A Younger Woman. Wendy Rosnau

remind him she wasn’t going to be around long enough for that. She simply sneered back with a honey-coated grin and said, “Do you have arsenic in the house?”

      He chuckled. “No, but I have eggs and shrimp. Still like shrimp for breakfast?”

      The question and the memory it manifested had Margo biting the inside of her cheek. The pain reminded her of how dangerous it was to reminisce, as well as how vulnerable it made her feel.

      “With shallots and chives?” He added, twisting the knife a little deeper.

      “Cook what you want,” she snapped. “Start the kitchen on fire for all I care. Better yet, how about yourself?” Margo squeezed her eyes shut and pretended to tune him out. Suddenly she caught the scent of him, felt his hand on her forehead. Her eyes popped open. “What are you doing?”

      “Making sure you don’t have a fever.”

      When his hand left her forehead, he shoved it into his back pocket and pulled out a key. A twinge of panic knotted Margo’s stomach. My God, she’d forgotten all about Blu’s key.

      “Recognize this?”

      Margo clamped her mouth shut.

      “Of course you do, it came from your pocket.” He was no longer grinning, his blue eyes razor sharp as he held Blu’s key up so she could see it clearly. “After breakfast we’ll discuss what it unlocks.”

      He slipped the key back into his pocket, then reached for the portable phone on the nightstand and pocketed that, too. On his way out the door, he said, “I almost forgot. There’s a tape recorder in the drawer next to you. While you’re waiting for breakfast why don’t you listen to it?”

      “I don’t feel much like listening to music,” Margo sniffed.

      “It’s not music, but it’s just as entertaining. You don’t sound like yourself, but you were in a lot of pain last night. Well, maybe it wasn’t so much the pain as the whiskey talking, you think?”

      He walked out of the room then, leaving Margo to wonder if the liquor he’d poured down her throat, had, in fact, done the dirty deed and loosened her tongue. And if that was the case, just what had she told Detective Archard that she shouldn’t have?

      Chapter 4

      His instructions had been specific—no one was to die. Not until he’d gotten his shipment back, that is. And maybe not even then if there wasn’t a good enough reason. Keeping a low profile, even in a city this size, had always been the key to his success and survival.

      Why, then, had his wishes been ignored and the job bungled so badly? The answer was simple—it was impossible to find good help these days. More to the point, his cousins were idiots.

      Swearing crudely, Taber Denoux lifted his glass of cognac to his lips and swallowed the expensive amber liquid. He’d just finished talking to his best customer, and the man was livid. His merchandise was missing, and Taber hadn’t been able to promise a recovery date. Oh, he had promised the merchandise would turn up, but without a date, the customer had threatened to buy elsewhere.

      Damn Blu duFray to hell, Taber thought. Was the man an idiot like Rudy and Raynard, or the very devil his name implied? A more important question was, how had a going-broke fisherman pulled off a heist worth millions?

      Unable to believe his merchandise was gone, Taber slammed the empty glass down on his desk. Blu duFray was either damn lucky, or his fisherman guise was the perfect cover for a well-connected thief.

      Taber still didn’t know how the cop fit into the scheme of things. And he conceded that he might never know. But, what did it matter now? The cop was dead. It seemed the only thing that had gone right last night was Raynard shooting low and wounding Blu duFray instead of killing him along with the cop. duFray dead would have only magnified the problem, since it seemed he was the only one who knew where the missing merchandise was.