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Alec opened the cabinets until he found a bag of popcorn and an air popper. It couldn’t hurt to butter Cleo up. An image of her naked, all oiled up and glistening, popped into his head. He forced it down. He had a mission and it wouldn’t be served if he walked out of the kitchen with an obvious hard-on. He set a large bowl in front of the air popper to catch the kernels, and went looking for Cleo.
He found her sitting at the dining room table, poring over Jada’s jigsaw puzzle.
A third of it was done, which he found somewhat miraculous since most of the one thousand pieces were shades of orange, yellow, and rust. He picked up the lid of the box and studied the picture of the Grand Canyon. Great photo, but as a puzzle, it was a bitch.
He sat down on Cleo’s right. He hadn’t done a jigsaw since he was probably ten years old and watching someone else work on one was about as interesting as watching hair grow.
“All done?” she asked as she tried unsuccessfully to fit a piece into the puzzle before discarding it.
“Taking a break.” He picked up the piece she’d just abandoned. It had striations of orange and rust. They were the right shades for the places she’d tried them, but it was impossible to tell up from down with the piece. He flipped it and tried it in one of the same spots. It snapped into place. “Aha.”
“Good eye.” She picked up another piece and tested its fit a couple of places before tossing it down. Absently, she rubbed her temple and frowned.
The faint brrr of the air popper stopped, so he got up and went into the kitchen, where he salted and buttered the popcorn. The smell filled the kitchen. He flipped a kernel into the air and caught it in his mouth. Then he dug into Cleo’s purse and retrieved her glasses.
“Thanks,” she said when he handed them to her.
“Do you really need those?”
“If I don’t want headaches, yes.”
“You could have come in and gotten them.” He set the bowl of popcorn on a chair he pulled catty-corner between them.
“I know,” she said, “but I didn’t want to disturb you while you were working.”
“My concentration isn’t that fragile.” Which was a lie. She distracted him whenever she was around. But now, he needed to focus, so he could pick her brain. Preferably without her noticing because he didn’t want to admit he needed her help.
He picked up a puzzle piece and went to work, letting a companionable silence grow into a minute, then two, before he asked, “Do you really think Willa was immune to Sebastian?”
“Some women were.”
“What kind of woman would that be?”
She looked at him over the rim of her glasses. That was so hot, he forgot what he’d asked. Oh yeah. Willa. Sebastian. To cover his momentary lapse, he said, “After all, most women think a man with money is a good provider. And of course, he had status in the community.”
Cleo pushed her glasses up and picked up another puzzle piece. “Not all women think that lifestyle is all they want from a marriage.”
“All other things being equal, most women think a man who can provide them with money, status, and the lifestyle that goes with it is better than a man who can’t.”
She snorted. “All things being equal only works in theory, not in the real world. In general, men who can achieve the money, status, and lifestyle Sebastian had also have traits that make them undesirable as spouses.”
“Says who?”
“Annaliese, actually. But I think she’s right. Sebastian was driven. He valued practicality and business over romance and relationships, which meant he wasn’t good marriage material. And he had four ex-wives to prove it.”
“And yet, there were undoubtedly women out there who would have stood in line to be the next Mrs. Koblect because you women always think you’re the one who can change a man and make him better.”
“All that and-they-lived-happily-ever-after crap is fairy tale thinking,” she said.
“You’re too young to be that cynical.”
“I’m not cynical. I was just never indoctrinated to think I’ll automatically get a happy ending.”
“So what do you think you’ll get?”
“I hope I’ll get what I earn.”
“Yeah, that’s working out well for you.”
She looked up from the puzzle. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you worked your ass off and turned in a kickass story, but instead of working your way up as an investigative journalist at The Sun, you’re stuck at a tabloid.”
“I thought you didn’t believe a tabloid was a bad place to be.”
“I don’t. But it isn’t what you were aiming for, is it?”
