What the Lady Wants (5 page)

That made her think about his hands. Of all the times for her hormones to kick in, this was the worst, but there it was. Ever since she'd met him, she'd had that bubbly feeling under her skin that she hadn't felt for a good long time. It was a nice feeling to have, but not in conjunction with Mitchell Peatwick. He was arrogant and stubborn and his face looked like a catcher's mitt with a jaw. And she absolutely was not going to get herself mixed up with a man who didn't listen to her; she had enough men not listening to her in her life already.

Once again in control of the situation, Mae wandered back to the kitchen and sat down to pry the heels she'd borrowed from June off her feet.

"Thank you," she said, handing them back. "They were agony."

"Poor baby." June put the shoes on the counter. "Do you want a basin of Epsom salts?"

"No." Mae rubbed one of her reddened feet. "I want the money so we can move to a better place than this mausoleum and live like normal human beings and you won't ever have to worry about the future again. This is driving me crazy."

"I cleaned Armand's room today," June said. "The painting of that nude woman is gone."

Mae stopped rubbing. "The Lempicka? How long has it been gone?''

"I don't know." June sank into the chair at the end of the table. "I think it was there last Wednesday when I did the room, but I'm not sure. I hate that damn room."

"I know. Don't worry about it. Pretty soon we'll get the inheritance and move and you won't ever have to see this place again." Mae took June's hand and held it tightly until the older woman smiled and relaxed again. Then Mae went back to the current problem. "He might have sold the painting."

"I don't like it." June's pleasantly vacuous face turned grim. "He never let go of anything, and then suddenly everything starts disappearing. There's something really wrong here."

Mae nodded. "Whatever it is, it'll be in the diary. He said, 'They can't get the money without the diary' that day on the phone. We need that diary."

"Well, maybe your detective will find it for us. He seems quite nice." June's voice softened. "If it wasn't for Harold, I'd be quite interested."

Mae grinned at her lovingly. "I think he feels the same. He was looking at you with a lot of appreciation."

June flapped her hand. "Oh, he was just detecting." She leaned back in her chair. "What did you think of him?"

"Well, I thought he was dumb as a rock." Mae tried to sound disinterested. "But I'm not so sure. I think he's just different."

"Different how?" June prompted.

Mae shrugged. "Oh, he doesn't act macho or protective or charming or any of the usual garbage. He just asks me questions and looks down my jacket and treats me like...anybody." She rubbed her foot again. "He's really up-front about being a loser."

June studied Mae under her eyelashes. "I don't think he's a loser. And I don't think he thinks you're just anybody. He seemed quite interested in you."

"He just likes women." Mae sat back. "And the more I think about it, the more I don't think he's as dumb as I thought he was."

"I don't think he's dumb at all." June smiled. "I think he's going to be good. Maybe we should tell him the truth and let him take care of everything."

"No." Mae's voice was firm. "Letting men take care of everything means you end up with nothing. Besides, you should have seen him at Uncle Gio's. Carlo pulled a gun, and he stepped behind me."

"Smart man." June nodded approvingly. "And so attractive."

"Oh, please."

"I'm serious." June leaned forward. "Your problem is that you've always been with those pretty boys.

Carlo and that worthless Dalton. Now, Mitchell Peatwick isn't pretty, but he's..." She stopped, obviously searching for the right word.

"Earthy?" Mae suggested.

"All man," June said, and Mae groaned. "Listen to me, sweetie, I know men. And I will bet you that Mitchell Peatwick could give you a very good time in bed."

Mae closed her eyes to shut out the thought, but her mind flashed to Mitch's hands moving across the notepad, to his body solid on hers as he'd yanked on the seat belt, to his grin kicking up her pulse as he'd quizzed her in the library. Then she thought about him in bed and immediately squelched the feeling the thought stirred. "He'd probably forget I was there." Mae shoved back her chair and stood up, unbuttoning the waistband of June's pink skirt. "Oh, God," she sighed as the zipper unzipped itself down her hip. "That feels so good."

June smiled up at her. "So would Mitchell Peatwick."

"Not in a million years," Mae said.

"We'll see," June said.

Somebody knocked on his door. Since his entire apartment was one room and a bath, Mitch didn't have to move. "Come in," he called and looked up to see his best friend and sometime partner close the apartment door behind him.

Neatly pressed and stern with disapproval, Newton was the epitome of a stockbroker who had just caught his best client buying lottery tickets. His pale blond eyebrows rose up his well-bred forehead, a forehead already so high it seemed limitless, and his pale blue eyes glared behind his gold-rimmed glasses. "You know, it is not a good idea to live in this neighborhood with your door unlocked. Extremely impractical. Foolhardy. There's no reason for this. The bet didn't say you had to live in penury."

