Finding Jessica Page 5

  “You’re saying someone shot him, hid his body and ran away?” She was disgusted.

  “Yeah.” Rocky shrugged. “And came back to try again.”

  Rose looked out the window at the trees where Hal’s body had been found. “Barrington’s lucky.”

  Rocky forced the disposable gloves over his gigantic hands. “Wonder what’s so special about this cottage, attracting all the lunatics?” He opened the top drawer. “It looks like Barrington’s jewelry is still here.”

  Rose stood next to him. She peered into the drawer. “What’s special is that Barrington Bigelow’s staying here.”

  Rocky pulled the gloves off his fingers. “I’ll talk to Tom Minot, see if he’s got a list of all his mama’s things. Maybe the thief found what he was looking for.”

  “Maybe it had something to do with Barrington looking for Jessica,” Rose said.

  “You still determined to talk to that Delores Beach?”

  “Absolutely.” Rose checked her watch. “Actually, I should be at her lingerie boutique in about six hours.”

  Chapter Ten

  Rose stood near the window in the Beaches’ penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, fondling black garter clips on a metallic blue bustier as though she might buy it. Delores’s Luscious Lady showroom was painted a checkerboard pattern of plum and a shade of pink that resembled Pepto-Bismol, but the room had a spectacular view of Central Park that made up for the glaring color scheme.

  “You can never go wrong with bustiers or baby dolls.” Delores Beach tapped across the floor on her stilettos; her clingy white dress hugged her ample curves and matched her short white hair streaked with pink highlights. “And everybody,” she winked at Rose, “loves naughty panties.”

  Rose tried not to think about Daniel looking at her in one of those luscious lingerie get-ups, but she couldn’t help it. Moving six hundred miles to get away from him, and even marrying Cameron, hadn’t shaken that forbidden fruit tree bare. She glanced through the open doorway at the guard who had searched her handbag. He was keeping an eye on her, his gun peeking out of its leather holster. She wondered if he ever got distracted by all the naughty panties his boss’s wife was selling.

  “By the way, that bustier you’re holding comes as a set with a G-string, spider web stockings and gloves,” Delores said.

  Rose surreptitiously rubbed her nose. The room was heavily perfumed, and she was trying hard not to sneeze. “This is pretty.” She pointed to a tiny red outfit.

  “Oh, the mesh thong teddy, it’s one of my favorites.” Delores held it up like an offering. “Note the strappy front and back. It would look great on you.”

  Rose touched the soft material. She hadn’t bought anything like that since Cameron had died.

  “I’m glad you wanted to see the lingerie in person,” Delores said. “It’s a good idea before committing to host a party. Not everyone is comfortable with all the accessories or, you know, some of the toys.” She blinked at Rose with her heavily mascara-ed eyes. “Some people want me to bring only lingerie to their party. Do you have a preference?”

  Rose bit her bottom lip, trying for an aw shucks look. “Actually, I’m not really throwing a bachelorette party,” she said, dropping her voice to a near whisper. Delores’s mouth formed a little O of surprise. “I wanted to talk to you in person,” Rose said quickly, “but I know who your husband is, and I was afraid he wouldn’t approve. So I invented the friend.”

  Delores closed her mouth. Her jaw set stubbornly. “Well, this better be good,” she said. “I don’t want Jimbo to have to escort you out of the building. He can be so rough.”

  Rose assumed Jimbo was the beefy guard in the hallway. “I’m not a cop,” Rose whispered. “My friend Hal was killed in Haven, New Hampshire, a few weeks ago while he was looking for Jessica Winters.”

  Delores’s fake eyebrows shot up. She pirouetted on her toes like a ballerina and went into the hallway. Rose couldn’t hear what she said to him, but Jimbo didn’t look happy. Delores shrugged and closed the door in his face. “I told him you’d just had a sex change operation and needed to see if these fit. He’s supposed to listen in on all my conversations.” She rolled her gigantic eyes. “I need a drink.” She made a beeline for the bar in the corner of the room. “Sandy always gets at me for drinking during the day, but I say, what’s the harm? You want one?”

