Before she could change her mind, Mollie found her way up to the cafeteria, a large, almost empty room that smelled of stale coffee. Jeremiah was at a table in a corner of windows, staring out on the interstate and the now glorious Miami afternoon, a mug of coffee in front of him.
If she had made her peace with the Jeremiah of the past, Mollie thought, she’d done nothing of the kind with the Jeremiah of the present. He attracted her, unnerved her, and preoccupied her in ways she never could have anticipated. It wasn’t just the jewel thief, his stubborn refusal to eliminate her as a suspect. It was his physical presence, his alertness to every nuance of his surroundings, to every nuance of her. He had an ability to make her rethink everything—her priorities, her life, herself. It was unsettling, but also irresistible.
She slid onto the chair opposite him and tried to look calm, in control, not as if she’d raced down here on impulse after receiving a nasty phone call—just in case she decided not to tell him about it. Because if he sensed she was holding back, he’d pounce. She smiled. “You look as if you’re waiting for your coffee to say something profound.”
He glanced up, squinted at her as if he had been so lost in thought he’d forgotten where he was. But the remoteness quickly vanished, and he grinned. “Nah. There’s no hope for a higher life form in there. I don’t know, either this stuff is getting worse or my tastebuds are finally improving.”
He paused, and his eyes, with all their golds and greens and grays, took her in, seemed to drink in her very soul. Mollie forced herself not to look away. No wonder he was so good at what he did. Nothing escaped him. Nothing was beneath his probing interest. Yet, she thought, it couldn’t be an easy way to live. Sometimes he had to wish he could just climb out of his own skin for a while and be as oblivious as most of the rest of the world.
“Helen send you up here?” he asked.
Mollie nodded. “She said you were in a bad mood.”
“I am. She was angling to get me away from my desk so she could rummage through it. Drives her crazy thinking I know something she doesn’t.”
“Do you?”
“Yep.”
“She won’t actually go through your desk, will she?”
“Probably not. But she had to play it out. I can just see her standing there, itching to see what I’ve got, then congratulating herself when she doesn’t go through with it.”
“She knows you wouldn’t leave anything out in the open.”
“Even if I did, she’d stop herself. I’ve known Helen since I landed at the Trib as a know-it-all eighteen-year-old. She knows what lines she can cross and what lines she can’t, not just with me. Part of the reason she’s lasted as long as she has is she knows the First Amendment protects what we say, not what we do.”
“Such as fraud, breaking and entering, harassment, trespassing.”
He shrugged. “Such as.” He eyed his coffee. “I used to pride myself on drinking swill. Times change. So, Miss Mollie,” he said, shifting his gaze to her, “what brings you to Miami looking as if you’ve had another good scare?”
“I have.” She sat on a chair at the end of the table, feeling formal, even awkward. “Had another good scare, that is.”
His eyes bored into her, darkening. “Tell me.”
“A phone call. It came on my business line, about ninety minutes ago. The voice was obviously altered, like those unnamed whistle-blowers on 60 Minutes. It suggested I go back to Boston because Miami’s dangerous.”
“Did you report it to the police?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“There’s only my word that the call happened or that the caller said what he said. I don’t want the police getting the wrong idea about me.”
“You don’t want to become a suspect.”
“Or the crazy woman looking for attention.”
Jeremiah pushed back his chair. “But the call happened.”
She nodded.
He rose, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’ve got a friend on the Palm Beach police you can talk to. It’ll only take a minute. You can call from my desk.” He grinned at her, an obvious attempt at levity. “Helen’s had long enough to pull herself back from the precipice, wouldn’t you say?”
“Jeremiah—”
“It’ll take two minutes tops. You’ll see.”
They took the stairs back down to the newsroom, no sign of Helen Samuel at his desk. Jeremiah pulled out his chair and made Mollie sit. Then he flipped through a dog-eared Rolodex, dialed a number, got through to some guy named Frank, and handed the phone to her. She told him what had happened, the time, the altered voice, its exact words. Jeremiah made no pretense of not listening in. He sat on the corner of his desk, taking in every word. “I don’t know that this is connected to the robbery on Friday,” she said. “It could just be a nut who saw my name in the paper.”
“Could be,” Frank said. “I’ll write this up. Give me your number in case I have any questions.”