The question was why?
Because she was truly innocent? Or because she was eager to pin the blame of Tony’s murder on someone else?
“A few weeks after George’s death I received a phone call from Tony,” Vicky eventually said.
“Was that unusual?” Lucas asked, his expression impossible to read.
It was the same expression he’d been wearing when he told Mia he was leaving Shreveport and wasn’t coming back.
“I preferred that we speak during our scheduled visits,” Vicky explained. “As I’ve said, I didn’t want people to know about our relationship.”
Mia made a sound of disgust. “Nice.”
Vicky narrowed her gaze, but before she could respond Lucas smoothly distracted her. “What did Tony want from you?”
With a glare at Mia, the older woman slowly turned her attention to Lucas. “He said he’d gotten on the wrong side of some drug dealers.”
Lucas frowned. “I thought Tony was only a casual user.”
Vicky shrugged. “Maybe, but he liked to make extra money by transporting”—she curled her lips, as if disgusted by her lover’s illegal activities—“packages from Texas or Florida to Shreveport. I warned him that it was too dangerous, but he refused to listen.” She shook her head in resignation. “Eventually his habit of playing with fire got him burnt.”
Mia flinched. She’d known that Tony had friends in bad places. And that he probably made some extra money doing things that were shady. But that was yet another thing she preferred not to dwell on.
Dammit. She should have taken more time to find out what was going on with her friend. It might not have changed anything, but she wouldn’t now be plagued with guilt. “What happened?” she demanded.
Vicky’s gaze remained locked on Lucas. “During his last trip the people who were supposed to give him the drugs instead beat him up and robbed him.” She gave a delicate shiver. “He was not only injured, but he had to come home without the drugs or the money. His contacts weren’t happy.”
“How much did he lose?” Lucas asked.
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
Mia sucked in a shocked breath. Tony had been busted four or five times and never had more than a dime bag of weed on him. “That’s a lot of money,” she muttered.
Vicky gave a stiff nod. “Enough to make the dealers threaten Tony’s life. They wanted their money back. Tony asked me to help.” She gave a small shrug. “I refused.”
Mia’s lips parted in fury. This woman had used Tony when it suited her. But she couldn’t do anything when he needed help?
But before she could speak, Lucas was asking the question trembling on her lips.
“Why would you refuse?”
“To be honest, I could tell that Tony was on a downward spiral,” Vicky said, no hint of remorse in her frigid tone. “He was drinking too much and constantly stoned. I was considering ending our relationship.”
Lucas gave a sharp laugh. “Yeah. We could tell by the tapes just how eager you were to end the relationship.”
Instead of being embarrassed by the reminder that they’d seen her in the sex tapes, the older woman managed to look even more arrogant. Tilting her chin, she peered at Lucas down the length of her nose. “He begged me not to leave him, and I felt guilty enough to give in to his pleas.”
“So you gave him a pity fuck, but not the money?” Lucas mocked.
Vicky flushed, but Mia was guessing it was from anger, not shame.
“No. I should have.” Lifting a hand to her lips, Vicky gave a delicate sniff. “He might be alive today if I’d agreed.”
Mia ground her teeth. She wasn’t fooled for a second. Vicky Fontaine had about as much feeling as a spitting cobra. “So what does any of this have to do with me?”
Vicky’s gaze lowered as she brushed an imaginary piece of lint from the cuff of her dress. “Tony was desperate,” she said, speaking slowly, as if giving herself time to consider her words. “He told the thugs who demanded the money that he was going to come into a fortune once your father died.”
“My father?” Mia blinked in disbelief. “That’s ridiculous.”
Vicky lifted her head, squarely meeting Mia’s suspicious glare. “I think he was hoping your father had the money he’d blackmailed from me still hidden somewhere in his cabin. After all, everyone knew George Ramon was paranoid of banks. If he could find it, he could use it to pay off his debt.” She gave a lift of her shoulder. “If nothing else, it gave him time to come up with another plan. But then your father passed away.”
