Get Fluffy (16 page)

“No. I saw Cliff with Tricia.”

I was suddenly confused. “What do you mean?”

“Cliff and Tricia were having an affair.”

It was as if we were living a soap opera. What was next, Mona was going to reappear alive. Maybe it was all a bad dream?

“Do you have proof?” I asked.

“I don’t need proof,” she answered coolly.

“You can’t convince me Mona believed you just because you say you had a dream.”

Darby came rushing out of her office, face flushed and out of breath. “Here you go. Sorry it took so long, I
 . . .
” she looked between us. “What’s going on?”

“I was right. Jo has information that might help clear you.”

Darby looked skeptical. “Oh?”

“Either you can tell her, or I will. She deserves to know since she’s the one the police are trying to pin Mona’s murder on,” I said.

Jo plucked the CD from Darby’s hand. A feline smile spread across her mouth. “She already knows,” she purred, (as well as a foghorn could) and scampered out of the studio.

I was getting used to the feeling of being blindsided all too well. Once again, Darby had some explaining to do.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was hard to trust Darby when she kept more secrets than Grey. At least Grey had a legitimate reason. The same could not be said for Darby.

Once Jo had ambushed me with her newest Cliff factoid, there was no stopping me from my own field trip. Darby, still convinced I could somehow be harmed, volunteered to be my wing woman.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” It had to be the third time I’d made the proclamation.

Apparently, Jo had “accidently” let it slip during the photo shoot that she’d had a vision of Cliff and Tricia together.

We sat in my Jeep in the Dana Point Marina parking lot and watched Cliff’s unattended yacht docked in the west basin. We’d pulled in at six o’clock. Sunset was in thirty minutes. We didn’t have a lot of time.

Most people were heading to the restaurants for dinner. If it was a little darker, I’d feel more comfortable climbing aboard. Or, as Darby called it, breaking and entering.

Darby raised her binoculars and focused on the yacht. “I thought Jo was lying. Why would Cliff and Tricia be having an affair?”

“For Cliff it would be a way to get back at Mona. Did you ever consider Tricia might be the reason for Mona and Cliff’s break up?” Rumor around town had been Mona had caught him with another woman.

She lowered the binoculars. “Best friends don’t steal each other’s husbands.”

“Those are your midwestern morals talking. Line up ten couples you know from Orange County, and I bet you a minimum of six couples have cheated on each other at some point.”

She shook her head. “I refuse to believe it.”

A couple who looked like they hadn’t seen the light of day since the inauguration of the first President George Bush wobbled past us in matching nautical outfits. The old man squinted through his glasses into the Jeep, checking us out. I smiled and waved, hoping he’d realize there was nothing to see and keep plodding past us.

“Look at Caro,” I said. “Her ex had cheated before they’d celebrated their second wedding anniversary. Heck, for all she knows he had never been faithful.”

Caro and her ex-husband, Geoff, had met in college while pursuing their psych degrees. (Just the way he spelled his name screamed pretentious butthead. You’d think someone as smart as Caro would have seen that red flag, but she hadn’t.)

They’d started a counseling practice together, and before you could say, “It’s all your mother’s fault,” Geoff had taken up with a client. After a public scandal big enough to rival my own public humiliation, Caro and Butthead had lost their licenses.

It doesn’t get much worse than that.

“That doesn’t explain Tricia,” Darby argued.

“She wants to be Mona so badly, she’d take her leftovers. Sad, but true.”

My cell chirped from inside my purse, cutting off whatever argument Darby was about to voice. I grabbed my phone and saw it was a text from Grey. He wanted to meet for dinner. I quickly tapped in my reply and hit send.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Grey wants to make me dinner.”

“Are you going to tell him what we’re doing?”

I assumed she meant breaking onto Cliff’s boat, not debating couple faithfulness in the OC. “Yes.”

I turned on the satellite radio and flipped stations before settling on classic rock. Queen’s
I Want To Break Free
reverberated around us.

