Carla Neggers - White Hot

“Yes! I remember! And she makes Desi let her perform with him. Ah, those were the days of the great shows. Sometimes,” he went on in his wonderful voice that even when not performing resonated in the listener’s soul, “I wish I’d stuck to singing in the shower and worked in my father’s butcher shop.”

“Your father’s butcher shop went out of business twenty years ago.”

“I could have sold lamb chops in Haymarket Square and sung Desi Arnaz songs to snotty young conservatory students.” Mollie could hear him gulping his drink, his melancholy palpable. He had always wanted more-more love, more romance, more acclaim, more everything-and yet wished he didn’t, wished the abyss inside him, that he could neither define nor ever fill, would just vanish, even if it took his drive and ambition with it. He sighed heavily. “If Papa could see me now…”

“He’d be proud of you, Leonardo.”

“I don’t know. No wife, no children. I forget even where I am. Florence, Venice?”

“Leonardo, this isn’t your first drink, is it?”

“It is. I’m just being mournful because I haven’t been to bed yet and I’m alone in the country of my ancestors, and I’ve just sung Puccini.” He cleared his throat, pushing through his dark mood. “But never mind me. Tell me about you, sweet Mollie. How are you? How’s your business? How’s your life?”

She sank back against the pillows, the room suddenly feeling strange with its warm colors and sprawling bed, its tasteful paintings of flowers and its beautiful blown-glass lamps. Everything in the guest quarters was chosen by an interior decorator because Leonardo had used up his limited patience for decorating in the main house. He didn’t care, didn’t have time. His world-his abyss-lay inside him, not outside, as much as he tried to find it there. He enjoyed the material success his talent brought him, but ultimately it didn’t matter, couldn’t help quiet his demons. Mollie smiled, remembering Leonardo and her parents engaging in a loud discussion of a new conductor’s interpretation of Mozart as they drank tea from a chipped teapot. It could have been Austrian china or a Kmart special, and none of them would even have noticed.

Mollie knew she could tell Leonardo about Jeremiah and his jewel thief. Her godfather didn’t know about her affair and its role in her decision to drop out of the conservatory, but he was no stranger himself to the dark places of the soul found after succumbing to the whims of passion. He sang opera, after all. And he could draw upon personal experience, decades of his own love affairs gone wrong.

But to say out loud to anyone, even this godfather she adored, what had happened between Jeremiah and her ten years ago-what had happened today-was just too risky, too daunting. Once she started, where would she stop? Where would the words take her? She’d practiced self-containment for so long. It was like coming upon long-buried nuclear waste, wondering if it had been down there for enough half-lives to be safe.

So she told Leonardo about business and how Deegan Tiernay was working out, and that she and Griffen were becoming even better friends, and just kept Jeremiah and his jewel thief to herself.

“Oh,” she added, “I almost forgot. I’m going to the children’s hospital charity ball tomorrow night. Don’t you have an ex-girlfriend or someone who left a nice dress in a closet?”

He paused, obviously taking her question seriously. “Upstairs. The pink bedroom. There should be several dresses in your size or close to it. Pick any you want.”

“Leonardo, I was just kidding.”

“Well, I’m not. What do I need with dresses? There’s jewelry, too. A lovely diamond-and-ruby necklace. Come, Mollie, I can’t believe you haven’t snooped.”

“I’d never search your closets!”

He laughed, his melancholy dissipating. “You’re your parents’ daughter after all. No curiosity.”

“I’m as curious as the next person, just not about what’s in your closets. Your mind, yes. Your closets, no.”

“I rest my case,” he said, and added dryly, “But I’d rather you invaded my closets than my mind.”

“I’m not planning to invade either one. Thanks, Leonardo. I don’t know, living at your house-” She grinned, feeling better. “I can see myself in diamonds and rubies.”

“Then wear them. And enjoy your ball, Cinderella.”

Jeremiah dug through the rubble on his desk for an invitation to a private party before the children’s hospital charity ball that evening. He knew he’d received one. He wasn’t organized, but he had a good memory. He picked through scraps of paper, steno pads started and abandoned, computer diskettes, articles ripped from newspapers and magazines, printouts off the Internet, unread memos from the Trib brass. He had a tendency to let things that didn’t interest him pile up. Periodically he’d decide everything was out of date and sweep it all into his trash can.

Croc’s jewel thief just might consider a private party and one of the big charity balls of the season prime targets. Then again, he hadn’t hit anything that high-profile. Even if the thief didn’t show, Jeremiah figured he could get a sense of how a jewel thief was being received among his potential victims. The papers and police might not be calling the string of stolen and possibly misplaced jewels the work of one thief, but he’d be willing to bet that speculation and rumors were running rampant sixty-five miles to the north.

He wasn’t ready to back out totally and abandon Mollie to Croc’s devices. He wouldn’t write the story, but he damned well wasn’t going to leave it to Croc, aka Blake Wilder, aka an elusive pain.

Since he was already invited, he could show up in Palm Beach, in his own truck, without calling attention to himself.

If he could find the goddamned invitation.

Helen Samuel edged up to his desk. He could see the shocked look on the faces of his fellow reporters. Helen made a practice of avoiding the newsroom and disdained the idea of “investigative” reporters. To her, news was news, and a reporter reported it. She was sipping a watermelon-colored health drink with green flecks, the smell of rancid smoke emanating from her bright orange knit suit. Without so much as a good morning, she said, “My spies tell me you’re on this jewel thief story for personal reasons.”

“Such as?”

“Such as a pretty young publicist from Boston.”

Jeremiah tilted back in his chair and regarded her with an equanimity he didn’t feel. “You mean Mollie Lavender.”

Helen sipped her drink. “I like it when people don’t try to bullshit me. You’re not going to ask how I got her name?”

“Helen, you own every fly from Cocoa Beach to Key West. I’m surprised I had twenty-four hours before you found out.” He paused, considering his options. “Off the record?”

“Sure. What the hell.”

Jeremiah debated how much to tell her; there were a lot of things he’d rather have buzzing around him besides Helen Samuel. If he told too much, she’d buzz. If he told too little, she’d really buzz. “I knew Mollie briefly about ten years ago. A source said she’s one of the common denominators in this jewel thief story.”

“Meaning she was at every party hit,” Helen said, staying with him.

“Right. I checked her out, just in case she’d stumbled into something. She’s only been in town a few months.”

“Five. She set up shop in Leonardo Pascarelli’s guest quarters. He dotes on her.”

Jeremiah had to allow that Helen Samuel was a formidable force in south Florida. She knew everything about everybody and made up none of it. She just didn’t keep much of it secret, either. “I don’t think she knows anything about our jewel thief.”