Fat Chance (20 page)

“It would have been smarter to just call the police,” Tony said.

She looked on the verge of tears. “I couldn’t bring myself to betray him without at least giving him an opportunity to tell me why he’d tried to kill Finley. I honestly thought I could talk him into doing the right thing.”

“Where was the gun?” Tony asked.

“In this pocket,” she said, patting the right side of her silk slacks.

“You had it on you?” Tony asked, his expression unreadable.

“I wasn’t planning on firing it. I just thought it prudent in case I couldn’t reason with him. Carlos is…
was
…a large man. He burst in here, slapped the cell phone out of my hand, and then I saw the knife and, well, Finley,
tell him.
You
had
to have heard the whole thing.”

“I did.”

Tony rubbed his chin. “There were no signs of a break-in.”

Melinda’s lower lip quivered. “All I can say is that I was concerned for Finley and must have forgotten to check the lock after I came back from the law office. Stupid, huh? But I don’t normally lock my front door. You can ask any of my neighbors or Terri Semple.”

“Does she come here often?” I asked.

Melinda gave a weak smile. “Of course. She and Martin gave me this house.”

“Generous,” Tony remarked.

“That’s Terri,” Melinda insisted. “Generous to a fault. So what happens now?”

“We’ll all go to the station. First, I’ll do my best to convince the cops that the shooting was justified. You’re lucky you were on the phone when Carlos came in. However, if they do charge you, I can probably get a judge to agree to bond because of the mitigating circumstances.”

Melinda blanched. “You think I’ll go to jail?”

Tony shook his head. “Not if I can help it. Let’s go.”

As we headed back to the great room, I touched Tony’s sleeve. He dropped back and I whispered, “Thank you. There’s nothing worse than being an innocent person locked in a cell.”

“You’re forgetting the rules. I don’t know that she’s innocent.”

A
S IT TURNED OUT,
it was a good thing I had to go to the police station to give a formal statement, since Liam’s Mustang was gone when we came out of Melinda’s house.

I ended up having to call Becky to take me back to my apartment.

“All my stuff is at the town house,” I said as I got into her car.

Becky sipped on a latte, then set it in the cup holder next to the one she’d kindly brought for me. “I don’t mind taking you by there.”

“I don’t have the code to get in.”

“Can you call Liam or Tony?” she asked.

“Liam must have had one of his annoying
things
, and Tony is finishing up the paperwork with the state’s attorney.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t charge Melinda,” Becky said.

“Hummmm.”

“What?” Becky prodded. “Something not right? Word back at the office is the shooting was justified.”

“I know. I
heard
the whole thing happen just as she described to the police.”

“But?”

“The blood was like two feet inside the door.”

“Why does it matter where he bled to death? Personally, I’m just happy he bled. Now we know he can’t hurt you.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, wondering why I had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

“You’re lucky,” Becky said as she pulled into the parking lot of my complex.

Liam was leaning against the trunk of the Mustang, arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Why is he here?” I groaned. And why did he have the ability to annoy me and excite me at the same time? “Why is the Mercedes here?” My mother’s car was parked in the spot next to his.

While we parked, he popped the trunk of the Mustang and lifted out the clothes and other things from the town house.

“How did you get the car from the valet?” I demanded.

He gave me a lopsided grin, then said, “Why Liam, you thought of everything. Thank you so much.”

I dug out my keys. “Thanks. Now tell me how you managed to get my mother’s car.”

“Fifty bucks,” he answered as he followed me inside and unceremoniously dumped my clothing on the sofa. “For a hundred the kid would have let me hot-wire the Bentley.”

“I’ve got to run.” Becky came over and hugged me.

“Liar,” I whispered in her ear.

“Selfless friend who hopes you get lucky,” she whispered back.

Liam followed Becky out, then returned with my laptop and files. “You don’t exactly pack light, do you?”

“No.”

I expected him to leave, but instead he pulled out his cell phone and sat on the ottoman. “I’ve got something I want you to see.”

Yes, you do. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Which is why I need you to leave before I do something I’ll really regret.
“What?”

He looked up at me. “You’re pretty snippy.”

“I’m tired,” I lied. “Plus, spending time at the police station isn’t my idea of a good time.”
You, naked, well that’s a whole different story.

“Come look,” he said, handing me his phone.

My heart pumped harder and faster as I scrolled through about a dozen photos. Some were from a distance, others close up. They all featured walls in some dank, nasty room. Taped on the wall were at least a hundred pictures of me, taken, based on my attire, over the last five days. They began with my first visit to the Chilian Avenue cottage and ended this morning.

A second wall was a mirror image, though I wasn’t the subject. All those photos were of Terri Semple. “Where did you get these?”

“Pay-by-the-day motel off A-1-A.”

