Читать книгу Risky Business: the classic story from the queen of romance that you won’t be able to put down - Нора Робертс - Страница 6

“Watch your step, please. Please, watch your step. Thank you.” Liz took a ticket from a sunburned man with palm trees on his shirt, then waited patiently for a woman with two bulging straw baskets to dig out another one.

“I hope you haven’t lost it, Mabel. I told you to let me hold it.”

“I haven’t lost it,” the woman said testily before she pulled out the little piece of blue cardboard.

“Thank you. Please take your seats.” It was several more minutes before everyone was settled and she could take her own. “Welcome aboard the Fantasy, ladies and gentlemen.”

With her mind on a half dozen other things, Liz began her opening monologue. She gave an absentminded nod to the man on the dock who cast off the ropes before she started the engine. Her voice was pleasant and easy as she took another look at her watch. They were already fifteen minutes behind schedule. She gave one last scan of the beach, skimming by lounge chairs, over bodies already stretched and oiled slick, like offerings to the sun. She couldn’t hold the tour any longer.

The boat swayed a bit as she backed it from the dock and took an eastern course. Though her thoughts were scattered, she made the turn from the coast expertly. She could have navigated the boat with her eyes closed. The air that ruffled around her face was soft and already warming, though the hour was early. Harmless and powder-puff white, clouds dotted the horizon. The water, churned by the engine, was as blue as the guidebooks promised. Even after ten years, Liz took none of it for granted—especially her livelihood. Part of that depended on an atmosphere that made muscles relax and problems disappear.

Behind her in the long, bullet-shaped craft were eighteen people seated on padded benches. They were already murmuring about the fish and formations they saw through the glass bottom. She doubted if any of them thought of the worries they’d left behind at home.

“We’ll be passing Paraiso Reef North,” Liz began in a low, flowing voice. “Diving depths range from thirty to fifty feet. Visibility is excellent, so you’ll be able to see star and brain corals, sea fans and sponges, as well as schools of sergeant majors, groupers and parrot fish. The grouper isn’t one of your prettier fish, but it’s versatile. They’re all born female and produce eggs before they change sex and become functioning males.”

Liz set her course and kept the speed steady. She went on to describe the elegantly colored angelfish, the shy, silvery small-mouth grunts, and the intriguing and dangerous sea urchin. Her clients would find the information useful when she stopped for two hours of snorkeling at Palancar Reef.

She’d made the run before, too many times to count. It might have become routine, but it was never monotonous. She felt now, as she always did, the freedom of open water, blue sky and the hum of engine with her at the controls. The boat was hers, as were three others, and the little concrete block dive shop close to shore. She’d worked for all of it, sweating through months when the bills were steep and the cash flow slight. She’d made it. Ten years of struggle had been a small price to pay for having something of her own. Turning her back on her country, leaving behind the familiar, had been a small price to pay for peace of mind.

The tiny, rustic island of Cozumel in the Mexican Caribbean promoted peace of mind. It was her home now, the only one that mattered. She was accepted there, respected. No one on the island knew of the humiliation and pain she’d gone through before she’d fled to Mexico. Liz rarely thought of it, though she had a vivid reminder.

Faith. Just the thought of her daughter made her smile. Faith was small and bright and precious, and so far away. Just six weeks, Liz thought, and she’d be home from school for the summer.

Sending her to Houston to her grandparents had been for the best, Liz reminded herself whenever the ache of loneliness became acute. Faith’s education was more important than a mother’s needs. Liz had worked, gambled, struggled so that Faith could have everything she was entitled to, everything she would have had if her father…

Determined, Liz set her mind on other things. She’d promised herself a decade before that she would cut Faith’s father from her mind, just as he had cut her from his life. It had been a mistake, one made in naïveté and passion, one that had changed the course of her life forever. But she’d won something precious from it: Faith.

“Below, you see the wreck of a forty-passenger Convair airliner lying upside down.” She slowed the boat so that her passengers could examine the wreck and the divers out for early explorations. Bubbles rose from air tanks like small silver disks. “The wreck’s no tragedy,” she continued. “It was sunk for a scene in a movie and provides divers with easy entertainment.”

