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Alec walked into El Dorado’s executive suites with sixty seconds to spare. All the doors facing the central corridor were closed because, he presumed, it was Sunday and because he was confident Bales would have rescheduled if any of the executives were in.
She looked up from her computer screen when he entered her office, then tapped a couple of keys on her keyboard before standing. “Sebastian’s office is more comfortable. Shall we do this there?”
“Wherever suits you.” He followed her into the office.
She took Sebastian’s black, Italian leather executive chair, picked up an expensive pen out of the pencil caddy, and flicked it back and forth between her fingers.
He sat in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk.
“How’s your research going?” Bales asked.
“It’s going well. Although it took an interesting turn today.”
“Oh?” She queried him with her eyebrows.
He ignored the question because he hadn’t decided yet how to introduce Cleo’s speculation. “I hear Sebastian’s children are in town.” Robbie had told him that when he’d sat down at his table.
“Yes, they checked in last night.”
“I suppose they’re getting the royal treatment.”
“It’s not doing much good,” she said. “I’ve already heard complaints from the staff. They don’t seem to care for El Dorado much. Not that I’m surprised. Their mother poisoned them against anything that had to do with their father.”
“A lot of hostility even after all these years?”
“Not openly. It’s more of a loaded silence. Sebastian paid someone to keep tabs on his kids, so he’d know when they hit milestones. Weddings, births . . . divorces.”
“The background I’ve got on his daughter says she’s been divorced twice, but the son seems to have a stable marriage,” Alec said.
“Not as stable as it looks from the outside. He’s separated a couple of times from his wife, but they’ve always reconciled. If you believe in psychobabble, you could probably lay that at Sebastian’s door. The absent, unfaithful father off building an empire instead of tossing a ball around in the backyard with the kids.”
“You don’t buy that though, do you?”
“I believe there’s a seed of truth in some of it, but too often it’s the excuse people use so they don’t have to take responsibility for their own screw ups.”
“Good point. So the kids have swallowed their resentment to see if they got any of the old man’s empire. How much will they get?”
“More than they deserve.” Her voice was tight with . . . bitterness? Judgment?
She valued loyalty, so it didn’t surprise him she thought Sebastian’s children weren’t worthy.
“In any case, we’ll find out tomorrow,” she said.
“I’m surprised. I figured you’d know.”
“The last time I knew for a fact what was in Sebastian’s will was after Loretta divorced him.”
“Okay. So the kids could get it all. Or they could get nothing. Or they could end up splitting the whole shooting match with Liz.” He gave Bales a chance to jump in with a guess, but she stayed silent. “That could turn into quite a little drama. Watching them fight over the casino.” He wished he could be there to see that.
“That won’t happen.”
Alec gave her a look that invited her to explain.
“The Gaming Commission has to approve casino ownership. There will be a Commission-appointed team overseeing operations until the dust settles, but in all likelihood, Sebastian’s heirs will end up selling. None of them have the experience necessary to run this place.”
“That’ll make things less messy.” When she didn’t respond, he crossed one leg over the other in a casual pose. “I heard an interesting rumor today.”
“You can’t trust rumors.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. In my experience, the office grapevine can be remarkably fruitful. It has to be verified, of course.”
“Naturally. What’s the rumor?”
He paused. He wanted to be sure he caught every nuance of Bales’ reaction. “Is there any chance Liz could be pregnant?”
“That’s impossible,” she said without hesitation.
“Impossible?”
She quirked an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t I already mention Sebastian’s marriage to Loretta fell apart because he got a vasectomy without clearing it with her?”
She had. But he’d known Liz might be pregnant for less than an hour and the memory of their initial interview hadn’t resurfaced yet. Even as he processed the reminder, Bales looked at him hard.
A few seconds later, her face puckered with anger. “That stupid little bitch,” she hissed.
It wasn’t confirmation, but her reaction gave Cleo’s intuition more plausibility.
“Could she not have known about his vasectomy?” he asked.
Bales was slow to answer, her expression sour as she gnawed on his revelation. Finally, she said, “It’s possible. It’s not exactly a secret, but it’s not something everyone knew.”
“And it’s old news,” Alec said. “But isn’t that something most men would mention?”
“Sebastian wasn’t most men,” she snapped.