  “Ah, sure, thank you.” A sex change operation? Rose was five feet five with the tiniest ankles most men had ever seen and absolutely no hair on her face, but the last thing she wanted was to tussle with Jimbo. She would have won the fight, but it would have messed up the manicure she’d gotten before the barbecue.

  “You like Chardonnay?” Delores bent down behind the bar. “Or whiskey?”

  “I’ll take whatever you’re having,” Rose said. For a brief moment, she imagined Delores rising up like a specter with a gun in her hand. She could feel the muscles in her legs tense as she judged the distance to the bar and how much time she’d have to tackle her.

  Instead, Delores banged a bottle of scotch on the bar and poured two tumblers full. “Sit down,” she said, leading the way to a white leather couch. Rose sat down and almost slid off the chair. It had a steel base and a sleek white leather cushion that felt as slippery as oil. She held onto one side of it with her free hand.

  “So, what happened? Your friend was looking for Jess, and someone killed him?” Delores studied Rose under her dark eyelashes. She said this casually, as though they were talking about what they’d had for lunch, and Rose realized that in Delores Beach’s world people probably killed other people all the time. Delores drank half her glass of whiskey and licked her lips. “I haven’t seen Jess in a thousand years.”

  “How did you know her?” Rose felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. It was probably Barrington. He had told her he would check in on her. If only he knew how well she could hold her own.

  “Back in the day, we worked at this private club called Swan’s Song. Sandy owned it.” Delores fingered her long feather earrings. They were a Luscious Lady accessory. Rose had seen a pair on the table. “We were cigarette girls.”

  “Is that how you met your husband?”

  Delores swung her foot in a wide arc, and the stilettos on her chubby feet looked dangerously sharp. “Yeah. Jess was prettier, but he always liked me best.” She narrowed her heavily lined eyes at Rose. “You think my husband had something to do with your friend getting killed?”

  “No, no.” Rose kept her voice level. “Nothing like that.” In fact, Sandy Beach had just ratcheted way up on her list of suspects. If Jessica worked for Sandy in the past, maybe she was still working for him—in Haven. “Are you still friends with Jess?”

  “God, no. She disappeared.” Delores rubbed her thumb along the rim of the wineglass, wiping away a fuchsia lipstick smudge. “She was in trouble.”

  “Pregnant?”

  “A lot more trouble than that.” Delores got up suddenly, the feathers brushing her shoulders. “Bugs,” she whispered. Rose watched her teeter to the stereo by the bar and turn up the volume. Cindy Lauper was singing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” After topping off her whiskey, Delores slid back into her chair. “You promise not to tell anyone?”

  What’s next, a pinky swear? Rose crossed her heart with her finger. “I promise.”

  Delores shifted her weight, and the chair tipped under her, but she managed to get it under control and stayed in the seat. “Jess stole something from Sandy, and he was after her.” She said the words fast, as if she’d been keeping them in storage for years and had just sprung the door wide open.

  “What did she steal?” The conversation was getting more interesting by the minute.

  Delores took another big gulp of her whiskey and glanced at the door, then back at Rose. “Sandy had arranged for Jess to work at Artsy Phartsy, this gallery on the Upper West side. All she had to do was put some kind of microfilm into the hollow frame of a painting. Sandy’s buyer would come in during her shi
ft and buy the painting way over the asking price. Then one of Sandy’s guys would show up and collect the extra cash. It all worked fine. The gallery didn’t have a clue what she was up to until she got greedy.”

  No wonder Sandy won’t let anyone near his wife without a bodyguard or bugs. She leaks like a sieve, Rose thought. “She kept the money?”

  “Not just the money, honey.” Delores wagged her finger at Rose. “She gave the buyer the frame but kept the painting for herself. God, she really had a lot of nerve.” Delores fiddled with her engagement ring. The diamond was as big as a walnut. “She disappeared that night.”

  “When did you hear from her again?”

  Delores’s busty chest was threatening to spill out of her Luscious Lady fun-time bra, and she pulled at the stretchy material with her chubby finger so it snapped loudly back into place. “After she’d had the baby.” Delores looked down at the tiny, sparkling pictures on her nails. “She called me.”