Her job was to do the same for her passengers, she reminded herself. It was simple enough when she had a mate on board. Alone, she had to captain the boat, keep up the light, informative banter, deal with snorkel equipment, serve lunch and count heads. It just hadn’t been possible to wait any longer for Jerry.

She muttered to herself a bit as she increased speed. It wasn’t so much that she minded the extra work, but she felt her paying customers were entitled to the best she could offer. She should have known better than to depend on him. She could have easily arranged for someone else to come along. As it was, she had two men on the dive boat and two more in the shop. Because her second dive boat was due to launch at noon, no one could be spared to mate the glass bottom on a day trip. And Jerry had come through before, she reminded herself. With him on board, the women passengers were so charmed that Liz didn’t think they even noticed the watery world the boat passed over.

Who could blame them? she thought with a half smile. If she hadn’t been immune to men in general, Jerry might have had her falling over her own feet. Most women had a difficult time resisting dark, cocky looks, a cleft chin and smoky gray eyes. Add to that a lean, muscular build and a glib tongue, and no female was safe.

But that hadn’t been why Liz had agreed to rent him a room, or give him a part-time job. She’d needed the extra income, as well as the extra help, and she was shrewd enough to recognize an operator when she saw one. Previous experience had taught her that it made good business sense to have an operator on your side. She told herself he’d better have a good excuse for leaving her without a crew, then forgot him.

The ride, the sun, the breeze relaxed her. Liz continued to speak of the sea life below, twining facts she’d learned while studying marine biology in college with facts she’d learned firsthand in the waters of the Mexican Caribbean. Occasionally one of her passengers would ask a question or call out in excitement over something that skimmed beneath them. She answered, commented and instructed while keeping the flow light. Because three of her passengers were Mexican, she repeated all her information in Spanish. Because there were several children on board, she made certain the facts were fun.

If things had been different, she would have been a teacher. Liz had long since pushed that early dream from her mind, telling herself she was more suited to the business world. Her business world. She glanced over where the clouds floated lazily over the horizon. The sun danced white and sharp on the surface of blue water. Below, coral rose like castles or waved like fans. Yes, she’d chosen her world and had no regrets.

When a woman screamed behind her, Liz let off the throttle. Before she could turn, the scream was joined by another. Her first thought was that perhaps they’d seen one of the sharks that occasionally visited the reefs. Set to calm and soothe, Liz let the boat drift in the current. A woman was weeping in her husband’s arms, another held her child’s face protectively against her shoulder. The rest were staring down through the clear glass. Liz took off her sunglasses as she walked down the two steps into the cabin.

“Please try to stay calm. I promise you, there’s nothing down there that can hurt you in here.”

A man with a Nikon around his neck and an orange sun visor over a balding dome gave her a steady look.

“Miss, you’d better radio the police.”

Liz looked down through the clear glass, through the crystal blue water. Her heart rose to her throat. She saw now why Jerry had stood her up. He was lying on the white sandy bottom with an anchor chain wrapped around his chest.

The moment the plane finished its taxi, Jonas gathered his garment bag and waited impatiently for the door to be opened. When it did, there was a whoosh of hot air and the drone of engines. With a quick nod to the flight attendant he strode down the steep metal stairs. He didn’t have the time or the inclination to appreciate the palm trees, the bursts of flowers or the dreamy blue sky. He walked purposefully, eyes straight ahead and narrowed against the sun. In his dark suit and trim tie he could have been a businessman, one who’d come to Cozumel to work, not to play. Whatever grief, whatever anger he felt were carefully masked by a calm, unapproachable expression.

The terminal was small and noisy. Americans on vacation stood in groups laughing or wandered in confusion. Though he knew no Spanish, Jonas passed quickly through customs then into a small, hot alcove where men waited at podiums to rent cars and Jeeps. Fifteen minutes after landing, Jonas was backing a compact out of a parking space and heading toward town with a map stuck in the sun visor. The heat baked right through the windshield.