“But how—”

“I saw the silver sedan parked on the street. There were some receipts crumbled on the floor. Went to check it out. Carlos has been staying there for the last three months.”

“Think Terri Semple knows he was stalking her too?”

He shrugged; the movement pulled his trademark faded Tommy Bahama shirt taut across his broad shoulders. “Don’t know.”

I was trying not to notice things like that.

And failing miserably.

“She might have,” I said. “Liv has always assumed she was so freaked about privacy because of the plastic surgery. But what if she was actually freaked by Carlos?”

“Speaking of Terri,” he said, leaning to pull a quartered single sheet of paper from his back pocket. “Preliminary DNA results from the shoes.”

Excitement surged through my lust-muddled brain, clearing away the lust. I grabbed the paper; his body heat still clung to the page. Unfolding it, I held my breath, certain I was about to discover the identity of the skeleton. I read the name. Three times. “Terri Semple? How is that possible? She’s alive and well and about to marry a bazillionaire.”

“You made an assumption about the shoes,” Liam said. “Turns out you were wrong.”

“I can’t be wrong. The pathologist said the skeleton was moved around from place to place.”

“But he never said she was dragged in
those
shoes,” he pointed out with just enough amusement to make me want to scream.

He stood up and turned quickly. Suddenly we were face-to-face, and I was looking up into those piercing blue eyes. My heart stopped beating when he lifted his hand and ran his fingertip along the slope of my neck. I held my breath, sensing he was about to say something. Part of me wanted it to be
“Let’s have sex.”

Instead he grinned and said, “We both know you can be wrong. Night.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing witty or pithy came out. In fact, nothing came out at all. I stood there, mute, angry, and frustrated, and watched him casually walk out the door. After he did, I threw a pillow in his wake. Since I throw like a girl because…well, I am one…I didn’t even come close to hitting the door. Instead, the pillow slammed into my coffee, splattering it over the floor, the wall, and most of the counter.
Shit.

T
HE NEXT MORNING WAS
a study in contradictions. On the plus side, my stitches no longer hurt. On the plus-plus side, I was about to slip on a fabulous new pale blue Betsey Johnson dress with wide belt that was flattering to my waistline, if I did say so myself. New clothes are the tonic that cures all ills. I also had a killer pair of sling-back Coach shoes, white with darling Carolina blue bows accenting the peek toe. On the plus-plus-plus side, I didn’t have a lunatic stalking me.

But I had to take the bad with the great. I’d mustered the nerve to call my mother to let her know I was using her car.

On the downside, the stitches itched and made shaving my left leg a challenge. My mother gave me twenty-four hours to return her car. Harold called me at dawn to remind me he’d be by later for a payment to cover materials costs. And I arrived at the office to find my desk piled high with neglected estates and trusts work, topped with a curt memo from Vain Dane insisting
there’d be consequences if I continued to shirk my responsibilities.
“Consequences”
was his code word for docking my pay.

Even though the danger was gone, I still didn’t know the identity of the skeleton, so I dragged the files into my office, just to have them sit, untouched, on the floor. They’d have to stay like that until I arranged for letters of administration for the LaGrange estate. Done by 10:00 a.m. Typed and faxed the court clerk an initial inventory of assets on the Salanis estate, which was already a week overdue. Done by 10:17. And completed the final accounting on the Preston estate. Still off by three frigging dollars at noon. I had a vending machine lunch of M&Ms and a can of Red Bull, then raced to the bank to get the money for Harold. His ratty truck was in the parking lot when I returned.

“You should come by the house after work,” he said. “I should have the framing up by then.”

“Great.”

It was great. I was dying to see the progress, but I had to arrange for a rental car and find the math error so I could get the Preston thing filed by 4:30. The heirs were flying in from New Jersey on Wednesday to collect their inheritance. Until I could reconcile the bank account and get it approved by the court, I couldn’t write those final checks.

On the eighth attempt, I finally found the number I’d transposed, and Preston was finished. A few minutes before 3:00 p.m., I was making my way over to the courthouse, happy to be out in the bright sunshine, listening to the palm fronds rustling on a soft breeze.

I waited until my favorite clerk was free, then presented my accounting and cajoled her into taking it to the judge for approval then and there. Because I make a point of sending her
flowers on her birthday and Godiva at Christmas, it didn’t take a whole lot of convincing to get her to bend the rules.

On my way back to the office, I called Enterprise and made arrangements for them to deliver a rental to my mother’s building at 5:30. I was so organized I was scaring myself.

My butt barely landed in my chair before I was typing an email to Vain Dane to let him know I had cleared my desk. I sent it, then foolishly waited a few minutes thinking he
might
email me back acknowledging my Herculean efforts.

