“Hey, man, how’s it going?” Jaime reached out and shook Johnny’s hand.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Roberta said. She hugged Mollie.
“So are we,” Mollie said. “I didn’t know you were going to meet us here.”
“We figured it was a holiday, and we should do something besides sit around Bayside all day,” Roberta said. “So we took the bus into the city and had lunch down at the Wharf, then walked around for a while. We thought it would be fun to come meet you!”
“So did Detective Benjamin,” Mollie said. “He searched our bags when we got off the plane.”
“I guess they didn’t find anything, or you wouldn’t be here,” Jaime said.
Mollie nodded. She’d explain the whole thing later.
“Where’s Sherman?” Johnny asked. They walked out of the airport and headed to the lot where Johnny’s car was parked.
“He’s doing something with his family,” Jaime said. “One of his sisters is home from med school for the long weekend.” Sherman’s four older sisters were all in medical school, which would probably explain his aversion to doctors.
Mollie and Johnny put their suitcases in the trunk, and they all hopped into the car. “Any missing hubcaps?” Mollie asked.
Johnny shook his head as he started the engine.
“Jaime and I had an idea this morning,” Roberta said. “We were thinking since we have the whole day off, maybe we should swing by Derek Hughes’s office and check it out.”
“Do you think he’ll be there?” Mollie asked. “It is a holiday.”
“He’d better be,” Roberta said. “I hope he’s spending the whole weekend working on Meredith’s case.”
“There’s not much he can do, at this point,” Johnny said.
“I still think we should go there,” Jaime said. He tapped Mollie on the shoulder. “Meredith’s uncle works there, too, right? And you said you didn’t trust him.”
“I don’t know anything about him, really, except that he gave DeDario a job,” Mollie said.
“That’s enough, if you ask me,” Roberta said. “Come on, we have nothing to lose.”
“What’s it called and where is it?” Johnny asked.
“Hughes, Hughes, and Longherin.” Roberta took a piece of paper out of her pock-etbook. “Thirty-four seventy-five James Avenue.”
When they pulled up in front of the building fifteen minutes later, Mollie turned around in her seat. “I think I should go up by myself. If there are too many of us, it’ll annoy them, and they’ll just kick us out. I can approach Mr. Hughes as Meredith’s best friend. He doesn’t know any better.”
Roberta nodded.
“All right, but don’t forget to poke around the office, too,” Jaime said.
“Good luck,” Johnny said.
Mollie shut the door and went into the building. It seemed to be deserted, but when she rang the doorbell outside Hughes, Hughes, and Longherin, someone opened the door immediately.
“Can I help you?” a woman asked.
“Is either Derek or Dayton Hughes in? I’m a friend of the family,” Mollie said.
“Dayton is on his boat down at the San Macero Yacht Club—lucky devil—and Derek’s on the phone. Care to wait?”
“Definitely,” Mollie said. “Thank you.”
The woman sat down at a desk and started reading from a stack of papers. Mollie could see Derek Hughes from where she was sitting. His office was only a few doors down, and his door was wide open, so she could hear him talking, too. “You didn’t make it to the party last night? Why not, Rahel?”
Mollie practically fell out of her seat. She wasn’t surprised that Rahel was lying. What was Rahel going to do, tell Derek she’d been hanging all over some other man all night?
“I’m sorry you don’t feel well,” Mr. Hughes went on. Then he looked up and noticed Mollie. “Uh, can I call you back a little later? There’s someone here to see me.” He hung up the phone and waved Mollie in.
She walked into his office. “Hi, Mr. Hughes. I don’t want to disturb you. I was just in the neighborhood, and I was wondering what was happening with Meredith’s case.”
Derek Hughes put his arms behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “I’m afraid to say that the case isn’t going very well. I get the feeling Meredith isn’t telling me everything.”
“Really? She told you she didn’t have anything to do with it, didn’t she?”
“Yes, but there’s something more. I’m sure of it. I don’t know, maybe she’d tell you, but she’s not telling me. And until she does, I don’t have much of a defense.”
“What do you think she’s keeping from you?” Mollie asked.
