Hot Secret (12 page)

“He didn’t give his name. His tone didn’t encourage questions.”

“Molly DeWitt.”

“Mrs. DeWitt, this is Sergeant Jenkins. I want you at the Miami Beach Police Station.”

“When?”

“Now,” he said tersely and slammed the phone down.

Molly didn’t have any trouble guessing what the detective wanted. No doubt he had a few questions about her presence at the motel the previous afternoon.

CHAPTER
TEN

The area around the Miami Beach Police Department on Washington Avenue was in a state of evolution. Two blocks west of Ocean Drive, Washington was a hybrid of old-style open-air fruit markets, trendy restaurants, discount pharmacies, and souvenir shops. Nightclubs appealing to the young bumped right into shops supplying wheelchairs and canes for the elderly. Garish china flamingos and gaudy T-shirts were sold next to yuppie fashions. The old Fifth Street Gym, where top boxers had trained for decades, was only a few blocks away. Parking was at a premium.

Molly found a metered spot two blocks over and made her way to the fancy new police headquarters. The made-over building was at least three or four times the size of the cramped old structure that had been an easy stroll from the famed Joe’s, where
chilled stone crabs had become a world-class delicacy.

Molly walked into the brightly lit police station lobby and immediately felt like a criminal. No doubt, after the meddling she’d done the previous day, she deserved to.

Reporter Ted Ryan, his shirttail pulled loose, his tie askew, came rushing down the hall after her. “Molly, wait. I really need to talk to you.”

“Not now.” She wanted to get her meeting with Jenkins and its likely lecture over with. With production scheduled to begin again in the morning, she had plenty to do to help smooth the way.

“At least tell me what you’re doing here,” Ted pleaded. “Has there been a break in the case?”

Molly stopped reluctantly and shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then what? You didn’t come all the way over here just to chat.”

“Maybe I did,” she replied. “Some of my best friends are policemen.”

Ted looked desperate. “Come on, Molly. How about we trade information?”

Molly studied him thoughtfully. It wouldn’t hurt to know what the word on the street was about the murder. Ted would have heard all the latest rumors by now. “What information do you have?”

He shook his head. “You first.”

“Oh, no. You want anything out of me, you cough up what you have first. I can always wait to read it in the morning paper.”

Reluctantly, Ted opened his notebook and flipped through a few pages. “Okay, here it is. According
to my sources, they’ve assigned someone new to take over the case. My guess is it’s that hotshot friend of yours, Michael O’Hara.”

“Oh, my God,” Molly murmured under her breath. She saw a bench up ahead and sank onto it. Ted sat beside her. She looked him straight in the eye. “Are you sure?”

Ted nodded. “The guy who told me is pretty reliable. O’Hara was on the scene the other night. It all hangs together.”

“But he’s Metro. And he just happened to drop by Saturday night. He wasn’t working. I can swear to that.” As she caught Ted scribbing, she added, “Off the record, of course.”

“Molly!”

“You want to cost me my job? All I can say on the record is that the Metro/Dade film office deeply regrets the death of Gregory Kinsey, while on location here. Period. End of statement.”

Ted rolled his eyes in disgust.

“I know, but that’s all I’m allowed to say for attribution,” she said. “Anything else I say is just background. You’ll have to get it officially from someone else. Now why do you think a Metro cop has been assigned to take over the case?”

“The way I hear it someone demanded he be brought in to try and solve this thing before the publicity gets out of hand.” He regarded her slyly. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“No,” Molly said weakly. She tried to inject a note of conviction into her voice. “No. Absolutely not.”

Ted grinned. “Methinks …”

“Don’t think, Ted. Isn’t that one of the first tenets of sound journalism? Stick strictly to the facts. No suppositions. No guesswork. No thinking.”

“Then it’s true,” he gloated. “I knew it.”

Before he could take any more wild leaps of logic and wind up with confirmation of some other theory he’d developed over the past forty-eight hours, Molly raced down the hall. She had no idea exactly where Sergeant Jenkins’s office was, but from the argument that was echoing off the walls she had a pretty good idea. At least one of the voices sounded all too familiar. So did the tone.