"I'm supporting myself with the profits of the agency, Newton. That was the deal." Mitch glanced around the room before he grinned at his friend. "It's not so bad. I actually like it better than my old River Road place. It's got more character." He stopped for a moment, thoughtful. "You know, I'm glad I sold that condo. At least that's one part of my old life I won't have to go back to."

Newton's nostrils flared as he took in the stained wallpaper and cracked floor tile. "This is abysmal." He turned his survey on Mitch. "I see you finally did your laundry."

"I had to." Mitch went back to the diary. "Somebody noticed I was going without underwear. There's food on the table."

"You bought authentic food?" His friend's voice was incredulous, and Mitch looked up, annoyed. Newton was staring in amazement at the remains of June's care package on Mitch's rickety table. "Truly astounding." He bent his attenuated frame closer to the table, his beautifully cut suit refusing to crease even as he moved. "These are cookies."

"Yes."

Newton's patrician nose quivered like an upper-class rabbit's. "Homemade?"

"Yes. There's milk in the fridge. Oh, and there's this." Mitch dropped the diary on the bed and rolled over to pick up his pants from the floor and pull his wallet from the back pocket.

Newton took a plastic bottle of milk from the refrigerator. "You didn't buy milk in this. Who's giving you food?"

"The same woman who gave me this." Mitch handed over Mae's check.

"My God." Newton sank into the kitchen chair, milk in one hand, check in the other. "You did it. You won the bet." He smiled. "Our friend Montgomery is not going to be pleased."

"Then he shouldn't have made the bet." Mitch smiled back as vast satisfaction spread through him. "You know what part I like best? I did it all by starting completely over as Mitch Peatwick. I made it without using Mitchell Kincaid's credit or connections. Montgomery is going to hate that part. That's the part of the bet he thought was going to sink me."

Newton's smile widened. "I'll mention it when I call him tonight."

"Why the rush? You didn't by any chance make a side bet?"

"A substantial one." Newton's smile widened. "He implied that I never took risks, and I let him manipulate the stakes."

"I'm touched." Mitch's voice was light, but he really was moved. "How much did you risk on me?"

"Twenty thousand."

Mitch's smile vanished. "Forget touched. I'm stunned. How the hell did you ever bring yourself to risk that much?"

Newton blinked at him. "It wasn't a risk. I was betting on you."

Mitch closed his eyes. "Never bet that much on me again. What if I'd just given up?"

Newton shook his head as he put the milk bottle down and pocketed the check. "I'll deposit this in the account. And as for giving up, that would never happen." He stood and crossed to the cupboard and took out a Flintstones glass, looking at it dubiously before he rinsed it out in the sink and went back to the table to pour the milk.

"Well, at least tell me next time." Mitch leaned his head against the iron bedstead. "That way I'll know what's riding on my impulses."

For a moment, Newton seemed to lose himself in judicious reverie. "No," he decided. "I don't want to affect your thought processes."

"Newton, most of the time I don't have thought processes."

"I know." Newton gazed at him with respect. "I admire that."

Mitch gave up. "At any rate, the game's over. I made the detective agency solvent in a year and supported myself with the profits, you've got your money back, and I've soaked Montgomery for ten thousand. Now we can all go back to real life." Mitch's glance fell on the diary. "As soon as I've figured out this last case."

Newton stopped, his cookie halfway to his mouth. "You're quitting the agency?"

Mitch nodded, understanding. "I know. I'm not all that excited about turning back into a yuppie stockbroker myself, but I've got to tell you, Newton, being a private detective sucks. You'd hate the people."

Newton's face fell. "No Brigid O'Shaughnessy?"

"Well, almost." Mitch called back the image of Mae walking into his office. "You should meet Mabel."

"Mabel?" Newton bit into his cookie. "Sounds like a barmaid." Then the taste of the cookie registered on him. "These are excellent. Really epicurean." He chewed methodically and endlessly, evidently savoring the bouquet of the cookie as if it were a fine wine.

"June made them. She's Mabel's housekeeper and cook."

"Tell me all." Newton took another bite.

"A very attractive woman with fantasy breasts came into the office today and hired me to find her seventy-six-year-old uncle's killer. After that, things went downhill."

Newton chewed his bite of cookie for the thirtieth time and swallowed. "Murder? That seems farfetched. Who's the uncle?"

"Armand Lewis. It seemed farfetched to me, too, at first, but now I don't know. He kept diaries, Newton, and there's some very interesting stuff in them."

"Armand Lewis." Newton frowned. "He has a very shaky reputation."

"Had. He's dead. What do you mean, shaky?"

"People had a tendency to lose money in his vicinity. Do you really think he was murdered?"

"I'm open-minded on that." Mitch picked up the diary. "I'm only on the third one of these, but there are a hell of a lot of people who are not going to be weeping at the memorial service on Friday."

"Such as?"