Twenty-four hours before, Jonas had been sitting in his large, elegantly furnished, air-conditioned office. He’d just won a long, tough case that had taken all his skill and mountains of research. His client was a free man, acquitted of a felony charge that carried a minimum sentence of ten years. He’d accepted his fee, accepted the gratitude and avoided as much publicity as possible.

Jonas had been preparing to take his first vacation in eighteen months. He’d felt satisfied, vaguely tired and optimistic. Two weeks in Paris seemed like the perfect reward for so many months of ten-hour days. Paris, with its ageless sophistication and cool parks, its stunning museums and incomparable food was precisely what suited Jonas Sharpe.

When the call had come through from Mexico, it had taken him several moments to understand. When he’d answered that he did indeed have a brother Jeremiah, Jonas’s predominant thought had been that Jerry had gotten himself into trouble again, and he was going to have to bail him out.

By the time he’d hung up the phone, Jonas couldn’t think at all. Numb, he’d given his secretary instructions to cancel his Paris arrangements and to make new ones for a flight to Cozumel the next day. Then Jonas had picked up the phone to call his parents and tell them their son was dead.

He’d come to Mexico to identify the body and take his brother home to bury. With a fresh wave of grief, Jonas experienced a sense of inevitability. Jerry had always lived on the edge of disaster. This time he’d stepped over. Since childhood Jerry had courted trouble—charmingly. He’d once joked that Jonas had taken to law so he could find the most efficient way to get his brother out of jams. Perhaps in a sense it had been true.

Jerry had been a dreamer. Jonas was a realist. Jerry had been unapologetically lazy, Jonas a workaholic. They were—had been—two sides of a coin. As Jonas drew up to the police station in San Miguel it was with the knowledge that part of himself had been erased.

The scene at port should have been painted. There were small fishing boats pulled up on the grass. Huge gray ships sat complacently at dock while tourists in flowered shirts or skimpy shorts strolled along the sea wall. Water lapped and scented the air.

Jonas got out of the car and walked to the police station to begin to wade through the morass of paperwork that accompanied a violent death.

Captain Moralas was a brisk, no-nonsense man who had been born on the island and was passionately dedicated to protecting it. He was approaching forty and awaiting the birth of his fifth child. He was proud of his position, his education and his family, though the order often varied. Basically, he was a quiet man who enjoyed classical music and a movie on Saturday nights.

Because San Miguel was a port, and ships brought sailors on leave, tourists on holiday, Moralas was no stranger to trouble or the darker side of human nature. He did, however, pride himself on the low percentage of violent crime on his island. The murder of the American bothered him in the way a pesky fly bothered a man sitting contentedly on his porch swing. A cop didn’t have to work in a big city to recognize a professional hit. There was no room for organized crime on Cozumel.

But he was also a family man. He understood love, and he understood grief, just as he understood certain men were compelled to conceal both. In the cool, flat air of the morgue, he waited beside Jonas. The American stood a head taller, rigid and pale.

“This is your brother, Mr. Sharpe?” Though he didn’t have to ask.

Jonas looked down at the other side of the coin. “Yes.”

In silence, he backed away to give Jonas the time he needed.

It didn’t seem possible. Jonas knew he could have stood for hours staring down at his brother’s face and it would never seem possible. Jerry had always looked for the easy way, the biggest deal, and he hadn’t always been an admirable man. But he’d always been so full of life. Slowly, Jonas laid his hand on his brother’s. There was no life there now, and nothing he could do; no amount of maneuvering or pulling of strings would bring it back. Just as slowly he removed his hand. It didn’t seem possible, but it was.

Moralas nodded to the attendant. “I’m sorry.”

Jonas shook his head. Pain was like a dull-edged knife through the base of his skull. He coated it with ice. “Who killed my brother, Captain?”

“I don’t know. We’re investigating.”

“You have leads?”

Moralas gestured and started down the corridor. “Your brother had been in Cozumel only three weeks, Mr. Sharpe. At the moment, we are interviewing everyone who had contact with him during that time.” He opened a door and stepped out into the air, breathing deeply of the fresh air and the flowers. The man beside him didn’t seem to notice the change. “I promise you, we will do everything possible to find your brother’s killer.”

