Sailing to Capri (31 page)

Daisy scrambled to her feet. “Thank you for confiding in me,” she said, suddenly frightened again. Desperate to get away, she almost ran to the door, but he followed her. “I won’t wait for the elevator,” she said, making a dash for the stairs. “Good night, Herr Dopplemann.”

“Marius,” she heard him correct her as she ran up the stairs and back to the safety of her cabin.

She locked the door and stood with her back against it, breathing heavily. She didn’t know how she’d managed to sit there with a murderer while he poured his heart out about his lost love and about how Bob had betrayed him.
Dopplemann was truly crazy
.

She sat on the edge of the bed, kicked off her shoes and sank back against the pillows. A red light blinked on the
phone. A message! It had to be from Montana. She grabbed the phone, but it was only Texas asking her to call her first thing in the morning, she had something important to tell her about Charlie Clement.

Daisy thought it would never end. It was just as Bob had said in his letter to her. All the suspects were beginning to reveal their true selves. And their motives for murder.

Montana was on his third espresso at a café at the marina in Sorrento when, like a summer mirage,
Blue Boat
appeared on the horizon. He felt like hell and was desperate for a good night’s sleep. Rubbing a weary hand across his stubbled jaw, he wondered if Daisy would be glad to see him or if she was so pissed off by now she’d give him the ice treatment women were so good at.

Daisy had been on his mind a lot on those long flights on Bob Hardwick’s Gulfstream jet, cocooned at thirty thousand feet in silver-gray leather, ears buzzing from too much plane travel in too short a time. He was beyond eating, beyond sleeping; he’d simply covered his eyes with a mask and tried to relax, getting up every now and again to pace. And to think.

He had most of the pieces of the puzzle together now, and the answers were surprising, as was the motive for the murder. He didn’t yet have sufficient proof to accuse the killer, but back
in New York at his high-tech headquarters, which these days was where a great part of investigations took place, men were working on it. They were checking computers for documents, financial statements, real estate transactions, birth certificates, identifications and prison records. Right now, Montana thought life was full of surprises, some of which came at you from left field.

He watched
Blue Boat
put down her anchor. He could see some of her passengers lining the rails, gazing at the pale golden cliffs of Sorrento, getting their first whiff of the aromatic scent of lemon and orange trees. Vineyards sprawled over the hills and rococo Belle Époque hotels perched on the very edges of the cliffs. Brightly colored fishing boats chugged into port, bringing in their catch, promising good fresh seafood for lunch, and hanging over the marina was an excited buzz of rapid-fire Italian.

At any other time, Montana would have been charmed by this, but right now he had Daisy on his mind. Today he was going to put her first, make up to her for deserting her without explanation. He hoped she’d gotten his phone message and understood, but he wasn’t betting on it.

A Chris-Craft emerged from the tank deck, and some of the passengers climbed into it. He punched in Daisy’s number.

“That you?” he said when she answered.

“Shouldn’t I be asking that question?” Her voice was frigid as an igloo in winter.

“You should. But do you really want to know the answer?”

“It’s a matter of complete indifference to me.”

“On a business or a personal level?”

There was a silence, then she said, “I’m working for Bob, so I’ll discuss business with you. The personal level does not exist between us.”

“What if I apologized and said it was unavoidable?”

“I don’t need apologies,” she said abruptly. “I need to talk to you. There’s a lot going on here you need to know about.”

“I’m at the marina waiting for you,” he said, and she rang off.

He paced the quai, hands thrust in his pockets. Things did not bode well. He’d have given anything not to have hurt Daisy but he’d had no choice. And he would not allow a woman to come in the way of his work. Work came first and it always would.

I climbed into the tender and we set off for the quai. Bordelaise was coming along as my reinforcement. I knew Montana couldn’t say anything too personal in front of her, and anyhow, I wasn’t going to allow him to apologize. Men seemed to think they could get away with anything and I was about to prove that at least this one could not. From now on it would be all business.

I spotted him waiting on the jetty. Damn it, he looked good. I wondered again where he’d gotten the suntan—not from chasing killers across continents, I knew that. I choked back a sigh. From now on it was all business, and besides, my mind was so stuffed with information on the suspects, I had no choice but to speak to him.