Lucas’s fingers tightened on Mia’s shoulder and she abruptly remembered the lighter they’d found at her dad’s house. It proved that Tony had been there, but not when or why he would go to the cabin.
Was it possible that he’d been searching the property hoping to find the fifty thousand dollars?
“I presume the dealers wanted their money?” Lucas said.
“Exactly,” Vicky agreed. “Tony was forced to confess that the money he’d hoped to get his hands on was now out of his reach.”
Mia narrowed her gaze. The woman never missed a beat.
It was truly a masterful performance.
Lucas looked as skeptical as Mia felt. “The drug dealers didn’t believe him?” he mocked.
“Actually, they did,” Vicky retorted in icy tones, her gaze shifting to Mia. “And since Tony had claimed that he was an heir for your father, they naturally assumed if you were gone he would finally get his hands on the money.”
Lucas frowned. “That’s a hell of a leap.”
“I doubt if any of them have more brains than Tony did,” Vicky said. “Whatever the explanation, when I went to visit Tony he revealed the picture of Mia he received with the demand that she be killed.”
Mia shook her head. She’d seen the image that Teagan had sent to Lucas. “The picture was in your purse.”
“I’d barely walked through the front door when he shoved the picture into my handbag and begged for my help.”
Lucas released a sharp laugh. “And that led to sex?”
“I knew I was going to refuse.” Vicky flicked a cold, dismissive glance over Mia. “No offense, but I wasn’t about to put myself in the position of being blackmailed by a gang of thugs who considered me their personal bank.” The older woman ignored Mia’s grimace as she continued. “Plus I intended to end my relationship with Tony that night. I was trying to soften the blow.”
Mia didn’t believe her for a minute. It was like Vicky kept putting puzzle pieces together, but none of them fit into a clear picture.
Still, she couldn’t call her a liar. Not when the only other person who could tell them what had actually happened was dead.
Seemingly agreeing with her logic, Lucas didn’t bother to press the older woman. Instead he turned the conversation.
“Why did Tony go to Houston?” he abruptly asked.
Vicky paused, her arms folding over her waist as she searched for her answer.
“I don’t know,” she at last conceded. “I remember he spoke about you and the fact that you’d opened some sort of detective agency in Houston.”
“Security,” Lucas growled.
Vicky waved away his correction. “Maybe he was hoping you could help him. Tony had a habit of getting in trouble and expecting someone else to clean up his mess.”
Lucas lifted his brows. “You aren’t suggesting that I shot him?”
“It’s certainly more likely than your obvious assumption that I’m involved,” Vicky responded, refusing to be intimidated. Then, sucking in a deep breath, she continued in a controlled tone. “But I was about to suggest that the dealers followed Tony to Houston and shot him before he had a chance to speak with you.”
Mia made a sound of frustration. There was something deeply annoying about hearing Tony’s name on this woman’s lips.
They might have been lovers, but it was obvious that Vicky hadn’t felt anything for the younger man. In fact, Mia was convinced she’d only used Tony for
sex. And maybe murder.
She shuddered as she forced herself to meet the icy-gray gaze. “That doesn’t explain why someone would want to kill me.”
Vicky shrugged. “The dealers might have been afraid that Tony said something to you that would tie them to the murder. It was no secret that the two of you were close.”
“If that was true they’d shoot me, not try to poison me,” Mia countered. Who’d ever heard of a gangbanger tossing pills into a coffeepot?
Vicky narrowed her gaze. “Then it must be some other enemy. You father was hardly a pillar of society—”
Mia abruptly snapped. In the past six months she’d lost two of the most important men in her life, and this ghastly woman was doing her best to shred their memories.
She was done playing nice.
“Don’t you dare say another word about my father,” she shouted, lunging forward.
With a speed that caught Mia off guard, Lucas was suddenly standing in front of her, blocking her path.
“I think that’s enough for now,” he murmured in soft tones.
