“Is that so?”
Cantor drank some more beer. “You ought to pay her a visit. You know she always had a thing for you.”
“I didn’t notice.” A slow flush stained Quinn’s face. “I was married, remember?”
“Could we get back to Teddy Fargo?” I brought my hand down hard on the table and Cantor’s plate jumped a little. “Before you two wander any further down memory lane and someone kills somebody.”
They both gave me an astonished look, and Cantor burst out laughing.
“I like you,” he said and licked his lips.
“Moving on.” I held up a finger to silence Quinn before he could open his mouth. “Teddy Fargo.”
“I don’t know him personally. But I heard about him.”
“Heard how?” Quinn asked.
“The guy was a good winemaker, really smart. He used to be a chemist or something like that before he got into wine.” Cantor rattled off the facts so easily that I knew he still kept up with what was going on in Napa and Sonoma more than he had let on. “He had kind of a boutique winery. Only made a couple thousand cases a year and sold it all in his tasting room.”
He paused.
“And?” Quinn said.
Cantor picked up his beer glass and stared into it, waving it back and forth.
“Want another one, Allen?”
“I wouldn’t say no.”
Quinn got him a second beer. “So what else about Fargo?”
“Just a rumor.”
“Goddammit, Allen, stop messing with us.”
“Quinn,” I said. “Please. Don’t.”
Cantor drank his beer, but I noticed his hand shook and he sloshed some liquid on the table. He wiped it with his fist.
“He had a little operation up in the hills behind his winery. Grew some stuff up there and apparently had the knowledge and background to get some very fine results, if you know what I mean.”
“Are you talking about roses?” I asked. “As in exotic roses?”
Even Quinn flashed me a look of surprise.
Cantor laughed. “I’m talking about marijuana, honey. Supposedly the guy had quite a booming business. Growing it, selling it. He’s lucky he never got busted. I figured that’s why he sold his place all of a sudden and split town. Rumor is that he torched the evidence before he took off. No one’s seen him or heard of him since. He vanished.”
I felt like I’d been sucker punched. So Charles had been barking up the wrong tree, after all. Even if Teddy Fargo were Theo Graf—and who knew, now?—the reason he disappeared had to do with drug dealing and probably fleeing the law, not some ancient grudge that had to do with the Mandrake Society.
Quinn reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet again. He threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table.
“Thanks, Allen,” he said. “Get yourself something else to eat. Or a couple of beers. I think we’re done here.”
He stood up and waited for me.
“That wasn’t the information you were looking for,” Cantor said to me as I got up. “Was it?”
“No,” I said, “it wasn’t.”
Chapter 14
As reunions go, this one spiraled downhill and out of control before anyone realized what happened. When Quinn threw that twenty on the table, it was like tossing a live grenade into the middle of an edgy truce no one really wanted. It would take no more than the tiniest flick of a finger, the wrong look, a perceived insult, to blow it all to smithereens.
Cantor, predictably, told Quinn to take his money and shove it, but by then Quinn had disappeared into the growing crowd on the Boardwalk, as though it had suddenly become intolerable to breathe the same air as his ex- boss for one more second. Cantor stood up and came around the table so fast that I wasn’t sure if he was going to go after Quinn to jam the money in his pocket because he was embarrassed, or roundhouse him because he was furious.
“Let him go. Please?” I grabbed his arm and held on. “He did this for me.”
Cantor’s eyes fastened on my face and he was breathing hard, but at least I had his attention.
I let go of his arm. “Thank you for coming today.”
“It was worth it just to meet you, angel.” He took my cane from me and leaned it against the table. “You don’t need that right now. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you are gorgeous.”
I had no intention of falling for Allen Cantor’s patented and probably well-used chat-up line, even if he was turning the full wattage of his dangerous charm on me.
“Allen, don’t—” If Quinn came back to find out what was taking me so long and saw Cantor standing this close to me, his body language making it obvious what was happening …
“He’s a lucky bastard, you know that?” He kept right on devouring me with those wolfish eyes. “Bet he doesn’t appreciate you the way someone as beautiful as you ought to be appreciated. Quinn never was any good with women. If you were mine, darling, you’d be on a pedestal. I’d give you everything you wanted, things you never dreamed of.”
His hands slipped easily around my waist. Before I knew what he was doing, they had moved up under my breasts. He wasn’t talking about chocolates and flowers, or even diamonds.
“He does appreciate me.” I felt breathless, light-headed. “Take your hands off. Now.”
He lifted a hand and deliberately traced his finger along the contour of my cheek. “You’ve slept with him. I figured as much.”
My face burned. “That’s none of your business.”
“I wasn’t asking. I know you did.” He drew me closer and whispered into my hair, “Ever read the
“No.” I jerked out of his grasp, reaching for my cane and wielding it like a club. “Come near me one more time and I’ll amaze you.”
I heard his taunting you-know-you-want-to laugh as I walked away, mocking me.
Quinn was sitting in the Porsche when I got to the parking lot, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and staring straight ahead at nothing. His sharp-edged profile glinted with anger and he acted deaf, dumb, and blind to my presence.
He wasn’t the only one who was mad. “Thanks for leaving me back there with Casanova.” I jerked open the passenger door. “You couldn’t have waited?”
He clenched and unclenched his fists. “I … no. I think I could have killed him. I’m sorry. He make a pass at you? Then I really would have lost it.”
I’d never heard Quinn like this before. For the first time, I was scared of what he might be capable of doing, things I’d never suspected. The anger drained out of me like he’d pulled a plug.
“He was just being a macho ass. I bet he’s like that with every woman he meets.” I slid into the passenger seat. “By now he’s probably working on getting the phone number of the cute girl who poured his beer at the restaurant, or asking her to have his baby. Besides, I can handle guys like him, especially ones who’ve had a few drinks. You should know that by now.”
“He asked you to have his baby?” He sounded stunned.
“I said no.”
It took him a second to get the joke and give me a weak grin. “What’d you do? Threaten to turn him into a eunuch with your cane?”
“Close enough. Wish I’d thought to use the word ‘eunuch.’”