The rage Jonas had controlled for so many hours bubbled toward the surface. “I don’t know you.” With a steady hand he drew out a cigarette, watching the captain with narrowed eyes as he lit it. “You didn’t know Jerry.”

“This is my island.” Moralas’s gaze remained locked with Jonas’s. “If there’s a murderer on it, I’ll find him.”

“A professional.” Jonas blew out smoke that hung in the air with no breeze to brush it away. “We both know that, don’t we?”

Moralas said nothing for a moment. He was still waiting to receive information on Jeremiah Sharpe. “Your brother was shot, Mr. Sharpe, so we’re investigating to find out why, how and who. You could help me by giving me some information.”

Jonas stared at the door a moment—the door that led down the stairs, down the corridor and to his brother’s body. “I’ve got to walk,” he murmured.

Moralas waited until they’d crossed the grass, then the road. For a moment, they walked near the sea wall in silence. “Why did your brother come to Cozumel?”

“I don’t know.” Jonas drew deeply on the cigarette until it burned into the filter. “Jerry liked palm trees.”

“His business? His work?”

With a half laugh Jonas ground the smoldering filter underfoot. Sunlight danced in diamonds on the water. “Jerry liked to call himself a free-lancer. He was a drifter.” And he’d brought complications to Jonas’s life as often as he’d brought pleasure. Jonas stared hard at the water, remembering shared lives, diverse opinions. “For Jerry, it was always the next town and the next deal. The last I heard—two weeks ago—he was giving diving lessons to tourists.”

“The Black Coral Dive Shop,” Moralas confirmed. “Elizabeth Palmer hired him on a part-time basis.”

“Palmer.” Jonas’s attention shifted away from the water. “That’s the woman he was living with.”

“Miss Palmer rented your brother a room,” Moralas corrected, abruptly proper. “She was also among the group to discover your brother’s body. She’s given my department her complete cooperation.”

Jonas’s mouth thinned. How had Jerry described this Liz Palmer in their brief phone conversation weeks before? A sexy little number who made great tortillas. She sounded like another one of Jerry’s tough ladies on the lookout for a good time and the main chance. “I’ll need her address.” At the captain’s quiet look he only raised a brow. “I assume my brother’s things are still there.”

“They are. I have some of your brother’s personal effects, those that he had on him, in my office. You’re welcome to collect them and what remains at Miss Palmer’s. We’ve already been through them.”

Jonas felt the rage build again and smothered it. “When can I take my brother home?”

“I’ll do my best to complete the paperwork today. I’ll need you to make a statement. Of course, there are forms.” He looked at Jonas’s set profile and felt a new tug of pity. “Again, I’m sorry.”

He only nodded. “Let’s get it done.”

Liz let herself into the house. While the door slammed behind her, she flicked switches, sending two ceiling fans whirling. The sound, for the moment, was company enough. The headache she’d lived with for over twenty-four hours was a dull, nagging thud just under her right temple. Going into the bathroom, she washed down two aspirin before turning on the shower.

She’d taken the glass bottom out again. Though it was off season, she’d had to turn a dozen people away. It wasn’t every day a body was found off the coast, and the curious had come in force. Morbid, she thought, then stripped and stepped under the cold spray of the shower. How long would it take, she wondered, before she stopped seeing Jerry on the sand beneath the water?

True, she’d barely known him, but he’d been fun and interesting and good company. He’d slept in her daughter’s bed and eaten in her kitchen. Closing her eyes, she let the water sluice over her, willing the headache away. She’d be better, she thought, when the police finished the investigation. It had been hard, very hard, when they’d come to her house and searched through Jerry’s things. And the questions.

How much had she known about Jerry Sharpe? He’d been American, an operator, a womanizer. She’d been able to use all three to her benefit when he’d given diving lessons or acted as mate on one of her boats. She’d thought him harmless—sexy, attractive and basically lazy. He’d boasted of making it big, of wheeling a deal that would set him up in style. Liz had considered it so much hot air. As far as she was concerned, nothing set you up in style but years of hard work—or inherited wealth.

