The Arrangement (18 page)

Of all the visitors to Josephine Hazelton’s house that morning, Villard was the only one who had ventured to the actual crime scene, but Tony had to admit that he was the least likely suspect. He was an outsider with no real connection to Butch and no particular motive to harm him.

Butch had more reason to want to harm Villard. A normal kid might have hated the guy because he’d stolen his brother’s girl, but Butch had never been normal, although he did once confide to Tony that he hated Villard’s guts because Villard had done something to embarrass him in front of his friends. Butch hadn’t gone into detail, and Tony hadn’t pressed. They’d never been close that way.

As much as Tony wanted to nail the French bastard, he didn’t have the goods on him. Not yet, anyway. And there was something far more intriguing about Villard. Tony had had him under surveillance for several days, and with the exception of this morning, he was starting to see a pattern in Villard’s movements. The man had an objective, but unfortunately, it didn’t make any sense to Tony. Andrew Villard seemed to be investigating the death of a woman who was very much alive.

His wife.

Julia took great pleasure in gazing at her new circlet bracelet as she drove through the light afternoon traffic on the San Diego Freeway. She didn’t have to take her eyes off the road because her hands were right there in front of her, and the way the round-cut diamonds caught the sun was dazzling.

She didn’t think of that kind of pleasure as bad, although her mother would have. Eleanor would have called it materialistic. But how could it be wrong to take so much pleasure from just one new piece of jewelry? She wasn’t bringing home bags of baubles, thousand-dollar designer shoes or Citation jets, even though she could well afford them. It was one bracelet, and it made her happy when so little else could these days.

Julia relaxed her grip on the wheel. Her knuckles had gone white around edges just from thinking about her mother. Eventually she would tire of the bracelet and buy something new and sparkly to boost her spirits, but that might be months, even years from now. She still loved her S600 Mercedes, too, and it wasn’t new. She understood value. She’d bought a car that would last.

She spotted the sign for her freeway exit ahead and glanced in the rearview mirror, getting ready to change lanes. As she did she saw the car behind her moving with her. The dark green sedan followed her from the fast lane of the freeway into the middle. Julia didn’t think much about it. Southern California freeways were hell in the best of circumstances, and she liked to be in the exit lane well ahead of time.

She was also dreading this afternoon’s rendezvous. She’d gotten carried away at the gym, and she was running late. But that was probably intentional. She didn’t like how things had been going with her lawyer, Jack Furlinghetti. He was stringing her along, playing her, and there was little she despised more than being played.

As she got ready to change lanes again, she checked both mirrors, rear and side, and saw that the car was still with her. Curious, she began to pay attention. The sedan took the exit with her, too. The sun was reflecting against the windshield, and she couldn’t see the driver, but the vehicle looked like a standard midsize four-door, nothing fancy.

Julia turned right at the exit, and the other car did, too. The sun was coming from a different angle now, silhouetting the driver, and Julia thought it might be a woman. She could see what looked like long hair, although she couldn’t make out any details.

When the sedan was still with her at the next turn, she fished her cell out of her purse and, with one hand, keyed in the speed dial code for Jack Furlinghetti’s cell phone. She knew he wouldn’t be in his office. He was waiting for her in a motel room, hopefully not as sleazy as the last one.

He answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”

He must have seen her number come up on the display. “I’m being followed, Jack. I think it’s a woman. It might even be…my assistant.”

Julia hadn’t realized she suspected it was Rebecca until she’d said it. She glanced in the mirror again, trying to get a better look at the car and the license. Rebecca drove an old Volkswagen Rabbit. It couldn’t be her—unless she’d picked up a rental. Julia still couldn’t see the driver clearly. Rebecca normally wore her hair up. The color might have been hers, reddish-brown, but with the bright sun, she couldn’t tell.

“Lose her and get over here. You wrote down the directions, right?”

“I’m not coming, Jack. It’s not safe. We’ll have to reschedule.”

“You’re going to be sorry. I had a surprise for you.”