“Thank you for the positive feedback,” I said to the screen. Jerk.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Handyman Harold; I really wanted to share the unveiling of my beach house with my friends. I called Becky’s office, only to be told by her intern that she’d be in contract negotiations until midnight. Jane was my next call.

“Are you dancing around like a Munchkin singing, ‘Ding, dong, the stalker’s dead’?” she asked.

“I must admit, it is nice to be out from under a threat of imminent death.”

“You should send that Redmond woman flowers.”

“She’s got the flower thing covered,” I said, then described the half dozen arrangements placed around the first floor. “For all I know she’s got another half dozen upstairs. I’ll have to think of something else.” Maybe that would relieve the unexplainable prickle that crawled up the back of my neck whenever I thought about Melinda. I told Jane about the progress on the Chilian Avenue house. “We can go see the framing, then grab dinner.”

“Oh, sorry,” Jane said. “I’ve got a date.”

I was disappointed, but happy for my friend. “With?”

“A guy I met at the gym. We’re going ocean kayaking.”

“A kayaking date? The guy better be hot.”

“He’s okay,” she sighed. “I’m actually more looking forward to being out on the water for a few hours. Rain check?”

“Sure.”

My final call was to Liv. Like Jane, she congratulated me on the demise of the threat of Carlos. Like Becky, she had to work. Concierge Plus was handling a charity dinner at The Breakers.

“Stop by if you want,” Liv offered. “I’ll slip you a couple of crab puffs and some champagne.”

“I might,” I hedged, not sure how my evening would unfold. It might be nice to just sit on the beach with a glass of wine, some cheese, and a baguette.

After hanging up, I looked at the clock, certain that it was close to five. I let out a groan when I saw it was just a few minutes past four. The only way I’d be able to leave early would be if I opened the window, climbed out, and shimmied down the drainpipe. Even then, I couldn’t be totally positive that Margaret wouldn’t be waiting for me.

I drummed my fingers on my desk while a half pot of coffee brewed. Checked eBay; nothing caught my fancy, so I logged into the Medicaid database and decided I could look around until 4:59 when I’d make a dash for the elevator. Thirty seconds to get down to the lobby, and I’d be at the car when the clock struck five.

Using the same insurance code manual I used for my estate work, I was easily able to decipher the medical information. I found a few billing errors. The government had charged one of Melinda’s foster children for a prostate exam. Only problem? The patient was a twelve-year-old girl named Hilary McMasters. The second error raised an alarm in my mind, so I reread the entry.

According to the U.S. government, they’d paid three ER bills and related orthopedic charges for Terri Semple. All were for
spiral fractures to the right arm. All while Terri was in Melinda’s care.

Reaching into my credenza, I flipped through the file until I found the skeleton’s second autopsy report. There it was, right in the third paragraph. Evidence of three healed spiral fractures to the right arm. “Son of a bitch.”

Technically, it was conceivable that my skeleton and Terri Semple had each suffered the same injuries. They were both abused children, and it was a common injury when an unfit parent or caregiver twisted a kid’s arm. Running my fingers through my hair, I weighed my options. There was a possibility that it was nothing more than a billing error. Somehow the skeleton’s medical records had comingled with Terri’s. The prostate exam proved the system was fallible.

I reached for the phone twice before finally making the call.

“Hi,” I greeted.

“Finley,” Melinda replied, her tone chipper. “I’ve been meaning to call you all day. I can’t thank you enough for yesterday. And Mr. Caprelli. If it wasn’t for the two of you, I might very well be sitting in jail right now.”

“I’m glad everything worked out. Listen, I have a question.”

“I already know what you’re going to ask.”

“You do?”

“The police asked me about the pictures in Carlos’s motel room. Did Mr. Caprelli tell you?”

Mr. Caprelli had been MIA all day. I knew because I’d made a few calls to his extension and had kept getting his voice mail. Under the guise of acknowledging his help, I had almost worked up the nerve to invite him for a drink. Especially after all my friends had bailed on me. “Um, no. What about the pictures?”

“The police think he was stalking you and Terri Semple. My guess is he was following her around hoping to get an unflattering photo to sell to a tabloid.”

That seemed like a stretch. He had hundreds of pictures, and, as memory served, lots of them were unflattering—and a few were of her sunbathing topless at the Gilmore estate.

“He couldn’t have been after me for money.”

“I think he was fixated on you for your looks. Carlos always liked pretty blondes.”

That seemed like a very lame reason to spend five days perched in trees or crouched in alleyways just to take my picture. Then again, he’d broken into my apartment when I hadn’t been there, so maybe she was right and he was just—gross—an admirer. It didn’t matter now. He was dead.

Speaking of which. “Do you remember Terri Semple breaking her arm three times when she was living with you?”

Dead silence.

“Melinda?”

“You caught me.”

I knew it! I knew she was hiding something.
“Doing…?”