  “Did you tell Sandy that she called you?”

  “Are you high?” Delores glanced out the window. “You obviously don’t know my husband. He would have killed her.” She fluffed her awful pink hair. “The only person I ever told was Barrington Bigelow, the artist? I saw him at a party a few weeks ago. He was going on about how he’d survived cancer and wanted to make things right with Jess, and, well, the bastard made me feel sorry for him, so I told him.”

  Rose was surprised. “Barrington had cancer?”

  “You know him?” Delores asked.

  Shit, Rose thought. Oh, well, here goes. “He was the one who hired my friend.”

  Delores sighed. “God in heaven, I need a cigarette,” she lifted her hand as if she were holding one. “But Sandy won’t let me smoke in the house anymore. He says it’s bad for Princess.”

  “Princess?” Rose was confused. Who the hell is Princess?

  Delores rolled her huge, made-up eyes. “I hate her.” She pretended to smoke. “Sometimes I think he loves her more than me.” A mistress, Rose wondered, in the house? Delores pursed her fuchsia lips. “Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, Barrington. What a prick, excuse my French. I was happy she finally left him. But I don’t know how in God’s name she raised a kid, she was always such a disaster, obsessed, I tell you, with men, and then she’d hate them because they didn’t love her enough.”

  The leopard-skin wallpaper behind Delores was making Rose dizzy. She set down her drink.

  “Well, this has been an interesting trip down memory lane.” Delores squinted at her watch, which looked to be worth the price of a car. “But I’m not feeling too good, so time’s up.” She slugged down the rest of her whiskey.

  “Please, can I just ask you about one more thing?”

  A look of impatience flashed across Delores’s face. “Make it fast.”

  “I think Jess might still be in touch with your husband.” Behind Delores’s languid blinking, her eyes turned stone hard. “I think maybe he made a deal: she agreed to haul paintings over the Canadian border from Haven, and she could keep the money and that painting she stole. And her life.”

  Delores’s leg stopped swinging. “Lady, you’ve got a vivid imagination.” She leaned in closer, and Rose could smell her burnt-sugar perfume and the whiskey. “Sandy doesn’t need Jessica. He’s got his own girl in Haven.” She tapped her foot impatiently. “Sandy’s got big plans for that girl. He’s giving her a chance to prove herself. End of story.”

  Behind Delores the sun was starting to set, and it was hard to tell where the city met the sky. Rose wasn’t sure she should ask the next question, but at this point, what did she have to lose? “What’s the girl’s name?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Delores peered into her empty glass. She looked surprised, as if the whiskey had disappeared magically.

  “Well, can you describe her?” Rose asked.

  “Why should I?” Delores set her glass down. “All’s I know is Sandy knew her mother, and she’s like a daughter to him.”

  Rose took in a deep breath, let it out slow. “Look.” She stared at her lap as if she was about to cry, when in fact she’d rather get beaten than cry in front of this woman. “I loved Hal,” she said quietly, lifting her eyes to Delores. “He was like a father to me.” She looked at her lap again. “And right now, you’re the only person who can help me.”

  When she looked up again, Delores’s face had softened. Rose guessed she wasn’t used to being asked for her help. “Truth is,” Delores said, “I don’t know her name.” She blinked as if the lights were too bright in the room. “Sandy keeps me so far out of the business, I might as well be invisible.” She shook her head as if this was the most ludicrous thing in the world. “But I saw her once. She came over with The Knife right before she went up north.” She leaned in and whispered theatrically. “She’s about your height and weight, and she has blonde hair.”

  Great, Rose thought. That fits the description of a hundred women in Haven. “Anything else? Anything sort of odd or different about her?”

  Delores tried to pull her skirt over her chubby thighs. “Well, she has a tattoo on her shoulder, I know that. She was wearing this darling chiffon dress, and I remember thinking how terrible that tattoo was,” Delores said. “You know kids today, they paint pictures all over themselves. My granddaughter, she’s got a tattoo on her neck, for crying out loud, can you imagine?”

