Mia took a deep breath. “Who’s paying for your plane ticket?”
It wasn’t the question she wanted to ask, and they both knew it. But because it was the opening she’d provided, he jumped into it eagerly. “Don’t worry, Mom, I already told them I’d pay for it myself. I knew you wouldn’t want me to let them take on the extra expense. This time of year, a ticket to Florida’s pretty cheap if you buy it online. I have enough money saved up. I already talked to Denny. He says I can have the time off from work. And all my teachers are giving me my assignments early so I won’t miss anything important.”
Her son was one clever boy. He’d covered all the bases. “Let me think about it,” she said. “How soon do you have to have an answer?”
“Tomorrow. Mr. Olson needs to know how many tickets to buy.”
“I’ll let you know in the morning. Right now, I’m taking a hot bath.”
She started to move away from the doorway, but his voice stopped her. “Mom?”
Mia turned back to her son, waited. “I know what you’re worried about,” he said, raising his gaze to hers. “Michelle and I are seventeen years old. We’re smart and we’re careful.” A flush spread across his cheeks, but he bravely continued. “We respect each other, and we don’t take chances. We know how much we have to lose. So please don’t worry about us. We know what we’re doing, and we’re acting like responsible adults.”
Well. It looked as if she had her answer. Something tightened inside Mia’s chest, and she felt a momentary urge to cry over the realization that her son was sexually active. He was so young. It seemed just yesterday he was taking his first steps, learning to ride a bike, becoming an Eagle Scout. Was he emotionally mature enough to handle a sexual relationship? Who would guide him through those shark-infested waters? For the first time in Kevin’s young life, she felt totally inadequate as a parent. She’d done well, raising him alone after Nick died, but there were times when a boy needed a father, and this was one of them.
Mia stepped back into her son’s room, leaned over his chair and gave him a hug. “I’m proud of you,” she said.
Most kids his age, male kids anyway, would have struggled to escape, but not Kevin. He hugged her back with the same enthusiasm with which he faced everything in life. “Thanks, Mom,” he said. “I’m pretty proud of you, too.”
Kevin DeLucca was his own person. He didn’t let peer pressure influence him, and he didn’t give a rat’s behind that it wasn’t cool to actually like your parents. Most adolescents were sullen and sulky, but Kevin was sunny and upbeat. His and Mia’s relationship was based on trust, mostly because he had never given her any reason not to trust him. Mia knew how lucky she was to have a son like that.
“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” she promised. “Don’t stay up too late.”
She’d just started to run her bath when the phone rang. It was past ten o’clock, late for a phone call, and for an instant, the old fear crept up through her, fanning out in a wall of flame across her chest and tightening around her throat. Back in the day, back when she was a kid, a call after 10:00 p.m. invariably meant that Dad was in trouble again. Back in jail on a D&D, occasionally something worse.
But those days were in the distant past. It had been fifteen years since she’d last seen Johnny Winslow, nearly as long since a late-night phone call meant trouble. It was probably just Bev, calling to remind her about an early morning appointment. Or one of Kev’s buddies who’d chosen to ignore her no-calls-after-nine-o’clock rule.
Kevin’s voice yanked her back to the present. “Mom,” he yelled, “it’s for you.”
Tying her soft flannel robe more tightly around her, she eyed the claw-foot bathtub with great longing before turning off the taps and padding barefoot into her bedroom. “I’ve got it,” she said into the telephone receiver, and heard the click as Kevin hung up. “Hello?”
But it wasn’t her administrative assistant’s voice she heard. It was her brother’s. “Mia,” he said, “it’s Sam. Can you come over to the house? The police are here, and Kaye’s missing.”
Three
A single unmarked police car sat at the curb behind Sam’s Volvo. Mia parked three houses down and locked the Blazer. Adjusting the soft leather gloves she’d worn to ward off the evening chill, she walked up the three steps to the door and rang the bell. A plainclothes cop wearing a shoulder holster and a deliberately neutral expression answered the door. Beneath the police academy stiffness, he was cute as the proverbial button. Tall and lanky and handsome. But he looked so young that she felt like a pedophile for the salacious thoughts that raced through her head. She shoved them aside and followed him into the living room, where her brother sat on the cream-colored leather couch. His hair was mussed, as though he’d been running his fingers through it.
In the armchair across from him sat another plainclothes cop, a fortyish woman in a gray suit, her chestnut hair clipped in a short, no-nonsense style. Her blue eyes were sharp and intelligent as she gave Mia a thorough once-over.
Sam glanced up, looking unfocused and weary. When he saw Mia, his entire face changed. Warmth flooded his eyes, and one corner of his mouth turned up in a half smile so loaded with gratitude it was almost painful to witness. He looked like a drowning man who’d just been thrown a life preserver. “Mia,” he said, standing and crossing the room. He took her in his arms and hugged her, hard. “Thank God you got here so quickly.”
She glanced past his shoulder at the cops and whispered, “Sam? What the hell is going on here?”
“Ms. DeLucca,” the female cop said in a brisk voice as no-nonsense as her hairstyle. “Detective Lorna Abrams.” She gave a brief nod toward the younger cop. “Detective Policzki. We’d appreciate it if you could sit down with us and answer a few questions.”
Mia stepped free of her brother’s arms. Policzki, her erstwhile doorman, stood in front of the bay window, feet planted firmly apart, arms crossed, his silent demeanor rivaling that of the guards at Buckingham Palace. Mia had an overwhelming urge to tickle him, just to see if he was human.
Squelching it, she removed her coat and gloves and, tossing them over the back of the couch, took a seat. “Kaye is missing?” she said, her gaze moving back and forth between the two detectives.
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Abrams said.
“Meaning?”
“This afternoon,” she explained, “Kaye Winslow had an appointment to show one of your listings. The Worthington house on Commonwealth.”
“Yes, of course. She mentioned it this morning.”
“When the buyer arrived, nobody answered his knock, but the house was unlocked, so he walked in—” Abrams and Policzki met each other’s eyes before she turned her gaze back on Mia “—directly into a homicide scene.”
Mia felt the color draining from her face. “Homicide,” she whispered. “Is Kaye—”
“We don’t know where Kaye is, Ms. DeLucca. The victim was a male, and so far we’ve been unable to identify him. Mrs. Winslow wasn’t at the scene.” Abrams paused. “But her briefcase was.”
“Oh, God.” This was every Realtor’s secret nightmare, the fear that they would place their trust in the wrong person and end up paying the price for the mistake. How many hours had Mia spent alone with some stranger in an empty house? Every time she met a new client, the fear was there, hovering at the periphery of her mind. Some of her peers had taken to carrying stun guns for protection. Just last week a fellow broker had shown her the Taser she kept hidden in her purse.
“What about the buyer?” Mia demanded. “Has anybody talked to him?”
Policzki spoke up. “Philip Armentrout. CEO of Geminicorp in