Cuff Me(30)

She reached out a hand, although the table was so enormous it stopped several feet short of Jill before dropping delicately. “I didn’t kill Lenora,” she said. “I don’t even have the energy to dislike her anymore. When you’ll get to my age… you’ll see. You’ll understand. It takes a grievance far worse than a straying lover to carry on that kind of hatred for decades. We had a spat a few weeks ago, true, but it was more for old times’ sake than anything else. There was no real heat to it. I’m sure Lenora would say the same.”

“Except she can’t. Because she’s dead.” Vincent put his napkin down after this sharp deceleration and stood, indicating that the meal was over.

The interview was over as well. Jill knew there was nothing more to get out of Holly at the moment. She had that clammed-up look of a woman who was gearing up for a good sulk.

“May we speak with your housekeeper and this Martin?” Jill asked, standing as well.

Holly sniffed. “Of course. I have nothing to hide.”

As expected, the housekeeper and security guy backed up their employer’s claims that she rarely left the home. Apparently Holly hadn’t been away from the house except to see the show in the city on the night she argued with Lenora, as well as to a friend’s house for cocktails a couple nights earlier.

Jill didn’t see any of the classic warning signs that they were lying, but neither did she get that gut-level instinct that they were completely honest.

Though, that sort of people-reading hunch was more Vincent’s thing. Maybe he’d picked something up.

Vincent and Jill said a chilly good-bye to a thoroughly pissed-off Holly Adams, who had left the dining room and now sat watching reruns of I Love Lucy in a fully decked-out media room.

“You can see yourself out, I trust?” Holly said, not looking away from the screen.

“We’ll manage,” Vin said with a roll of his eyes at Jill.

They barely managed. It took two wrong turns in the massive house before they found their way back to the formal foyer.

“That chandelier is bigger than my entire apartment,” Vin muttered.

“Probably costs as much too,” Jill said, pausing to take one last look at the opulent home. “It’s a little sad, isn’t it? All of this grandness and nobody to share it with?”

“Doesn’t have to be sad. Some people like being alone.”

She glanced at him knowingly. “You’re talking about you, huh?”

Her voice was teasing, but he merely looked away. Didn’t answer as he opened the door and started to head outside.

Vincent skidded to a halt and when Jill glanced around him, she knew why.

The sky had made good on its threat of snow.

Lots of it.





CHAPTER TWELVE


Jill and Vincent made a solid go of it, but ten minutes after leaving Holly Adams’s house, they realized that trying to make it back to Manhattan in a near blizzard was stupid and dangerous.

“There,” Jill said, squinting through the white blur of their windshield. “I think that’s a motel up on the right.”

“‘Motel’ is a strong word,” Vincent said as they inched closer, pulling into the near-deserted parking lot.

Jill reached for the door handle, but Vincent gave her a skeptical look. “You do know that deserted motels like this are where people come to die, right?”

She leaned over and patted his thigh. “You’ve got a gun, big guy.”

The woman behind the reception desk had both the whitest skin and the blackest hair Jill had ever seen. Add to that a complete inability to smile, an obvious disdain for her job, and a disarming habit of maintaining eye contact for three beats too long, and Vincent had a pretty solid point about the whole death-in-motel theory.

The place was seriously creepy.

“Good thing Holly served us a big old meal so we won’t have to worry about dinner,” Jill said as they made their way to their side-by-side rooms.

“Or not,” she muttered, watching as Vincent stopped in front of a vending machine, pulled out some cash, and began punching buttons for everything from mixed nuts to M&M’s.

Their rooms were on the first floor. “This is me,” Jill said, pointing at 104. The “0” was missing, but as long as the bed was clean and the bathroom spider-free, she’d make do.

Vincent nodded at 105. “I’m next door if you need anything.”

“I’ll be good,” she said. “I have every intention of taking a hot shower and then watching some truly appalling old movie on TV.”

“And calling Tom,” Vin said.

She’d started to put her key in the lock but glanced over her shoulder in surprise at that.

“Sure,” she said, a little confused by the sudden and unprompted mention of her fiancé. “And calling Tom.”

She hadn’t thought much about it actually. But they talked most nights, so yeah… she’d check in.

Vin nodded once before taking a couple steps toward his own room. He passed before entering, glancing at her once. “If you hear me scream… save me?”

Jill grinned. “You got it, partner. Be brave in there.”

Then, to her utter surprise, Vincent Moretti smiled at her. Not a big toothy grin… the man didn’t have any of those… that she knew of.