“Doesn’t he melt your heart, even just a little?” Bordelaise murmured in my ear as we disembarked and he came toward us.

“No,” I lied, but I couldn’t fool my oldest friend. I arranged a cool smile on my face for Montana’s benefit, but my heart was
thumping and I was dying inside. When he took my hand, it was like an electric shock and my cool attitude melted instantly.

“How are you?” I said, snatching my hand back.

“Better, now I’ve seen you.” He looked me over. “You look tired, though.”

I shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. And neither could Dopplemann. We met up in the empty bar at two A.M.”

His smile disappeared. “What were you doing out alone at that time in the morning?”

I gaped at him. “I told you, I couldn’t sleep so I got up and took a walk—”

“Jesus.” He let go of me. “You must have fooled the agents keeping an eye on you. They’d have assumed you’d gone to bed and that was that.”

“So much for professional surveillance tactics,” Bordelaise said. “And hello to you too, Harry, how are you?”

He turned to her. “Good to see you, Bordelaise. How are you enjoying the cruise?”

“So far, it’s terrific. You wouldn’t believe the undercurrents and the plotting and planning, to say nothing of the confessions and then those late-night confrontations in the bar.”

Montana hailed a taxi, and we climbed in and headed up the steep hill into town, to the Albergo Lorelei et Londres, which he said had the best view in all of Sorrento.

I didn’t bother to ask how Montana knew that. He was the kind of man you could put in any town in the world and he’d know the best places to go. And he wasn’t wrong about the tiny nineteenth-century inn, with its terrace overhanging the infinite blue of the Bay of Naples with a view of the isle of Capri on
the horizon and of Vesuvius to the north. The inn was swagged in purple bougainvillea with lemon trees in pots and tables under shady red awnings. There was a bustle of laughter and talk and everyone but me seemed to be having a good time.

We took a table under the red awning where the sweet sea breeze lifted my hair and my mood and I began to feel a little better. Suffering from an overkill of cosmos and champagne, I ordered Pellegrino with lemon, while Bordelaise and Montana had Peroni beers. A platter of
calamari fritti
was brought, still sizzling from the pan, with a bowl of lemony aioli to dip them in. We picked silently at them and after a while I relaxed. I wasn’t ready to forgive Montana, but at least now I could look him in the eye without wanting to kill him.

“Want me to start, or do you want to tell me
your
news first?” he asked.

“You go first.” I popped another aioli-laden calamari into my mouth. At this rate I was going home ten pounds heavier but who cared?

“I’m sorry I left you so abruptly, but I got a call at four in the morning. You were fast asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”

I held up my hand for him to stop. “This meeting is purely business.”

“Okay. The call was from my assistant in New York. We had a forensics team working on Bob’s car and they’d come up with some interesting conclusions.”

I took another calamari, and he leaned across the table and put his hand on mine.
“Listen,
Daisy,” he said, “this is
important.”
And then he told me how Bob died.

In the hot sun of Sorrento I turned to ice. I looked at Bordelaise’s shocked eyes, then back at Montana.

He said, “I’m sorry,” and stroked my cold hands.

Anger flared. I was ready to personally strangle the killer; he’d taken Bob away from me, taken a good man’s life while his own despicable life went on. “Of course it’s Dopplemann,” I said. “He told me last night how he felt about Bob.” I filled Montana in. “So you see,” I said, “revenge was Dopplemann’s motive. It
was
him, I
know
it.”

“We’ll have to wait until I have positive proof,” Montana warned.

“Then what about Charlie Clement?” Bordelaise asked.

I’d brought her up-to-date on Ginny’s story about Charlie, and now I told Montana about Texas’s having seen him at the notorious École de Nuit. She’d been working in Paris a while ago and had gone to a club with a man she’d met, an “exclusive” club, he’d told her. It turned out to be one of those anything goes places: sex for anyone who wanted it any way they wanted it, even with children. The guy she was with told her it was Charlie Clement’s place and pointed him out to her. She had left immediately when she saw what kind of place it was, but it was Charlie’s club, all right.

“So Bob was right,” Montana said, “and they are all showing their true colors.”

“Rosalia’s the only one who doesn’t care what’s in Bob’s will,” I said. “She doesn’t want anything from him, she never has.”