“Gorgeous,” she said. “We’re so very grateful.”
The clerk opened the door, and she and Mick stepped into an elegantly retro cottage, low lights revealing clean lines and lots of windows with gauzy curtains, and everything impeccably decorated in old Hollywood style: Art Deco mirrors and tile, low curved couches, a small kitchen. Through a half-open door, Barrie caught a glimpse of a bedroom with a four-poster bed.
To her mortification, Mick caught her look and held her eyes before he turned to the desk clerk.
“It’s perfect, my man. We’re going to name our first child after you,” he declared, whipping out what Barrie was sure was a hundred-dollar bill, even as she was blushing as crimson as the desk clerk at the idea of a first child.
“There are robes in the closet, and…well…” The clerk cast around for something safe to say. “Enjoy.”
He backed out with one last furtive look at Barrie as he closed the door behind him.
“Beautiful,” Mick said, looking straight at her with a heart-stopping intensity, and for a moment she wondered if he meant the success of their ruse—or her. She was suddenly regretting changing into jeans and a hoodie. And then she realized where her thoughts were going and ordered herself to focus.
“Was this Mayo’s suite?” she demanded, moving farther inside, partly to get some distance from Mick, who was radiating way too much…everything. In every way.
“No. Two bungalows down,” he said, and she was infuriated to see he was holding back a smile that seemed all-too-knowing in the circumstances. “I saw the crime scene tape,” he added.
“What are you planning to do, break in?”
He turned his hand over and displayed a key in his palm. “Grabbed it from behind the desk while he was ogling you.”
Damn the man, he thought of everything.
“You can drop the accent now, you know,” she told him. It was making her want to sink into that four-poster bed and do unspeakable things to him. Or let him do unspeakable things to her. Or…
Stop that.
She had to keep her head.
“Oh, of course,” he said in his normal voice. “If you insist. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
He stepped to the front door and opened it a wedge to look out onto the dimly lit walkway, then nodded to Barrie. She moved past him through the door, a little too close for comfort. It seemed anytime she got within three feet of him her whole body started to melt down.
Mick came after her. “This way,” he said, and reached for her hand; she pulled away and stopped on the shadowed path. “Why bring me along?” she demanded. Journalists weren’t big on sharing scoops; the whole setup was highly suspicious.
He half smiled in the dark. “Because I needed to get out to the cottages and that clerk was so obviously smitten with you, I knew he’d bend over backward to help if you were involved.”
Barrie had to admit the glamour had done its work. In fact it even seemed to be affecting Mick a little; he kept looking at her in a way that was making it hard to concentrate on rooting out a story or even breathing.
“Are you coming or not?” he asked, and started down the path again.
She stood for a moment, then followed. “And what do you think you’re going to find in Mayo’s bungalow?” she said too crossly as she caught up with him.
The smile disappeared from his face; he looked serious, even grim. “I have no idea, but don’t you want to see?”
She had to admit she did.
She felt a thrill of the illicit as she followed him under the crime scene ribbon, stretched discreetly back from the main walkway. He gallantly held it up for her to slip under, and then they both moved down the path toward the door of the dark bungalow. It was bigger than the one the desk clerk had given them. Two bedrooms, Barrie thought, and higher ceilings.
Mick inserted the key in the lock, and she found herself holding her breath as the door swung open.
They stood for a moment letting their eyes adjust to the dimness.
The bungalow was even more luxurious than the clean-lined and pretty one they had just left. Here there was dark wood, velvet couches and stained glass in the arched windows, with thick Persian rugs on the hardwood floors. The lights from outside were an eerie glow through the colors of the stained glass.
Barrie looked around her in the dark, and even though she knew it was mostly her imagination, she felt a chill, a dark heaviness to the air. Did Tiger die here? Tiger and Mayo both? What intruder was here with them?
Mick moved forward slowly, stepping silently on the luxurious rugs. “Feel anything?” he asked her, his voice low and tense. She was unnerved, wondering what he could possibly mean.
“Creepy,” she said softly, surprising herself.
“Yeah,” he answered, and moved into the bedroom. She stood for a moment in the pools of red and blue and amber light, and then followed him.
The bed, like the one in the other suite, was four-poster, but this one was massive, with heavy and intricately carved posts, and the window screens were covered with iron filigree. There were standing candelabra lined up beside the bed; the whole setup had a medieval look that gave Barrie another shiver. Tiger, what did you get yourself into? she thought, her heart wrenching with sorrow. And then she felt a surge of blistering anger at the middle-aged mogul who had deliberately, maliciously brought a teenage boy into this kind of gilded prison to use for his narcissistic pleasures.
“The Prince of Darkness,” Mick said, his voice taut, almost as if he’d heard her thoughts, and Barrie heard the same strange bitterness in his voice that she’d noticed when he spoke of Mayo in the newsroom.
Why is that? she wondered. And what does he think he’s going to find here that the cops wouldn’t have already taken away?
Even as she thought it, Mick pulled something dark and metallic from his jacket pocket. Barrie’s heart constricted in fear.
Oh, my God…a gun… .
And then she went limp as she realized it was a small flashlight.
He turned it on and shielded the beam with his hand to keep the light away from the windows, then stepped to the bed where he ran the flashlight beam up the post closest to him.
Barrie watched, mystified. Mick stopped the light on the wooden post about a foot above the mattress and leaned in to examine the wood. She could see by the tightening of his body that he’d found whatever it was he was looking for.
“What is it?” she said, and heard her voice quaver.
He moved abruptly back and strode around to her side of the bed. She backed away to let him pass. He trained the light on the other post, at the same level as he had before, and once again she saw the change in his body language.
He looked at her and nodded toward the post, holding the flashlight steady, and she stepped warily in beside him to look.
She saw scratches in the post, light marks where the wood had been scraped.
“What…?” she started, and then she had a sinking feeling she understood.
“Handcuffs,” Mick said tightly.
“What does that…?”
“It means he did have a kid here with him. The scratches are fresh, and the evidence fits with Mayo’s…proclivities.”
Barrie was opening her mouth to demand how he knew, when suddenly they both froze at the sound of the door opening in the outer room.