But Jerry’s eyes had lit up when he’d talked of it, and his grin had been appealing. If she’d been a woman who allowed herself dreams, she would have believed him. But dreams were for the young and foolish. With a little tug of regret, she realized Jerry Sharpe had been both.

Now he was gone, and what he had left was still scattered in her daughter’s room. She’d have to box it up, Liz decided as she turned off the taps. It was something, at least. She’d box up Jerry’s things and ask that Captain Moralas what to do about them. Certainly his family would want whatever he’d left behind. Jerry had spoken of a brother, whom he’d affectionately referred to as “the stuffed shirt.” Jerry Sharpe had been anything but stuffy.

As she walked to the bedroom, Liz wrapped her hair in the towel. She remembered the way Jerry had tried to talk his way between her sheets a few days after he’d moved in. Smooth talk, smooth hands. Though he’d had her backed into the doorway, kissing her before she’d evaded it, Liz had easily brushed him off. He’d taken her refusal good-naturedly, she recalled, and they’d remained on comfortable terms. Liz pulled on an oversized shirt that skimmed her thighs.

The truth was, Jerry Sharpe had been a good-natured, comfortable man with big dreams. She wondered, not for the first time, if his dreams had had something to do with his death.

She couldn’t go on thinking about it. The best thing to do was to pack what had belonged to Jerry back into his suitcase and take it to the police.

It made her feel gruesome. She discovered that after only five minutes. Privacy, for a time, had been all but her only possession. To invade someone else’s made her uneasy. Liz folded a faded brown T-shirt that boasted the wearer had hiked the Grand Canyon and tried not to think at all. But she kept seeing him there, joking about sleeping with one of Faith’s collection of dolls. He’d fixed the window that had stuck and had cooked paella to celebrate his first paycheck.

Without warning, Liz felt the first tears flow. He’d been so alive, so young, so full of that cocky sense of confidence. She’d hardly had time to consider him a friend, but he’d slept in her daughter’s bed and left clothes in her closet.

She wished now she’d listened to him more, been friendlier, more approachable. He’d asked her to have drinks with him and she’d brushed him off because she’d had paperwork to do. It seemed petty now, cold. If she’d given him an hour of her life, she might have learned who he was, where he’d come from, why he’d died.

When the knock at the door sounded, she pressed her hands against her cheeks. Silly to cry, she told herself, when tears never solved anything. Jerry Sharpe was gone, and it had nothing to do with her.

She brushed away the tears as she walked to the door. The headache was easing. Liz decided it would be best if she called Moralas right away and arranged to have the clothes picked up. She was telling herself she really wasn’t involved at all when she opened the door.

For a moment she could only stare. The T-shirt she hadn’t been aware of still holding slipped from her fingers. She took one stumbling step back as she felt a rushing sound fill her head. Because her vision dimmed, she blinked to clear it. The man in the doorway stared back at her accusingly.

“Jer-Jerry,” she managed and nearly screamed when he took a step forward.

“Elizabeth Palmer?”

She shook her head, numb and terrified. She had no superstitions. She believed in action and reaction on a purely practical level. When someone died, they couldn’t come back. And yet she stood in her living room with the fans whirling and watched Jerry Sharpe step over her threshold. She heard him speak to her again.

“Are you Liz Palmer?”

“I saw you.” She heard her own voice rise with nerves but couldn’t take her eyes from his face. The cocky good looks, the cleft chin, the smoky eyes under thick dark brows. It was a face that appealed to a woman’s need to risk, or to her dreams of risking. “Who are you?”

“Jonas Sharpe. Jerry was my brother. My twin brother.”

When she discovered her knees were shaking, she sat down quickly. No, not Jerry, she told herself as her heartbeat leveled. The hair was just as dark, just as full, but it lacked Jerry’s unkempt shagginess. The face was just as attractive, just as ruggedly hewn, but she’d never seen Jerry’s eyes so hard, so cold. And this man wore a suit as though he’d been born in one. His stance was one of restrained passion and impatience. It took her a moment, only a moment, before anger struck.

“You did that on purpose.” Because her palms were damp she rubbed them against her knees. “It was a hideous thing to do. You knew what I’d think when I opened the door.”