She looked at the puzzle piece she held as though, if she studied it hard enough, it would give up its secrets. “No, it isn’t.”
This topic hadn’t gone where he’d expected it to. He hadn’t meant to kick her while she was down. They needed something else to talk about. “Tell me about Sebastian.”
She found a home for the piece in her hand and picked up a fistful of popcorn. “Everything about his life is already being hashed and rehashed. I don’t know what else there is left to tell.”
“That’s all public knowledge. You knew him. Maybe he wasn’t front and center in your life, but he was on the periphery for a long time. Tell me how you saw him.”
She was silent for almost a minute as she ate the popcorn in her hand. “I was nine the first time I met him. He’d just gotten divorced from his first wife. He and Annaliese were going golfing.”
“Like a date?”
“Kind of. I guess. I don’t really think of Annaliese as ever dating. Mostly she had . . . extended hook-ups. A guy might be a one-night stand, or he might hang around for a while. Not exclusively, mind you. I don’t know that she’s ever done exclusive. At least not until Jada.”
“So she’s exclusive with Jada.” He inflected it as a statement then waited for Cleo to confirm it, though if she did, her claim not to believe in fairy tales was a lie because she’d clearly chosen to believe what she wanted rather than ask for confirmation.
“I hope so,” she muttered as she tapped unassembled puzzle pieces in her search for something that suited the corner she was working on.
“Were Annaliese’s boyfriends ever . . .?”
“Ever what?”
“You know. Too friendly. With you.” His stomach clenched unexpectedly. The dangers of bringing strange men who had sex on their minds around young girls were real. He hoped Cleo had never had to fight one off.
She picked up a puzzle piece and studied it. “The guys before Sebastian weren’t interested in me.” Then, in a rush, she amended, “In us.”
“Us? You mean you and . . .?”
“Uhm, Patty. Me and Patty.”
He’d almost forgotten about the tragically dead cousin she had invented on the spur of the moment the day he’d found a picture of ten-year-old Cleo with Annaliese.
“We hung around together a lot in those days,” Cleo continued. “Annaliese’s friends seemed to see me—us—as something that had to be scheduled around.”
His stomach relaxed. “Okay. So back to the first time you met Sebastian . . .”
She dropped the piece she held and picked up another, talking while she tried to fit it in. “Annaliese wasn’t quite ready that day, so Sebastian came in to wait. He was nice. To us, I mean. Me and Patty.”
He caught himself before he could smile. She was clinging to her fabrication for all it was worth.
“When Annaliese was finally ready to go,” she said, “he insisted we come along. Because of us, they went miniature golfing instead. I was awful at it. It was a nice day, though.”
She dropped into silence, appearing to concentrate hard on the puzzle. Alec picked up a piece and tried it in a few places. It didn’t fit, so he turned it top to bottom and tried it again. No go.
“For a while,” she said as though she hadn’t let the conversation lag, “he’d show up every few days. Then he disappeared and there was a string of other guys. I was used to that, though, so it didn’t surprise me. It was, oh, I guess nearly a year before I saw him again. He came around for a while then nothing for six months or so. That’s how they were. If they did something kid-friendly together, he didn’t mind me—I mean us—tagging along. Not that there was a lot of that after the first run. I think by the time he showed back up, it was mostly about sex.”
“So you never thought he’d be . . . Patty’s new daddy.” He’d almost said your instead of Patty’s. Hopefully, she’d overlook the hesitation in the middle of his question.
He was relieved when she laughed though it didn’t hold real humor.
“No. Annaliese didn’t encourage that kind of thinking. He didn’t try to play the father either, if that’s what you’re wondering. He had two grown kids; he was emphatically not interested in raising another.” Her tone softened. “But I liked him. He didn’t talk down to me. I think he was the first person I told I wanted to be some kind of writer. He told me I was a smart cookie—for some reason, he always called me a smart cookie even when the only thing smart about me was my mouth—and I could be anything I wanted to be.”
