Thrill Me to Death

  “He may have already killed someone else. William Peyton.”

  Breezy choked. “Oh, please. That I would know about.”

  Cori looked from one to the other. “He didn’t kill William, Max. I know that like I know my name.”

  “Then who did?”

  She bit her lip. “Marta?”

  For a long time, he didn’t speak, all his instincts locked in a battle with one another. Finally, his gaze shifted to Breezy. “You better not be lying.”

  Breezy snorted. “Like I could make this up.”

  “Don’t leave this property,” he said to Cori. “Keep her cell phone next to you. And program my number into it now.”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  He held out his hand to Cori. “Come inside. Both of you.”

  Breezy shot him a look of pure loathing as she pulled out yet another cigarette. “You’re not babysitting me, stud. Go get my husband before he kills someone.”

  “I’ll get the phone, Max,” Cori said. “Just please hurry and find him.”

  Breezy stayed in the gazebo as they crossed back to the house. When they entered the kitchen, he kicked the French door closed with enough force to rattle the panes of glass. “You know something? I hate her.”

  “I can tell.” She picked up the phone and flipped it open. “Turned on, with a full battery. Hers was the last number dialed on your phone. Just hit redial if you need me.”

  “I always need you.” He reached out, sliding his hand under her hair and pulling her closer. “Someday you’re going to realize that.” He dipped his head and kissed her hard. Then he turned around and left.

  Cori stood in the kitchen for a long time after she’d heard Max lock the door and drive away, the taste of him still on her lips, the sound of his confession still in her ears.

  I have never, ever stopped loving you.

  “Me neither, Max,” she whispered to herself. “And my dad did not die in vain.”

  She dropped the phone into her handbag and slid it over her shoulder, then headed out to the gazebo. Her footsteps slowed when she reached the grass. Breezy was gone.

  “Breeze?”

  In the distance, waves slapped against hulls, and something skittered through the bushes. Where did she go?

  “Breezy!” Cori called. “Where are you?”

  The yard was empty, with slow, steady rain whispering over the palm fronds and hibiscus trees. Cori reached the gazebo, her heart thumping.

  She turned back to the house, imagining Breezy’s path. Had she gone into the house through another entrance?

  Behind her, a shoe scuffed on the gazebo floor. Sucking in a breath she turned, but the full weight of a man threw her to the ground, and a strong hand slapped against her mouth. When she gasped for air, she tasted mud.

  Something sharp and cold pierced the skin under her ear.

  “Where is the palm tree?” The voice was low and gruff, nearly incomprehensible.

  She squirmed and fought, and the metal dug deeper against her skin.

  “Tell me.” He loosened his hand over her mouth, but his whole body pressed her into the ground, a belt buckle jabbed her lower back and his knee painfully stabbed the back of her thigh. “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?” she managed to say.

  One hand twisted her hair, the other raised a blade high enough to glint in the light from the house. “The golden palm tree. I want it now—or someone else is going to die.”

  The palm tree?

  Her bag was propped under her right hip, knocked off her shoulder in the fall. The palm tree was right under her.

  “Where is it?” He yanked her hair hard.

  “Where’s Breezy?” she managed to ask.

  He swore in her ear.

  That voice. That voice was so familiar. She tried to look back and instantly felt the same explosion of blinding pain she’d felt in the spa.

  Just as she lost consciousness, she realized who it was.

  Chapter

  Twenty-three

  A s Max peered along the side of the road, looking for a Jaguar that might have rolled over or crossed the median strip, he whipped his phone out and hit the speed dial.

  Dan answered on the first ring. “ ’Sup, mad man?”

  “How’s the patient?” Max asked.

  “Groggy, but alive. She hasn’t talked to me yet. How’s Cori?”

  “She’s at Gifford Jones’s house in Cocoplum. Coral Gables. You know how to get there?”

  “What’s she doing there?”