"Well, June the cookie-maker, for one. She had a fifteen-year-old son named Ronnie who got into drugs back in 1967. Summer-of-love stuff. She asked Armand for help sending him to a detox place, and Armand said no. Four months later, Ronnie OD'd."

Newton frowned. "It was ungenerous of him, but hardly a motive for murder."

"The kid was Armand's son."

Newton blinked.

"June gave her notice as soon as Ronnie was buried." Mitch handed Newton the diary marked 1967. "It's all in there. He just says that he's glad Ronnie's off his back, but he's worried because the only reason June stayed was so that the boy would be with his father. Then she gives notice, and he says flat out that the reason he wants his orphaned niece to come live with him is because he thinks it will keep June."

"Orphaned niece?"

"Our client." Mitch smiled and then realized he was smiling and stopped. "Mae Belle Sullivan. She was six in 1967 when June's son died. Armand took Mae to give June another kid to raise so she wouldn't leave."

"Do you think June killed him?"

Mitch shrugged. "Could be. But we also have Harold Tennyson, the butler. He came at the same time Mae did to keep an eye on her, and immediately fell hard for June who is still quite a looker. Back then, she must have been a knockout." He stopped, distracted. "Mabel is not a knockout. She is merely very attractive, which is why she has little or no effect on me."

Newton blinked at him. "What?"

"Nothing. Anyway, Harold's smitten-ness amused Armand, so he tried to get June back again to spite Harold, even though they hadn't been any more than employer and employee since he'd found out she was pregnant years before. Only June wasn't playing." Mitch grinned. "Armand sounds truly annoyed in the diary. It's toward the back. You should read it. I enjoyed it immensely. Anyway, Armand pushed his luck one night, and Harold roughed him up a little. Armand fired him, but June threatened to quit, and little Mae cried, and the guy who sent Harold in the first place leaned on Armand, so Armand had to take him back. And they've hated each other ever since. There are a couple of places in the diary where Armand says he thinks Harold is trying to kill him. Accidentally backing the car over him, stuff like that."

Newton frowned. "Is Harold homicidal?"

"Harold is a longtime employee of Gio Donatello."

Newton blinked. "Dear Lord."

"Gio is another of Mabel's uncles. He also doesn't like Armand, partly because of Mae, but also because—" Mitch picked up the 1978 diary and handed it to Newton "—Armand bilked him out of a quarter of a million in 1978."

Newton's face took on the stem disapproval of his Puritan ancestors. "That was stupid."

"That was Armand." Mitch shook his head. "He's also cheating on his girlfriend with a society woman, both of whom may be feeling less than warm toward him. And then there are any of his business partners who he may have screwed, including his brother Claud. I haven't read the most recent journal yet. I can only imagine the carnage this jerk may have caused lately."

Newton raised his eyebrows. "His brother is Claud Lewis?"

"Yep."

"I think I might be more afraid of Claud Lewis than I would be of Gio Donatello." Newton chose his words carefully, as always. "Gio can only kill you, and there's no real evidence that he's ever murdered anyone. But Claud can rain you financially, and there's ample evidence that he's done that whenever the spirit moved him."

Mitch thought for a moment. "Can you look into Armand's financial dealings? Especially his dealings with Claud?"

"I can ask around." Newton looked uncomfortable. "It's really none of my business."

Mitch rolled his eyes. "Newton, you're the one who's always saying you want to be a detective, too. If you're a private detective, it's your business to look into things that are none of your business."

"Oh."

"You said you wanted to help with the agency. This is the first time I've had something that involved skills beyond peeping and waiting. This is the good stuff, Newton."

"All right." Newton seemed to gather himself up. "All right. I'll do it."

"It's for a good cause," Mitch comforted him. "I think Armand Lewis died a natural death, but if he didn't, he didn't deserve to be murdered." He cast a doubtful glance at the last diary. "Probably."

"Probably?"

Mitch frowned. "What we have here is a man who has annoyed or hurt everyone he's ever known, and he's known a lot of powerful people. And the beauty of it is, he's written it all down in his diaries. Of course, he thinks it's a scream that he swindled Gio and perfectly understandable that he deserted his own son, but even so—" Mitch picked up the most recent diary "—he wrote it all down in these. Just like Nixon and his tapes. Ego makes people stupid, Newton."

"In that case, the last diary should tell you who killed him," Newton said. "If anybody did."

"That's what's interesting. The last diary is missing."

"Oh."

"Yeah." Mitch propped the 1993 diary on his knees. "If it wasn't for that, I'd say Mabel had lost her grip. But the thing about Mabel is, she may be unreasonably stubborn, but she's not stupid. And she's up to something." Mitch met Newton's eyes. "She's lying to me, Newton. Can you believe it?"

"Just like Brigid," Newton said.

"That's what I'm afraid of," Mitch said.