DrillingDownDeep (21 page)

Jeff wouldn’t be having any threesomes with Tiffany.

* * * * *

Given the sophistication of the failed bomb, Vik had called
a contact in the FBI to run the investigation instead of the local police. They
quickly sent out a team to examine Tiffany’s body as well and another one to
question the victim’s fellow party-goers, although Damien Reynolds had used his
influence to limit the group who would be questioned before they even arrived.

Vanny seemed amazed. “You mean the party’s going to keep on
going on after all this?”

Michael shrugged. “We’ll provide a guest list and if
anything seems off, the FBI can question a guest later. For now, Father’s
interested in not causing a scandal.”

“But a woman’s dead. A woman who planted a bomb here right
before that. You can’t sweep that under the rug.”

Vik assured her, “It won’t be swept under the rug. But for
now, a low profile on this whole thing is probably good for the investigation.”

“Exactly right.” A man in a tux came into the library. “Hi,
Vik. Nice to see you again.”

They shook hands. “And you dressed for the part,” Vik said.

“We all did. Orders straight from the top. Damien Reynolds
didn’t want it to look like cops were showing up to his party. There’s a bunch
of guys circulating now.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Not sure.”

Vik turned to the group. “This is Agent Joe Carter.” He
introduced each one in turn, after which the agent directed his attention right
to Jeff.

“Mrs. Fischer was holding a gun in her hand. We won’t know
without the proper tests, but this could be a suicide.”

“Tiffany didn’t commit suicide. It’s impossible. Absolutely
impossible.”

“Religious beliefs, Mr. Fischer?” the agent asked.

Michael answered, “No. Just a very healthy
id,
if you
know what I mean.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Samantha chimed in, “if you crashed
in the Andes Mountains with Tiffany onboard, you can be sure she’d be the first
to get out her knife and fork so you better watch your back.”

“Samantha,” her husband cautioned.

“What? It’s the truth. She’d be more likely to eat a plane
full of fellow passengers, dead or not, to stay alive than she would be to kill
herself. That’s what Michael meant, isn’t it, Michael?”

“I’m afraid so, Agent Carter. It’d be extremely difficult
for anyone who knew Tiffany to believe she’d commit suicide. She wasn’t, well,
saying she wasn’t that type doesn’t seem strong enough. She had a very strong
sense of self-preservation.”

“She was a completely self-involved bitch who thought the
whole world revolved around her.”

The agent shrugged at Samantha’s elaboration. “Sometimes,
when that kind of type finds it doesn’t, they can get a little down.”

“Not Tiffany,” Jeff added his opinion.

“We ran your ex-wife’s prints through the database. Did you
know she had a record?”

Jeff traded surprised looks with Michael. “No. For what?”

“Prostitution, under the name of Cissy-Lou Hankel, some
twenty-two years ago. She must have been no more than a child, though it said
she was eighteen on the report.”

“Tiffany was a Botox addict.”

“That’s enough, Samantha,” Michael said. “No. Nobody knew
that.”

“At the time, she was suspected in a homicide as well. Her
pimp. But since the guy wasn’t exactly an upstanding citizen, I’m not sure
anybody pushed the investigation that hard.”

“Any evidence of criminal activities after that?” Vik asked.

Agent and ex-husband both answered no, with varying degrees
of emphasis.

“She was just a normal woman. Beautiful and spoiled maybe,
but she wasn’t some kind of master criminal,” Jeff insisted.

“So how does she end up with this?” Vik asked, handing the
explosive device to Carter. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

The agent handled it, brought it close to his eyes, looking
at something. “Yep. Looks Russian.”

Vik nodded. “Was Tiffany of Russian descent?”

Jeff shook his head no. “Scotch Irish, I think, though I
guess there was a lot about her I didn’t know.”

“There’s something else we should mention, Agent Carter.”
This from Vanny, still curled up in an arm chair, mostly observing the scene
rather than contributing to it as she had not known Tiffany.

At the very last second, Michael realized what she was going
to say and his warning look didn’t stop her.

“There was another bomb planted. Over two weeks ago. On the
Treasure
Driller
.”