“I don’t know, except—you’d tell me if she was involved with drugs, wouldn’t you? I know I haven’t paid as much attention to her as a father should.” His desk chair squeaked as he leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk.
“I know she doesn’t do drugs,” Mollie said.
“That’s a relief. I mean, I believed her, but still it’s nice to hear it from a good friend of hers.” He tapped his desk blotter with a pencil. “I’d like you to be a character witness at her trial.”
“Sure,” Mollie said, rising to leave. “You know, you have a really nice office. I saw that computer room down at the end of the hall—what’s all that high-tech equipment for?”
“Do you mean the cameras and so forth? Well, we often tape depositions—by audio, video, or both. And we tape crime scenes, so we can study them—things like that.” Derek Hughes smiled. “Are you interested in becoming a lawyer someday?”
“Maybe,” Mollie said, though it was at the bottom of her list of possible careers right next to fish cleaner and accountant. “Thanks for seeing me.”
As she walked out of the office, she thought about how quickly and naturally Derek Hughes had answered her questions. He didn’t seem nervous at all. He only wanted to help his daughter.
But there was still the older Hughes brother to talk to. Mollie had a feeling he wasn’t so innocent.
“What do you say at a yacht club?” Roberta asked. “Do I have to talk with a British accent?”
“Just act casual,” Mollie told her. Jaime and Johnny were waiting in the car, while she and Roberta went to talk to Dayton Hughes.
“How can I act casual when I’m the first black person who’s ever been in this place?” Roberta said as she opened the door. She looked around the fancy room. “At least the first black person without a tray in her hand.”
They walked up to the front desk. “Excuse me. I’m looking for Dayton Hughes,” Mollie said to a blond-haired young man wearing a blue blazer with the yacht-club crest on it. “I’m supposed to meet him here.”
“Mr. Hughes is on the Golden State.” He didn’t elaborate, as if they should know exactly where that was.
“You know, I can never remember where he parks that thing,” Roberta said. “Is it docked next to the Golden Warrior?”
“It’s at slip two thirty-seven. Go out that door, take a left, take your third right, and look for all the drunk people.”
Mollie laughed. “Is he having a party?”
“You should know,” he said. “You are invited, aren’t you? Although personally, I don’t think either of you looks Italian.”
“Thank you,” Roberta said. “We’ll be shoving off now.” She grabbed the sleeve of Mollie’s sweater and gently pulled her through the yacht club and out the door. “I had to get out of there before I said something that would have gotten us kicked out. Okay, we go left and then—”
“Would you let go of me now?”
“Sorry.” Roberta unclasped Mollie’s sweater and brushed it back into shape.
“Do you believe how much money some of these people have?” Mollie pointed to a yacht towering above them. “I can’t even afford to pay off my stupid car.” Since her job at The Insurance Shoppe had been terminated by the earthquake, Mollie hadn’t been able to find a new one. She hated mooching off her friends, and she especially loathed borrowing from her parents.
“Uh-oh. Sleaze alert,” Roberta said. She pointed to a speedboat docked on the same pier where Dayton Hughes’s yacht was supposed to be moored. Mollie read the name on the back of it: the DareDevil. Fortunately, Aaron DeDario was nowhere in sight.
“Devil is right,” she said. “I wonder if he’s at Hughes’s party?”
“Good question. It looks like we’re here.” Both Roberta and Mollie looked up at a large banner on the back of the Golden State that said, WELCOME LOCAL ITALIAN POLITICIANS!
“You’d think he’d be more subtle than that,” Roberta said.
“Did he declare his candidacy while I was out of town?”
Roberta nodded. “I heard about it Friday night on the news after you left.”
The deck of the boat was full of people drinking, eating, and milling around in the late-afternoon sunshine. Everyone was dressed casually for the occasion; Mollie was glad she wouldn’t stand out, although there didn’t seem to be too many people under the age of forty. As she climbed onto the boat, Mollie heard a loud burst of laughter. When she looked up, she saw Dayton Hughes sitting on the upper deck of his seventy-foot yacht, telling a story to several people gathered around him. He looked like a king addressing his loyal subjects.