Darby drummed her fingers on her leg. “I can’t sit here any longer. Are we going aboard or not? If we wait too long, it will be dark, and we won’t be able to see a thing. Either that or Cliff will come home.” She grabbed the door handle.

I really liked the song and thought it was quite fitting for the situation, but for sanity’s sake I turned off the radio. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

We hopped out of the Jeep and quickly made our way toward the dock. I’m sure we looked ridiculous dressed in all black like cat burglars
 . . .
or yoga escapees. We were sporting our yoga garb.

A chill hung in the evening air. We casually strolled past the trendy shops and headed for the area Camilla had described when I’d called her earlier for Cliff’s slip number.

As we neared the dock, I could see we’d have to pass through a chain-link security gate. “Camilla failed to mention we needed a key to get to Cliff’s boat,” I said softly, looking around for a different way to reach our destination.

The older couple who’d shuffled past the Jeep earlier suddenly emerged from the other side of the gate, leaving the dock area. I quickly grabbed the gate before it shut, denying us access.

“I saw you resting in your car,” the old man wheezed. “What’s a matter? Did you girls work too hard at your calisthenics?” He chuckled, then erupted into a coughing fit strong enough to shoot his dentures across the marina.

“That’s what you get.” His wife pounded his frail back with an aged hand. “Leave those poor girls alone.” She bobbed with every swat, shaking the lopsided bun of white hair pinned precariously on the crown of her head.

“Do you need help?” Darby asked.

A well-practiced apologetic smile pulled at the old woman’s orange lipstick-stained mouth. “He’ll be fine. He gets excited when he sees a pretty girl.”

Darby insisted we watch them as they slowly made their way to a park bench. Once they were seated, I let the gate slam behind us.

“We’re in,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”

It was a clear evening, and a large number of boats were still out on the ocean. Water slapped against the wood pier. I inhaled the ocean air, savoring the delicate salt sting as my lungs filled.

We quickly found dock B.
The Ruthless
was easy to spot. At fifty feet, she was one of the larger yachts anchored.

“Cliff, are you home?” I called out just to make sure he wasn’t below deck sleeping. Or drinking, which was more likely in his case.

There was no answer. I grabbed the side of the boat and climbed onto the back. The swaying motion tossed me to the side. It took me a second to steady myself. Once I had my sea legs under me, I motioned for Darby to join me.

We made our way past the deck patio and down into the salon. It wasn’t a huge area, but big enough for a couple of leather barrel chairs, a sofa and a pop-up TV.

Oh, and a wet bar of multiple Scotches that could rival any liquor store.

The rhythmic rocking helped calm my racing heart. “It’s much smaller than the ocean-side mansion, but Mona’s money bought him a nice place to crash.”

“Let’s get this over with. What exactly are we looking for?” Darby’s voice shook, her nerves getting the best of her.

“I don’t know. Anything that proves he’s been gambling or that he killed Mona.”

I started in the galley (I knew that was the name for the kitchen, but that was the extent of my proper boat vernacular), and Darby searched the couple of cabinets in the salon (okay, I knew that too).

“Explain to me again, why the police aren’t doing this?” she asked.

“Maybe they have.”

“Not to be a total wet blanket, but if they didn’t find anything, what makes you think we will?”

I glanced sideways at Darby. “Do you have this sudden passion to go to jail?”

“Of course not.”

“Okay, stop talking and get looking.”

I leafed through a stack of papers on the kitchen table and didn’t see anything except past due bills. I opened drawers and only found flatware and dishes. No real food. Nothing.

We were losing light fast. “We’ll have to turn on a lamp.”

We each tuned on a table lamp in the area we were searching. I quickly moved to one of the sleeping quarters. No photo albums or handwritten notes. Nothing but clothes, sheets and towels. Not even a computer.

“Anything?” I asked, utterly disappointed.

“Not yet.”

Either the police had already been here or Cliff didn’t have anything to hide (I found the latter hard to believe). I opened a small closet behind the door, and something large and heavy covered with a white sheet tumbled onto my foot. “Ow!”

Darby rushed up and peered around me. I peeled back the sheet.

“Why would Cliff store his paintings in a closet?” she asked.

