White Hot (7 page)

“It’s not.”

He walked out ahead of her, leaving her little choice but to follow. They headed down the sand-covered steps to the beach. The wind must have pushed the crowds off the water, but Jeremiah seemed undaunted as he walked across the sand to the ocean’s edge. The air was cooler, the wind stiffer, penetrating the lightweight khakis and black henley Mollie had pulled on in haste. She wished she’d brought her windbreaker. She reminded herself she was with a man who’d always lived in this ecologically complex maze of water, land, wildlife, and people. She remembered walking on the beach on a late afternoon such as this, with gulls wheeling in a clear sky as he’d told her about growing up in the Everglades, an only child with a widowed father, his soul as tangled up with exotic birds and tall grasses and mysterious waters as hers was with music.

If he was to be believed. For all she really knew, he’d grown up in Buffalo.

The tide was going out, wide stretches of sand dampened and packed down from the recent influx of water. That was where they walked, leaving footprints. The wind whipped Mollie’s hair into tangles, but she had to admit it felt cathartic, as if it were trying to whip some of the anger and confusion out of her.

“Here’s the deal, Mollie.” He walked steadily beside her, his mind clearly made up to say whatever he’d come to say. “I lied to you ten years ago.”

“Yes. We’ve been over that ground. You wanted your story, and you used me to get it. It happened a long time ago. And I forgave you a long time ago.” She smiled. “Sort of.”

He didn’t smile back. There was a seriousness about him, a weightiness, that hadn’t been there this morning. In the harsh late afternoon light, she saw lines at the corners of his eyes she hadn’t noticed, either. “I wanted the story,” he said, “but I didn’t lie to you or use you to get it.”

Mollie kept walking, ignoring the catch in her knees. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I thought it would be easier for you if you hated me. So I made up the story about using you.”

“Whoa, back up. You’re saying you didn’t use me for your drug-dealing story?”

“Correct.”

“And you thought painting yourself as a morally corrupt journalist who’d bed a twenty-year-old flute player—i.e., me—to get a front-page story would be
easier
on me?”

He nodded, expressionless.

Mollie sputtered, nearly speechless. “Easier than
what?
”

“The truth,” he said.

“You mean it gets worse?”

He squinted against the wind and sun, regarding her with infuriating calm. “I guess that depends on your point of view. The truth is I did fall in love with you that week.”

“Well, hell,” Mollie breathed.

A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “But I knew it never could have worked, and so I tried to spare you—spare myself is more like it—by making sure you went back to Boston in high dudgeon over having been used by your first—what was it you called me?”

“A son of a bitch, I believe.”

“Your first ‘dark and dangerous’ man. That was it.”

She scowled. “I was young.”

“So you were.”

“And you were
dumb,
Jeremiah. Good God, what were you thinking? Here you were, caught in this inconvenient, impossible relationship with a Boston flute player, trying to end it as gently as possible—and so you make sure I hate your guts. Boy.
That
makes sense.”

Now that he’d said what he’d had to say, he seemed more at ease. The wind gusted, kicking up the surf. Down the beach, a middle-aged couple packed it in for the day. Jeremiah just kept walking, the water lapping almost at his toes. “I was trying to be honorable.”

“The truth, Tabak, is honorable. A lie is a lie.”

“What can I say? I was twenty-six, I wanted to do the right thing, and now, here we are.”

“Yes. Well, no wonder you wanted witnesses.”

He smiled, and she thought she saw a flicker of amusement in his eyes, half-closed as they were.

“Did you pine for me?” she asked.

“For weeks.”

“Good. Would you have lied to me if I hadn’t been a virgin?”

“Mollie, you weren’t a virgin when I made the decision to lie—”

“That was at the end of the week. At the beginning of the week, I was a virgin. Did it matter?”

“Of course it mattered, just not in my decision.”

“Well,” she said, “I know how you men can get all chivalrous and protective and make perfect asses of yourselves when you’ve realized you’re a woman’s first lover.”

Jeremiah stopped and stared at her. “Mollie, we men didn’t sleep with you. I did.”

As if she needed the reminder. But she’d brought up the subject. “All right. So I have to adjust my thinking about your journalistic ethics. I’m just not sure how that plays into your visit this morning. You are on this jewel thief story, aren’t you?”

