Hot Property (16 page)

She opened her mouth, about to issue some kind of greeting, when the phone rang. She held up one finger, indicating she’d be only a minute, and picked up the phone on Jillian’s desk.

“Born to Shop, this is Wendy.”

It was the caterer working on the mayor’s party.

“Yes, that’s right, we’ve upped the guest list to 210. And Mrs. Munn has changed her mind about the shrimp canapés. She wants liver pâté instead. Oh, by the way, Sellman’s Meat Market has the best … you already knew that. Okay. I’ll confirm everything with you tomorrow.”

“Still working on the mayor’s party?” Michael asked, swiveling a chair around and straddling it.

She nodded. “Mrs. Munn is standing behind me a hundred percent. A lot of my other clients are on the guest list. If they see that the Munns still trust me, maybe they will too. I have to make sure I don’t mess anything up, either. I still have to make last-minute
arrangements with the florist, the valet-parking attendants, security …” She realized she was rambling.

She sank into Jillian’s chair. “So, let’s have it. What do you need to know?”

“It’s about James Batliner.”

Wendy’s heart sank. She didn’t owe James anything, but she’d been hoping to shield him from the investigation. His employer was so uptight, he might suffer repercussions if her legal troubles spilled over onto him. “What about him?”

“Did his behavior change in the past six months? Any unexplained absences, sudden show of wealth, secretive behavior?”

“You think James might be Mr. Neff?” Wendy laughed. That was ludicrous.

“I think he might be Mr. Neff’s accomplice. A man meeting your lover-boy’s description opened Mr. Neff’s bank account.”

She sobered immediately. Was it possible? She tried to give Michael’s question serious consideration. “He did have a pretty flashy lifestyle,” she said. “Drove a Porsche, wore Italian suits, that kind of thing. But his family has money. Lots of it. There’s no way his salary could support his habits, but I always assumed he had a trust fund or something.”

“Did he have access to your computer?”

She nodded. “He liked to play games on it. Sometimes he would start some space war game and play it till three or four in the morning.”

“So he used your computer for long periods of time without your monitoring him?”

“Well, yeah. But my work files were password protected, and I never told him my password. There was no reason to.”

“Wendy,
I
know your password. You should never use something as easy as your birthday.”

She stared at him in stunned silence. “How did you—”

“It doesn’t matter. Anyone could have broken into your files. Which means there are lots of potential suspects now.”

Wendy shook her head vehemently. “Not my staff. Not them. Don’t you dare question them.” They were so good, so loyal. All of them had stood behind her when they’d found out about the accusations against her. They’d all volunteered to testify on her behalf as character witnesses.

“If not your staff or James, then who? If we don’t come up with a viable alternative, the jury will convict you. Whoever engineered those burglaries got the security codes from your computer or your organizer, no doubt about it. Help me figure out who it is, or my hands are tied.”

Wendy took a deep breath. She’d met with Nathaniel that morning, and he’d told her that her case looked grim. His private investigator hadn’t turned up anything the police hadn’t already found. If she didn’t come up with the real guilty party, she was going to jail.

Was it remotely possible James was in on the crime? She’d like to believe she was a better judge of
character. But she hadn’t in a million years believed James was a philanderer, either, till he’d confessed.

“I feel like a real witch saying this,” she said, “but I suppose James could be involved.”

“Great,” Michael said, warming to the idea. “Do you have a picture of him?”

She had to think a minute. “Wait.” She went to the back of the office, to the cubbyhole where her desk was. There, in the drawer, she found some snapshots taken at James’s family’s Christmas party. There were a couple of pretty good ones of James. She pulled them out of the envelope and hurried back to Michael.

“Will these do?”

Michael studied them, and a strange expression came over his face. She thought for one breathtaking moment that he was going to kick something or tear the pictures up. Then he pressed his mouth into a grim line and stuck the snapshots into the inside pocket of his sport coat. “They’ll do. Oh, Wendy. Your mother’s still living, right?”

“Yes, but she’s in Florida, thank God, where news of my arrest will never reach her, unless one of her nosy but well-meaning friends sends her the newspaper clipping. Why?”