  “Jones evidently had a meltdown, confessed to his wife that he stole and spent the ten million bucks. He is currently headed into downtown Miami to write his resignation letter. The wife is either in shock, on drugs, or playing serious head games, but she called Cori for help.”

  “And where are you?”

  “Tracking Jones to Miami.”

  “What’s the address in Cocoplum?”

  He gave it to Dan.

  “I’ll head over there.”

  “Hurry.” Good—Dan would be there in half an hour, tops. Max slowed down where two police cars had pulled someone over, but it was a white van with teenagers, not a Jag with a crazed blind man driving.

  The only way into the Peyton office at this hour was a direct executive elevator in the Peyton Building parking garage. He’d used this entrance when they’d come to the board meeting. Climbing out of Cori’s Mercedes, he fingered the key chain, trying to remember which one worked the elevator.

  There’d been more keys before. He looked at the ring, mentally tallying the ones he’d used and seen. When they’d taken the elevator to go to the board meeting, there was one more key on this ring.

  But the first one he tried fit the elevator, and would fit the office. In a moment, he was in the elevator, headed toward the executive offices on the eighteenth floor.

  The elevator opened to a hushed, darkened reception area. The soft buzz of white noise, a powered-down computer or the air-conditioning, was the only sound he heard after the elevator quietly dinged. He paused for a moment, getting his bearings. The boardroom was across from the reception area and he distinctly remembered the direction Jones walked after they’d had a conversation in the hall. Max retraced those steps as far as he remembered, to a T in a darkened hallway. He stood motionless, listening for any sound.

  And he heard one. The distinct double-click of a semi-automatic hammer being cocked. He flattened against the wall, his own gun raised. He inched down the wall toward the last office, ready for any movement, any threat.

  He moved closer to the open door, the office beyond it even blacker than the hallway. He didn’t know the layout and had no idea where Jones could be hiding. But he was in there—or someone was. And he had a gun.

  His shoulder touched the doorjamb and he inched his head into the opening.

  A sudden sucking of breath broke the silence and Max jerked back, only to hear a whimper as soft as an injured puppy and just as pathetic.

  Max lunged into the doorway, his weapon straight ahead, braced with two hands. “Don’t move!”

  Metal thunked against wood as the crack of a gunshot blasted Max’s ears.

  He crouched, aimed, and heard the whimper turn to a scared sniffle. “Oh, fuck. I can’t even do this.”

  Holding perfectly still, he asked, “Jones?”

  A leather chair squeaked and Max debated sliding to the wall to find the light switch, but he let his eyes adjust to the darkness instead of dividing his focus.

  “I’m trying to kill myself, if you don’t mind.”

  Max slowly lowered his gun an inch, now able to see the outline of a person in the chair. “I do mind. And so does your wife. She sent me for you.”

  “My wife.” He snorted a dry, soft laugh.

  “She thinks you’re here writing up your resignation letter.” At least, that’s what she told him and Cori.

  “In a sense, I am.”

  The shadow moved and Max straightened his gun aga
in. “Don’t,” he barked. “Don’t touch that weapon.” He slowly entered the room, his night vision improving enough to see a sheen on Jones’s bald spot and tears in his eyes. “I’m going to take that gun, Jones. Don’t move, or I’ll commit your suicide for you.”

  Jones rolled the chair back away from the desk. Not the move of a man who really wanted to die.

  Max closed the space and lifted a compact Beretta from the desk, checking the safety and stashing it in his waistband. He still didn’t take his Ruger off Jones.

  “Turn on the light,” he ordered.

  “No. It hurts my eyes.”

  “Too bad. Turn it on.”

  After a second, a desk lamp clicked and bathed the room in soft white light. Jones blinked and covered his eyes.

  “Your wife says you’re going blind.”

  He kept his head cradled in his hands. “She should know.”

  “All this just for some embezzlement?” Max asked dryly. “Or are you in even deeper than that?”