“More than enough,” Vicky snapped, moving to the desk to grab her cell phone. “Either you leave now or I call and report you for trespassing.”
Lucas never turned his gaze from Mia’s flushed face, his hand reaching up to tuck a curl behind her ear. “We’re not going to get any more today,” he murmured.
“But—”
Her words were cut short as he pressed a finger to her lips.
“We’ll discuss this later.” He brushed the back of his fingers over her cheek. “Trust me.”
Catching sight of the grim determination etched onto his face, Mia gave a grudging nod. He wasn’t giving up.
Or at least, he’d better not.
Still standing in front of her, Lucas turned his head to glance toward Vicky. “Thank you for your time.”
Vicky remained by the desk, glaring at Mia over Lucas’s shoulder. “I’d like to say it was a pleasure, but we all know it wasn’t.”
Grabbing Mia’s arm, Lucas steered her toward the door. “We’ll let you know if we have more questions,” he told Vicky.
“Next time you want to speak with me, call my lawyer.”
* * *
Lucas clenched his teeth, refusing to slow as he tugged Mia out of the house and toward his car.
Mia was clearly close to a meltdown. Hardly surprising when Vicky was accusing her father of being an accomplice to murder.
He wanted her away from the venomous atmosphere that swirled through the house.
Pulling her to the side of Max’s SUV so they were out of sight of the front windows, Lucas sent a text to his friend before meeting Mia’s worried gaze. “Are you okay?”
She shivered, wrapping her arms around her waist. “You don’t believe her, do you?”
Lucas paused, sensing how important his answer was to Mia. “I think she’s a very clever, very dangerous woman,” he said, choosing his words with care. “She mixes in just enough truth to make her lies plausible.”
Mia bit her bottom lip, her expression brittle. “Tony wouldn’t have killed Paul Fontaine.”
Lucas wasn’t nearly so certain. Tony was physically strong, but he rarely made the effort to think for himself. He preferred to be told what to do and when to do it.
“He wouldn’t have plotted the murder, but he could have been persuaded to do it by someone he loved,” he said.
She frowned. “Vicky?”
“We just witnessed that she’s a master manipulator,” he pointed out with a small shudder. He felt contaminated from his time with Vicky Fontaine. When they got back to the penthouse he was going to take a long, hot shower. “It would have been easy to convince Tony that she was in a terrible marriage and the only way to get out was to kill her husband.”
Mia flinched, knowing he was right but still wanting to cling to the belief that her friend would never take the life of another.
“He wasn’t a violent man,” she muttered.
“He didn’t initiate fights,” Lucas agreed, reaching out to cup her cheek in his palm. “But if he thought someone was trying to hurt you, he would have beat the hell out of them.”
She blinked back sudden tears, as if reminded of a time when Tony had stood up to a bully for her. “True.”
“If Vicky told him Paul was abusing her, Tony would have rushed to the rescue.”
“I suppose,” Mia grudgingly conceded, her jaw hardening with a stubborn expression. “But my father would never have agreed to help.”
Again Lucas hesitated. He wanted to assure her that she was right. That there was no way George Ramon was involved. Only the fact that there was someone out there who wanted to hurt her forced him to press the issue.
“Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” he said, holding up his hand as her lips parted in protest. “Wait, Mia. I don’t mean your father would kill for his own gain. But I think he understood on some level that he’d failed you after your mother died.”
Pain flared through her eyes as his words struck a raw nerve. “What’s your point?”
He stroked his thumb over her chilled cheek, hating the fact that she was so obviously upset.
“It’s possible he wanted to do something to make up for his inability to be the father you needed,” he suggested in gentle tones. “If he could give you financial security after he passed, it might help ease his sense of failure.”
She shook her head, her brow furrowed. “He wouldn’t kill anyone, not even for me.”
“No, but he might be coerced into covering up a crime.”
She stepped away from him, as if needing the distance to regain command of her shaken composure.
“If Tony was Vicky’s lover and he agreed to murder her husband for her, then who shot him in Houston?”