Alec fell silent. When she’d had enough time to process the immediate implications but not enough to decide what to withhold, he said, “You said they had a fight a couple of days before he died. Do you think this might be what it was about?” If the pregnancy was a fact, he would bet this was the source of the fight, but it wasn’t his job to print what he thought.
Bales’ lips tightened into a thin line.
And then he remembered what else Bales had said at their first interview; Sebastian had made an appointment with his attorney to change his will immediately after the fight. A mere two days before his death. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Does the name Dave Marsh ring any bells?”
A flicker in her eyes said it did. “Why do you ask?”
“He’s someone I met in the casino.” Alec looked at his notes as though he needed to check them, not wanting her to know yet how pivotal the question was. “I believe he works in security.”
“No, he actually works in IT, but he’s on a specialized team that liaisons with security. They make sure the camera feeds from the casino get stored digitally and their computers are secure. Things like that.” Her lips were tight again. “He’s also Liz’s first husband.”
Cleo was right; Dave hadn’t been a kind stranger reaching out to help Liz. Not that Alec had ever really thought that, but some part of him had still doubted Cleo’s intuition even as he’d thrown the question at Bales.
But knowing Liz had been married to Dave Marsh . . . That threw a different light on things. No wonder Liz hadn’t wanted to talk about him in their interview.
His mind was spinning from all the unexplored implications. “How long has Liz’s ex-husband worked here?”
Bales shrugged one shoulder. “A couple of years, I think. No, a little longer than that. He was hired before Sebastian started seeing Liz.”
Had they planned it from the beginning? From the moment Liz caught Sebastian’s eye?
Alec had planned to spend longer talking to Bales, but his thoughts were tumbling over each other like clumsy puppies, and he was afraid he’d make a misstep he couldn’t recover from, so he said, “I need to go. There’s something I need to follow up on.”
“Of course,” Bales said, her voice heavily laced with amusement. She clearly enjoyed having pitched a curve ball at him. “If you hear any more wild rumors, you’ll let me know, won’t you?” She looked like she meant it. As if rumors were something she could sharpen and store in an arsenal.
“You’ll be the first one I come to,” Alec promised.
~***~
Ten seconds after Alec walked into the condo, Cleo grabbed his arm and pulled him into the kitchen. “I’ve been thinking about Liz being pregnant all afternoon.”
“So have I.” Whatever she’d been thinking, he was about to blow it all out of the water.
“I think Bales was right. Liz is a gold digger.”
He sat down on one of the stools while she went around the counter to pour him a cup of coffee, talking at a hundred miles an hour the whole time. He was going to need the caffeine to keep up with her.
“I know you said you were giving her the benefit of the doubt, thinking underneath it all she might have cared for him,” Cleo said, her hands clearly on autopilot as she stirred cream into his coffee because her brain—and her mouth—were in warp drive, “but what if all she was after all along was the money?” She wagged the spoon at him, spattering drops of coffee across the counter. “In spite of what she says, I think Sebastian was serious about the divorce. I think she got pregnant because she thought that would stop him.”
“I don’t think she did.”
“What? No, you don’t know how conniving some women are. She probably thought he’d―”
“It’s not Sebastian’s,” he said.
That finally stalled her. A moment of silence followed his bombshell. “What?”
“It’s not Sebastian’s.”
Her brow furrowed. “How do you know that?”
“Sebastian had a vasectomy. It’s what put the last coffin nail in his marriage to Loretta. Can I have my coffee?”
Cleo’s eyes widened.
“Bales mentioned it in our first interview, but I forgot about it.”
“You forgot? Really?” She set his coffee in front of him, but she didn’t seem aware of doing it. Then she waved her hand, dismissing her question, and Alec fell for her a little.
A woman who didn’t beat up on him over something he couldn’t change? Priceless.
“Does Bales know Liz is pregnant?” Cleo’s eyes widened further. “Did Liz know about the vasectomy?”
“I told Bales I heard a rumor. It surprised her, but she came to grips with it fast enough, and no, she doesn’t know if Liz knew about the vasectomy. It’s possible she didn’t.”
From the look on Cleo’s face, she’d barely heard what he said. He could practically see the gears turning behind her eyes as the implications bombarded her.
“She couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to get pregnant by someone else. Even if she didn’t know about the vasectomy. Not if they had an open marriage.”
And yet if Cleo was right, Liz had done just that.
“She had to know Sebastian would insist on paternity tests.” She fell silent for a moment then added, “And Sebastian didn’t want any more kids. If she didn’t know anything else, she had to know that.”
