Hot & Bothered (3 page)

She leaned forward, but before she could say a word, the office door opened and her father's fifth wife strolled in.

The busty blonde stopped when she saw them. Her gaze skimmed past Victoria with supreme disinterest, but John was apparently a different matter for she subjected him to a lengthy once-over. “Sorry,” she finally said. “I didn't realize anyone was in here.”

Tori suppressed a sigh. “Mr. Miglionni, this is my father's widow, DeeDee Hamilton. DeeDee, this is John Miglionni, the private investigator Father's attorney helped me hire.”

DeeDee's big blue eyes grew even bigger and bluer. “Why the hell would
you
need a P.I.? As far as I can tell,
the only even halfway interesting thing you've ever done is piss off your daddy by having Es—”

“Mr. Miglionni has a reputation as the man to call when a teenager is missing. He's going to find Jared.”

“No shit? Aren't you worried the cops'll slap him in irons the minute you bring him home?”

Fury flared in Victoria's chest. “Jared didn't kill Father!”

The lush blonde simply shrugged.

“He did
not.
”

DeeDee looked bored. “Okay, fine. So why did he run, then?”

“Well, let me think. Could it be that he stumbled across his father's dead body, and that he's seventeen years old and it probably scared him to death? Or for all we know, he could have walked in
while
Father was being killed. Am I the only one worried that he might not have left voluntarily?”

“Yes.”

“For heaven's sake, DeeDee, if you've spent any time with him at all, you must know he hasn't got a violent bone in his body.”

“Yeah? So how the hell would
you
know? Except for the odd holiday or flying visit, it's not like you've been around much during the two years I've been here.”

“You're right, I haven't. And I have to live with the fact that I left him to Father's less-than-tender mercies. But that doesn't keep me from knowing that a person's basic nature doesn't change. And Jared wouldn't hurt a flea.”

“Maybe not.” DeeDee shrugged once again. “But who else had any reason to kill Ford?”

“My God, are you serious?” The laugh that escaped Victoria went a little wild, and ruthlessly she slammed a lid on the urge to give in to unchecked hysteria. “Considering Father's personality, and the fact that he was killed in
the middle of a dinner party he was giving to rub salt in the wound of a CEO whose company he'd just acquired in a hostile takeover, I'd have to say darn near everyone.”

She turned to include Rocket. “I realize it's unkind to speak ill of the dead, but you might as well know up front that my father wasn't a nice man. He liked nothing more than to toy with people, and from what I've gathered, none of the guests attending his little soiree the night he was killed had a clue if they'd still have a job come Monday morning. I'm not just talking about the employees of the company he'd taken over, either.
No
one could afford to relax around him. He was just as apt to can his own people as the ones from his new acquisition, if for no other reason than to provide himself a moment's entertainment.”

“And here I thought my old man was the daddy of dys-function.” John had been watching the interaction between the two women with fascination, knowing they had no idea how revealing it was. But it was time for a more straightforward approach. He needed to start directing the conversation to where he wanted it to go.

It was clear the women weren't overly fond of each other, and turning to DeeDee, he decided she couldn't be more than a year or two older than Victoria—who, if he remembered correctly, would be about thirty-one now. As Victoria's new stepmama, that had to make for some friction. He'd bet the main source of dissension, though, was the fact that you'd have to search hard to find two more dissimilar women. Even way back when, he'd understood that Tori wasn't one of the party girls he was accustomed to picking up in bars. So when she'd allowed him to do exactly that, he'd noted her relative inexperience, then simply felt grateful to whatever karma had
thrown him in her path at the exact moment she'd decided to cut loose.

DeeDee, on the other hand, had the look of a woman who knew her way around a wet T-shirt contest. Not that you could always go by appearances, he admitted, remembering when his friend Zach had first met the woman who'd become his wife. Still, there was an indefinable aura about DeeDee that said she knew the score, and at the very least, she struck him as the quintessential trophy wife.

He favored her with his most charming grin. “You have a point,” he said. “A homicide detective will always look first within the family for his suspect. Hell, any cop will be happy to tell you that nine times out of ten the victim is killed by someone he knew.”

Something about the smug look she shot Victoria rubbed him the wrong way, but he wasn't stepping into the middle of
that
brouhaha. As a man, he knew better than to get between two women with opposing points of view. As a professional, he didn't get involved in his clients' lives, period, or anyone else's who might be connected to a case. As far as he was concerned, in fact, the two of them could dive right into a knockdown drag-out fight, and he'd simply pull up a chair and enjoy the show. Especially if the ripping of clothing was involved.

He glanced at Tori's svelte little sheath, then at her patrician nose poking ceiling-ward, and swallowed a snort.
Sure, Ace, that's likely to happen.
Turning his attention back to DeeDee, he added, “Of course they generally look at the spouse first, since that's who most often inherits the lion's share of money.”

She curled her lip at him. “Lets me out, then. I signed a prenup that said if Ford divorced me or died for any reason during the first three years, I'd get bupkis—or
next to it, at any rate. He was my golden goose, pal—it was in my best interests to keep him healthy.”

John glanced at Tori, who nodded. “He had all his wives sign the same prenuptial agreement, and it was set up in such a way that they only received a truly generous bequest if they lasted ten years.” She shrugged. “The only one who ever came close to lasting that long was my mother, but she died just before my eighth birthday.”