  Jones lifted his head enough to gaze at Max. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Did you arrange for the construction trailer to be torched and send some thugs to shoot at Cori?”

  “Doug Nash wasn’t about to give up his gravy train.” Jones sucked in an unsteady breath, closing his eyes. “I was trying to do the right thing. It was stupid.”

  “No kidding. And how about William Peyton?” Max asked. “When did he find out?”

  Jones closed his eyes. “A few months before he died.”

  “Before you killed him, you mean.”

  He shook his head violently. “No, no! I didn’t. I wouldn’t. He was trying to help. We were trying to figure out…never mind. The money’s gone. William’s gone. Everything’s gone.”

  Max widened his stance but Jones didn’t seem to notice. Hell, he really didn’t seem to be able to see. “So if you didn’t kill him, who did?”

  “I guess we’ll never know,” he said. “The answer is cremated and deposited into Biscayne Bay.”

  No, someone knew the truth. Max eased into a chair, scrutinizing Jones’s expression as the man squeezed his eyes repeatedly, forcing yellowish tears from the corners and into his crow’s-feet. This guy really was blind.

  He wasn’t interrogating a suspect; Gifford Jones was a victim.

  “Did you know William was having an affair, Giff?”

  Despite the eye problems, Jones looked up with dismay that turned into a short laugh. “I hope the insurance company isn’t basing its investigation on that bullshit.” He shook his head. “The man loved his wife and wouldn’t cheat on her if you pointed that gun at his dick and threatened to blow it off. He thought the sun rose and set on Cori.”

  “I have evidence to the contrary.”

  “Whatever you have won’t hold up in court against an impressive list of people who will testify that William was faithful.”

  “William was murdered. It’s a fact; the only thing missing is proof. No one seems to be able to find anything but the cover sheet of the original autopsy report.” Max lowered the gun and leaned forward. “Any idea where the rest of it might be?”

  “No.” The single syllable, Max knew, was the truth.

  “You want to help figure out who murdered him?”

  Jones managed to open his eyes. “Would it save my ass?”

  Max shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “I have no idea. Honestly.”

  “What about Marta Gaspero?”

  Jones frowned. “Their housekeeper? She loved William.”

  “Precisely.”

  “No, no. She loved him for saving her. She was a prostitute in California.”

  “Did she service him?”

  Jones just shook his head. “You really don’t get it. William Peyton was the real deal. One of the last good guys. He found Marta doubled over in the parking lot of some restaurant in Napa Valley, took her to the hospital, paid her bills, and gave her a home. That’s the kind of man he was.”

  Or the kind of man he wanted people to believe he was. “The night before he died, he went down on his boat to get it ready for fishing. Did you know that?”

  Jones nodded. “We were going off-shore the next morning.”

  “Why would he keep condoms on the boat?”

  “Condoms?” He dropped his hands from his temples and frowned. “I thought they were trying to have a baby.”

  “And, yet, the last of the great American good guys had a box of Trojans in his Dopp kit and a pricey gift engraved ‘love W’ that his wife had never seen.” Max leaned back in the chair. “Sounds like he was doing something other than fishing, on board.”

  “I doubt it. You could dust that place for prints. He wasn’t entertaining women on that boat.”

  “Too late,” Max acknowledged. “The new owners picked it up.”

  Jones’s eyes flashed. “No, no they didn’t. I would have been called since I have Cori’s power of attorney.”

  “The boat’s gone,” Max told him. “I was on the empty dock.”

  Max’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he grabbed it, hoping it was Cori, but was almost as glad to see Dan’s number. “Where are you?” he asked without preamble.

  “I’m just leaving the hospital now. Marta woke up and got chatty. It was not suicide. She made tea, using Cori’s favorite stash, then went down to the cabana to pick up some stuff the new owners had taken off the boat. Anything else you want to ask?”

  “Can you put her on?”

