. Diverted by her toy, Charlie took the seat beside her. He liked learning things hands-on. He had too much energy to sit still for long, staring at any kind of screen: computer, TV, or otherwise. But the gobbledygook scrolling across the laptop contained an array of information he'd like to grab with his hands and haul off the screen. Instead, it jabbered slowly into the printer.

While she waited for the machine to print, she hit some more keys, flipped through a few more on-screen pages, and Emile's name appeared across the top. Charlie widened his eyes as he scanned quickly through the information scrolling before him.

“Damn, but I should have taken computer courses in college. I wasted three years reading Dickens and fiddling with math problems and never learned one thing of any use except the Dolphins' old plays.”

Finishing her toast, Penelope unconsciously sucked a smear of jam off her finger, then wiped her hands on a napkin before reaching for the paper falling from the printer. “College has essentially become a playground for kids who don't know what to do with themselves,” she answered absently, scanning the printed page in her hand. “Most of the jobs in our current economy can't even be taught in college. Why they don't wise up and start apprenticeship training is beyond my understanding.”

Forgetting the paper she handed to him, Charlie stared at her with incredulity. “I thought all you preppy types believe a college education is essential.”

She blinked, shrugged, then returned to reading. “Who needs a college education to lay bricks? A good course on accounting and bookkeeping, maybe contract law, could put someone with technical training into business, provided he'd learned what he should have in high school. College teaches theory, not practical basics. It gives kids time to grow up and maybe learn a little more than they did in high school. Maybe. But when I graduated from accounting school, I couldn't even balance a ledger. I'd never
seen
a ledger. But I had a computer and could use one. Theory is helpful; practice is everything.”

“My God, where have you been all my life?” he muttered as he read through the next pages falling from the printer. “Even my father wanted to disown me when I didn't graduate. I wasn't learning anything useful. I was earning a business degree, can you imagine? I took
marketing
. Did that class ever teach me how to go out and hobnob with the movers and shakers? How to make word of mouth sell? Not in this lifetime.”

He laid the papers out on the table, pulling out the ones he recognized as balance sheets and laying them on top. “All right, so this shows that both Emile and Jacobsen own percentages of the Resort Foundation. What's that prove?”

“Not any more than we already guessed.” She rearranged the stacks. “But this shows Jacobsen is in a heap of financial trouble. And he owes Emile's corporations, big-time.” She pulled out another sheet. “He also owes several of the other board members. Are you sure I shouldn't look them up too? A lot of them look European, so it may not be as easy,” she added thoughtfully.

Charlie sat back and shuffled through the stack on Jacobsen. “Let's take the easy route first. We've proved Jacobsen is a desperate man. Where does that get us?”

She turned her beautiful brown eyes in his direction. “You realize Samuel Jacobsen is a big client of PC&M's.”