“Really?”
Her voice was singsong. Heh heh. Wink Wink. “What kind of surprise, Jack?”

He snickered, and Julia grimaced. Her mother was right; she had no morals. Jack Furlinghetti redefined the word
revolting,
but she was worse. She was encouraging his revoltingness, exploiting it.

“I want an answer, Jack. Are you are going to cooperate?”

“Only if you do. Get your awesome ass over here.”

“Apparently you’d like a threesome? You, me and my tail?”

“Is that a trick question?” In a different tone, he added, “Julia, you know what I mean.”

“I’ll call you back to reschedule,” she said, clicking off the phone. Bastard. She would have to find another way to deal with him. Would her mother think her immoral if she strung him up by his balls? Probably not. It might be the first thing Eleanor would heartily approve of.

A horn blared, reminding Julia that she wasn’t paying attention to the road. She tossed her cell phone in the passenger seat. They really should pass a law against the nasty things.

When she glanced back at the mirror, the sedan was gone.

Jack Furlinghetti finished off the soft drink he’d gotten from the vending machine in the motel lobby. He dropped the can in the wastebasket, not quite sure what he’d been drinking. The medication he was on blunted his senses and made everything taste the same, but he’d had a thirst that had to be quenched, and the vending machine had been handy.

The motel room was a disaster, small, stuffy and claustrophobic. Even for a guy with a seedy motel fantasy, he had to admit that this was a challenge. The decrepit air conditioner had wheezed its last almost as soon as he’d turned it on, and the building was about as well insulated as a sardine can.

He sat on the bed and picked up his cell, smiling at the rusty creak of the box springs. He had phone calls to make. It wasn’t easy accounting for all the time he’d been away from the office lately. And Julia wouldn’t have liked his surprise, anyway. There wasn’t going to be any sex today, at least nothing exotic. Just some bad news for the lady of the house. Julia didn’t know it yet, but she wasn’t getting what she wanted.

His mind went oddly blank as he stared at the cell’s keypad, trying to remember his office number. The phone was new and he hadn’t programmed it yet. What the hell was that number? He hated not having information at his fingertips.

He reached inside his suit jacket, snagged a packet with two tiny red tablets, ripped it open and swallowed them both without water.

Give yourself a minute. You’ll be fine, dude. Superman.

The bed groaned loudly as he got up and walked to the grimy second-floor window. He wrestled it open, looking for a breeze. The parking lot was empty, except for a dented compact car and his silver Porsche, which stuck out like a handful of sore thumbs.

No, Julia wasn’t getting what she wanted. And neither was anyone else in the Fairmont family. He wasn’t giving control of the trust fund over to any of those desperate losers, no matter what they did. Both Bret and Andrew, the son-in-law, had paid him visits to make discreet inquiries. Jack was a little surprised neither of them had offered him sex. The only one he hadn’t heard from was Alison, who had a legitimate claim—and hadn’t breached the morals clause. Yet.

Of course, if
she
were to offer him sex…

But there were other, smarter ways to deal with her. He grunted and shut the window, which was nothing but a conduit for the drippy heat.

Now, Eleanor Driscoll, there was a woman after an attorney’s heart. That crazy morals clause she’d come up with practically guaranteed that her female progeny would screw themselves out of the money, so to speak. Of course, it could be legally challenged in a heartbeat, but who among the proud and prominent Fairmonts wanted their dirty laundry aired in court? And Jack would make sure it was a packed courtroom and not some closed session with a hired private judge.

Eleanor was quite a dame, and probably as hot as a cherry bomb in her prime. Who else would think in terms of moral clauses except someone struggling to contain his or her own rampant libido?

The office phone number—555-2100—popped into his head, thanks to the pills. One of his clients had been supplying him with smart pills that did everything from jump-start your memory to make you an analytical genius. He hated game shows, but had found himself watching
Jeopardy
and acing the questions before the contestants could hit the button. It was unreal. Of course, it was illegal, too. Not narcotic illegal, just not approved for use by the FDA.

