Hot Money (2 page)

“Forget Julio Iglesias. I doubt I could have talked her into inviting Wayne Newton. When I mentioned holding an auction, she practically choked. She claimed it had no class.” Liza stood on tiptoe to kiss Michael’s cheek. “Thanks for coming, you two. Mingle. Have fun. I’ve got to go see if I can get old man Jeffries to cough up a few thousand bucks before he dies. I’ve heard he’s willing to save the manatees. Maybe I can get him together with Jimmy Buffet and put together a benefit concert.”

Liza disappeared around a hedge, leaving the two of them staring after her.

“Where does she find the energy?” Michael marveled.

“I think it takes about twenty minutes and the mention of a cause to recharge her batteries.” Molly glanced up. “Are you interested in checking out the food?”

He shook his head. A wicked gleam lit his dark brown eyes. “Not right now. I’m more in the mood to shock this stuffy crowd.”

“Oh?” Molly replied cautiously. The last time Michael had that look in his eyes he’d kissed her senseless. It had played havoc with her already wavering resolve to keep this man at arm’s length.

“Follow me.”

He held out his hand, and after a momentary hesitation, Molly took it. “Exactly what do you have in mind?”

“I intend to start by removing selective pieces of clothing.”

She stopped in her tracks. “You what?” It wouldn’t do to get too elated under the circumstances. She had a discouraging feeling he wasn’t about to lure her into one of the mansion’s many bedrooms and have his way with her, thereby settling the matter of her resolve once and for all.

He grinned. Those wicked sparks intensified. “Scared, Molly?”

“Of you? Never!” she declared staunchly.

“Then let’s go.”

As they crossed the lawn, stopping several times along the way to chat, Molly’s pulse reached an anticipatory rate that would have her in the hospital down the block if it continued unchecked. The music drifted on the night breeze, swirling around them. The slow, romantic beat was counterpointed by laughter that grew more distant as they reached the shadowy fringes of the estate. Michael’s hand curved reassuringly around hers.

“Put your hand on my shoulder,” he instructed, standing before her. “Lift your foot.”

“Is this anything like that game where you put different body parts on different squares until everyone ends up on the ground in a tangle?”

“Sounds fascinating,” he said, “but no.” He removed her shoe and tucked it in his pocket. “Other foot.”

“Michael, I do not intend to romp around this place barefooted.”

“Careful, amiga. Your stuffy social graces are showing.”

In return for that remark, she nearly planted her remaining spiked heel atop his foot. Unfortunately, as a volunteer soccer coach, to say nothing of being witness to a fair amount of gunplay, Michael possessed reflexes that tended to be lightning quick. He stepped nimbly aside. Molly’s heel dug into the dry, sandy soil, which effectively removed her shoe just as he’d intended in the first place.

He glanced at her stocking-clad feet. “How about those?” he inquired of the sheer, iridescent hose that shimmered against her legs.

“Is this one of those kinky things I’ve read about?”

“Last I heard there wasn’t anything kinky about sitting on a dock by the bay, but I’m game if you want to show me.”

“You would be,” she muttered darkly, trying not to let her disappointment show. Kinky with Michael O’Hara might have had its good points. She wasn’t about to be the one to initiate it, though. She glanced at the limestone ledge, worn smooth by time, then at the water lapping gently against it. “You don’t actually expect me to sit on that, do you?”

“Of course not,” he said, sweeping off his jacket and spreading it before her.

Molly had a hunch the gesture wasn’t entirely due to gallantry. In fact, she was almost certain she heard him sigh with relief as he shed the hated, restrictive attire. She glanced from Michael to his quite probably ruined jacket, then to the water that seemed ominously dark in this shadowed corner.

“What do you suppose is in there?”

“A little seaweed. A few fish. Nothing to worry about.”

“Maybe you don’t consider having barracuda nibbling at your toes to be risky, but I’m not all that enchanted with the idea.”

“I doubt there are any barracuda lurking down there.”

“Not good enough,” she said. “I want conviction in your voice or my toes stay on land.”

