Mollie smiled. “You two are a lot alike.”
“Don’t you start, too. That’s what she keeps telling me. You walked into a hell of a scene, didn’t you?”
“Deegan was sobbing. The cop guarding Croc called your friend Frank.” She was silent a moment, her clear gaze on the broken body in the neat, clean bed. “What do you suppose drove him onto the streets?”
“I don’t know, but he got into Harvard. After that, things seemed to fall apart. Maybe the parents can tell us.”
“Do you think they will?” she asked.
Jeremiah took in a breath. “I’ll find out, one way or the other.”
She curved a hand around the back of his neck, slid her fingers into his hair, and kissed him lightly. “Yes, you will, and not because you’re a reporter.” She dropped her hand, smiled warmly. “You’re also his friend.”
“Mollie.” His voice quaked, but he ignored the knot of fear in his throat. “If the attack on Croc wasn’t a coincidence-if he was set up-then someone’s trying to cover their own tracks.”
She nodded, still steady, although he could see that she’d followed his thinking, perhaps had already reached the same conclusion. “I’m the common denominator, and we still don’t know what it means, if anything. And I was attacked and threatened-” She swallowed visibly, but maintained her composure. “If Croc isn’t the jewel thief, or if the police don’t accept him as the jewel thief, I could be in danger.”
“You could be in danger, period.”
“Well. I guess next time I speak to Leonardo, I’ll tell him he’s not paranoid after all for having such an elaborate security system.”
“You’ll be there?”
“Waiting for you,” she said, and left him alone with Croc, aka Blake Wilder, aka Kermit Tiernay.
Jeremiah leaned over the kid’s sleeping body. “Where the hell your folks get a name like Kermit? No wonder you went off the deep end.”
He pulled up a chair and sat, wondering if Kermit Tienay’s parents would show up.
14
“Your brother’s a derelict and a jewel thief?” Griffen repeated for at least the third time, her stunned rage upon hearing news of Kermit Tiernay no surprise to Mollie. She, Griffen, and Deegan were at Leonardo’s pool, sitting in the shade, oblivious to the bright, hot afternoon sun. Griffen sputtered, still furious. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know for sure,” Deegan said, remarkably calm under the circumstances. “I only suspected.”
Mollie watched a chameleon scurry into the grass. “We still don’t know your brother’s the thief.”
Neither reacted to her comment. Griffen, straddling a lounge chair, her sundress billowing in front of her, was still beside herself. “This explains why you’ve been acting so weird. You should have called the police, Deegan. They could have picked him up before he did any more damage.”
“Call them with what? I didn’t even know where to find him.” He was on his feet, pacing, the only sign he was affected by the morning’s events. “I did the best I could with what I had.”
Griffen wasn’t mollified. “Well, maybe someone did him a favor by beating the crap out of him. This thing was escalating. I’m glad it’s over.”
Deegan paused a moment, his gaze resting on his lover. “As Mollie said, we don’t know that Kermit is guilty.”
“It’s the most obvious, easiest explanation. So, it’s probably the right explanation. That’s how things work in the real world, even in Palm Beach. Conspiracies are for the movies. Most criminals are idiots. Your brother’s an idiot who got mugged by an idiot.” She leaned back and hoisted up her knees, her bare feet on the chair in front of her. She squinted up at Deegan. “Simple.”
He sighed, threw up his hands, and grinned suddenly, turning to Mollie. “Don’t you love it when she’s on a tear?”
“Go to hell,” Griffen told him.
Mollie shook her head. “I’m not saying a word.”
But all the fight had gone out of Griffen. “So, how’d Mum and Dad take the news their number one’s son’s back in town?”
Deegan’s grin faded. “About like you’d expect.”
“Ah. Flared nostrils and no comment.”
He managed a thin smile. “Pretty much. They were deciding whether to see him in the hospital when I left.”
Mollie resisted a knee-jerk negative reaction. She didn’t know what had occurred between Croc and his parents. Maybe they, too, had done the best they could with what they had and had simply tried to save a nineteen-year-old son bent on self-destruction. On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine her parents kicking her out and not seeing her for over two years. They weren’t always tuned in the way other parents she knew were, practicing what their friends sometimes called “healthy neglect.” Discipline was never much more than a knitted brow, and she and her sister had had more freedom early on than most of their friends. But they knew they had their parents’ unconditional love. They took it for granted, as, Mollie thought now, children should. But they instinctively appreciated and never abused that love. It just wouldn’t have occurred to them to do so.
Such was not the case, it seemed, in the Tiernay household.
“What did Kermit do to get tossed out?” Griffen asked.
“He embarrassed the family.” Deegan’s tone was neutral, even a trace of sarcasm impossible to detect. “He flunked out of Harvard for no reason anyone could understand. He just chose not to do the work. Then he had the gall to ask for a year off to sort things out and work odd jobs. My parents said he could go to school or get out.”
“ ‘Get out’ as in ‘you’re on your own but we love you and want to keep in touch’ or ‘get out’ as in-”
“As in ‘we disown you.’ ”
She grimaced. “Ouch.”
“Was he abusing drugs or alcohol?” Mollie asked.
“He got drunk maybe twice that I can remember, but that wasn’t it. He didn’t have his act together at nineteen, and my parents decided the only way he would ever get it together was if they severed all ties. They truly thought they were doing the right thing.”
Griffen snorted in disgust. “There has to be more. Was he lighting cats on fire, screwing the household help? You don’t just toss a kid out and sever all ties because he wants to wash cars for a year. I mean, why not give him the year?”
“Kermit has always had a vivid imagination,” Deegan said. “He’s sensitive, maybe too sensitive. He went against the grain.”
“Yeah, well, now he’s snatching brooches out of people’s pockets.” Griffen shook her head, just not getting it, and turned to Mollie. “How’s this sitting with Tabak?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to him without a cop around since he’s seen Croc…Kermit.”
“Well.” Griffen shook her head, as if trying to shake off the tensions of the past hour. “We’ve got a party to plan-unless you want to cancel.”
Mollie thought a moment, then shook her head. “No, let’s do it. We won’t invite the world, and we’ll keep it low-key. If the police have their thief, there’s no need to worry about him striking again, and it’ll prove that whatever ax he had to grind with me, I wasn’t intimidated. And if they don’t have their thief-” She settled back, breathed in the warm, scented air. “Then maybe he will strike again.”
“And we can catch him in the act,” Griffen said.
Mollie eyed her young intern. “If you don’t want to be involved-”
“No. It’s okay. In fact, it’s perfect. My parents would approve, carrying on in the face of adversity and all that, and Kermit…Croc…” He faltered, his only display of emotion. “I think he’d understand, too.”
“Good.” Griffen sat up and dug in her big leather bag for a clipboard and her laptop. “Then let’s get to work.”
Jeremiah found Mollie on her back in the pool, her toes pointed, her head tilted back, blonde hair floating out around her. Not sure how to work the gate release in the Jaguar, not wanting to scare the hell out of her, he’d called from the driveway, and she’d opened up. She must have scooted right back into the pool. He could see the portable phone on her chair, which was covered, he noticed with a tug of amusement, with a towel covered with the busts of various composers. He recognized Beethoven’s scowl.