“Any news to report?” she asked, barely moving in the still, azure water.
“I’m just back from my apartment. I checked in with the guys and asked them to look after my critters. All considered, reptiles are low maintenance. Albert started to regale me with tales of eating snake in the jungles of southeast Asia.”
“Think he has designs on yours?”
“He assured me not.”
She went very still. “And Croc?”
“Kermit Tiernay is making steady progress. He should be able to make a limited statement to the police tomorrow. It’s not easy to talk with your jaw wired shut, and he’s still swollen, which doesn’t help.”
“Nothing more from the police?”
“Nothing.”
“Any word on when Croc will be released from the hospital?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know.” He bit off the words, not angry at the question or anyone, just frustrated with his fruitless days, his own worries. He hated worrying. Better just to gather information, jot it in his notebook, chew on it, and write it up. “I don’t even know if he has a place of his own. He needs an attorney…damn!”
Mollie dropped her feet and stood in the pool, the water up to her neck. The burn from her necklace was healing fast, some of its redness already gone. She swirled her arms through the water, studying him. “Croc hasn’t asked for your help?”
“No.”
Jeremiah dropped into a chair in the sun and watched her splash backwards, kicking her feet up in front of her, not swimming so much as playing in the water, stretching, perhaps easing out some of her own tension. He could feel it coiled in him. A long, hard day that had yielded more questions than answers.
But there was, he thought, something very sexy about being fully clothed around a woman in a swimsuit. Hers was turquoise, the color of the water, and thus made her look even less clothed.
She flipped over onto her stomach and swam over to the edge of the pool, hoisting up her forearms. Water dripped down her face, and her hair was slicked back, making her eyes seem even more bottomless, the lashes ever blacker. “So, have you reached any conclusions about the attack on Croc?”
“I don’t have enough information yet.”
“But you have theories,” she said.
“Theories are the easy part.” He knew he sounded short and grumpy, didn’t care. Of course, she didn’t seem to care, either. “It could have been a random attack. It could have been an attack by a professional. It could have been an attack by an amateur. It could have been intended to kill him, scare the hell out of him, scare the hell out of someone else, mislead him, mislead someone else.”
“These someone elses. Meaning who?”
“You, me, the police, the real jewel thief if it’s not Croc.”
“The real jewel thief? How would an attack on Croc mislead the real jewel thief?”
Jeremiah shot to his feet, unable to sit still. “I don’t know. My point is, we can speculate endlessly and end up right back where we are, knowing next to nothing.”
She stretched out her arms, still hanging onto the edge of the pool, and eased her behind up as she did a slow frog-kick that struck him as intensely erotic. But she was preoccupied with her sleuthing. She didn’t think like a cop or a journalist. She wasn’t bound by their professionalism, their cynicism, their ethics, and she was seldom impartial or removed from her emotion. Yet it would be a mistake, Jeremiah knew, to underestimate the keenness of her mind, her ability to see nuances and layers that others might miss. She was, he remembered, a woman who could unravel the intricacies of a symphony and zero in on the essence, the appeal, of a particular client.
Still, right now, he had to admit he was more interested in that wet, slim body. He watched her, feeling the heat of the afternoon, of his own body.
“Speculating,” he told her, “will make you crazy. You have to force yourself not to go beyond the facts.” He moved to the edge of the pool, squatted down in front of her. “And the facts still have you in the thick of things. I just can’t figure out how or why.”
“Because Croc is Kermit Tiernay, my intern’s older brother.”
“That’s one reason. You’re also still the only known common denominator, the only victim of violence, the only person who’s received a threatening call.”
She dipped her chin under water, studying him. “I’m just a publicist who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I hope so,” he said.
Her eyes widened in irritation. “Are you still keeping an open mind about me? You think it’s possible I’m lying?”
He frowned. “Mollie, I simply said I hope you’ve just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can take that at face value.”
“Then you don’t suspect me,” she said stubbornly.
He scooped up a handful of water and flicked it playfully into her face. “Go up and get dressed. If I go up with you, we might not make it back down here until morning. I promised Croc I’d be back this evening.” He eased to his feet, felt the day’s dramas all the way to his bones. “I still can’t get my head around the little bastard being a rich kid.”
“You took him on his own terms. Maybe that’s all he wanted from you.”
“Maybe.”
She climbed out of the pool and grabbed her composers’ towel, so caught up in her own thoughts she didn’t notice him watching her. Her wet suit clung to her curves, her flat stomach. Water glistened on her arms and legs. She slung the towel over her shoulders. “I’ll be down in ten minutes, tops.”
She made it in seven. She had on a little sheath of a sundress, in dark blue, and sandals, her legs bare, her hair pulled back and still damp. She’d dabbed on pale lipstick and a touch of mascara, and Jeremiah couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to put this woman on a plane to Boston ten years ago. Except that if he hadn’t, there’d be no hope for them now. She’d needed those ten years. Probably so had he. And that still said nothing about the next ten years.
They took the Jaguar to the hospital, and Mollie, saying she was tired from her swim, let him drive. “You just want to see if I can really handle this thing,” he said, grinning at her.
“Not true. If that truck of yours doesn’t intimidate you, nothing will.”
On their way, she told him about her “spontaneous” cocktail party tomorrow night. She, Deegan, and Griffen had worked on it that afternoon. “Deegan didn’t stay-he went back to the hospital to see his brother.”
“You’re baiting him,” Jeremiah said.
She glanced sideways at him, mystified. “Who, Deegan?’ ”
“The thief. If he’s still out there, this ‘spontaneous’ party is a way of baiting him.”
She sat back, miffed. “So what if it is?”
He shrugged. “So what is right. Let’s just not be disingenuous.”
“I.e., don’t lie to you.”
“I.e., don’t bullshit me. And don’t bullshit yourself.”
“You do feel free to speak your mind, don’t you?”
“Always, Mollie,” he said without remorse. “Not just with you.”
“Must be from growing up in a swamp. I mean, if you’re surrounded by poisonous snakes and alligators and big ugly bugs, you learn pretty quick to tell it like it is.” She glanced over at him, the glint of the devil in her eyes. “Am I right?”
He smiled. “From a certain point of view.”
When they arrived at the hospital, he was surprised to find it wasn’t crawling with reporters. Word was out about the police finding Leonardo Pascarelli’s necklace on “Blake Wilder,” but not that Blake Wilder was Michael and Bobbi Tiernay’s long-missing older son, Kermit. Helen Samuel was either being remarkably discreet or not tipping her hand. Knowing her, Jeremiah suspected the latter.