  In a moment, Marta said, “Is Mrs. Peyton okay? You mustn’t let her—”

  “When did the new owners pick up the boat?”

  “Today,” she said. “He came this afternoon.”

  He shot a look at Jones. “Was the broker there? Mendoza?”

  “No. Was he supposed to be? This man just showed up and said he was there to take the boat. He had a key.”

  Of course he did—the key that was missing from Cori’s ring. The key that somebody took from her bag while she was out cold in the spa.

  “Was he alone, Marta?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Tall, like you. He had light hair and a big diamond earring. I could hardly understand him, his English was very…thick. You can ask Miss Breezy,” Marta said hopefully. “She met him.”

  “She did? How?”

  “She wanted to borrow a sweater. She went to Miss Cori’s room and made a holy mess out of that closet while the man was there to pick up the boat.”

  What a coincidence. “Were either one of them alone in the house, Marta?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Max. I know I promised you I wouldn’t let anyone in, but I had to help that man get stuff off the boat. So yes, she went to Mrs. Peyton’s room alone.”

  He looked at the miserable expression on Gifford Jones’s face as the older man dabbed at his eyes and rubbed his aching head.

  What could make a man get headaches and go blind like that?

  He didn’t know, but he knew someone who sure as hell did. Someone with special knowledge in the art of healing…and the opposite. Then someone close to Jones could have administered the poison in small doses, enough to make him think he was going blind.

  Enough to make him think he was going crazy. Enough to make him think the only way out was suicide—freeing ten million dollars socked away in some Swiss bank account. Or a Finnish bank account.

  “Marta, tell Dan to leave now.”

  Flipping the phone shut, Max leaned toward Jones. “How long has your wife been screwing the masseuse?”

  Jones dropped his head. “Awhile.”

  Cori opened her eyes, but everything was still dark.

  Her throat thickened with the feeling that came right before she was sick, and she gagged and swallowed the bitter, metallic taste back down her esophagus.

  Her body undulated again. What was underneath her? A water bed?

  No. A boat.

  She was on a boat. With supreme effort, sh
e lifted her head and stared at the strands of navy and gold thread in front of her face.

  She was on Peyton’s Place, and this was William’s bed and she was alive and—

  The stateroom door slammed against the wall and someone grabbed her shoulder and flipped her over like a pancake.

  She stared at him. “Swen. Why—”

  He thumped his hands on either side of her head and jammed his knee into her stomach. “It’s not on this boat,” Swen said, his eyes burning with fury and determination. “Where is the palm tree?”

  The golden palm tree that William had received or given as a gift to a woman. Where was it?

  Wherever her purse had landed. If her purse had made it with her to this boat, it was only a matter of time until Swen got what he wanted. As soon as Max called her and “Hello, Dolly” trilled into her handbag, then Swen would find the palm tree.

  And then, she knew, she’d be dead.

  “Where is it?” he growled in her face, increasing the pressure on her stomach. “Tell me!”

  “Where’s Breezy?” Her voice scraped like sandpaper. “Did you hurt her?”

  The boat rose over a swell and Cori’s stomach rolled with it, but she willed herself not to retch as Swen leaned over her, his hand closed over her throat. “Tell me where the palm tree is, Cori.”

  “Why?” She managed to choke out the word.

  He smacked her face, rattling her brain. “If you don’t tell me, they will find it anyway. And you’ll have no alibi, no excuse. No one will believe you didn’t grind up that oleander from your very own yard and feed it to your husband. You had so much to gain. Billions, Cori. There is no one with a motive like yours.”

  A motive. What was his?

  “All I want is the evidence. I’ll hide the evidence and disappear,” he said quickly. “And you can live fat and happy with your billions. Doesn’t that sound good, Cori? Huh?”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  He lifted a menacing eyebrow. “In truth, he did himself in. The poison wasn’t intended to give him the heart attack.”

  This wasn’t meant for me.