“That’s why I think it was an accident,” Alec said. “But she might have figured he’d relent. Or maybe she figured this would be a way to get more money out of him. As rich as Sebastian is, the courts would have given her some hefty child support.”
“But he’d want paternity tests,” Cleo said, repeating her very valid point.
“Maybe she didn’t think about that. Or maybe she thought Sebastian would be sensitive to people knowing she’d gotten pregnant by someone else while they were married. We guys can be funny about stuff like that.” He leaned forward. “And maybe the fight they had in his office last Friday was because she told Sebastian about the baby. Maybe he threatened to cut her off completely, and maybe she killed to stop him from changing his will.”
Cleo looked at him as if he were Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and Prince Charming all rolled into one. “Oh my God. What if she did? What if she killed him?” She bit her lip. “How are we going to prove it?”
“I say we start with the baby’s father.”
“That could be anyone. I mean, that Marsh guy might think he’s the father, but it doesn’t make it true. And she might have told him that to get something from him.” She gasped. “What if she had him kill Sebastian?”
Alec couldn’t help laughing at her. She was so excited, her mind pinging around like a pinball.
“Well, I can’t rule any of that out, but I’m willing to bet big bucks the father is Liz’s ex-husband.” He let a beat pass before he threw out the clincher. “That would be ‘that Marsh guy,’ by the way.” He grinned and delivered the coup de grace. “He’s also employed by El Dorado. In some hybrid crossover between IT and security.”
Cleo gasped again, giving him the reaction he was hoping for. He could really get used to that awed look she directed at him. Then she tapped her bottom lip with her index finger.
“If he has the knowledge and the access . . . Sebastian could have had the cameras on, but this guy could have erased it. He could have covered her tracks through the entire casino.” She jumped up and started pacing. “We’ll have to feel him out and get as much background on him as we can. You’ve met him. Do you think we’ve got a chance? Can we get him to admit any of this? Oh hell, probably not. He’d have to know he’s an accessory to murder.” She stopped on the other side of the breakfast bar and planted her hands on its surface. “I wish we had enough to break a story. We could push the cops into looking at Liz again.”
Alec smiled. She was truly magnificent. “Chica, you forget; you don’t work for The Sun any more. You work for The Inside Word. We report rumors and innuendo all the time. It’s one of the things you hate about us, remember? As long as we call it a rumor, our legal team will let us go to press with this any time we want.”
She looked at him and blinked twice. And that was when it happened. Like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, her lips stretched slowly into a smile. A big, beautiful, thousand-watt Cleo smile.
She might as well have hit him with a two-ton atomic bomb because, in that moment, there was nothing she could ever want he wouldn’t do his damnedest to give her.
When she came around to his side, he parted his knees, so she could step into the V between his legs. The promise in her eyes as she draped her arms around his neck captivated him. “You, mister, are going to get so lucky tonight.”
“I already have.” Having her in his life was more luck than any one man deserved. “But I can always use more luck,” he said before he kissed her.
~***~
The late afternoon sun slanted over the west end of the golf course behind the condo as Alec sat down on the patio glider to call Jackson. Jada had been out there sunbathing earlier, and a bottle of gold nail polish still sat on the small wooden table between him and a webbed lounge chair. He picked it up and rolled it in his fingers while he waited for Jackson to pick up.
“’Lo,” Jackson said in his I-was-out-late-and-I’m-cranky voice.
Alec grinned. “Been abducted by aliens lately?”
“Oh, it’s you.”
“Sorry. I know you’re waiting for a call from Miss Nude America. That probably came in while you were recovering from whatever party you went to last night.”
Jackson groaned. “Yeah. Last night. Got in about four in the A.M. Man, those dudes know how to party.”
“Whose party was it?”
“Callum’s.”
Callum was Nigel’s nephew and sometimes freelance photographer for The Word. At only twenty-two, his parties were already legendary, but there was always a hefty price to be paid the morning after.
“A little hung over, are we?” Alec asked.
“More like a lot. I must be getting old. I don’t bounce back like I used to.”
“Well, I’m sure there were some little green women at the party to make it all worthwhile.” Jackson specialized in alien abduction stories.
“Nope. They’re a sexually dimorphic race. The men may be short and green, but the women are tall and blue.”
“Sounds very Avatar.”