For the first time, Alec thought he might actually have liked Sebastian. “That’s nice. Every kid should have someone to encourage them.” He shuffled some loose pieces around, absently grouping them by subtle hues. “Maybe he called you cookie because you were sweet. Like a dessert.”
She peered over her glasses again, looking like a sexy, stern librarian. It hit him in the groin.
“Not that you’re sweet to me,” he said, “but you seemed to like him better than you usually like me, so I don’t know. Maybe you were sweet to him.”
She added a hiked eyebrow to her skeptical look.
Had he really hoped she’d deny it? “Or not.”
She sighed and looked down. “I should have been nicer to him. When I was sixteen and needed a summer job, he got me on with the casino’s housekeeping department. It was my first real job.” She shook her head ruefully. “He didn’t have to do that.”
Her mouth drew into a tight line as she stared at the puzzle, but there was a blind quality to her gaze. “She didn’t do it, Alec,” she said softly. “Annaliese didn’t kill Sebastian.”
“I can’t imagine it either,” Alec said. Except he could. Everyone was capable of murder in the right circumstances.
Did that make him a cynic?
The only person he would rule out as a suspect was Jada. Cleo was right about her. She was one of those rare people. A true innocent. They’d have to invent a whole new category for any death that occurred by her hand. Murder by freak accident maybe.
He laid his hand on Cleo’s where it rested against the edge of the table. “It’s going to be all right.”
Her chest expanded with a deep breath. “You don’t know that, but thanks for saying it.” She pulled her hand out from under his. “It’s easier if someone else says it.”
“Have some faith. Annaliese is the type who lands on her feet.”
“I hope so.”
She needed, he decided, a distraction from stewing about her mother’s arrest. In his experience, action was the best cure. “You know,” he said, “cops stop looking at other suspects once they’ve made an arrest.”
She looked up, her gaze sharpening. “Are you saying we should investigate on our own?”
“You did make your name as an investigative reporter.”
Her eyes were coming back to life.
“And we do work for the media,” Alec said. “People expect us to be nosy.”
“That’s true.”
“It’s not like we aren’t already covering this story.”
She nodded slowly then got up to retrieve her laptop from the bedroom. He met her in the kitchen where she opened the lid and powered it on. “Where should we start?” she asked.
“Let’s make a list of what we know.”
It didn’t take long. Sebastian had drowned in the tub in his penthouse. He’d been drinking. Sometime Sunday evening, Annaliese had stopped by to discuss the repayment of the loan. When he became sloppy drunk, she put him to bed and left. He’d been found the next morning when the maid let herself in to clean.
“What kind of reporters are we?” Cleo asked. “We didn’t even ask Annaliese what time she was there.”
“We didn’t know it was important.” But she was right. They’d taken too much at face value. He got a couple of Cokes from the fridge, opened them, and set one in front of her. “How did Annaliese get in debt to Sebastian?” He’d wanted to ask her that before, but she wouldn’t have told him. Now it was relevant. Now there was something in it for her.
“It was a string of things.” She slid the laptop aside. “Jada had some cosmetic surgeries so she could keep working. She’s thirty, you know. Showgirls can’t sag, even a little. The surgeries and recovery time both cost money, but they were holding it together. Then they were in a car accident that injured Jada’s knee. More expenses and more lost income. They got behind on the condo payments.” She took a sip of her Coke. “Sebastian offered her a loan. She took it.”
“Interest on the loan?”
She nodded. “Then Annaliese got sued over the accident, so there were legal expenses.”
“She lost the lawsuit,” he guessed.
Cleo nodded again. “Sebastian offered to loan her more money, but she didn’t want to owe him that much. That’s when she called me.
“I didn’t know how bad it had gotten, but I could dig her out to a place where they could handle it. But I didn’t have it in cash reserves, so she took what was supposed to be a super short-term loan from Sebastian. I thought I could convert some assets and pay him back quick enough we’d all be okay.”
