And that was that. Croc started to argue, but Jeremiah grabbed him by the shirt, yanked him out of the way, and let Mollie pass. She did a neat three-point turn and continued on to the main road and out to Leonardo’s house, trying not to think about anything except the traffic, her speed, the turns she needed to make. Jeremiah had known this Croc had followed them to dinner. He hadn’t said anything. He’d been out there for the past three hours doing God only knew what, and she’d known it and had let it happen, had even made it happen. This wasn’t her property, these weren’t even her friends, not yet. They were Leonardo’s friends, and she had used them badly.
There were no two-way streets where Jeremiah Tabak was concerned.
It was something she desperately needed to remember.
“Guess you lost your ride home,” Croc said after Mollie had abandoned them.
Jeremiah gritted his teeth. It was pitch-dark, cool, raining again. “Croc, why I don’t hang you from this banyan, I don’t know.”
“What’d I do?”
“I have half a mind to drag your ass down to the police station.”
“What for?”
“Personal satisfaction.”
“Hey, I’m not your thief. For all we know, your tootsie there waltzed off with a trunkload of jewels.”
Jeremiah stopped in his tracks. He glared at Croc in the dark. With the clouds and the rain, it was not a pleasant night to be out. Croc’s shape was visible, just not any of his features. Which was just as well. The wrong look, the wrong glint in his eye, and Jeremiah didn’t know what he’d do. “Mollie is not your thief. Will you get that out of your head?”
“Okay. She’s not the thief.”
There was no conviction in his tone. Jeremiah sighed. “What’s your interest in this thing, Croc? Just explain that to me.”
“Keeps me off the streets.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
What Jeremiah calculated was the last of the guests drove past, making it relatively safe for him and Croc to walk out on the driveway instead of in the wet brush. He didn’t mind, but Croc kept expecting alligators and snakes. “I’m probably full of spiders,” he grumbled when they hit smooth pavement.
“Good,” Jeremiah said.
“You’re a heartless bastard, you know?”
“I haven’t strangled you yet.”
“Yeah, yeah, so I should be grateful. You want a ride home?”
“My truck’s at Mollie’s. It’s not that far. I can walk.”
“What, and give her time to have your truck towed? That’ll cost you a mint. You know, she’s pissed because you didn’t tell her she was being followed.”
“If you will recall, I didn’t know for sure it was you.”
“Yep,” Croc said, “I recall.”
After he’d slipped from Mollie’s car, Jeremiah had hidden in the brush and waited for whoever had followed her to make an appearance. It was Croc’s good fortune that Jeremiah had recognized him before he’d decked him. As it was, he’d scared the daylights out of one twenty-something informant.
“My car’s down the road about a quarter-mile,” Croc said.
Jeremiah relented. “All right. You can drive me back to Mollie’s. But I suggest you crawl back into whatever hole you crawled out of and leave her the hell alone. Understood?”
“Aye-aye, mon capitaine.”
Jeremiah charged down the driveway, Croc on his heels, unruffled. That they’d managed to avoid being spotted by any of tonight’s dinner guests suggested Croc had deliberately let Mollie see him. He’d wanted to find out what she would do, and he’d wanted to meet her.
“Think about it, Tabak.” Croc was having to move fast to keep up. “If you were an innocent dinner guest and came upon a strange man in the dark, would you have rolled down your window and chatted with him? I mean, it would have made more sense if she’d tried to run me over or drove back up to the house and called the police.”
“Croc, for God’s sake. She saw me half a second after she saw you.”
“I don’t know.” They came to the end of the driveway and turned up the road. Streetlights and passing cars provided some illumination. “I think she knows I wasn’t the jewel thief. Which means she must know who it really is.”
“That’s a huge leap in logic.”
“So? Logic’s your department.” He grinned over at Jeremiah. “I consider myself a visionary.”
“Yeah, well, visionary me back to my truck.”
Croc’s car was a little red Volkswagen Rabbit that fit in Palm Beach even less well than Jeremiah’s truck. A truck was an essential piece of equipment. Gardeners could have beat-up trucks. Rich men who drove Lincolns and Mercedes during the day liked to rough it with a beat-up truck. But a rusted, ancient Rabbit with bald tires didn’t make the grade. Croc didn’t seem to care. “I’m telling you, this baby costs nothing to keep on the road.”
Jeremiah wondered who paid the insurance. And whose name it was in. He could run the license plate, but that seemed premature, a violation of the fragile trust he and Croc, aka Blake Wilder, had established. Not that the little bastard was holding up his end. He was damned lucky Jeremiah still didn’t throttle him for following Mollie.
When they arrived at Pascarelli’s, she was backing Jeremiah’s truck onto the street. It was bucking wildly. “I don’t think she’s so good with a clutch,” Croc said.
“That clutch is balky.”
Jeremiah winced at the squeal of tires and sudden silence as the engine choked. The truck was still crooked, its front tires well out into the street, but Mollie apparently had had enough. The door opened, and she climbed out.
Croc gave a low whistle. “Guess that’s a hint, huh?”
“Go home, Croc.” Jeremiah pushed open the rusting passenger door and got out. “Call me tomorrow. We’ll talk.”
This time not arguing, Croc did a quick turnaround and sped off. Jeremiah approached his truck, and Mollie, with a certain prudent wariness. “I’m surprised you didn’t let the air out of my tires.”
She turned to him, dusting off her hands as if there’d been something nasty on his steering wheel, and tossed her head back, the streetlight catching the ends of her pale hair. She still had on her little black dinner dress. “That would only encourage you to stay longer.”
He moved closer. “Mad, huh?”
“Very.”
“You deserve to be.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “Is that an apology?”
“Mollie, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure it was Croc. I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure we’d been followed. I didn’t want to ruin your evening if I was wrong. When I tracked him down on your friends’ grounds, I could hardly waltz up to the house and come clean to you.”
She didn’t soften. “Would you have told me if I hadn’t spotted him?”
Jeremiah moved even closer, aware of the cool evening air, the shape of her under her dress, of his own ragged muscles, his hair and clothes damp from the intermittent rain, the crazy trek through underbrush. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
“I see. Well, fair enough. Here are your keys.” She dangled them from two fingers. Jeremiah held out his palm, and she dropped them in. “Good night.”
She started back toward her open gates, casting a long shadow on the elegant brick driveway.
Jeremiah stayed where he was. “What would you do if you were trapped in there with a pack of wild dogs and your gates didn’t work?”
She arched him a mystified look. “I’d just have to get out my tranquilizer gun and tranquilize them.”
“You don’t have a tranquilizer gun.”
“You don’t have a pack of wild dogs, and my gates work fine.”
He settled back on his heels, studying her.
She couldn’t stand the scrutiny for long. “What is it?”
“How come there’s no man in your life?”