The agent cocked his head and she answered his unspoken
question. “That’s the off-shore oil rig I worked on in the Gulf of Mexico.
Michael’s company owns the rig and the bomb was on it when Michael was there.
So maybe these two things have something to do with each other.”

“The bomb in that case was very different, Vanny,” Michael
said hastily. “Nothing like the sophisticated device Tiffany planted tonight.
The bomb on the rig was probably homemade. Just somebody trying to cause
trouble.”

“Which is why Michael thought I planted it,” Vanny
volunteered, causing the whole room to regard her in surprise and Michael to
put his hand up to his temple again. “But I didn’t.”

He quickly went to her chair and took her hand. Damn if he
knew why, but he did. “Of course you didn’t. And I doubt the two situations have
anything to do with each other.”

Vik and Carter wore identical expressions. Some cross
between skepticism and weariness. The FBI agent spoke first. “Do you know the
statistical chances of one individual encountering two hidden bombs in less
than a month just
coincidentally
?”

Vanny jumped up from the chair. “Well, Michael didn’t plant
them!”

Michael grinned, probably for the first time since this
whole mess began, at her impassioned defense of him.

“I wasn’t trying to suggest that, Miss Donald. What I was
suggesting is that it’s almost impossible for the two events to be
coincidental. I would say Mr. Reynolds, or maybe Reynolds Industries, is our
target.”

“Oh.” She sat back down. “I already figured that.”

“Can I see the guest list?”

Vik handed it to the agent, who scanned it. “Is there anyone
on this list nobody could identify?”

Just then, something occurred to Michael that hadn’t before.
“I knew
of
everybody on that list, most of them business acquaintances
to be honest, even if I didn’t know them on sight. But there was a guest here
who came into the room when Tiffany and I were talking. I couldn’t quite place
him. He said she’d dropped her purse and handed it to her.”

“I didn’t see Tiffany with a purse,” Samantha offered. “If I
know her, she probably checked it with her coat, so she had her hands free
during the party. She liked her hands free.” This last Samantha directed to her
husband with a wry look.

“She didn’t have a coat on in the car when we found her,”
Vik noted. “And I didn’t see a purse either.”

“Maybe she ran out of here and forgot to pick it up. We’ll
check on that. If her purse is still here, then that could mean the man you
saw, Mr. Reynolds, might be involved. So we’ll have you sit down with a sketch
artist.”

“Shouldn’t I just go back to the party? Maybe he’s still
here.”

“You could, but if he’s the man we want, I doubt he would
be. Still, that’s a good idea. If he is still here, maybe we could rule him
out.”

“But how could Tiffany leave without her purse?” Vanny
asked. “What about her car keys?”

Michael leaned down and dropped a peck on her cheek.
“Valet,” he whispered with a smile.

She smiled back. “Oh you rich people!”

“I know,” Samantha said. “When Vik met me, I didn’t even
know how to make coffee or cook an egg.”

“Still don’t,” her husband cracked, earning a poke in the
ribs, which he graciously accepted with a laugh.

When Michael and Vanny circulated around the party again, to
their surprise, the man who had interrupted his conversation with Tiffany
was
still there. He pointed the unprepossessing fellow out to Vik, who ushered the
guy out of the room for a little conversation with Agent Carter. When he came
back, though, Vik said the fact that the guy was still here probably meant he
wasn’t involved.

“Who was he?” Michael asked.

“A Texas businessman. Heinrich Kohler.”

“Oh right. That guy. He owns some electronics security
company in Houston. My father thinks he’s a good contact for us since we bought
Transcoastal. I was supposed to have dinner with him while I was there, but I
got distracted.” He glanced at Vanny by his side. “Probably why Father invited
him tonight. He seems pretty harmless though, and I doubt he knew Tiffany. Not
her type.”

“Speaking of which,” Vanny said. “Jeff seemed pretty down.”

“He is. But it’s probably the best thing that could’ve
happened to him.”

“That’s kind of cold, Michael. Don’t you think you can love
somebody even if they’re all wrong for you?”