“Yeah, but with tits.”
Hangover notwithstanding, Jackson never changed.
“So how’s the Ice Queen?” Jackson asked, starting to sound like he was going to live.
Alec almost asked, “Who?” but caught himself in the nick of time. How had his perceptions of Cleo changed so radically in . . . Wow. A mere ten days.
“Has she frozen your balls off yet?” Jackson laughed, amused, as usual, with his own wit. “I’ll bet she takes blue balls to a whole new level.”
Alec cringed.
“How many cold showers are you up to a day, mi amigo?”
“None.”
“Liar. Unless you’ve started liking guys or . . . You dog.” Jackson sounded like he’d made a complete recovery. “You’re doing her, aren’t you?”
“Jax―”
“Is she as hot in bed as she looks, or is she one of those stuck-up women who only wants to do it missionary style?”
“Jax―”
“Yeah, like it matters. With tits like that, who cares if you don’t get to do it doggie style?”
It hurt—actually, physically pained him—to hear Jackson talk about Cleo like she was nothing but a hot body. Or maybe the pain came from knowing that the person he’d been a week ago would have found Jackson’s comments funny.
“Hey, man, I really owe you an apology,” Jackson said. “I never thought you could nail that. Screw Elvis. The king is dead. There’s a new king in town. All hail―”
“Jackson, stop!”
The silence that followed was so complete Alec thought one of their phones had gone dead. “It’s not like that,” he said.
He could hear Jackson’s confusion in the silence that followed.
“What do you mean? You are doing her, right?”
“I mean . . .” What did he mean? How could he explain this so Jackson would understand? Especially when he wasn’t sure he understood himself. But there was one thing Jackson would understand. “She’s a good reporter. Maybe the best I’ve ever worked with.”
“Wow. That’s hurtful.”
“Sorry, man. I don’t mean to take anything away from you, but yeah, she’s that good.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. She’s got this killer instinct. And she sees things I miss.”
“Like what?”
“Just . . . things. Which brings me to why I called.”
“Yeah, ’cause obviously it wasn’t to brag. What do you need, bro?”
Alec breathed a sigh of relief. Jackson was a hound dog, but when it came to a story, he was reliable.
“I need you to find out everything you can about a Vegas resident named Dave Marsh, especially anything that relates to his marriage and divorce from Liz Morrow.”
“Sure. I can do that, but you’re boots-on-the-ground. It’d probably be easier for you to unearth whatever you’re looking for there.”
“Yeah, but the bail hearing is tomorrow.” Which he had to cover because, according to Cleo, Annaliese didn’t want her there. “And it’s not like I don’t have a bunch of other leads to follow, so if you can gather the basic data, it’ll save me time.”
“All those leads,” Jackson said in a tone of mock sympathy. “Sounds like an embarrassment of riches. How soon do you need this?”
“Yesterday, but unless your little green men have mastered time travel, tomorrow will have to do. I’ll call you in the afternoon to see what you’ve got.”
“I’ll have it ready.” A short pause. “So word around the office is Cleo has some connection to the killer.”
“The alleged killer.” He’d known word would get around sooner or later. “I’m not convinced they’ve arrested the right person.”
“You’re not jerking my chain, are you? You really think somebody else did it?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“Oh man. You bust open a story like this and bring it home, Papa Nigel will be so proud.”
“Yeah, I could get a bonus out of this. Maybe even a raise.”
Jackson laughed. “You’re dreaming. They’ll give her the credit, it being her turf after all. Not to mention making Nigel look like a genius for hiring her.”
Mierde. Jackson was right. No matter what Alec contributed, the best he’d get was credit for guiding Cleo because it came down to politics. It was the single thing he’d hated most about his internship at The Post. Not that most jobs didn’t have some degree of office politics, but he’d never been caught at the wrong end of it at The Word before.
If it were a trivial story, he wouldn’t mind Cleo getting all the kudos, but it wasn’t. It was the kind of story management was going to remember. Being able to claim credit would be something that would keep him at the front of the line when they handed out plum assignments. But if they brought this in, he’d have to compete with Cleo for those stories. And she was good enough, she could steal them out from under him.
He tried to put his concern behind him after he hung up with Jackson, telling himself that, when the time came, he’d fight for his rightful share of the credit, but it chaffed at him. Even the reminder that they didn’t have the story locked down yet didn’t put it in a perspective where he could let it go.