Jack put the top down and took a long drive along the beach after leaving Manny’s office. Cindy had called him a couple of nights before-just to chat, but they’d talked about being apart, and suddenly he heard her saying she’d move back in. Unfortunately, the euphoria he’d felt then had been severely dampened by the past two days’ events. They’d settled on tonight for her to bring her stuff over, and he knew she’d be at the house, unpacking, when he arrived. He needed time to think before facing her.
The meeting today with Gina had been a real reality check. Any prior illusions about keeping his “evening” with her a secret were beginning to dissipate. He kept looking for a way to steer a course with her that would help his case and not affect his relationship with Cindy, but nothing was coming to him.
It was shortly after six o’clock when he finally pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine, and by then he’d received a call from Manny in his car that made him even more ill at ease. He thought about the call as he got out of the Mustang and walked up the wood-chip path.
The front door opened before he’d even mounted the stairs. “Hi there,” Cindy said. She stood smiling in the doorway, and although he felt miserable it was impossible for him not to throw his arms around her.
“How’s the unpacking going?” he asked, closing the door behind them.
“Getting there,” she said, taking his hand as they walked into the living room. “It’s mostly just clothes, but I spent most of my time sifting through Gina’s closet, looking for things she borrowed from me.”
As they sat down on the couch, she noticed that he was brooding about something. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”
He sighed. “Cindy, as much as I want us to be together, after today I wonder if it’s such a great idea for you to move in.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not a question of loving you. I’m crazy about you. It’s just that I’m not sure it’s safe for you here.”
“Why not?”
He exhaled, then launched into a selective summary of the events of the past two days, focusing on the Tampa real estate attorney by the name of Richard Dressler.
“So why is Dressler so interested in this?” she asked.
“He’s not. I got a call from Manny driving back here. His investigator met with Dressler in Tampa. Turns out his wallet was stolen two months ago. Somebody got all his identification. Including his Florida bar card.”
“So somebody’s been using his bar card to pose as an attorney?”
“Exactly. This somebody used his name to check out the police file in my case after Goss was dead. I think the guy, whoever he is, is trying to frame me. If I’m right, it was him who was hassling me all along, not Goss.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you saying-”
“I don’t know exactly what I’m saying. I haven’t thought it all the way through yet. But I’m pretty sure there’s still a killer on the loose. Whoever was after me is still out there.”
She took a step back. “Who is it, then? If it wasn’t Eddy Goss, who could it be?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. And until I do, I think it’s best if you take a vacation or just get out of town for a few-”
“No. I’m staying with you, Jack. I’m not going to leave you at a time like this. We’ll deal with this together.”
He took a deep breath, then put his arms around her again. “We still can’t call the police. I can’t tell them that whoever was after me is still out there. Because the minute they find out I thought Goss was threatening me, the prosecution goes from no evidence of motive to iron-clad proof.”
Cindy bit her lip. It was bad enough that a stalker was still out there, but not being able to tell anyone was against common sense. Yet everything Jack had said seemed logical. “All right,” she said with a sigh. “No police. We’ll look out for ourselves, and we’ll look out for each other.”
That same Thursday evening, Governor Harold Swyteck checked into a room on the thirty-second floor of Miami’s Hotel Intercontinental. He was scheduled to speak at a fund-raiser later that evening, but first he had to give away some money of his own. The bouquet of chrysanthemums he’d ordered was waiting for him in his room. He took the money from his briefcase-fifty thousand dollars-and placed the bills in the oversized pot. Then he took his shoes from his suitcase, all the while fighting to keep his anger under control. It was demeaning, really-like stealing a man’s clothes and leaving him stranded on a street corner. But if that was the kind of cheap power trip this lunatic needed, so be it. At this point, Harry would have given much more than fifty grand to be rid of his blackmailer, once and for all.
He checked his watch. Six-thirty. With traffic, it would be about a twenty-minute drive to Memorial Cemetery. For perhaps the hundredth time that day, the governor mentally ran through his options, trying to find some way out of this ludicrousness. But both of his alternatives-calling the police or letting his tormentor do what he’d threatened-seemed unacceptable. At least, by following his blackmailer’s instructions, he had a chance of holding on to the life he’d struggled so hard to create.
He grabbed the pot and the keys to his rental car and he was off, wondering with a growing dread if the grave he was about to visit was his own.