“JUDD, IT’S SATURDAY afternoon. The reunion will be over by tomorrow morning. What have you got?”
Nothing but a headache and heartache, he thought.
“Today’s been a total bust so far. Warner slept in until nearly noon, so I couldn’t get near him or his room. Then we had this dumb boat ride around Miami harbor. Warner buzzed my room and asked me to join him. I was hoping he’d finally get down to talking business. I show on the boat and guess what?”
“He didn’t,” Roz said.
“You got it,” Judd said, not adding that Lucy hadn’t been on board, either. “I just got back. So there you have it. My progress report in a nutshell,” he added dryly.
“Well, cheer up, I’ve got something for you. Gina Reed called me a few minutes ago. Found out something that might be important. She popped into the office this afternoon, thinking, since it was Saturday, no one would be around and she could do some more snooping. Only Warner’s secretary was there. She got nervous when she saw Gina, and babbled something about finding a client folder that had been misfiled in another broker’s file cabinet. She was all upset about it because Warner is paranoid—the secretary’s word—about keeping all his client info under lock and key in his office.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he said sardonically.
“Maybe this will surprise you,” Roz continued. “Warner’s secretary refused to let Gina have a look at the folder, but Gina was able to catch a gander at the client’s name—”
“Get to the point, Roz.” His eyes were on his watch. It was almost five. He was expecting Danielle to show up any minute to escort him over to Morales’s penthouse. Now more than ever, he was literally itching to meet this Romeo mobster. His hands clenched into tight fists.
“You’re sounding awfully tense, Judd. It doesn’t have anything to do with your reunion with Lucy Warner, does it?”
“Who’s the client, Roz?”
“A mobster by the name of—”
“Rico Morales.”
“How the hell did you know?”
So Kyle was lying to Lucy—big surprise—about Danielle introducing him to Morales tonight. The mobster was already a client of his. Kyle was just covering his bases.
“Wait a second,” he muttered. “Then Lucy wasn’t the one who set him up with Morales. Maybe I had it all wrong.” A weight suddenly lifted. If he was wrong about that, maybe he had it all wrong. He laughed.
“Judd, are you all right? You’re babbling.” Roz was really bewildered now.
“Sorry. Just thinking out loud. This is getting damn complicated. I need to…I need to go, Roz. I’ll fill you in…later.”
“How about a few hints, Judd? I think—”
He clicked off his cell phone, once again cutting his boss off midsentence.
BY FIVE-FIFTEEN, Danielle had not arrived, and Judd was getting antsy. Worried that she was having second thoughts about introducing him to Morales, he decided to go looking for her. He tried her room first, but there was no response to his knocks. Either she wasn’t in there or—
He flashed on an image of Danielle and Kyle rolling around on her bed. He knocked again. Harder. And kept it up for almost a minute. If the pair was in there, at least Judd would have the satisfaction of disturbing their activities.
A middle-aged man occupying the room next door popped his head out and gave him an angry look.
“Do you mind?” the man said sharply. “I’m trying to take a nap.”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s…my sister. She’s a little…deaf.”
“She’s also not in her room.”
“She isn’t?” For a second Judd thought Danielle might be in her next-door neighbor’s hotel room.
“These damn walls are paper thin. I can hear every time your sister’s door opens and closes. It closed over an hour ago. And it hasn’t opened since.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s out,” Judd said. “She could have gone into her room an hour ago—”
“Like I said, pal, these walls are paper thin. Your sister’s not the quietest person. No disrespect meant. Believe me, if she was in her room, I’d know it.”
Judd believed him. He went down to the lobby, stopping at the front desk. His snitch, the pretty, young desk clerk, wasn’t on duty so there was no way to find out if Danielle had left the hotel or not.
He surveyed the crowded space. While he didn’t spot Danielle there, he saw a slew of old Florida State classmates, all of them wearing ID tags with their college yearbook photos attached, milling around, hugging, slapping backs, chattering away. A few people waved in his direction, but only a couple came over to greet him. He hadn’t exactly been Mr. Popular back in college.
He started across the lobby to check out the Tango Room, but he was waylaid before he got there.
Judd didn’t place the slight man at first, but then he realized it was Gary Burke, the biochem student from Florida State who’d become a gynecologist, and who had checked him out when he’d hit his head at the pool.
Judd’s hand automatically went to the back of his head. As he’d predicted, thanks to that collision with the shower pole, the bump was, indeed, the size of a goose egg. Not that he had any intention of getting into this second mishap with Gary. “Oh, it’s fine.”
