“Shit, Deirdre. When you gonna find a man who doesn’t make you drive your own ass over to his place in order to see him naked?”
“As soon as I inherit forty-six million dollars.”
“Not that the money matters to you.”
“Of course not. Who needs money?”
They managed to keep a straight face for about two seconds, then burst into laughter. “I’ll see you later,” said Deirdre.
She zigzagged through the noisy crowd, and she could have sworn she was getting checked out more than usual. It was all in the attitude, and as of this morning she had a new one. A stranger even opened the door for her.
“Thanks,” she said with a smile, then stepped outside.
The sun having long-since dipped into the Everglades, it was one of those perfect autumn evenings with just enough bite in the air to make you forget the cursed summer heat and humidity that had stuck around till Halloween. Valet was a rip-off at eighteen bucks, and as usual Deirdre had come with no coins to feed the meters on the street, so she’d wedged her little Honda into a free spot in the alley beside the drugstore. This had seemed like a good idea when the store was open, but its windows were now black and there were no more customers coming and going. Nightfall had a way of changing everything.
She dug her key from her purse as she quickly crossed the lot. A guy in a red pickup truck was sitting behind the wheel, and the look on his face gave her concern at first, until she saw the mop of blond hair bobbing up and down in his lap. Pretty safe bet he wouldn’t be following her. Her car was just around the corner, and the muffled drone of the bar crowd faded with each step farther into the darkness.
Her car alarm chirped as she hit the remote button. She got in, slammed the door shut, and aimed the key for the ignition. Jittery hands made a challenge out of the simple process of starting the car, definitely more nerves than the drinks.
Damn it, settle down, girl.
The engine fired on the second try. She put it into the gear and pulled away so fast that she sent some loose gravel flying. She turned on the radio to calm herself.
She’d lied to Carmen. Her source had her more than “a little” scared. She was well aware that submitting the story about Tatum Knight to her editors was an outright defiance of his orders. She wasn’t sure what he might do about it, but he would surely do something. She’d gone to the police, hoping they might offer protection. They gave her a pamphlet filled with canned advice for stalking victims, told her to come back when she was willing to agree to a wiretap on her home and work telephones. Maybe then they’d talk protection.
A journalist with a wiretap on her telephone. Are they out of their minds?
She reached Johnny’s townhouse in record time. The fear, the gin, the adrenaline all had her driving faster than usual. The parking spaces in front of Johnny’s unit were full, and Carmen’s comment came back to her. The creep could have at least given up his prime spot and parked his own car in guest parking so that she didn’t have to walk five hundred yards in the darkness. She was inclined to bag it and go home, but she did feel safer sleeping with him. She zipped her car over to guest parking, found a spot, and jumped out.
Gables Point was a quiet condominium development, lots of trees, not very well lit. She followed the sidewalk past the pool area, which wasn’t the most direct path to Johnny’s unit, but the lighting was better, except for the last hundred yards, where the sidewalk snaked through a forest of droopy bottlebrush trees. The ring of light that shined from the pool area seemed to follow her for a while, but she stopped when she reached the faint edge of its farthermost reach. She’d walked this way at least a dozen times over the past month, never once giving it a second thought. Tonight, her instincts told her to turn and run the other way. It was late. It was dark. There were lots of big trees for someone to hide behind.
You’re making yourself crazy.
She put one foot in front of the other, and she was on her way, gathering speed, her pulse quickening. She’d entered far more dangerous places in her career, night after night, as the Tribune’s crime beat reporter. Interviews with killers, dead bodies galore-it was all in a day’s work. This was nothing to be afraid of.
Halfway there. The sidewalk curved, but she went straight. No time for the scenic route, and there was no scenery in the black night anyway. She was cutting her own path through the grass when she heard it. She stopped and looked back, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. But she was certain that she’d heard something just a moment earlier. Footsteps. Behind her.
Or was she imagining it?
She turned and ran at full throttle, holding back nothing, brushing aside the tree branches that were lashing at her face. Her ankle turned, which made her yelp, but she ran through the pain. Twenty yards to Johnny’s townhouse. She was back on the sidewalk, sprinting down the homestretch. She gobbled up the three front steps in a single leap, then searched frantically for her key in the darkness.
Jerk doesn’t even leave the porch light on for me.
She got her key, used two hands to steady her aim, and shoved it home. The tumblers clicked, the deadbolt turned. She turned the knob and leaned into the door. It opened six inches, then caught on the chain.
Shit!
She shot a quick glance over her shoulder, and again she saw nothing. Or no, maybe a shadow. “Johnny, open the damn door!”
She pushed and pulled the door back and forth, shaking it violently against the chain to wake him.
“Johnny!”
She heard footsteps again, and her heart skipped a beat-then relief. The footsteps were coming from inside the townhouse.
“Johnny, it’s me!”
The door closed, and the chain rattled on the inside. The knob turned, and Deirdre pushed her way inside. She rushed in, eager to see him, eager to see anyone. He grabbed her, she poured herself into his arms, the door slammed, and she was firmly in his grasp before she could realize what had happened.
It wasn’t Johnny.
A cold knife was at her throat. “Fucking bitch,” he said in an angry whisper. “You were told to write the story, not print it.”
She screamed, but it was heard only in her own mind, as the sharp blade slid deeply across her throat, sinking all the way to the neck bone, silencing her forever.
Forty-seven
At 4 P.M. Friday afternoon, Jack and Tatum were back in probate court.
It had been less than two days since Deirdre’s murder, and everything had changed. Or at least everything had intensified, and Jack couldn’t get away from it-media coverage, phone calls from lawyers for the surviving heirs, questions from investigators. It was a neighbor who’d spotted the blood seeping out from under the front door on Thanksgiving morning. The cops found her body in the foyer, and her boyfriend was tied up in his bedroom closet, unharmed but blindfolded. He hadn’t seen a thing, a useless witness. Naturally, Detective Larsen turned to Jack and his client for answers, as the judge’s restraining order had already labeled Tatum as the thug in the group. Mason Rudsky’s hit-and-run death was still a mystery, and it didn’t help matters that Deirdre Meadows had turned up dead the same day the Tribune ran her story that Tatum was hired to kill Sally Fenning.
“All rise!”
Judge Parsons entered the courtroom from his side chambers. The crowd rose on command, and the foot shuffling was noticeably louder than at most hearings. All fifteen rows of public seating were packed with spectators, mostly members of the media. This was the first court hearing since a state prosecutor and an ambitious reporter had met untimely deaths in a race for forty-six million dollars, and the local news geniuses had finally taken serious notice, even without a sex scandal.