“Griffen!”
She laughed. “You can be such a Boston prude, you know that? Honestly. However, we didn’t come here to harangue you. The police will step up their investigation now that this guy’s shown a capacity for violence. The Palm Beach crowd won’t stand for a cocky thief waltzing into their parties and ripping necklaces off their throats. I expect they’ll beef up security, too. In fact, I’m catering a luncheon on Tuesday on that very subject. One of the women’s societies is sponsoring it. You should come.”
“I might,” Mollie said.
They finished the muffins and coffee, chatting about the weather and the weekend goings-on and a little bit about work. Griffen and Deegan were off to the beach for a couple of hours before she had to pull together a small dinner party up in West Palm that evening.
After they left, Mollie found herself wandering around on the terrace and in the yard, smelling flowers, trying to stop herself from shaking. She’d thought she’d be fine this morning. And she wasn’t. She kept thinking of the gloved hand on her neck, of her relief when Jeremiah came to her side, of his questions and suspicions and his damned open mind.
“Damn it,” she said aloud, charging across the lawn. She didn’t stop at the pool’s edge. She just thought, to hell with it, and jumped in, clothes and bruised, cut neck and all. The muffins and coffee churned in her stomach, but the water was just cool enough, refreshing, swirling around her and slowly, inexorably easing out the accumulated tension in her mind and body. She swam until her muscles cried out in protest, then crawled out of the pool and lay on her stomach on the warm terrace, letting the sun dry her, telling herself if Jeremiah had stayed last night, they’d both be regretting it now.
Finally, she headed upstairs with a vague plan for the rest of her Saturday. First, she would report the stolen necklace to Leonardo’s financial manager and let him deal with the insurance company and the hotel. Second, she would grit her teeth and call Leonardo and talk him out of taking the next plane out of Florence—she thought he was still in Florence—to see her through this crisis.
If her conversation with Leonardo didn’t totally exhaust her, she would do a little work before lunch. Then she’d go for a long walk on the beach, take a nap, and afterwards see which of her new friends were around for dinner.
With any luck, the police wouldn’t call, and Jeremiah wouldn’t show up at her door.
Or, she thought, she at his.
Jeremiah knew this whole damned jewel thief nonsense, and maybe his life as a reporter, was really falling apart when he found himself back in Helen Samuel’s office. It was Saturday, and he ought to be cleaning his apartment, listening to tunes, and whittling with the boys—and if he was going to work, find a damned story he could actually write.
Helen was hammering out her column a half-hour before the midnight deadline for the Sunday paper. “Goddamned computers,” she said, cigarette hanging from her lower lip as she pecked on the keyboard. “No satisfaction hitting a ‘delete’ button. Give me a bottle of Wite-Out any day.” She glanced up at him with a skeletal grin. “I miss the fumes.”
“Why not do your column from home? You could just—”
“Modem it in?” She snorted, setting her cigarette on her overflowing ashtray. “Modems scare the shit out of me. Trust me, Tabak. I was right about television. I’m right about modems.”
Jeremiah didn’t ask her to elaborate. Her predictions on televisions or modems no doubt included the end of civilization as she knew it. Helen was even more doomsday about human nature and the future of mankind than the average reporter—which in Jeremiah’s experience was saying something.
“You want to know what I keep deleting?” She didn’t wait for his answer, her beady eyes boring into him. “Your name. I type, ‘The Tribune’s own Jeremiah Tabak was the first to rush to Mollie Lavender’s aid,’ and I delete it. Then I hit ‘redo’ and stare at it awhile, and delete it again.” She picked up her cigarette, inhaled, set it back down. “I kind of like that ‘redo’ button.”
“I’ve never known you to be indecisive, Helen.”
She squinted at him. “What have you gotten yourself into, Tabak? I can sit on this for a while, but you’re up to your nose in stink.”