“I’d like to talk to her.”

A wave of panic washed over Wendy. “You can’t!”

He flashed an almost predatory smile. “Afraid she’ll contradict something you’ve told me?”

“No, no, it isn’t that.” Wendy and her mother had long ago gotten their stories straight regarding Wendy’s father. Marcella Thayer wouldn’t contradict
her daughter. “It’s just that if she finds out I’ve been arrested, she’ll be very upset.” Marcella would think Wendy was her father’s Bad Seed. During all of Wendy’s growing-up years her mother had watched her closely, worried that some of her ex-husband’s aspects would manifest in their offspring when she wasn’t looking.

“Any other family? You told me your father died when you were five. Does he have any relatives you’re close to?”

Why this sudden interest in her family? she wondered. She supposed investigations into family background were normal and routine, but it made her nervous. Not that there was any way Michael could guess her father’s true whereabouts. If he did, if he knew about it, he would have to include it in his report. And once the D.A. got hold of the fact that her father was a habitual criminal, she would be toast.

That’s why she hadn’t been truthful with Michael. She knew he would never lie for her.

“No, there’s no one,” she said.

Abruptly he got up and headed toward the door without even saying good-bye, though after he’d turned the dead bolt to let himself out, he ordered her to lock the door behind him.

Michael’s heart ached as he sat at his desk later that afternoon, filling out a report on the Wendy Thayer case. He’d lost Wendy before he’d ever really had her
in more than a purely physical sense, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

She’d lied to him. Looked him right in the eye and lied about her father. Michael had checked out James’s story, of course. And there was, indeed, a Dickson Thayer in Leavenworth serving ten-to-twenty for wire fraud. If Wendy didn’t trust him enough to confide a painful part of her past to him, then how could he trust her with the really important stuff?

It had taken him until now to realize how important she’d become to him. If he thought it would serve any useful purpose, he would go to his supervisor and request that the case be turned over to another detective, that he’d lost his objectivity. But he couldn’t make himself do that. Another detective might not put the care into the investigation that Michael had. Another detective might look at the surface facts, assume Wendy was guilty, and ignore any leads that contradicted that conclusion.

He’d
certainly followed every lead he could think of. He had an appointment the next morning with the bank employee. He intended to show her a photo lineup, mixing James’s snapshot in with a few other handsome, fair-haired men in their thirties to see if she would pick him out.

But even if he succeeded in casting blame on James Batliner, that wouldn’t get Wendy off the hook. She and James had been more than casual acquaintances. The easy intimacy between them had been obvious in one of the pictures Wendy had given him. James’s arm had been casually slung around Wendy’s shoulders.
And Wendy, looking delectable in a dark green velvet dress, her hair loose and curly around her face, had been looking at him with a smile of fondness and familiarity.

The picture had produced a visceral reaction in Michael, and it had been all he could do not to reveal how insanely jealous her past relationship with James made him feel.

A shadow fell across his desk. He looked up, and though he hadn’t believed his heart could sink any lower, it did. Standing before him was Mayor Munn, and hizzonor wasn’t smiling.

“Wendy hasn’t been cleared yet,” the mayor said succinctly. “That article in the paper could ruin her. And it will be on your conscience.”

Michael steeled himself for the verbal battle he knew was coming. Munn had won the last election after a series of televised debates, during which he trounced his opponent with both logic and quick thinking.

“Ms. Thayer’s arrest is a matter of public record,” Michael said, telling himself to remain calm. “I have no control over what the press prints. But I did stress to the reporter who interviewed me that Ms. Thayer’s guilt was not a foregone conclusion.” His investigative work couldn’t be faulted. He was confident he would have the right answers to the mayor’s questions.

The mayor glared. “Maybe I didn’t make myself understood. I want the woman cleared, and I want it done today. If you haven’t found the evidence to do that, then you need to put in some overtime.”