“I needed a reaction.”

She sat back and took a deep, steadying breath. “You’re a bastard, Mr. Sharpe.”

For the first time in hours, his mouth curved…only slightly. “May I sit down?”

She gestured to a chair. “What do you want?”

“I came to get Jerry’s things. And to talk to you.”

As he sat, Jonas took a long look around. His was not the polite, casual glance a stranger indulges himself in when he walks into someone else’s home, but a sharp-eyed, intense study of what belonged to Liz Palmer. It was a small living area, hardly bigger than his office. While he preferred muted colors and clean lines, Liz chose bright, contrasting shades and odd knickknacks. Several Mayan masks hung on the walls, and rugs of different sizes and hues were scattered over the floor. The sunlight, fading now, came in slats through red window blinds. There was a big blue pottery vase on a woven mat on the table, but the butter-yellow flowers in it were losing their petals. The table itself didn’t gleam with polish, but was covered with a thin layer of dust.

The shock that had had her stomach muscles jumping had eased. She said nothing as he looked around the room because she was looking at him. A mirror image of Jerry, she thought. And weren’t mirror images something like negatives? She didn’t think he’d be fun to have around. She had a frantic need to order him out, to pitch him out quickly and finally. Ridiculous, she told herself. He was just a man, and nothing to her. And he had lost his brother.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sharpe. This is a very difficult time for you.”

His gaze locked on hers so quickly that she tensed again. She’d barely been aware of his inch-by-inch study of her room, but she couldn’t remain unmoved by his study of her.

She wasn’t what he’d expected. Her face was all angles—wide cheekbones, a long narrow nose and a chin that came to a suggestion of a point. She wasn’t beautiful, but stunning in an almost uncomfortable way. It might have been the eyes, a deep haunted brown, that rose a bit exotically at the outer edge. It might have been the mouth, full and vulnerable. The shirt overwhelmed her body with its yards of material, leaving only long, tanned legs bare. Her hands, resting on the arms of her chair, were small, narrow and ringless. Jonas had thought he knew his brother’s taste as well as his own. Liz Palmer didn’t suit Jerry’s penchant for the loud and flamboyant, or his own for the discreet sophisticate.

Still, Jerry had lived with her. Jonas thought grimly that she was taking the murder of her lover very well. “And a difficult time for you.”

His long study had left her shaken. It had gone beyond natural curiosity and made her feel like a specimen, filed and labeled for further research. She tried to remember that grief took different forms in different people. “Jerry was a nice man. It isn’t easy to—”

“How did you meet him?”

Words of sympathy cut off, Liz straightened in her chair. She never extended friendliness where it wasn’t likely to be accepted. If he wanted facts only, she’d give him facts. “He came by my shop a few weeks ago. He was interested in diving.”

Jonas’s brow lifted as in polite interest but his eyes remained cold. “In diving.”

“I own a dive shop on the beach—rent equipment, boat rides, lessons, day trips. Jerry was looking for work. Since he knew what he was doing, I gave it to him. He crewed on the dive boat, gave some of the tourists lessons, that sort of thing.”

Showing tourists how to use a regulator didn’t fit with Jonas’s last conversation with his brother. Jerry had talked about cooking up a big deal. Big money, big time. “He didn’t buy in as your partner?”

Something came into her face—pride, disdain, amusement. Jonas couldn’t be sure. “I don’t take partners, Mr. Sharpe. Jerry worked for me, that’s all.”

“All?” The brow came up again. “He was living here.”

She caught the meaning, had dealt with it from the police. Liz decided she’d answered all the questions she cared to and that she’d given Jonas Sharpe more than enough of her time. “Jerry’s things are in here.” Rising, she walked out of the room. Liz waited at the doorway to her daughter’s room until Jonas joined her. “I was just beginning to pack his clothes. You’d probably prefer to do that yourself. Take as much time as you need.”

When she started to turn away, Jonas took her arm. He wasn’t looking at her, but into the room with the shelves of dolls, the pink walls and lacy curtains. And at his brother’s clothes tossed negligently over the back of a painted white chair and onto a flowered spread. It hurt, Jonas discovered, all over again.

