Fat Chance (8 page)

Hell, yes!
“Of course not,” I lied.

“Don’t get sidetracked over this skeleton thing.
Dead
and
murder
aren’t always synonymous. There could be a perfectly logical explanation for how the skeleton ended up in the closet.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“Liam mentioned that he thought you took something off the body?”

“If I tell you, wouldn’t that sidetrack me?”

“Yep. Just call me curious. It’ll take some time for me to bring in clients, and who knows? Maybe I can help.”

I hesitated, then eventually reached into the side compartment of my purse. I pulled the medallion out of its silk hiding place. “She was holding this.”

After inspecting it, Tony asked, “When did you give this to your father?”

“Stepfather,” I corrected, as if that was somehow relevant. “About a year before he died. So, sixteen years ago. His team won the CV Whitney Cup Championship. It’s a big deal among polo enthusiasts. I bought the medal for him and had it inscribed.”

“And you last saw it…?”

“I’m not sure. I think it was when my mother was married to Enrique Rossi. He was a retired polo player and raised Thoroughbreds in Argentina. They split their time between Palm Beach and his family’s other estate outside Sao Paulo. I know that before Jonathan died, he kept it in a small cedar box on his dresser.”

Oddly enough, Tony was taking notes. “Where was this?”

“Their home on Palm Beach.” I gave him the address. “My
sister, Lisa, and I were shipped off to boarding school about a month after Jonathan died. We only came back for holidays and a few weeks in the summer, so I’m not positive if I saw it last before or after Jonathan’s death. It was a long time ago.”

“Your mother told the police it was stolen.”

“It could have been. I know the Palm Beach house was robbed. It freaked my mother out enough so that she closed up that house and moved to New York for a while. Then Jonathan died and my mother married Enrique and she was back in the polo circle again.”

“So Enrique was your mother’s next husband. Could he have taken the medallion?”

I shook my head. “No. Enrique was husband number three. Jonathan was her first husband. He died and she married Jake Halpern. That didn’t work because she was trying to recapture her youth by sleeping with one. Jake was handsome, but he only married my mother for her money. Jake was in his early twenties, and as soon as my mother figured out his motives, he was history. It lasted
maybe
four months.

“Next came Enrique. He was my mother’s age, only Enrique couldn’t keep it in his pants, so she divorced him. Got half his family’s lands in the divorce.

“My mother wised up and set her sights on…shall we call them more mature men. Enter Kirk Browning. He was a nice guy. Some sort of retired insurance broker. He died seven months after they got married. Never had kids, so his whole fortune went to my mother.

“Her last husband was Carl Johnstone. I’m not sure what he did, he was long retired by the time he married my mother. They were sailing around the world on his private motor yacht when Carl suffered a massive heart attack.”

Tony was grimacing.

“When I say it out loud, it sounds pretty bad, huh?”

“Marrying your mother can be hazardous to your health.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to give her points for trying,” I joked. “Even with Jake and Enrique, all she was trying to do was reclaim what she’d had with Jonathan.”

“So you don’t think there’s any connection between this Melinda Redmond woman and any of your mother’s subsequent husbands?”

Vehemently I shook my head. “If my mother so much as thought any of them were involved with another woman, she would have jettisoned them from her life in a heartbeat. That’s her style.”

“Is that what she did to you?”

“No, not exactly. I’m her daughter, so she can’t shun me without explaining it to the DAR and the Junior League, so instead, she opted to cut me off when I decided not to go to law school. If I change my mind and/or if I marry someone ‘suitable,’ then she’ll reconsider her position.”

“And here I thought only Italian mothers interfered. Part of the reason I moved to Florida was so my mother would stop setting me up every Friday night.”

“I hate blind dates.”

“Ditto,” he said, pouring us both mugs of coffee. “Only in my case, she falls on the ‘Isabella needs a mother’ sword.”

Hell, we were spilling our guts, so I might as well go for it. “There’s no Mrs. Caprelli?”

“Not since September 11, 2001.”

My heart squeezed in my chest. “I’m sorry.”

“The worst part is Isabella doesn’t remember Maria.”

There was a sad, distant look in his brown eyes that touched me. While I hadn’t lost Jonathan to a national tragedy brought
about my fanatics, I knew what it was like to lose a parent. “But you do, and you’ll remind her,” I offered.

He let out a long breath. “Not sure how we got so far afield.”

“I’m using the skeleton as a starting point.”

Tony frowned. “I thought we just agreed that you weren’t going to let this whole skeleton thing distract you from your new responsibilities.”

