“What all are we celebrating, Deva?”
“The good men in our lives.”
She rewarded me with the only real smile I’d seen on her face all day. Brighter than Ilona’s diamonds, it lit up the whole shop. “It’s the lieutenant, isn’t it?”
The bells on the door jangled, and we both turned toward the door.
She bounded into the shop, slamming the door so hard the bells jangled for another thirty seconds. “Did that bastard tell you what he did to me?”
“Which bastard is that?” I asked, taking the Fifth.
“Don’t pretend, Deva.” With a nod at Lee, Jessica took a seat on the zebra settee. “He served me with divorce papers, the son of a bitch.”
I heaved a sigh. This wasn’t going to be easy. “You handle anger well, Jessica.”
Her eyes narrowed at me, but she rested the Ferragamo tote on the floor next to her feet as if she planned to stay a while and crossed her legs at the knee.
She ran her palms down her sides. “Ten pounds since Christmas. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me in years. Only forty more to go. I hope you don’t have any of those Christmas cookies left. I can do without the temptation.”
“You’re safe. They’re long gone.”
Lee dropped her purse back into a desk drawer. I guess she recognized that Jessica needed to vent, and that meant girl talk, lots of it.
Jessica picked up the Ferragamo and rummaged in it for a tissue. I hoped she wasn’t about to burst into tears. But no, she gave her nose a vigorous blow, tucked the tissue in a jacket pocket and said, “I like you, Deva, so I came to warn you, woman to woman.”
“Warn me? About what?”
Lee stiffened. I caught her alarmed glance and smiled, but her troubled expression didn’t change.
I pulled up a folding garden chair. Whatever Jessica had to say would be easier to take sitting down. I leaned forward. “What is it?”
“Don’t trust Morgan. He’s a bloody liar.”
“But-”
She held up a hand for silence. “Let me finish. I have proof. Wait till you see this.” She reached back into the tote, yanked out a bank statement and thrust it at me.
One glance and I knew. “All his accounts have been cancelled.”
“Right. And that’s just the Sun Trust Bank. The others are the same. He’s stripped every account. At least those I could find.”
I handed her back the statement.
“I had to take a hammer to his desk drawer to get this much information. Wait till he sees the damage. Not that I give a damn. What infuriates me is that he changed the password to his PC. God knows what he’s hiding in there. But one thing for sure, he’s holding out on me, Deva.”
This didn’t bode well for Jessica. Or for Deva Dunne Interiors, either. “I’m sorry to hear all this. You sounded so positive the night you telephoned.”
“Yeah. Well I was a fool to believe him. He knew you and I had talked about the new house. So he figured he had to tell me the truth about it. That kept me off his back until he could move his assets where I wouldn’t find them. And that little weasel helped him.”
“Weasel?”
“George Farragut. God, I can’t stand the creep. He’s as bad as Morgan with his precious collections. All those drab etchings. Not a one with any color to it. Just like him. The little prick.”
“I used to be such a lady.” Jessica uncrossed her legs and, spreading them apart, dropped her hands between her knees. “Now I’m a piranha. Out for blood. That’s why I’m here. I don’t want Morgan to screw you over-” with a wink to a wide-eyed Lee, “-metaphorically speaking, of course, the way he screwed me. So get your money upfront. Or else leave him hanging with a half-finished house. Slap a lien on it if you have to. He’ll have a tough time impressing his bimbo then.”
A housewife forever and now sliding down the fifties hill, Jessica had my sympathy, even though punishing Morgan, not protecting my interests, was her motive in coming here today. I couldn’t blame her for her fury, but she should be concentrating on her fiscal interests, not revenge. Anger must have her blindsided. I wondered what marketable skills she possessed but didn’t dare ask. Her ace in the hole was her husband, and it looked like she’d played that card. Unless?
“Have you seen a lawyer, Jessica?”
She looked up from her knees and shook her head. “A divorce lawyer? Not yet. First I’m talking to Morgan’s tax attorney. See if I can get the truth out of him. We always filed a joint return, so I know how much Morgan earned but not where it went. Simon Yaeger better not hold out on me.” She pounded a fist on the settee arm. “I have a right to know. Once I learn what’s what from Yaeger, I’ll contact a divorce lawyer. You know a good one? Somebody who’ll go for the jugular?”
I shook my head when what I wanted to do was slap myself on the forehead. Sometimes you can’t see the forest-too many trees in the way. Of course, they all knew each other. Simon, the Alexanders, George Farragut, and now the Morgan Joneses.
So not only did Simon handle legal affairs for Trevor and George, he apparently did so for the Morgans. That was something I didn’t find out the day I rifled-I mean glanced at-the documents on Trevor’s desk. The day Simon called and left that chilling message on Trevor’s answering machine. And of course both Simon and George did business with Trevor.
Now that I thought about it, there were a lot of loose ends, too. George had recommended the Russian art show to Simon. They had planned to meet there that night so Simon could return George’s briefcase. A briefcase Simon had been storing in his office for a week-the very week after Maria was murdered. For some unexplained reason, at the last minute George had skipped the art show. Had he seen Rossi lurking in his car outside the gallery? Could that have kept him away? It had to have been something serious. The next day he had arrived at Morgan’s house practically panting to get his briefcase back. Whatever it held had to have been valuable.
Not a laptop. It had been too light. Client records, then? Facts, information? Possibly. Or money. No. Suitcases full of cash only cropped up in B movies…
Somewhere, in the background, Jessica nattered on about how rotten Morgan was, how
George had rolled up the Monet and hidden it in his briefcase. And Simon had stored it for him. What better hiding place than the office of Naples’s most respected law firm? Which left me with two burning questions: Had Simon known what was in the case? And where was the painting now?
“…furthermore, Deva, I’ll bet that bimbo is a bag of bones. Wait till he bangs into her in the dark. Ha! He’ll miss me then.”
With a start, I came back into the moment. “I’m sorry, Jessica. What were you saying?”
The phone rang shortly after Jessica left. Rossi again? Or maybe a customer. I picked up fast.
“Deva. For you I have bad news. It is bad for me, too.”
“What is it, Ilona?”
“Our Wine Festival dinner is no more. It’s
Surprised but not stunned, I asked, “You’ve cancelled? Why?”