Molly skidded to a halt and looked through a window into a cramped office that looked as if a hurricane had recently passed through. She stopped just in time to see the Miami Beach detective slam his phone back into the cradle. He glowered at Michael, who was fiddling with a pair of sunglasses. Michael jammed the glasses back on his face and scowled, then took them off again.

“Well?” he said.

“Dammit, you know what the chief said,” Jenkins retorted. “He confirmed it. You’re on the Kinsey case. Of all the jackass moves, you son of a bitch. Don’t you have enough to worry about on your own turf?”

“Dammit, Jenkins, I don’t like this any better than you do, but we’re stuck with it. Let’s try to make it work.”

“Hell, no,” Jenkins said with exaggerated generosity. “You want the case this bad, it’s yours.”

“I do not want the case,” Michael retorted, biting off each word.

“Yeah, sure. I’m supposed to believe that.”

“It’s the truth.”

Molly felt as if she were trying to watch a tennis match from the vantage point of the net. Sergeant Jenkins served up another sly dig about Michael walking off in the middle of his own investigation.

“Couldn’t break that case, so now you’re over here messing in mine.”

“I’m here because somebody in the county wants it that way. I’m beginning to see why,” Michael shot back, jamming his sunglasses into place.

That was a sure sign that he was losing his temper. Molly had observed that he used those sunglasses to shut out the world when he’d lost patience with it nearly as often as he did to shade his eyes.

Sergeant Jenkins still wasn’t content to let it rest. “I can see the press hasn’t labeled you an ambitious hotshot for nothing. With an ego that size, I’m surprised you bother with us lowly mortals at all,” he said, and stalked from the office.

He was so angry he didn’t even notice Molly as he stormed by. Just her luck. Considering the furious expression on Michael’s face, she might have been better off with Jenkins.

When Michael finally glanced Molly’s way, she stepped into the office and inquired innocently, “All done being territorial?”

Michael lifted his hands in the air in a gesture of total frustration. “The man’s a jerk. I didn’t ask to be assigned to this case. The way I’ve got it figured, your boss whined to my boss, who whined to the
County Commission, and the next thing I know I’m meddling in a case that belongs to the Miami Beach Police Department.”

He came over until they were toe to toe. She forced herself not to retreat. He removed his glasses so Molly could get a glimpse of his cold, hard stare. “Now how do you suppose that happened?”

Molly winced. “You sound as if you’re blaming me.”

“If the shoe fits.”

“It doesn’t. Vince whined, not me.”

“But who put the notion into his head? You’re not suggesting that someone just drew my name out of a hat, are you?”

Molly tried to recall her exact conversation with her boss. Unfortunately there might have been the tiniest hint that Michael O’Hara could get to the bottom of Gregory’s murder and end this public relations nightmare for the film office. Whether it was Vince’s conclusion or hers hardly seemed to matter. Michael was here and she had a pretty good idea why.

“No,” she said meekly. “I might have mentioned your name when Vince asked who solved that murder in my building.”

“I’m delighted the two of you hold me in such high regard, but the next time you get yourself tangled up in a murder, make sure it’s in my jurisdiction if you want me to be involved. I don’t like butting heads with other cops, especially when they’re perfectly competent.”

Hoping to get herself off the hook, Molly reminded him, “You just called Otis Jenkins a jerk.”

“It’s his general attitude I’m not crazy about. There’s nothing wrong with his intelligence or his credentials. I don’t even blame him for being mad as hell. I’m mad as hell. I was in the middle of another case, not as flashy maybe, but the guy was just as dead and his family is justifiably concerned with catching the killer.”

Molly winced. “You were pulled off that case?”

“Practically in the middle of an interrogation.”

“Someone took over for you, though, right?”

“Sure. Some other overloaded detective got another case dumped in his lap, so I could come over here and baby-sit this investigation.”

“I’ve got a motive worked out for Hank Murdock,” Molly said, hoping to distract him.

He responded in terse Spanish. She knew the word for “thank you.” The phrase he’d uttered hadn’t sounded much like that. Neither had the tone.