“It won’t. But what I do on my own time…?” I let that hang in the air.

He shrugged. “Any idea where to go next?”

I shook my head. “I’ll figure something out.”

“If it was me,” Tony said as he stroked the faint shadow of stubble on his chin, “I’d arrange for a private autopsy. The ME’s office is good, but they’ve got a lot on their plate, so they sometimes miss minute traces of foul play. A cause of death would be helpful in establishing your time line. A second autopsy might even give you an ID.” Tony glanced down at his watch. “I’ve got to run. I promised Izzy I’d tuck her in.” He stood and came around the desk.

He was very close. The coffee scent of his breath washed over my face as I felt the heat coming off him. I’m not psychic, but I can certainly tell when a man is looking at me with interest. Yep. Tony’s dark eyes locked with mine, igniting a spark in the pit of my stomach. My whole body tensed. I was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what that something was. Much to my disappointment, Tony reached for my hand. Much to my pleasure, he held it a few seconds longer than necessary. Maybe planning our wedding wasn’t as far-fetched as I’d thought.

“Thanks for coming by,” he said, his eyes fixated on my mouth.

I knew what he was thinking. Hell, I was thinking the same
thing. The offices were deserted, we were consenting adults, and there was definitely a connection. The only reason a man looked at your mouth was a prelude to a kiss. I was at an unexpected crossroad—reach for him or play it safe and walk away.

Depleting most of my self-control, I pivoted and took a slow, deliberate walk down the hall. I didn’t need eyes in the back of my head to know Tony was checking out my butt. That knowledge alone was enough to put a smile on my face. I’d won the first round.

Twenty minutes later, I was pulling into the driveway of my uninhabitable home. I’d expected to find Happy Harold the Crack Head. Instead, Liam was seated on the front porch, un-corking a bottle of my favorite red wine.

“You’re trespassing.” I watched as he pulled a hunk of cheese and a baguette from a bag he’d partially hidden behind his back. My empty stomach rumbled.
Traitor.

“Nice to see you too,” he replied. “Wine?”

“Yes, thank you.” I sat next to him on the top step. “The stench is gone,” I remarked as I glanced over my shoulder through the open door. “How come there are lights on? Wait, how come there are lights?”

Liam shrugged. “I made a trip to Home Depot and called Florida Power and Light and had service turned on. Oh, there’ll be a onetime fifty-dollar security fee on you-first month’s bill.”

“Don’t you need my Social Security number to do that?”

“Yep.”

I bit off a hunk of bread, chewed it, then swallowed it along with some wine. “Is there anything about me you don’t know?”

“Nope.”

“In case you were wondering, that’s very irritating.”

“Want me to take my wine and food and leave?”

“No.” I turned and offered him my sweetest smile. “I want the wine and food to stay. You’re welcome to leave any time.”

“I had to check on Harold’s work.”

I drained my plastic cup. “Thanks for sending me a drug addict.”

“Recovering.”

“Whatever. He has b-u-l-l and s-h-i-t tattooed on his respective knuckles.”

“Popular prison tat.”

“That’s reassuring and screams professionalism.” I stood and stepped over the wine bottle and went inside the house.

The mushy carpeting was gone, revealing partially rotted wooden subflooring. In the center of the dining room was a small, neatly swept pyramid of debris.

It wasn’t until I sensed Liam behind me that I ventured down the hall to the master bedroom. Harold had pulled up the carpet and carted off the closet doors. As he had done throughout the house, Liam had placed an inexpensive, shadeless table lamp in the center of the room.

“Still spooked?” he asked.

Hell yes!
“No,” I replied as I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms. “Okay, maybe a little.” I knew all I had to do was lean back and I’d be in his arms. I also knew that was a dangerous idea. Once burned, twice stupid. “So how did you finagle a job out of my new boss?”

“Tony? He called me. Offered a decent retainer.”

“He’s paying you to do nothing before he even gets his first client?” I asked as I turned quickly and went back into the less creepy part of the house.

“Isn’t he sending you to school before he has his first client?”

How did he know all the comings and goings in my life? I
rolled my eyes, and in the process, they fixed on a small, yellowed scrap of paper in the debris pile. Ignoring Liam completely, I went over, crouched down, and examined it from a few different angles. “Looks like it might have writing on it.”

Unlike me, Liam wasn’t the least bit squeamish about flicking aside the bug carcasses and other disgusting things to retrieve the paper. As he unfolded it, dust rained down to the floor.