Not that he really needed to be any smarter. The people he dealt with were endlessly stupid. What made being an estate lawyer so easy and lucrative was how efficiently most people, especially the wealthy, fucked up their lives and brought about their own financial downfalls. Jack hardly had to do any work at all.

He glanced over his shoulder at his depressing surroundings. Time to pack up and say goodbye to this dive. He also needed to replenish his supply of pills. He’d found only one packet in his suit jacket. Possibly he’d been taking more than he realized.

T
he misty pink clouds sat like scoops of strawberry ice cream on the lavender hills, and the evening air was heavy with the sweetness of star jasmine. It was cocktail hour at the Fairmont mansion, and Julia and Bret were sipping what looked like champagne cocktails when Andrew joined them on the terrace.

“Can I get you a drink?” Rebecca asked, approaching him with a tray of appetizers.

“No, thanks.” He carefully dodged her as he walked over to Julia, who’d taken possession of a chaise longue under a huge Kentia palm.

Whether intentional or not, the slit of Julia’s sarong skirt had fallen open to reveal enough skin to make you wonder if she was wearing underwear. And the glazed smile told him this wasn’t her first drink.

Bret, on the other hand, looked stone-cold sober as he stood at the railing, his back to the ocean, watching Andrew with a glower.

Andrew’s gut tightened. Maybe
he
had better watch for falling pots. Bret was positively malevolent tonight.

Andrew turned to Julia. “Have you seen Alison? She’s not in the room, and there’s no note. When I left she wasn’t feeling well.”

Julia sloshed her drink a bit as she set it down. “I have no idea where she is. I haven’t seen her since breakfast. Is everything all right?”

Andrew tried to quiet the uneasiness he felt. “Everything’s fine. She probably went for a walk.”

“At this time of day?”

“People do take walks before dinner.”

“Maybe in Long Island,” Julia murmured. “Here, we walk after dinner.”

“I saw her go,” Bret said. “She hit the beach about an hour ago, wandering around like she was in some kind of trance. She’s probably halfway to San Diego by now.”

“See there?” Julia said, beckoning for Rebecca. “Join us in a drink, Andrew. Alison is fine. She knows her way around.”

“Are you kidding?” Bret came off the railing. “She didn’t even know her own name. I shouted at her several times, and she didn’t look up.”

Andrew didn’t smile. “My guess is she didn’t want to talk to you.”

Bret smiled, but it was vicious. “My guess is she
doesn’t
know her own name.”

“Bret, don’t be ridiculous,” Julia said impatiently. “Rebecca, I need another drink. And bring something for Andrew.”

Andrew looked hard at Bret, trying to size him up. It could just be more of his spoiled-brat routine, the sibling rivalry garbage. But if Bret had figured out that Marnie wasn’t his sister, and he intended to try and prove it, then Andrew had one more time bomb on his hands. He could feel the pressure mounting as he weighed Bret’s open hostility against Julia’s inebriation. Were either of them capable of masterminding an elaborate frame-up scheme? One was becoming more aggressive, the other seemed to be cracking up. It could be either of them.

Rebecca hurried over with a tray of drinks, which Bret neatly intercepted, since Andrew was already on his way to the ramp that led to the stairs to the beach.

“Don’t hold dinner,” Andrew called back. “I’m going for a walk.”

It seemed to take forever to get down the several steep flights of steps, and he found the shore nearly deserted when he got there. This was a public beach that often got crowded during the day, but most people packed up and went home around dinnertime.

The sun was dropping and the breeze getting chilly. To the north, he could see all the way to the Mirage Bay pier, where the neon lights of the arcade were already blazing. To the south the beach wound around the cliffs, and his visibility was limited. Bret hadn’t said which way she’d gone, but he’d mentioned San Diego. That was south.

Andrew glanced back up at the terrace. Bret stood at the railing, looking down. Rebecca was right next to him.

Andrew went south.