“Don’t you want to hear it?”

He sat down in Jenkins’s chair. “Sure. Why not. Start by telling me again who this Murdock is.”

Neither his tone nor his expression was exactly inviting, but she told him anyway. “Assistant director. My impression is that he’s always stayed in the background. You know the kind, competent but not ambitious. In fact, that’s exactly how Laura Crain described him. Now
Endless Tomorrows
is practically dumped in his lap. A lot of people will be watching to see if he can sustain Greg’s level of creativity.”

“How old’s this guy?”

“Forty-five. Maybe fifty, but I don’t think so.”

“Let me see if I’m following you here. You think
this guy who is forty-five, maybe fifty, and has never displayed any sign of burning ambition decides to off the director of this particular film so he can finally have his big break? Is that right?”

Molly felt her cheeks burn. “It doesn’t sound so logical when you say it.”

“It isn’t,” he said flatly. “Not unless the man is having a mid-life crisis of gargantuan proportions.”

She glared at him. “There’s no need to be so sarcastic. I’m just trying to help.”

The reminder didn’t seem to placate him. “What are you doing here anyway?” he inquired. “Shouldn’t you be on location holding Veronica Weston’s hand or offering assistance to that barracuda who’s in charge of production?”

“Sergeant Jenkins summoned me here. I’m not sure exactly why,” she said, figuring Michael was in no mood to hear the specifics. Naturally, though, he couldn’t leave well enough alone.

He regarded her suspiciously. “Now why would Jenkins want to talk to you?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Molly?”

“Really, you’ll have to ask him. I guess since he’s gone, I might as well take off, too.” She backed to the door. “You want a lift over to the location?”

He shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll be going with Jenkins.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“He just pulled out of the parking lot. If anyone else had pulled into traffic the way he just did, the chief himself would have gone out to ticket him.”

“Damn,” Michael muttered. He was on his feet and across the office before she could blink. He yanked open the door, then glanced back at her. “Well, come on. There’s no point in trying to find two parking places on Ocean Drive.”

“You’re welcome,” Molly grumbled.

If he caught the remark, he chose to ignore it. When they reached her convertible, he held out his hand for the keys. “I’ll drive.”

“Hoping to strand me without a car again?”

“It’s a thought.”

“You really are in a nasty mood. Don’t take it out on me.”

He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as they waited for an old lady pushing a shopping cart filled with groceries to cross the street. From the set of his jaw, she guessed he was struggling between fury over the circumstances in which he’d found himself and his normal decent manners.

“Sorry,” he said as if the word were one with which he was slightly unfamiliar.

She nodded. It was nice that she’d been able to wrench an apology out of him. She had a hunch, though, that the tentative peace they’d reached was likely to give way to another round of verbal warfare once she admitted the real reason Jenkins had probably called her to the station. She figured she might as well get the confession out of the way.

“Remember that model? The one Greg was supposedly involved with?”

Michael turned toward her. “Yes,” he said very slowly. “What about her?”

Before she could say a word, he apparently read the answer on her face. “You didn’t talk to her?”

“Actually, I did,” she said in a rush. “The photographer, too.”

Michael slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “I don’t suppose you just happened to run into them sunning themselves on the beach?”

She shook her head. “I went to the motel. I bribed the desk clerk to tell me which room they were in.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

“Fine. Of course. Tell me what you discovered on this little adventure.”

“Her name’s Francesca. She admits she and Greg fought. She was furious because Greg didn’t want her to stay behind with him. The photographer was furious because he’s in love with her and he resented the way Greg used her and dumped her. They both had motives and opportunity, but they both swear he was alive when they left him in Veronica’s trailer Saturday night.”

“And you believed them?”

“I believed her. Him, I’m not so sure about.”

“Why?”

“I told you, he was jealous. Besides, he all but warned her right in front of me to keep something a secret.”

“Like what?”

“He said they left together. Then he looked at Francesca as if he was trying to tell her not to contradict him.”

“That’s one possibility. The other is that he’s protecting her.”