“No more stars in your eyes?” There was a twinkle in Gary’s eyes.
“I’m seeing perfectly clearly now,” Judd assured him. That might have been the biggest whopper he’d told all day!
“You looking for Lucy?” That twinkle was still present.
“No,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I’m looking for another old classmate. Danielle Brunaud. Do you remember Danielle?”
Gary laughed heartily. “Man, who at Florida State doesn’t remember Danielle? Not that she ever gave me the time of day.” He squinted at Judd. “Don’t tell me you two had a—?”
“No.”
Gary nodded. “No. I didn’t think so.” He gave Judd’s shoulder a sympathetic pat. “Guys like us never did get girls like Danielle.” He winked. “Or Lucy Weston. Man, talk about a knockout. That guy Warner’s one lucky bastard.” His lips compressed. “You’d think he’d be satisfied with one out of two.”
“What do you mean?”
Gary shrugged. “I probably shouldn’t be telling tales out of school—”
“We’re not in school anymore,” Judd reminded him.
Gary glanced around the lobby, waving at a few old classmates. Only one of them waved back. Judd was surprised to see that the waver was a small but very attractive blonde. He didn’t recognize her. And from this distance, she appeared younger than most of the other alums.
“When Bri and I were strolling down Lincoln Road Mall a short while ago—” He paused, waving again to the good-looking blonde who was now wending her way toward them. “That’s Bri. We’ve been married almost four years.” He nudged Judd. “We’re not all in Kansas anymore,” he said with both pride and adoration, his eyes following his lovely wife’s progress.
Judd was pleased to see that Gary Burke had gotten the last laugh. But right now he wanted the doc to concentrate on his tale. “So you were strolling down Lincoln Road…”
Gary nodded. “Right. And we popped into one of those pricey designer boutiques because Bri spotted this really beautiful and—naturally—very expensive pair of Brazilian leather slacks in the window. You couldn’t miss ’em. They were cranberry-red—wait. I’ll let Bri tell it.”
Gary’s wife had made it to her husband’s side by now and she kissed him lovingly on his cheek.
“Bri, darling, this is Judd Turner. Judd’s one of the good guys,” he said affably.
Bri shook Judd’s hand. He saw that she was even better looking up close. And he doubted she was a day over twenty-five.
“I’m glad to hear that,” she told Judd, then cast a bemused glance over at her husband. “Because the rest of your old classmates—” she made a sweeping gesture with her hand “—seem depressingly dull. Most of them must have majored in basket weaving back in college.”
“Bri’s a criminal attorney. The youngest partner at Carter, Rutenberg & Taylor.” Gary winked. “If you ever get into any trouble with the law—”
Judd felt a shiver run down his spine.
She poked her husband. “Hey, we both promised—no business talk while we’re down here.”
The pair kissed.
Judd cleared his throat. “Gary was telling me about your visit to a boutique on Lincoln Road.”
She giggled. “Did he get to the part about the dressing room?”
Gary laughed along with his wife. “No, I thought I’d let you tell it since you were the eyewitness.”
“Eyewitness to what?” Judd asked, narrowing his gaze.
“I was in my dressing room, trying on this divine pair of leather slacks, which, by the way, I bought—”
“Naturally,” Gary said amiably, slipping an arm around his lawyer wife’s narrow waist.
“And all of a sudden I hear these…moans coming from the dressing room next to mine. Well, naturally I thought someone must be ill—”
Gary smiled. “Naturally.” His eyes sparkled mischievously. “What else would you think?”
She giggled again. “Certainly not that the moans weren’t the result of pain, but—”
Gary couldn’t wait for his wife to get to the punch line. “Bri walked in and caught them in the act. Kyle Warner and Danielle Brunaud.”
Judd couldn’t say he was surprised. He’d just gotten the location wrong.
Bri was laughing harder. “And here’s the funniest part. The woman—she was French and well, you know the French—looked straight at me while the guy was hurriedly pulling up his trousers, and she nonchalantly asks me to get her a pair of slacks in a size four like the ones I was wearing.”
“She thought Bri was a salesgirl,” Gary said, chuckling.
Judd had as good a sense of humor as the next guy. And if the story had involved any other pair of lovers, he would have gotten a few laughs out of it himself. But he was far from being amused. “How did you know it was Kyle and Danielle?” he asked her.
“I didn’t. But I pointed them out to Gary as they were leaving the boutique.”
Gary sobered up a bit. “Is it true Warner’s engaged to Lucy Weston?”
Judd’s gaze narrowed. “Not for long.”