“Maddie?” Richard looked wildly from side to side as if expecting I’d brought the entire mounted Calvary with me. Which, I guess I almost had, if you counted the wedding guests. “What the hell are you doing here?”
I tried to answer but I think I’d swallowed my tongue. It was like seeing a ghost. He was dressed in the same pressed slacks I’d come to expect, his button down shirt opened at the collar, covered by a tasteful sport coat. He looked like he’d just come from the office, or a client meeting, instead of being on the run for the last week. I almost wanted to reach out and touch him just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating this whole thing.
Either that or smack him across his perfectly shaved cheeks.
“Me?” I finally gasped out, in sort of a strangled cry. “What the hell are
“Nothing.” Richard shifted from foot to foot, still looking over my shoulder at the empty lobby. “I mean, I, uh, I’ve been staying here for a few days. I just needed to get away for a while.”
I snorted. “Away from Greenway or away from the cops? Oh, I know, maybe away from your wife.”
He froze. His eyes meeting mine. “You know about her.”
“Richard, I know everything.” Which was a slight exaggeration.
“Look, maybe we should just go up to my room and talk.” He looked over my shoulder again.
I bit my lip. I was dying to ask Richard about a million different questions, starting with what the hell is up with Cinderella? But, while I mostly believed Richard had nothing to do with the hole in Greenway’s head, I was still a little reluctant to go off alone with him.
He must have sensed it because he grabbed my hand in both of his and looked at me with those sad little boy eyes that always melted me. “Please, pumpkin?”
I took a deep breath. “Fine, we’ll go up to your room.” I told myself it was because I didn’t want Molly the Breeder to stumble into the lobby and witness me ripping the designer slacks wearing crap weasel a new one. Not because hearing him call me pumpkin suddenly filled me with a longing for a simpler time when deciding if I should be leaving my toothbrush in Richard’s medicine cabinet was my biggest worry. “But just for a minute,” I added. “I have to get back to the reception.”
“Reception?” He glanced down at my gown as if just noticing the purple monstrosity for the first time.
“Yes, reception. My mom just got married. The wedding was going to be in Malibu, but weather issues forced us…” I glanced around at the Elk’s Lodge chic interior. “…here. You were supposed to go with me, you know.”
“Right. Sorry, pumpkin.”
Only he didn’t look sorry at all. He looked nervous. And he kept glancing back at the lobby like any second he expected someone to come bursting through the doors with guns drawn. Maybe Ramirez.
I shuddered at that thought, suddenly as eager to get Richard out of sight as he was.
I followed him down the hall to the elevators and up to the second floor. He paused outside room two-fourteen and unlocked the door. The room wasn’t much to speak of. A double bed covered with a desert motif spread, two watery prints on the wall and a TV stand and small writing desk in one corner. All standard roadside motel issue. Richard immediately went to the windows and peeked out between the rust colored curtains.
“Richard, maybe you should tell me what’s going on here.”
“Nothing’s going on. I told you, I just needed to get away.”
“Right. And this is really Club Med. Time to quit shoveling the bullshit, Richard.”
He crossed the room and sat down on the bed. He still looked jumpy, his body humming with nervous energy. “All right, look, Maddie. I’ll tell you. But I don’t want you to get mad at me.”
Fat chance of that. But I nodded anyway.
Richard sighed. “I didn’t mean for things to get this out of hand. And I’m sorry I just left like that, but I couldn’t take the chance of anyone following me. I had to get out of there.”
“Because of Greenway?”
“Yeah.”
I sat down beside him. He looked so pathetic I almost felt sorry for him. “Maybe you’d better start at the beginning.”
Richard sighed again. Then he proceeded to tell much the same story Ramirez had. Richard had been in debt. So, when his client, Devon Greenway, wanted to shuffle some money around, Richard had agreed to help set up the dummy corporations in Mrs. Greenway’s name in exchange for a small cut of the profits. Two million dollars small. (He so owed me a pair of really expensive Blahniks when this was all over.) The plan had been to funnel everything into Swiss bank accounts and no one would be the wiser. Only an over zealous accounting clerk at Securities and Exchange had found a minor accounting error. That’s when everything started to go wrong.
To make matters worse, somewhere in all the paper shuffling, the twenty mil had disappeared. Greenway had suspected Richard of taking it, and Richard had suspected Greenway was holding out on him. Neither was willing to leave town without it, but with NewTone suddenly under investigation, they’d both gone into hiding.
“How do you just lose twenty million dollars?” I asked when he finished the narrative.
“I don’t know. We had the money travel through a series of different accounts to lose the paper trail. And it’s not in any of them.”
“Well, who had access to those accounts?”
“Just Greenway, his wife, and I.” Richard paused. He must have read the facts settling on my face because he quickly protested, his voice going high and whiney. “Look, I know this looks bad, but you’ve got to believe me. I had nothing to do with killing anyone. I’ve been here the whole time. Pumpkin, I swear I wouldn’t do that.”
As much as this new whiney side of Richard was starting to annoy me, I was inclined to believe him. I didn’t think Richard had the stomach to shoot a man. Never mind drive into the Valley.
An alternative brewed in the back of my mind as Richard got up and checked the windows again. Bunny had admitted that she’d been present at one of Greenway and Richard’s meetings. What if Greenway had been as careless with his other lady friends? What if one of the Bimbo Parade was smarter than she appeared? Unfortunately the list of Greenway’s bedtime playmates was about as long as my mother’s vintage wedding train.
I was about to ask Richard what he knew about Greenway’s extra curricular activities when a knock sounded at the door. My stomach jumped into my throat.
Ramirez.
Richard leapt away from the window, his gaze whipping wildly from me to the door.
“Who is that?”
I bit my lip. “Well, I, uh, kind of got a replacement date to the wedding.”
“Replacement date?”
“More like a ride, really.” With the added perks of knee grabbing and French kissing.
Richard waved his hands in the air. “Look, just get rid of him.”
“Open up, police,” I heard Ramirez yell from the other side of the door.
“Police?!” Richard’s voice rose two octaves and he looked like he had ants in his pants, jumping from one foot to the other. “You’re dating the police?”
Okay, I wasn’t sure how suddenly Mr. Did-I-forget-to-mention-I’m-Married was making me feel guilty, but I kind of did. “Sort of. It’s that detective that came to see you. Ramirez.”
“Detective Ramirez!? You brought him here?”
“I didn’t bring him. He kind of brought himself.” Which was the truth.
“Well, make him go away.”
Ramirez banged on the door again.
“Richard, you can’t run forever,” I reasoned. “You have to turn yourself in.”
I moved toward the door.
But Richard stopped me, laying a hand on my arm. “Don’t do this to me. Please, pumpkin.”
Ugh. I was beginning to hate this pumpkin thing.
As it turned out I didn’t have a choice. Before I could even jerk free of Richard’s grip, Ramirez burst through the door, gun drawn. I was pretty impressed. It was very Bruce Willis.
“Shit,” Richard retreated to the far side of the room, hands up in a surrender motion. “Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed. I know the law. You can’t shoot an unarmed man.”
Ramirez looked from me to Richard. He raised his eyebrows, silently asking if I was really serious about this clown. At the moment, I was having my doubts.