They had both forgotten Vik was there, but he coughed
audibly. “I’m going to go find Samantha.” And then he was gone.

It was on the tip of Michael’s tongue to say he didn’t
believe in love. His standard response. But the words weren’t there. And not
just for the reason that he tended to stay silent on that subject around women.

“Let’s forget all this for a minute and do what we came here
to do. Celebrate.” And he pulled her into a dance.

It was their first dance of the night, what with everything
going on, and, by the by, their first dance ever. She was good at it, as he’d
known she would be.

“I noticed your rhythm from the start, back when you were
Shelly,” he whispered in her ear as they twirled around.

“I didn’t plant the bomb, Michael,” she said in a rush, and
he pulled back to look at her, not halting the dance.

“Of course not.”

“Did you ever think I had?”

“I don’t know. The truth is…the truth is I liked you so much
on the rig, before I knew, that I wasn’t thinking straight when I found out the
whole story. Your father. Shelly. The whole thing.”

“But it’s not the whole thing, Michael. You asked me why I
picked you up that night and I said it was because I wanted to.”

He gripped her tighter.

“But that’s not true. I
slept
with you because I
wanted to. But I picked you up for a different reason.”

He said nothing, pulling her closer, still dancing.

“I copied some files for Transcoastal management. The ones
who
didn’t
want the sale. They said it would help my father, but of
course it didn’t.”

He still said nothing.

“Are you mad at me?”

“Is that your last criminal disclosure?”

She hit him on the shoulder and he let out an exaggerated
ouch.

“I knew from the first, Vanny. Even that night. I saw my
iPad in your purse, before you managed to slip it out again. And they weren’t
even real files. Just dummies we set up as a routine matter on deals in case of
corporate espionage.”

“You rat! And you never told me! You let me feel guilty all
this time?”

He kissed her, passionately, not caring that fifty people
saw it. “I was waiting for you to tell me. And now you have…”

“Now I have. Where do we go from here?”

He didn’t answer.

By mutual consent, when the dance was done, they headed
straight upstairs.

To bed. The investigation could wait until tomorrow.

* * * * *

The following morning, she and Michael left, without a word
to anyone except a quick good-bye to Mrs. Fox when she ran out to the car with
bagels. They went back to the apartment and then straight to the airport where
the Reynolds Industries fleet of jets were housed. They were going back to
Texas, since the investigation Michael had commissioned on Mick O’Malley had
shown conclusively that he
had
come into a large sum recently. Given the
situation in the Hamptons, Michael wanted to know from where.

Vanny had long since stopped questioning that she and
Michael were joined at the hip as far as he was concerned, even when Samantha
pointed out to her privately that it wasn’t his norm with his
mistresses
.

“Usually, he can’t get away from them fast enough once he’s
out of bed with them. Although of course, now you’ve met Tiffany, you can
probably see why.” This was before they learned Tiffany had been murdered of
course.

But she and Michael had been together a scant two weeks. A
rich man would undoubtedly tire of his new plaything before long.

And lord, Michael Reynolds was rich. In the plush
cranberry-leather armchairs of the G-IV jet, with the two of them buckled in
for takeoff across from each other, she asked, “Forget about bunk beds. Have
you ever flown commercial?”

He was reading the
Sunday Times
and glanced at her
over the top of the newspaper. “Is that a trick question?”

“No. I just want to know.”

“No, I haven’t. Does that shock you?”

It did actually and she said no more as the plane smoothly
taxied and then headed over the clouds away from the blinding sun once they’d
reached altitude.

Maybe it was that they were about to go accuse a man who’d
been an uncle to her of planting bombs and rendering his best friend paralyzed
and who knew what else. Or maybe it was because every taste she got of
Michael’s world was way too rich for her. In bed, in his arms, they were equal,
wonderfully, wildly compatible. But out of it, he was too much. Just way too
much.

And she had to stop all this at some point. It wasn’t about
a job anymore either. It was about her heart.

“Goddamn it.”

Michael looked up and she realized she’d said it out loud.

“I think I’m having a good effect on you, Vanny. I think
your swearing is cutting down to acceptable levels.”