“You have to understand, there’s a lot of red tape in the foster care system. Someone else needed medical attention, but there was a problem getting her Medicaid benefits transferred from her previous foster home. So I used Terri’s card. I didn’t have a choice. She needed medical attention, and I was struggling to keep food on the table with the stipends I got from the state. Can I ask how you found out about that?”

“I’m still trying to identify the skeleton in my house.”

“And you think it was Jill?”

“Jill Burkett?”

“Yes. Troubled girl. And unfortunately, trouble often attracts
trouble. She had a boyfriend who liked to beat on her. He was the one who kept breaking her arm.”

Same injuries. Right time frame. Jill Burkett had to be the skeleton in the closet. “What happened to her?”

“She wasn’t one of my success stories, I’m afraid. Kept running off with that horrible boyfriend. She’d come back, usually after a bad beating. Until the last time.”

“When was that?”

“Wow,” Melinda said on a breath, “let me think. She came in 1990, so it had to be sometime in ’96 or ’97. I don’t know anyone she kept in touch with after she left.”

“I think that’s because she’s the skeleton I found at the Chilian Avenue house.”

“That’s not possible,” Melinda said vehemently. “I lived in that house for years after she left. Space was an issue. Believe me, someone would have noticed a body in a closet.
I
would have noticed. Why, the smell alone would have…well, you know what I mean.”

I did. “You don’t happen to remember the boyfriend’s name?”

“Heavens no,” she said. “Jill wouldn’t tell me. If she had, I would have called the cops and pressed charges for the assaults. So, what happens now?”

“With what?”

“If you make the identification public, I could be charged with Medicaid fraud.”

I sensed genuine fear in her tone. “I don’t want to get you into trouble,” I said. “I’ll find some other way. Did she have any siblings? Someone who might be able to provide a DNA comparison or something?”

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to just let this go. Assuming
it is Jill, she’s been dead for more than a decade. Nothing good normally comes from dredging up the past. I’d be more than happy to cover burial expenses or anything you think might be appropriate to put this unfortunate situation to rest.”

“I’d like to know what happened to her,” I said, more for my own edification. “Someone murdered her.”

“Probably that boyfriend.”

“Why would a boyfriend keep the body all these years?”

“I shudder to think.”

Glancing at the clock, I realized it was two minutes after five. “Listen, I’ve got an appointment, so I need to go.”

Rudely, I all but hung up on Melinda. It couldn’t be helped. I had to go to my mother’s house to drop off the Mercedes and meet the Enterprise guy. Grabbing up my skeleton research and my purse, I dashed for the elevator.

A
T 5:35 P.M
., I was transferring those same items from the Mercedes to a utilitarian, nondescript white four-door coupe.

Driving in hideously slow, Friday-night traffic, I crawled along I-95 to Palm Beach Gardens. It took me close to thirty minutes to go eight miles, but I finally reached the little French bistro in the newest addition of trendy shops and eateries known as Downtown across from the Gardens Mall.

After selecting a nice Brie and some crusty artisanal bread, I walked two stores down and bought some wine, a corkscrew, and a pair of glasses. I only needed one, but that wasn’t an option.

Armed with dinner, I made one final stop before heading to Palm Beach. Using Military Trail as an alternative to the overly congested interstate, I detoured into one of the Walgreens that seemed to inhabit every other corner and bought a cheap sand chair.

The change at the house was nothing short of miraculous. Still, I groaned when I saw the Mustang already parked in the driveway. I was mentally exhausted and not in the mood to play head games with Liam. I wanted to be left alone. I needed to sort through the bits and pieces of the skeleton mystery that didn’t quite seem to fit.

The whir of a power saw buzz traveled on the breeze coming off the beach. I entered the house and stopped short. Liam, gloriously shirtless, was hunched over the sawhorses, operating the power tool. A fine dust swirled all around him, and some of the shavings stuck to the sheen of perspiration coating his naked torso.

“Hi,” Harold greeted me as he came down the hall.

Only then did Liam look up and find me standing on the threshold.

“Hi.” I walked across the plywood subflooring and placed my bags on the counter so I could remove the chair I’d hooked in the bend of my elbow. I fixed my attention on Harold. “I’m here for my tour.”

He offered a single-toothed smile. “Right this way.”

Like a kid showing off birthday presents, Harold took me through the house, explaining as he went.

“This will be the powder room,” he said, pointing to some tubes and a round thing. White PVC pipe zigged and zagged through holes drilled in the two-by-fours.

“Very nice,” I fibbed. With nothing but boards nailed up every twelve inches or so, I couldn’t tell where one room ended and the next one started. Maybe I’d do better when the drywall went up.

“Mr. Sam had me add this,” he said, patting a boxy-looking thing under what I thought was my bedroom window.