Ragged edges indicated it had been torn from a pad or notebook. “What does it say?”

“Nothing. It can’t talk.”

I groaned at his bad joke and took the paper by the edge. In faint, barely legible printing, I could read only a few words:

“What do you think this means?”

“Could be part of a suicide note,” Liam suggested. “Assuming part of her suicide plan was to move around a lot after she offed herself.”

I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. Not hard, but enough to make my point. “Or…maybe whatever she should have done sooner got her killed.”

“Or the note was written by any one of dozens of people who’ve lived in this house over the last fifteen years. Or one of their friends. Or one by—”

“Did I mention you were trespassing?”

“I’m just suggesting you keep this in perspective. Until we know who she was and/or how she died, it’s impossible to tell what is or isn’t important.”

“I’m starting with Melinda. I called earlier and I’m having lunch with her tomorrow.”

I
AWAKENED THE NEXT MORNING
to the irritatingly happy chirping of birds and a retina-burning shaft of sunlight slicing through my bedroom drapes.

My modest, rented apartment was on the ground floor of a complex in Palm Beach Gardens. It had a decent-sized bedroom and bathroom, but I chose it mainly for the walkout patio. The walkout wasn’t as impressive, comparatively, now that I owned a house smack on the sugary sands of the Atlantic Ocean.

On autopilot, I got up, shuffled to the kitchen, and flipped on my coffeemaker. Leaning my elbows on the counter, I listened to the lyrical sounds of water seeping, then spitting, and then finally hissing to let me know the brew cycle was complete.

I poured a cup, then wandered over to the sliding glass door. Using my bare toe, I kicked free the dowel I used as added security, pushed the silver lock to the open position, and slid the door a few inches. Warm, balmy air caressed my skin and
lifted my hair off my shoulders. This was one of those days that convinced people to move to Florida. It was just past nine, little puffy white clouds drifted in off the ocean, and the thermometer hovered somewhere around eighty.

My place was fairly neat. The throw was balled in the corner of the sofa, right where I’d left it after watching the late news, and the television screen could have used some dusting, as could the coffee table, but my caffeine levels weren’t high enough yet for me to contemplate chores.

As for most working people, Saturdays were catch-up days for me—laundry, groceries, all the mundane but necessary things that had to be done if I wanted to avoid a public nudity charge and the prospect of garlic-stuffed olives being my main meal of the day.

I rested my head against the doorjamb and looked critically at my furnishings. Until now I’d been content with my eclectic—definition: affordable—furniture, but I wanted more for the beach house. Closing my eyes, I imagined a casual yet chic blend of white with hints of…
other
colors. Nothing I could pull off without serious professional help.

Grabbing my phone, I pressed the speed-dial code to my friend Sam’s place. His apartment was above mine, and I’d noticed his car in the parking lot the night before. He was a professional. He’d help me turn my cottage into a show place.

“What?”

“Good morning to you too,” I said, sipping coffee.

“It isn’t morning, Finley. It’s the middle of the night.”

“On the West Coast, but now you’re home. Time to readjust your internal clock and welcome a new day.”

“Screw you, Mary Poppins.”

“Fine,” I said as I twirled a lock of hair around my forefinger.
“You go back to sleep and I’ll go shopping for furnishings for my new house all by my lonesome.”

“Did you say new house?” Sam’s voice no longer sounded foggy and distant.

“Yes, I did, but you obviously need your rest. Sorry I bothered you.”

“I’ll be down in five minutes.”

It was more like twenty, but that suited me fine. It gave me enough time to brush my teeth, apply makeup, and knowing that I had a lunch with Melinda Redmond, pick out a casual but fun white Betsey Johnson dress accented all over with tiny cherries. I had one white cork-soled wedge on when the doorbell chimed.

I hopped over to the door, checked the peephole, then let Sam in. I managed to get the second shoe on just before he grabbed me in a big hug and swung me around the room. Of course my shoe left a scuff on the wall that I knew would be deducted from my security deposit, but I didn’t care.

Sam was about five-foot-six, with brown eyes—tweezed brows, of course—and brown hair always styled perfectly with product. This morning, he’d chosen pale blue and green madras plaid shorts and a pale blue collared shirt. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess his sexual orientation. Not that I cared. Sam had been my neighbor for years; long enough to know that neither one of us was any good at picking men.

He sat at one of the three mismatched stools at my bar while I told him all about the house, pausing only to refill his coffee mug or to eat a handful of Lucky Charms cereal right out of the box. One of the advantages of living alone is the freedom to eat what you please when you please. Lucky Charms pleases me.