He leaned on the counter, supporting his upper body with his forearms. “But you couldn’t.”
“Oh no. I did. Everything should have been fine.”
“Except?”
“I told you she has the worst luck in the world. Her timing stinks, too. The night before I transferred the money in her account, she and Jada went out with some friends, and Annaliese got to telling the story about how she won the down payment for the condo at a craps table.” Cleo took a deep breath. “This is where it gets bad. She was hungover the next day, so Jada, who’s the sweetest, best-intentioned person in the world, decided to take the money to Sebastian.”
“Why do I have the bad feeling that when you say money, you mean cash.”
“Because you’ve read ahead? Yeah, lots of business is done on a cash basis here.”
“So what happened? Jada gambled it away?”
“She didn’t intend to. She just thought . . .” Cleo took another deep breath, releasing it in a long sigh. “She thought if Annaliese could get a down payment for the condo that way, she could win enough to get them completely out of the hole and even pay me back.”
“But she didn’t, of course.”
“No. And she couldn’t stop after she started losing. She kept chasing the money that was already gone.”
“Green felt disease,” Alec said. Not an uncommon affliction in Las Vegas.
She nodded. “I see you’ve heard of it. It got complicated so fast. You can declare bankruptcy on all sorts of things, but a Vegas loan isn’t one of them. Especially not if you live and work here.”
“That’s what drove you to a tabloid, isn’t it?”
She nodded, her lips tightening. “Taking a loan from Sebastian was stupid. Those kinds of loans are high interest.”
“The cops probably think the debt was Annaliese’s motive.”
Her eyes dropped and she picked at the polish on her nails. “She didn’t tell them about it.”
He winced. “Ouch. They probably found out some other way then. Which makes her look guilty for not telling them.”
“But the money’s there in her bank account.”
He looked at her over the rim of his can as he took a sip, giving her a minute to see the obvious: the money was in Annaliese’s account. Not Sebastian’s.
Cleo wilted a little as it became obvious that, if she couldn’t even convince him, the police wouldn’t buy it either, but then she straightened again. “Besides, you don’t arrest people just because they have a motive. Lots of people could have a motive. Liz, for instance. She’ll probably inherit the whole pie instead of getting a small slice from the divorce.”
“Good point. And they always look at the spouse first. So they must have something else that makes Annaliese look guilty.” He took another sip. “They’ll look at her bank account and want explanations for any unaccounted funds.” And when they saw the money Cleo had deposited, they’d want to talk to her. She was right. Things got complicated fast around Annaliese.
The worried look on Cleo’s face reminded him he was supposed to be distracting her from her mother’s arrest. “But what they’ve got must be circumstantial evidence.” He scrubbed his hand across his chin, thinking. “What if someone framed Annaliese?”
He was rewarded with an almost hopeful look from Cleo.
“Maybe they knew she was going to see Sebastian that night,” she said.
“Or maybe they saw the opportunity and took it.”
She chewed at her lower lip. “Crime of passion or a business deal gone bad?”
“Hm. Annaliese says she put him to bed because he was stumbling drunk. Unless he got himself up and into the tub, which seems unlikely, someone else did. I gotta say that doesn’t sound much like a business deal gone bad.”
“You’re right. And men are more direct. More likely to use a gun or a knife or their fists.”
“So odds are it was a woman. Which makes a crime of passion more likely.”
“Do you think whoever did it knew Annaliese was there?”
“It would be awfully coincidental if they didn’t.”
“Coincidences do happen.”
They shared a look of silent agreement. Neither of them thought the timing was coincidental.
They talked about other aspects. Whether Annaliese’s visit might have triggered the murder, about whether Sebastian might have roused on his own and got in the tub himself. About how much strength it would have taken to drown a man who was already stumbling drunk.
And then they got down to the list of women who might want him dead.