Andrew was on the path from the beach to Gramma Jo’s house when he saw Marnie walking toward him. She was gripping something in her hand, and she’d left the front door of the cottage hanging open. Apparently she’d walked all the way from the Fairmont mansion to get here, which was well over a mile, by his estimation. He’d just made the same trip himself, and he could feel the strain in his legs.

She advanced with her head high and her face stricken. Even the wild dark hair flying around her couldn’t hide the raw emotion he saw. She already knew the news he’d been planning to break to her. Her grandmother was gone, but not on a cruise. He’d done enough checking to discover that no one actually knew where Josephine Hazelton was.

But Marnie didn’t want comfort. He could see that, too. Pain bristled from her like porcupine quills. It was her barrier. And he had to respect that. He’d always admired her nerve. Another woman might have allowed him to take her in his arms and comfort her, even Alison. But not this one. She would have turned him into a pillar of salt.

She stopped three feet in front of him and held up a shawl that shimmered with rainbow-sherbet hues and was fringed with long white tassels.

“Marnie? What’s wrong?”

“She didn’t take her wrap with her. She never went anywhere without this.”

“That’s your grandmother’s wrap?”

Marnie unclenched her fingers and tried to smooth the wrinkles from the fragile silk material. The tassels bounced around, getting in her way.

Andrew didn’t attempt to help her. This was sacred territory.

“She would
never
have left it behind,” Marnie said. “It belonged to her aunt, and she was superstitious that way.”

Now she was trying to fold the slippery material into something smaller and neater, something manageable.

“Let’s go sit on the porch and talk,” he suggested.

“No, I can’t.”

The dark hair fell away from her face as she looked up at him. Her intensity actually spooked him at times, the wary chill in her eyes, the sullen heat in her mouth. She was wild at heart, frightened—and frightening. But it was the kind of fear that attracted a man, called out to him like the sirens on the rocks, whispering an invitation and threatening to wreck you if you took it.

He felt a stirring in his groin and hated himself for the impulse. He couldn’t go there, couldn’t even let himself think about going there.

“Something terrible has happened to my grandmother,” she said. “She’s gone, and she didn’t leave any clues, nothing for me to find. Not even a note.”

He quieted his voice. “Why would she have left you a note, Marnie? She thought you were dead.”

Pain pierced her gaze, but she went on talking. “She told my friend LaDonna that she was going to a hospital of some kind, but I didn’t find any record of that, no phone number, no doctor’s name.”

“Marnie, it won’t be that hard to find her. There aren’t that many hospitals in the area.”

He wasn’t sure she’d heard him. She’d tucked the shawl under her arm for safekeeping, and all he could think about was how young she was. Not how young she looked. She
was
young, twenty-two, and seriously inexperienced, he suspected. She hardly looked different than the day he’d pulled Butch and his thug friends off her. But that was Marnie and this was Alison. Alison with Marnie’s eyes and Marnie’s soul.

It was amazing how a personality could change the face.

“It’s one thing to ruin my own life,” she said. “I have to live with that and with what I did to Butch. But I didn’t ever want to hurt her. She gave her whole life to raising me.”

Andrew glanced past her to the house and the small forest of oak trees behind it. He wondered if she’d gone into the glen and tried to face down that horror. It could account for her state of mind.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “Let’s start walking back.”

She searched his face, as if seeking something, but with little hope of finding it. Was he to be trusted? Was anyone?

Anguish. Those were the waters she swam in. The despair in her expression made him feel helpless—and Christ, he hated that feeling.

“I’ll find your grandmother,” he said. “I promise.”

Goose bumps rippled down her bare arms. It almost looked painful. She averted her gaze, but began to nod. He wasn’t sure why.

“Let’s walk,” she said.

The light was fading quickly as they walked back, and the beach was nearly empty, except for a few die-hard surfers and some families packing up to go home. It was too late for swimming and too early for beach fires, which made it quiet and peaceful, but lonely, too.