“Unofficially. I can’t write it now that your name’s come up.”

She swallowed hard. “How in hell did my name come up?”

“It came to my attention that you’ve attended every event that the thief’s hit so far.”

“I’m sure a lot of people have—”

“I don’t think so. You’re the only common denominator we have right now.”

“We?”

He shrugged, some of his natural cockiness returning. “Consider that an editoral
we.
In any case, hearing your name, discovering you were in Palm Beach and a publicist, piqued my curiosity.”

“Jeremiah, the last thing I’d want to do is pique the curiosity of a Miami investigative reporter. That it’s you just makes it worse. How can I un-pique your curiosity?”

“Tell me what you know,” he said.

“I don’t know a damned thing. I didn’t even realize a jewel thief was on the loose until a few minutes before I called you.”

“Oblivious as ever, eh, Mollie?”

“I just don’t have a suspicious mind. Plus I’ve got a lot of work to do,” she added, “and I’m new in town. I’m not tapped in.”

“You’re still an outsider.”

“I guess you could say that.”

“But because of Leonardo and your work, you have an insider’s access. You didn’t see or hear anything—you have no reason to believe your name came up as a common denominator except by coincidence?”

She shook her head. She was feeling chilled now, the sand shifting around at the bottoms of her shoes, grinding in between her toes. “None. I’m not a witness, and I’m not a credible suspect. If you want to go back right now and search Leonardo’s place from top to bottom for jewels, clues—”

“Mollie, it’s way too early to consider you a suspect.”

“It’s more than too early, Jeremiah, it’s nuts.”

He paused. “You could be right.”

She tightened her hands into fists. “I
am
right!”

“I’m just trying to remain objective.” He turned to her, the wind at his back, his mouth a hard line. “Which isn’t easy.”

Her breath caught at what she saw in his eyes. “Jeremiah…”

He took another step closer, and he brought his mouth to hers, said, “In fact, objectivity where you’re concerned is downright impossible,” and kissed her lightly, softly, as if he’d appeared in one of the countless dreams she’d had about him over the past ten years, elusive, there but not there. He straightened, becoming real, yet somehow also more distant. “We should go.”

“I should…” She cleared her throat, her insides quivering, burning. “I should take some time to digest what you’ve told me. I can walk back to Leonardo’s.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded.

He fished a dog-eared card out of a pocket. “Here’s my number at work and at home. If you want to call for any reason, don’t hesitate.”

She took the card and tucked it into a pocket without looking at it, and he headed off across the sand. She continued along the beach, watching seagulls and children and waves, hearing laughter carried on the wind, and remembering herself at twenty, in love with a man she wanted to believe she knew.

Two hours of four constant, humming lanes of traffic had a strangely calming effect on Jeremiah, and he felt pretty good when he took the causeway to South Beach, a barrier island of eighty blocks, with much more than just the expensive, trendy stretch of renovated Art Deco buildings along the water. His street was a few blocks inland, untouched by celebrities, speculators, and tourists. He found a space in front of his building, which did not have security gates, fancy landscaping, or a pool, and said hello to the handful of bony old retirees sitting out front on lounge chairs, enjoying the warm evening.

He turned down their offers of beer and a whittling knife and took the stairs up to his fourth-floor apartment. One bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, an eat-in kitchen. No maid, no gardener, no high-tech security. The upkeep was minimal, his neighbors were all so deaf they didn’t object to his state-of-the-art sound system, and his landlord didn’t come by often enough to know about his snake, turtle, and lizard, castoffs from a friend’s pet shop. He kept their cages on his kitchen table. He’d found that lizards in the bedroom were a deterrent to romance. He didn’t eat in much himself, and only his snake ate the occasional live animal, so it wasn’t as if his critters were disgusting on a regular basis. Nevertheless, when he had company, he removed their cages from the table.

It was not the sort of lifestyle he expected the goddaughter of Leonardo Pascarelli to appreciate. Then again, her parents were flakes. Who knew? Maybe all Mollie needed was a place to hang her dartboard.

He checked his voice mail, his eyes glazing over at the polite requests for his presence and expertise at three different functions. Maybe four. He wasn’t paying close attention. His had been an unintentional leap to celebrity status, not a calculated one. He’d erase these messages without answering them. He knew it was rude. But rude didn’t worry him.