“Ah, Molly. Where’s the romance in your soul?” he murmured, just close enough to her ear to give her goosebumps. His finger trailed along her neck, then over her bare shoulder.

Molly shivered and halfheartedly wished she’d selected a gown with more fabric. She was entirely too responsive and Michael was entirely too skilled at this seduction stuff. Another five minutes and the society grandes dames truly would have something to shock the daylights out of them. As an alternative, Molly practically dived for the ledge. She stuck her feet, outrageously expensive stockings and all, into the bathwater-warm bay.

Michael’s amused chuckle was entirely too predictable. As he sat down next to her, she considered—for no more than an instant—tumbling him into the bay so he could cool off his … libido.

As if he guessed her thoughts, he grinned at her. “Don’t even think about it,” he said.

“What?” she inquired innocently.

Suddenly something brushed past her foot, ending all thoughts of retaliation. As it made contact again, it became clear that it was something considerably larger than a guppy or even a damned barracuda, she thought as a scream rose up in her throat and snagged.

“What—” she asked in a choked voice. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Michael said, instantly alert to the change in her voice.

She was already standing, water pooling at her feet as she pointed at the murky depths. “There’s something in there.”

“Probably just some seaweed.”

“I don’t think so. It felt …” She was at a loss for an accurate description. “Slimy.”

“That’s how seaweed feels,” he said, sounding so damned calm and rational she wanted to slug him.

“Does it also feel big?” she snapped.

“Big like a manatee?” he said, obviously refusing to share her alarm. “Maybe one is tangled in the mangroves.”

Molly wasn’t sure exactly how she knew that Michael was wrong, but she was certain of it. “Maybe we should go get a flashlight.”

“By the time we do, I’m sure whatever it is will be gone.”

“Michael, humor me. If it is a trapped manatee, we ought to free it or Liza will never forgive us. If it’s …” She swallowed hard. “If it’s something else, we ought to do, hell, I don’t know. Just get the flashlight. I’ll wait here,” she said before she realized that she’d be left alone with something that every instinct told her was very human and very dead.

Michael had taken two steps back toward the house, when she grabbed his arm. “Never mind. I’ll go for the flashlight. Give me the car keys. You stay here.”

His expression suddenly serious, he handed over the keys without argument, either to humor her or because his own highly developed instincts for trouble had finally kicked in. “Don’t say a word to anyone, Molly. There’s no point in alarming everyone unnecessarily.”

She nodded, then took off across the lawn, oblivious of the stares she drew as she raced barefooted through the guests, across the central courtyard of the house and down the driveway to the parking lot. It could have taken no more than ten minutes, fifteen at the outside, but it felt like an eternity before she made it back to where Michael was waiting. She’d grabbed a glass of champagne and chugged it down on the way. She had a hunch she was going to need it.

Michael took the flashlight from her trembling grasp and shone it onto the water in front of where they’d been sitting. At first it seemed she must have been mistaken as the glare picked up no more than a few strands of seaweed, a tangle of mangrove roots, a curved arm of driftwood. As the light skimmed across the surface and back again, Molly’s heart suddenly began to thud.

“There,” she whispered. “Move it back a little. See?”

What at first seemed to be no more than seaweed moved sensuously on the water’s surface. It was a distinctive three-carat diamond that finally caught the light, broke it into a hundred shimmering rays and removed any lingering doubts about the exact nature of Molly’s discovery.

“Oh, my God,” Molly whispered, her gaze fixed on the glittering ring that she herself had once coveted at a charity auction. Though her stomach was pitching acid, she forced herself to look again, just to be sure.

Michael’s arm circled her waist. The flashlight wavered in his grasp and the light pooled at her feet, instead of on the water. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“As well as anyone would be after discovering another body,” she said in an aggrieved tone. “For someone not even remotely interested in signing on for homicide investigations, I have a nasty suspicion I’ve seen almost as many murder victims as you have in the past few months.”

“Don’t you think you’re jumping to conclusions? We have no way of knowing whether the woman was murdered until we get the body out of there.”