  “What was her tattoo of?”

  “Her boyfriend’s name. She’s fifteen years old! I told my son, if you ever …”

  “No, I mean Sandy’s girl in Haven, what’s her tattoo of?

  “Oh,” Delores looked deflated and a little green around the edges. “The Tasmanian Devil,” she said. “Like the one from the cartoon.”

  Rose couldn’t breathe. She felt as though the air had been sucked out of the room. She thought of Cameron coming home from the gallery, throwing his arms around her waist. I found the perfect girl to run the gallery. He’d kissed her on the lips. And she’s named after my favorite stone. Amber. Amber French was Sandy Beach’s girl in Haven, and she was working for Rose’s gallery. She’d never believed in coincidences before, but here was one staring her in the face.

  Delores rubbed her bare arms as if she was cold. “Okay, it’s time for you to go.”

  Rose shook herself mentally. She took a business card out of her pocket, trying to keep her hand from shaking. “If you hear from Jess, or anything about her, will you let me know?” She handed the card to Delores.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Delores stood up, wobbled on the high heels and quickly righted herself.

  Rose pointed to the table. “How much for the teddy?”

  Delores told her. Rose tried not to look shocked. Good thing she’d stopped at the ATM. Delores seemed to know it was too much. “There’s a sale on the panties and bras,” she told her, “two for one.” Rose bought a couple of new bras, some naughty panties and a pair of feather earrings like the ones Delores was wearing.

  As Delores clumsily wrapped her purchases in tissue paper, she said, “Look, Jess had some horrible stuff in her past with her mom and all,” she tied the package with a bright pink bow. “So, I never judged her or anything.” Rose didn’t want to judge her either, but running away and not telling Barrington about the baby when a gangster was hunting for her made it hard not to. “Truth is, Jess was one of my best friends. I always admired that girl.” She placed the wrapped items into a bag. “She sure outsmarted Sandy.” She handed the bag to Rose. “And the best thing about it,” she said as she tottered after Rose to the door, “was that she stole the one painting everyone was bidding on. The whole art world was having an orgasm over that painting, and Jess got it!”

  Rose turned. Delores looked like an oversized doll some kid had smeared too much makeup on. “Yeah!” Delores nodded vigorously. “She stole The Peacemaker.” Delores grinned. “The painting that made Barrington Bigelow famous?” She shrugged. “Served him right, the ego tripping bastard.”

  When she swung the do
or open, Jimbo was there with his gun, standing a little too close for comfort next to the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rocky was trying to wipe donut sugar off his shirt when his phone rang. Cops and donuts, so cliché, but he couldn’t resist. It was Rose calling from New York, and after she told him about strong-arming Delores’s bodyguard, he laughed. “The guy’s lucky you only sprained his wrist.” He looked down at his shirtfront and saw he’d only smeared the sugar. Em would be bugging him again about eating foods that would give him a heart attack. “That Tasmanian Devil tattoo sounds pretty damning,” he said. “Seems like Amber’s in big fat trouble.”

  “It’s weird, because Cameron wanted to put her on the floor right away, but I checked her inside and out before I’d let him.”

  Rocky was sure she had. Rose was a background check fanatic. “Well, what’s her deal?”

  “Grew up in northern California, only child, father was in construction, mother was a stay-at-home mom, went to U.C. Berkeley to study art but dropped out and came to work at galleries in New York.”

  “That could be fabricated,” Rocky said.

  “If it was, she would have had to have a professional do it.”

  “Sandy Beach is as professional as they get. What about friends in Haven?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about her friends here.”

  Right, Rocky thought. You do the background check, and then you back away. Rose would never get Haven’s friendliest citizen award, but it flabbergasted Rocky how little the people in Haven seemed to interest her. Only Em could get her to open up. “Em said she came to our fourth bash with Parker Prescott, that guy who owns Le Bourget gallery on Main.”

  “Yeah, he’s a big flirt.”

  “We could ask him what he knows.” Rocky steered the car into his gravel driveway. It was late, and the kids would be asleep, but the flicker of lights in the window told him Emily was watching TV, waiting up for him.