The last message was from Croc. “Tabak? You there or did your lizard eat you for an afternoon snack? I’ll call back at eight.”

It was quarter of now. Jeremiah got a beer and some spinach from the refrigerator and waited for Croc to call. He sipped the beer, fed his turtle the spinach, and thought about Mollie walking on the beach with the wind in her hair and the sand in her shoes. She hadn’t gone to pieces. She hadn’t tried to drown him. And when he’d kissed her, she hadn’t smacked him one. All in all, things could have gone worse.

He just wished he knew how she’d come to Croc’s attention.

When the phone rang, he picked it up on the first ring. “Croc?”

“None other,” he said.

“I need a way to reach you.” Jeremiah suddenly felt grouchy. “I can’t just sit around waiting for you to call. You have a phone number, an address?”

“I’m calling from a pay phone up in Broward. It’s costing me. You got anything?”

“No.”

“Shit. I know this Mollie Lavender’s hooked into this thing somehow.”

“Why her, Croc? Tell me the rest. You’ve got more, and I know it. Is it something to do with Leonardo Pascarelli, a client, the gardener, someone she pals around with? I’m not playing games with you. I need everything you’ve got.”

“I gave you my best lead.”

Best didn’t mean only. Jeremiah gripped the phone. “Croc, you’d better not be this damned thief yourself. If you are, I swear to you I’ll find out and I’ll nail your hide to the wall one inch at a time.”

Croc took no offense. “What, you think I wouldn’t stick out in Palm Beach? I’m insulted. Keep digging, Tabak. I’ll dig on my end. Anything comes up, I’ll let you know. Right now, I’m hearing stirrings. I don’t like it.”

“What kind of stirrings?”

“Just talk. I think this thing could get dangerous.”

“Croc, goddamnit—”

“I don’t have shit, Tabak. Just feelings. One thing I know for sure is, none of the hot ice has been fenced locally. Not one rock. So our thief’s either sending it out or holding on to it.” He paused, and Jeremiah pictured him at some rat-hole pay phone, resisted a surge of sympathy for a wasted life. “Any chance you can search Pascarelli’s place?”

“Jesus Christ, Croc. No, I can’t search Pascarelli’s place. I’m a reporter, not a goddamned burglar. And I’m not a lunatic.” Jeremiah went still, eyeing his turtle, thinking. “Croc…don’t you go trying to search Pascarelli’s place yourself. I don’t need a loose cannon on my hands.”

“Hey, I was just kidding. I know you play by the rules.”

“You’d best play by those same rules. You break the law, don’t expect me to be landing at your jail cell with bail money.”

“A cheap bastard like you? Nah. I wouldn’t expect that. Whoops, I’m running out of time. Hate to spend another quarter listening to you spout off. Keep digging, okay?”

“How can I reach you?”

But Croc had hung up, and Jeremiah growled at the phone and hurled it into the kitchen. He went through a lot of phones that way. His lizard stared at him, motionless. His snake slept. His turtle continued to eat his spinach. Jeremiah swore viciously. His gut burned. His head pounded. Whatever calm he’d managed to find en route south had deserted him. Things didn’t feel right. He couldn’t pinpoint what, or why it was getting to him. Rich people were losing a few baubles to a clever, nonviolent thief. It wasn’t dangerous, it wasn’t sick, it wasn’t controversial or depressing, and he probably shouldn’t trust his instincts to work right up in Palm Beach.

He should find a real story or go fishing with his father for a week. He had no business chasing down a jewel thief, especially not on behalf of a street creep who wasn’t being straight with him.

But Croc wasn’t the problem. Mollie, Jeremiah knew, was the problem. He’d picked her off a beach filled with college students ten years ago because something about her had grabbed at his soul.

He groaned at his own romantic idiocy. A decade hadn’t made him any smarter about her. He grabbed his own whittling knife and went down to join the boys on the porch. Four eighty-plus-year-olds and him. They passed him a cigar and a hunk of wood, and Jeremiah figured it beat driving back up to Palm Beach and sneaking around Leonardo Pascarelli’s house just in case his big-eyed ex-flute player ventured out tonight. He could follow her, search her house, or just sit out on the street talking to himself like a damned fool. Best he just sit out with the guys instead and let the night sort itself out.