“Trust me,” Molly said. “Tessa Lafferty would never willingly ruin her hairdo, to say nothing of her designer gown. If she felt ill, she would go home, send the dress to the secondhand store on consignment, and then climb between her two-hundred-dollar sheets and die. If she’s in that water, it’s because someone heaved her into the bay.”

“I know that name. Wasn’t it on the invitation to this shindig?” Recognition spread across his face, then dismay. “Isn’t Tessa Lafferty the woman Liza described as an idiot?”

She glared at him. “What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing. I’m just asking, purely for purposes of clarification, if it’s the same woman.”

“It is,” Molly conceded, then jumped to her friend’s defense. “But Liza would never kill her just because she didn’t want some Latin singer that Liza has the hots for to sing at this bash.”

“Did I say she would?”

“No, but I know how you think.”

“Do you really? How is that?”

“Like a cop.”

“Then I suppose you won’t mind obeying an official police request.”

She regarded him warily. “Which is?”

“Go into the house and call the police.”

“You are the police.”

“Not here. Will you just go make that call?”

“Only if you promise that Liza will not be on the list of suspects you turn over to the Miami police.”

“Sweetheart, you and I are on that list of suspects. Now move it.”

Molly didn’t waste time arguing that they provided tidy alibis for each other. She was more concerned with warning Liza that inviting a homicide detective to a charity function was just about the same as inviting trouble.

With Michael’s hand clamped firmly around her wrist, Molly was more or less obligated to leave the murder investigation in the hands of the proper authorities, members of the Miami Police Department who arrived with sirens blaring. Damn the man, beyond insisting that everyone remain on the grounds and seeing to it that the security guards enforced the rule by barricading the routes to the parking lot, he didn’t ask a single question of anyone himself.

“It’s not my jurisdiction,” he said for the tenth time when Molly mentioned that a few casual inquiries surely wouldn’t offend the Miami police.

What she didn’t say was that asking a few questions would help to keep her mind off the image of Tessa’s body being untangled from the mangroves, then placed rather indelicately on the bank awaiting further examination by the medical examiner before its removal from the grounds. Tessa hadn’t been in the water long enough for her body to be distorted or ravaged by fish as it might have been had she remained undiscovered, but that didn’t make it any less distressing to see her poor, bedraggled, lifeless form lying there. Because she needed a distraction, Molly pressed Michael for some sort of action.

“But what about Liza? Don’t you feel any obligation at all where she’s concerned? I don’t even know where she is. Shouldn’t we at least find her?”

“Any obligation I feel toward your friend was pretty well wiped out when I forked over the money for the tickets to tonight’s affair.”

Molly scowled at him. “That was not the sort of obligation I was talking about.”

“I know,” he said succinctly.

Refusing to admit aloud that she was worried by Liza’s inexplicable absence ever since the discovery of the body, Molly pleaded, “At least let me find her and talk to her. She’s bound to be distraught. Who’ll want to donate more money to all these environmental causes after this?”

“From what I hear, any publicity is good publicity when it comes to raising public awareness of a cause.”

“Spoken like someone who’s taken PR one-oh-one. I know there are those who believe that as long as the name is spelled correctly, public relations benefits will be reaped, but I’m not sure that applies to a murder investigation. If this gets ugly, the coalition that sponsored tonight’s event is bound to be tainted by it. Besides, Liza is my friend. I want to be supportive.”

She also wanted very much to be reassured that Liza had spent the last hour or so in the midst of this throng and not off on one of her solitary nature hikes around the grounds. She left that thought unspoken. Michael was sharp enough to figure it out anyway, just as he’d noticed the handful of yachts docked at the boat landing and notified the guards to block that route of escape as well. Now, unless someone dived into Biscayne Bay and swam away, the suspects were pretty well contained on the grounds. She didn’t want to think about how far away the killer might have gotten in that time before the body was discovered.

“Molly, just let the police solve this case as quickly as possible without any of your amateur interference. That’s the best thing you can do for Liza,” he said.

“I thought you said my instincts about these things were good.”

“Did I say that?”

“Just a few short weeks ago, as a matter of fact.”

“I must have been in a state of shock after seeing you heading straight into the clutches of that film director’s killer. Close calls always muddle my thinking.”