“But all the remnants of the dead girl are gone now, right?” he asked uneasily.

I nodded. “Liam and I were there until almost ten. Not a bone in sight.”

His brows arched. “With Liam? Until ten?”

“In the kitchen? With the wrench?”

“C’mon, Finley. A guy that hot and all you do is drink wine and break bread? Way to wuss out.”

I leveled him with a glare. “I won’t hire you as my decorator if you don’t stop mentioning Liam.”

Sam clapped his hands with excitement. “What’s the budget, and when do we start?”

“Jane’s working on a budget for me. You know better than to expect much, but we can head over there now and have a look around. You’ll have to follow me, because I have a lunch date with the woman who used to rent the place.”

Sam’s fingers gripped my upper arm. “But she could be a killer. You can’t meet her alone.”

“Who said I was going to be alone?”

Sam sighed. “With hot, chivalrous—”

“I thought we just agreed we would not mention Liam’s name.”

He tossed me one of those childish superiority looks that was often accompanied by sticking out his tongue, but apparently he contained the urge. “
I
wasn’t the one who mentioned him. Is this new too?” he asked after I pressed my keychain and made the BMW chirp.

“Yes. See all the stuff you miss when you go out of town?” As we were about to get into our cars, the FedEx truck zoomed into the parking lot and stopped right behind my car. The logo alone was enough to reignite the anger inside me. I’d probably associate FedEx with my breakup with Patrick for all time. However, the smiling face of the deliveryman quickly doused my irritation.
He handed me a flat nine-by-twelve envelope, and I signed his bulky computerized thingy with its tethered pen.

I zipped open the tab and carefully removed the photograph from the envelope. It was much clearer than the one I’d seen on the
Palm Beach Post
’s website. This larger, eight-by-ten version made it possible for me to read the names typed neatly at the bottom of the photo.

Sam looked over my shoulder as I read. Unfortunately for me, Melinda Redmond was the only name listed. The others were simply identified by initials. “Crap.”

“Maybe she can tell you herself at lunch,” Sam suggested.

“Maybe,” I murmured.

Just in case we got separated, I gave him directions to my cottage on Chilian Avenue. I still liked saying “my cottage.” So much so that as I drove the twenty minutes from West Palm, over the bridge to Palm Beach proper, I must have said it a hundred times. I had homeowner’s Tourette’s.

I don’t know whether it was the midday light or the fact that I’d accepted the condition of the house, but for whatever reason, I felt excited as I pulled into my driveway. From the outside, and only because of city ordinances, the place looked darling and pristine. I made a mental note to ask Jane how much it would cost to add a pool. Something small that could be heated during the winter months, when it often dipped below seventy.

Sam arrived even before I closed my car door. He grinned, then his bottom lip quivered, then tears started streaming down his cheeks. “I can’t believe you’re going to move. What if they rent your apartment to some old hag, or worse, homophobic frat boys?”

I patted his shoulder. “Or they could rent it to some incredibly hunky gay guy. Or a nice girl with an incredibly hunky gay brother. You never know.”

He sniffled once, then regained his composure. “This is happening way too fast for me, but okay. Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”

As soon as I opened the front door, Sam gasped. “It looks like pictures I’ve seen of cells for Tibetan dissidents.”

He started to turn away, but I spun him around and gently shoved him inside. “Look. Look at that beautiful view.”

“Look,” he said, pointing up, “look at that rotted ceiling joist. Geez, Finley, this place should be condemned.”

“I think it was, but that’s irrelevant now. Just give me ideas. You know my taste.”

“Such as it is,” he said without bothering to cloak his censure. Taking a notebook and pen out of his man purse, he strolled though the kitchen, shaking his head and making some sort of
tsk-tsk
sound while I followed along like an obedient tracking hound. He wrote as he walked.

A few times he stopped to make a frame with his hands, then moved along. It wasn’t until we were on our way back to the kitchen that he opened a door I assumed was another closet.

Stink billowed out of it. Moldy, musty, humid stench. Feeling along the wall, I found a switch and flipped it. It wasn’t a closet but a small garage partially filled with trash bags, scraps of wood, and an old gas grill minus the propane tank. I put that tidbit in the plus column. A single cement step led down to the garage floor. Next to the step was the rusted outline of a rectangle. I had no idea what had caused the stain, and quite frankly, I didn’t care.