They’d walked probably a mile when she stopped and turned to him.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For listening to me. I must have sounded pretty crazy.”

“You’re frightened and worried. That’s not the same as crazy.”

“Yeah.” She nodded, and they walked a few more feet. He stopped this time.

“I have something of yours,” he said. “I’m not sure this is the right time but I think you should have it. I was at your grandmother’s cottage this morning. I’d been to the flea market, trying to get more information on her. I talked to several people this time, and most of them expressed concerns about the cruise she was supposed to have gone on. They said she’d been away too long. They hadn’t seen her in weeks.”

He took the jewelry box from his jacket. “This was on her dresser. According to the writing on the box, it belongs to you. I thought you might like to have it.”

He opened the box, and she moved closer for a look at the delicate gold chain inside. It sparkled in the low pink light.

“My grandmother gave me this when I was a kid so I could wear the copper penny around my neck,” she said. “I wore it night and day until the chain broke. We never had the money to get it fixed, but…” Marnie took the chain from the box, letting it hang from her fingers. “It’s not broken anymore.”

“She must have had it done after you disappeared. Apparently she did believe you were coming back.”

She opened the clasp, took the battered copper ring from the pocket of her shorts and looped the chain through the penny. “She actually believed the ring would protect me, and at first, I wore it mostly to humor her. Can you put it on me?” she asked, handing it to him.

As he fastened the chain around her neck, he realized that this was the reason she would stay. None of his promises to exonerate her meant anything to her, really. They weren’t persuasive, but this was. She would not be able to leave until her grandmother was found. And Andrew needed her to stay. All of his meticulous planning would blow sky-high without her—and it might blow anyway. He hadn’t received another blackmail threat since the first one, but he could feel it coming in his gut. Time was running out.

He needed to focus on that instead of the curve of her neck—and how vividly he could remember the line of that curve as she lay in naked slumber in her perpetually darkened bedroom in Long Island. That was inappropriate right now, and it would be inappropriate later, too, because he’d promised her there wasn’t going to be any sex, and himself that there wouldn’t be any more thoughts of it.

And she was so goddamn young.

“Why do you let her do it to you, Reb?”

“Do what?” Sweat dripped from Rebecca’s brow as she pumped away on the elliptical trainer, ignoring Bret Fairmont as best she could. She grabbed the towel and mopped her forehead, wishing she hadn’t stripped down to her sports bra and bicycle shorts. She hated the thought that he could see the rolls of flesh created by the strangling tightness of her shorts.

He was a pig, even when he tried to be nice to her. He didn’t understand her life—never would, never could, and probably didn’t care enough to bother. That made him a pig.

“Why do you let her take her frustrations out on you?” he said. “Tell her to fuck off.”

Right, just like
you
tell her to fuck off?

He was standing in the doorway of the workout room, and Rebecca was on the elliptical trainer facing the windows that looked out at the terrace. She could see him in her peripheral vision, cocky and artlessly gorgeous in his trunks and tank top, but she preferred the view out the window, which was pitch-black oblivion, except for the lights on the terrace.

Bret definitely brought out the worst in her. She’d been raised by strict parents who had taught her to be unfailingly polite, but somehow when he got her alone, he could always provoke her into trading barbs. If only she had the nerve now to tell him to leave her
alone.
She would be changing machines in a minute, which would bring her face-to-face with his insinuating smirk.

Some people could invade your privacy just by being within eyeshot. He was like that with her. He took…liberties.

He would laugh at the word, she knew.
Liberties.

Pig.

“You want some water?” He walked over to the watercooler and poured himself a cup. “You’re going to get dehydrated the way you’re sweating.”

“I want to sweat,” she mumbled. “Water weight.”

She mopped herself with the towel again, her face, her neck, even her cleavage this time. Let him look. Let him lust over her voluptuousness. The thought would have made her convulse with laughter, except that he actually had lusted once. He’d been a man with a mission. Maybe he only got hot for women who were totally unlike his mother. Some men had kinks that way.