A shaft of light found its way through the shutters and shone directly in her eyes. It highlighted the gold flecks around her pupils, and he was irritated that seeing them gave him the urge to cut her a little slack and not pursue the next logical line of questioning. He gave her a flat stare to compensate. “So I'm guessing you and your brother inherited the bulk of Daddy's fortune then.”

When she narrowed her eyes, he had a feeling it wasn't against the light. But she said without inflection, “Yes. And before you ask, I was living in London when he died, and I've already told you that Jared couldn't have done it.”

Hit men could be hired as easily from London as anywhere else, and John never trusted in the goodness of young men he hadn't met. Since he had a hankering for this case, however, he knew better than to say so. He might be one of the best at locating missing teens, but he was by no means the only investigator qualified for the job, and his prior relationship with Tori was more likely a strike against him than anything that would work to his benefit.

But what the hell—when in doubt, project confidence, he always said. Besides, it wasn't as if he actually believed she'd put a contract out on her old man. No, the woman he'd met this afternoon was more likely to freeze a man to death.

Seeing DeeDee watching the two of them as if this were
improvisational theater, he leveled a look on her. “Would you excuse us, Mrs. Hamilton? My client's paying by the hour and I'd like to get down to business with her.”

“I just bet you would,” she murmured, but then spun on her stiletto heels and sashayed out as blithely as she'd entered.

The moment the door shut behind her, he pinned his best no-nonsense look on Victoria. “Okay, look, I plan to look for your brother regardless, but I'd still like to know why you believe he's incapable of violence. There's probably not a person in the world who doesn't have the capacity for it, given the right circumstances.”

“I simply can't visualize what those circumstances would ever be in Jared's case,” she said. “He's scared to death of spiders, for heaven's sake, yet he's
still
the type of guy who'd perform a catch and release if one got in the house. Now, me, I'd rather see the damn thing dead.”

He remembered. She'd climbed up his back once, screaming
Kill it! Kill it!
in his ear when a hapless daddy longlegs had shown the poor judgement to venture across their bedroom floor in Pensacola. Irritably shoving the memory away, he focused on the facts. “Yet he's been in quite a bit of trouble, if I understand correctly.”

“It's true he's been expelled from several schools. But always for things like drinking, or smoking or not knowing when to stow his attitude.” She leaned forward in her chair as if she could compel his understanding through sheer physical intensity. “When he was little, he was always running up to Father saying ‘Watch this! Watch this!' All he ever wanted was the tiniest bit of his daddy's attention, and his expulsions were just a continuation of the same. They were a way to get Father to pay him a little regard, if only in a negative way.”

“Tell me who his friends are.”

Victoria sat back. “That's one of those good news/bad news things,” she said. “He has a habit of falling in with the malcontents, which as you can probably imagine contributes considerably to his problems. The good news is, he didn't do that this time. Since there were only a few months remaining in the semester when he was bounced from his last school, Father decided to enroll him locally to finish out the year. Jared joined a baseball team, discovered he really liked the sport, and actually met a couple of nice kids on the team. The bad news, though, is that whenever he told me anything about them, he only referred to them as Dan and Dave.”

“That's okay, just give me the name of the school.” He'd contact the coach and go from there.

She told him, and he was keying the information into her file when the office door opened once again. Brows furrowing, he glanced up. Now what?

A little girl with a long, wild, tangle of baby-fine brown hair that was held off her face by sparkling butterfly barrettes stood in the doorway. Casting him an intrigued glance, she ran over to Victoria. “Hullo, Mummy,” she said in a clear British accent, leaning into her. “Nanny Helen told me a 'tective was here to find Uncle Jared.”

Mummy?
John felt his jaw drop as he watched Victoria wrap an arm around the little girl and hug her close. She was a
mother?

“Yes, that's true,” Victoria said. “So you really should run along, sweetie, and I'll come see you just as soon as we're finished.”

That “something” he'd heard earlier was back in her voice and he narrowed his eyes on Victoria. What the hell was it? Alarm? Wariness? He couldn't quite pin it down.

“But, Mummy, I want to say hello.”

There was an instant of dead silence. Then Victoria succumbed to her manners. “Very well. Sweetheart, this is Mr. Miglionni. He's the private detective Nanny Helen was telling you about. John, this is my daughter, Esme.”

His experience with little girls—or any kids her age, for that matter—was nil. But what the hell, a female was a female and John bestowed his warmest smile upon the little girl. “Nice to meet you, Esme. Love your butterflies.”

Her little hand went up to touch one of her barrettes in an ageless feminine gesture. “Thank you. My mummy bought them at Harrods.” A pleased smile curved her rosebud mouth and she stared at him with big eyes as dark as his own.

His stomach began to churn as a sudden suspicion splintered through him. Holy shit. Oh, holy, fuckin' shit. It couldn't be. Could it?

Hell, no. They'd used protection.

Which any fool knows is never one hundred percent fail-safe. He took a deep breath and got an iron grip on his emotions. “Harrods, huh? That's a department store in London, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You look like you're nearly grown up. Got your driver's license yet?”

She giggled. “No, silly. I'm only five and a quarter years old.”

“Ah. I guess that
is
a little young.” The hot roil in his gut had turned to ice. He might not be the world's greatest mathematician, but he could sure as hell add two plus two and arrive at the right answer. Especially when you factored in the kid's eyes. Although it took every ounce of his self-control, he managed to keep the easy smile
plastered on his kisser until the little girl skipped out of the room. But it dropped the instant the door closed behind her, and he swung to pin Victoria in place with furious eyes.

“You've got some explaining to do, lady.”