I was about to turn off the light when a piece of green and black striped fabric sticking out of one of the bags caught my eye. As I walked toward it, I heard Sam say, “Don’t open anything. There could be raccoons or snakes or God only knows what in those bags.”

Okay, so fear threatened to overtake my curiosity. But I figured there couldn’t be a second body in here. Could there? Carefully, using my forefinger and thumb, I was able to tug the fabric free from the rusted twist tie holding the bag secure. Out popped a worn and torn T-shirt in a junior size 2. While it wasn’t from one of the pricey shops that defined Worth Avenue as the Rodeo Drive of south Florida, it wasn’t from a superstore either. It was vintage Abercrombie and Fitch.

“Stop playing in the trash, Finley.”

Using the tip of my toe, I stabbed at a few of the two dozen bags, and it felt to me as if they were all full of clothing—or, at the very least, soft stuff. No bones, thank God. “I’ll have Harold open these and sort them.”

“What on earth for? It isn’t like you’d wear vagrant people’s castoffs.”

If he only knew. But he didn’t. I kept my eBay and outlet shopping habits to myself.

“There might be a clue in here.”

“What kind of clue?”

“I don’t know.” I shivered. “Let’s go back inside the house.”

Sam went out to get a large sketch pad from his car while I wandered out onto the beach. I’d gotten within a few feet of the surf line when I saw a flash of light out of the right corner of my eye. Turning in that direction, I shielded my face and thought I caught a glimpse of something or someone crouched down in the three-foot-high sea grass that separated my house from my neighbor’s. But after I blinked and my eyes refocused, I didn’t see anything. Probably a bird or one of the sacred, federally protected turtles that lay eggs on the coast. I shook my head. It was probably nothing but the play of light against the foliage and my own fears screwing with me.

When I rejoined Sam, he was busy pacing off the size of each room. I helped by writing the length and width as he called out the dimensions. It was nearing eleven, and I had to meet Melinda Redmond at Bimini Twist just west of the Turnpike at noon. “We need to move this along.”

“Decorating is an art. You can’t hurry art,” he said as he continued to sketch.

“Okay, then lock up when you’re done.”

“You’re leaving me here alone?”

“Sam, we’ve opened every door. No bonus skeletons. Besides, Happy Harold is coming by, and you two should probably get together regarding any interior walls you want taken down.”

“How about all of them?”

“How about you remember that I’m already hemorrhaging money?”

“I will use all of my decorating genius to turn this place into a seaside palace. But Finley, there are some serious structural issues that have to be addressed.”

I kissed his cheek. “I trust you.”

“Do you trust Happy Harold?”

Liam does.
“Jury’s still out on that one. I’ll call your cell when I’m done with lunch. Thanks,” I said, waving over my shoulder, walking down the steps and disarming my car alarm at the same time.

I was already contemplating macadamia nut crusted sea bass as I turned left on Okeechobee Boulevard and eventually crossed the bridge connecting Palm Beach to the mainland. Like it is in most subtropical locales, as soon as you cross the railroad tracks, estate homes give way to more humble abodes. The crisp smell of the ocean is replaced by the choke of car exhaust, and bus and truck diesel, and it’s occasionally relieved by the smell of freshly mowed grass.

Pockets of abject poverty coexist side by side with manicured gated communities. The telephone listing for Melinda had a North Palm Beach address. Probably one of the tidy small homes off A-1-A. I felt for her. A home in North Palm was not exactly a step up for her.

Eventually Okeechobee turns into a ribbon of strip malls, payday loan offices, liquor stores, and auto dealerships. The area west of Florida’s Turnpike is more sparsely populated, thanks in large part to the number of private ranches and corporate orange groves. The ranches are slowly evolving, moving away from beef cattle production to more lucrative, swanky equestrian centers.

Bimini Twist is a large restaurant that serves good food. Me? I’d have picked one of the zillion or so restaurants with a water view, but that’s just me.

My heart skipped a beat when I spotted Liam’s car as I pulled into the lot. Hard to miss the 1964 Mustang, with its putty quarter panels and mismatched tires. I didn’t recall inviting him to join me for lunch. However, it was five after twelve, so I grabbed my purse and the news photo and went into the dimly lit restaurant.

My mouth watered at the smells as a polite twenty-something hostess led the way to where Liam sat with a woman. Her back was to me, so all I could really see was shoulder-length dark brown hair and a few inches of a strapless Shoshanna ivory and white sundress. That sucker retailed for somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred fifty dollars, so either Melinda was a closet outlet shopper like me or the foster mother thing paid more than I thought.