“Are you going up there?”
“We have to go straight to the source,” Mollie said. “Of course, if you want to mingle down here—”
A waitress wearing the official yacht-club blazer came up to them, offering a tray of strange-looking hors d’oeuvres. “What are those?” Roberta asked.
“That’s escargot pâté on Melba,” the girl replied.
“Translation?” Roberta asked.
“Snail smeared on dry toast,” Mollie said.
Roberta wrinkled up her nose. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
She and Mollie took a tour around the boat before climbing the stairs inside the cabin. Mollie didn’t see anything unusual, just a lot of people having a good time—or pretending to. On the upper deck, Mollie looked down at DeDario’s speedboat. It looked puny compared to Hughes’s yacht. She could even see Johnny’s red-and-white Chrysler in the parking lot from up there.
“Excuse me,” Mollie said. “Mr. Hughes?”
Dayton Hughes swiveled around in his white chair and flashed a winning smile. “Hello. Do I know you?”
“Not really, but I’m a friend of Meredith’s,” Mollie said. “We need to talk to you about her.”
Dayton frowned. “Can it wait?”
Roberta shook her head. “Not really. Unless you like visiting relatives in jail.”
Dayton turned back to his admiring crowd of listeners. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment. Tony, don’t you dare finish that story until I get back.” He chuckled, got up from his seat, and came over to Mollie and Roberta. “Let’s go down into the cabin, where we’ll have some privacy.” They followed him back down the stairs and sat down on a padded leather bench by the window. “Now, who are you, and what is this about Meredith?”
Mollie studied his face. His sandy blond hair was cut short, with not a hair out of place. His deep blue eyes stared right back at her. “My name is Mollie Fox, this is Roberta Baldwin, and I think I know who set Meredith up,” she said.
“Set her up? What do you mean?”
Mollie couldn’t believe Meredith’s uncle actually thought his niece was guilty. “I think someone who works at the Whistler Modeling Agency did it. An ex-employee of yours who wanted to ruin your political campaign.”
“And who would that be?”
“Aaron DeDario. He runs Whistler’s San Francisco office, the one that sent Meredith to New York,” Roberta said.
“And he’s an ex-employee of mine?” Dayton Hughes shook his head. “I don’t remember him.”
“First he went to jail, and you defended him. Back then his name was just Dario. When he got out, you gave him a job,” Mollie said.
Dayton shrugged. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Are you sure it’s not my brother who helped him?”
Roberta nodded. “We researched it. It took place back in 1984. And we were thinking, maybe he has some resentment toward you.”
“This DeDario guy is the kind who would do anything for money,” Mollie said. “Someone could have paid him to do it. Do you know anyone who wants to stop you from becoming governor?”
Dayton Hughes laughed. “Girls, I think you’ve been watching too many movies or reading too many detective novels.”
“Well, I’m no Nancy Drew,” Mollie said.
“But look, I really don’t remember any—what did you say his name was?”
“Dario,” Roberta said.
“I don’t know him. As far as anyone trying to hurt me, well, I think that’s out of the question. As you can see, I have support from the entire community. However, I will look into it. I want to see Meredith’s name cleared as much as you do.” He frowned. “I think what’s happened to her is horrible, simply horrible.”
“So you’ll check him out?”
“Sure.” He flashed his winning campaign smile again. “And now, I must get back to my guests.”
Mollie and Roberta stood up. “Thanks for talking to us,” Roberta said.
“You’re welcome. Enjoy your afternoon.” Dayton climbed the stairs to the top deck.
A Chinese man wearing a chefs uniform came up the stairs from the galley below, carrying a tray of stuffed mushrooms. He had a neat goatee.
Roberta waved him away. “I don’t eat slugs.”
“You listen to me,” he whispered in a heavy accent. “I hear you talking. You must leave this alone.”
“Leave what alone?”
“This Dario business. Do not come here again. You must not make Mr. Hughes angry.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I warn you, stay out of this,” the chef said. Then he disappeared down the stairs.