I pointed to the “walls” which were basically windows. “He doesn’t really have a place to hang that type of stuff.”

“True.” She shrugged and went back to her search.

Was that why Mona had left him her art, because she knew he didn’t have a way to appreciate it? Talk about cold hearted.

I continued to stare at the paintings. They looked so familiar. A couple of watercolors and an oil, all three different sizes and different artists. All were dramatic landscapes with excellent contrasting of light and dark. I looked at the signature on the smaller framed oil painting. Thomas Cole.

“I think these are the same paintings Mona had in her bedroom.”

“He has a copy?” she asked from the other end of the yacht.

“This is really confusing. Why would Mona leave him her art, if he already owned the same piece? Can you own the same piece? I wish Grey was here.”

“Mel, I think I found something in a nightstand,” Darby’s excited voice pierced my confusion.

She raced to my side and held out a brown Moleskin notebook. We held it under the light and flipped through the pages. It looked like recordings of betting entries, winnings, losses, names and dates.

What jumped out at me was that losses outnumbered the wins. By a huge margin.

I whistled softly. “He owes a lot of money.”

“But if he owed money, wouldn’t killing Mona be a bad idea?”

“When I called him about Fluffy, he made the comment that Mona hadn’t paid him in a while. What if Mona was paying off his gambling debts to save face, then decided she’d had enough and stopped enabling the louse?” I said.

“Or she couldn’t give him money because she was broke.”

“Exactly. He’d be mad and desperate. Especially if he was stupid enough to take mob money to pay his gambling debts.”

“He could be in serious trouble.”

“I agree. If he thought he’d get Fluffy, and her money, after Mona’s death, that’s a strong motive for murder.”

“Do you think Malone knows about this?” Darby asked.

“If he doesn’t he’s going to.”

“What about the paintings?”

I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a couple of pictures. “We can’t take those with us.”

The Yacht tipped to the side, throwing us against the closet.

“You’re sure you saw someone over here?” a male voice drifted down toward us.

“Someone’s here,” Darby said.

“Hide,” I croaked.

Rooted in place, we looked around. There was nowhere to hide one person, let alone two. We were about to get caught red-handed.

“I’m
so
going to jail,” Darby cried.

Galvanized into action, I shoved the paintings back into the closet.

“I’m positive,” a soft female voice assured the man.

I immediately recognized that breathy voice. Tova. What the heck was she doing here?

“Mr. Michaels, is that you?” the man called out.

She’d brought company. The boat continued to sway as the two boarded. I held my index finger over my lips. Darby’s eyes looked like they were about to pop out of her head.

I pointed toward the sleeping area, motioning for her to stay there. She shook her head frantically.

“Who’s down there?” he demanded.

“I swear I saw two people,” Tova’s voice drifted into our hiding place.

I’d kill her. We were going to get caught because of dingbat Tova.

“Stay,” I whispered.

I brushed past Darby and skittered toward the stairs. “Hello,” I called out. “Are you looking for Cliff, too?” I stumbled into a doughy-faced kid who looked like he was fresh out of security training school. The name tag sewn to his uniform read, “Bruce.”

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice breaking on “you.” He cleared his throat.

“Where’s Cliff?” Tova asked at the same time, clutching a wicker patio chair as the boat continued to rock.

Obviously, she wasn’t surprised to see me. “I don’t know. I’ve been waiting for him. I needed to talk to him about Fluffy.”

“Dressed in all black?” Bruce eyed me with a large amount of skepticism.

“I had a yoga class.”

“Mel has bad fashion sense. Everyone knows that.” Tova’s lame explanation was the least of her problems. Each time the boat swayed she’d stumble, struggling to find her sea legs.

“You know her?” Bruce asked Tova.

My eyes narrowed in Dingbat’s direction. Was it my imagination or was she looking slightly green? “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I’m thinking about buying a sailboat, and Cliff offered to help me,” Tova’s voice quivered. She gulped a couple of times.

“Really?” I glanced at the death grip she had on the chair. “You’re not exactly dressed for yacht shopping.”