It was a question that continued to nag at Lucas. “I think he was coming to me because he knew you were in danger,” he said. “And whoever gave him that picture of you followed him to Houston to stop him from talking to me.”
“Drug dealers?”
He gave a slow shake of his head. “If it was drug-related Tony would never have allowed them to get close enough to shoot him at point-blank. The only way they could have killed him would be to do a drive-by.”
“A horrible thought, but true,” she muttered. “Besides, it’s ridiculous to believe that they would be trying to kill me.”
“No, but Vicky is cunning. She creates one distraction after another to keep the blame from landing on herself.”
“There has to be some way to prove she’s involved.”
“Did I just hear you say the lovely Ms. Fontaine is involved?” Max drawled as he suddenly stepped around the front of the SUV.
Resisting the urge to grab Mia and pull her close against him, Lucas forced his attention toward his friend.
Quickly he gave a condensed rundown of what they’d discovered, including the fact that Paul Fontaine was dead, and Vicky’s attempt to pin the murder on Tony and George Ramon.
As he listened, Max studied Mia’s pale face, no doubt sensing her brittle distress. It wasn’t until Lucas finished speaking that Max turned his attention back to him.
“She can’t believe that lame-ass story will hold up in court?”
Lucas shrugged. “I doubt that she’s worried about her story. She has the sort of money and power to ensure that her lawyers will keep her off any witness stand.”
Max grimaced. “True enough.”
“Did you find anything?” Lucas asked.
“The stables have been closed and it looks like the pool hasn’t been used in years,” he answered.
Lucas shrugged. “Not surprising for a woman living on her own. I doubt they’ve kept horses here in the past fifty years. And Vicky doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman who likes to lie around the pool.”
“True,” Max agreed.
“What about the rest of the outbuildings?”
“The greenhouses have recently been restored.�
� Max nodded his head toward the far end of the house. “And the garage looks as if it’s in decent shape.”
“Did you check the vehicles?” Lucas demanded, his lips twitching as Max cocked a brow. Of course his friend would have done a thorough search of the garage. “What did you find?”
“A Jag and a more mundane Taurus.”
Disappointment flared through Lucas. Why couldn’t anything be easy? “That’s it?” he asked.
Max flashed a secretive smile. “Nope.”
Lucas stared at his companion, waiting for him to continue. When Max simply smiled, Lucas muttered a low curse. “You’re as annoying as Teagan.”
Max snorted. “No one is as annoying as Teagan.”
“Okay. That’s true,” Lucas conceded. “Tell me what you found.”
Max glanced around, making sure there was no one close enough to overhear his words. “I went to the side driveway where the employees park their cars.”
“A black SUV?” Lucas demanded.
“Yep.” Max gave a nod of his head. “I asked the gardener about it and he said it belonged to the housekeeper.”
“Louisa?” Mia’s eyes widened with confusion. “Why would she try to hurt me?”
“It probably wasn’t her,” Max assured her. “The gardener admitted that most of the servants leave their keys in their cars in case they need to be moved for a delivery.”
Lucas moved to the back of Max’s SUV, studying the end of the house. There was a large, screened-in porch that looked as if it was rarely used. If Louisa was busy working, she wouldn’t be able to see that her vehicle was missing. In fact, she’d probably have to actually go outside and look to notice if it’d been moved.
“So anyone could have borrowed it,” he murmured.
Max moved to stand at his side. “Yes.”
Lucas released a slow breath. Mia wasn’t going to like what he had to say, but it was increasingly obvious that Vicky Fontaine was deeply involved in Tony’s murder, as well as trying to hurt her.
He was done screwing around.
“It might be time to turn over what we’ve learned to Detective Cooper,” he told Max.
As expected, Mia sucked in a harsh breath as she hastily stepped forward to grab his arm. “Wait.”
He frowned down at her strained expression, knowing that she was going to try to convince him not to contact the cops. “Mia.”