Michael was tired of his investigation being called into question. “Let me make
my
self clear,” he said through gritted teeth. It was all he could do not to stand up and mirror the mayor’s intimidating posture. “I am doing everything I know how to do. Would you like to review the file? Maybe you can find a lead I’ve missed, a piece of evidence I’ve overlooked. But I doubt it. Because I’ve spent more hours on this case than any other five cases I’ve ever worked, combined. I’ve interviewed dozens of witnesses, logged almost a hundred phone calls. And I don’t appreciate some rich fat cat from city hall telling me I’m not doing my job, even if he is ex-FBI.”

The entire squad room, he noticed, had gone unnaturally silent. Even the phones had stopped ringing.

Munn fairly vibrated with rage. “No one talks to me like that. I’ll have your badge, Taggert.” He swung on his heel and walked away as if he had a steel rod up his back.

As soon as the mayor was gone, a spotty round of applause broke out among the other detectives in Theft.

“Way to go, Tagg,” Smythe called from his desk in a back corner. “Way to work those political connections.”

Michael made a rude gesture toward his colleagues. “Y’all are just jealous ’cause I’ll be out of this hellhole pretty soon,” he said, pretending he wasn’t disturbed by the mayor’s threat. “I’ll be working for a real law enforcement agency.”

“Yeah, or you’ll be in the unemployment line,” Smythe said.

Michael ignored the good-natured ribbing and went back to his report. He wasn’t altogether sure that Smythe was wrong. He suspected the mayor was mostly bluster, but what if he
could
exert enough influence to get Michael fired? If he nixed his appointment to the FBI, that was survivable. He still had a job, one that he was damn good at despite the lack of promotions, one he usually enjoyed despite the frustrations. Anyway, he wasn’t feeling as confident about the Bureau anymore. His potential employers had been distressingly quiet this past week.

Joe wandered over to Michael’s desk. “Hey, Tagg, you still planning on skipping the mayor’s party? ’Cause it might be a chance for you to earn some major brownie points. I hear Munn’s invited some of his former Fibbie colleagues.”

“Hmm.” Michael accompanied his noncommittal reply with a shrug. More than likely, the mayor would use his party as an opportunity to squeeze the vice a little tighter. Or embarrass him in front of his potential future employers.

“You know who’s put the whole party together, right?” Joe asked with an unmistakable leer.

“Yeah.” Wendy had been obsessing about this bash for days.

“Chatty, aren’t you. Don’t you want to see our little suspect in action?”

“I’ve seen her in action.” Her presence at the party was his number one reason for wanting to skip the
whole thing. He wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, but he was torn up about Wendy Thayer—about her lying, about her leaving him that morning, about the possibility of her going to jail. She’d twisted him up into so many knots, he didn’t think he’d ever be the same.

The old man had never felt so frustrated. He couldn’t leave the country until he had this little matter of Wendy Thayer tied up—otherwise he might not be able to come back. Did Tahiti have an extradition agreement with the United States?

But back to Wendy. She’d eluded his best man. She managed to slip around as easily as a shadow, shielding her whereabouts with an expertise that amazed him. And when he did know her location, she constantly surrounded herself with people, particularly cops, making it impossible for anyone to execute a clean hit.

He could see now that he’d made a mistake by not taking care of her himself. But he’d have another chance Saturday night. It wouldn’t be hard to lure her away from the crowd. And though her death would be ruled a homicide, the police force would have a whole house full of suspects—hundreds of them—to contend with. He would be the last person they’d question.

The day of the mayor’s party dawned clear and bright. Wendy got out of bed with renewed optimism. No one had tried to kill her in a couple of days. She’d even managed to wedge a video aerobics routine into her morning before the phone started ringing.

Wendy knew who it would be even before she picked up the receiver. Alice Munn was a dear lady, the aunt of one of Wendy’s high school friends. She was a pleasure to work for and one of Born to Shop’s best clients. But she was a worrywart, and she’d never thrown a party of this magnitude.

Neither had Wendy. But everything was in place.

“Wendy,” Alice said, breathless. “I’m sorry to bother you at home, but where are the party favors? We have to have party favors.”

“They’re in the trunk of my rental car.” As the guests departed, a footman would hand each one a
small vial of rare perfume or a set of designer golf tees, depending on their sex.