“Is this all?” It seemed so little.

“I haven’t been through the drawers or the closet yet. The police have.” Suddenly weary, she pulled the towel from her head. Dark blond hair, still damp, tumbled around her face and shoulders. Somehow her face seemed even more vulnerable. “I don’t know anything about Jerry’s personal life, his personal belongings. This is my daughter’s room.” She turned her head until their eyes met. “She’s away at school. This is where Jerry slept.” She left him alone.

Twenty minutes was all he needed. His brother had traveled light. Leaving the suitcase in the living room, Jonas walked through the house. It wasn’t large. The next bedroom was dim in the early evening light, but he could see a splash of orange over a rattan bed and a desk cluttered with files and papers. It smelled lightly of spice and talcum powder. Turning away, he walked toward the back and found the kitchen. And Liz.

It was when he smelled the coffee that Jonas remembered he hadn’t eaten since morning. Without turning around, Liz poured a second cup. She didn’t need him to speak to know he was there. She doubted he was a man who ever had to announce his presence. “Cream?”

Jonas ran a hand through his hair. He felt as though he were walking through someone else’s dream. “No, black.”

When Liz turned to offer the cup, he saw the quick jolt. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, taking up her own cup. “You look so much like him.”

“Does that bother you?”

“It unnerves me.”

He sipped the coffee, finding it cleared some of the mists of unreality. “You weren’t in love with Jerry.”

Liz sent him a look of mild surprise. She realized he’d thought she’d been his brother’s lover, but she hadn’t thought he’d have taken the next step. “I only knew him a few weeks.” Then she laughed, remembering another time, another life. “No, I wasn’t in love with him. We had a business relationship, but I liked him. He was cocky and well aware of his own charms. I had a lot of repeat female customers over the past couple of weeks. Jerry was quite an operator,” she murmured, then looked up, horrified. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” Interested, Jonas stepped closer. She was a tall woman, so their eyes stayed level easily. She smelled of the talcum powder and wore no cosmetics. Not Jerry’s type, he thought again. But there was something about the eyes. “That’s what he was, only most people never caught on.”

“I’ve known others.” And her voice was flat. “Not so harmless, not so kind. Your brother was a nice man, Mr. Sharpe. And I hope whoever… I hope they’re found.”

She watched the gray eyes ice over. The little tremor in her stomach reminded her that cold was often more dangerous than heat. “They will be. I may need to talk with you again.”

It seemed a simple enough request, but she backed away from it. She didn’t want to talk to him again, she didn’t want to be involved in any way. “There’s nothing else I can tell you.”

“Jerry was living in your house, working for you.”

“I don’t know anything.” Her voice rose as she spun away to stare out the window. She was tired of the questions, tired of people pointing her out on the beach as the woman who’d found the body. She was tired of having her life turned upside down by the death of a man she had hardly known. And she was nervous, she admitted, because Jonas Sharpe struck her as a man who could keep her life turned upside down as long as it suited him. “I’ve talked to the police again and again. He worked for me. I saw him a few hours out of the day. I don’t know where he went at night, who he saw, what he did. It wasn’t my business as long as he paid for the room and showed up to work.” When she looked back, her face was set. “I’m sorry for your brother, I’m sorry for you. But it’s not my business.”

He saw the nerves as her hands unclenched but interpreted them in his own way. “We disagree, Mrs. Palmer.”

“Miss Palmer,” she said deliberately, and watched his slow, acknowledging nod. “I can’t help you.”

“You don’t know that until we talk.”

“All right. I won’t help you.”

He inclined his head and reached for his wallet. “Did Jerry owe you anything on the room?”

She felt the insult like a slap. Her eyes, usually soft, usually sad, blazed. “He owed me nothing, and neither do you. If you’ve finished your coffee…”

Jonas set the cup on the table. “I’ve finished. For now.” He gave her a final study. Not Jerry’s type, he thought again, or his. But she had to know something. If he had to use her to find out, he would. “Good night.”

Liz stayed where she was until the sound of the front door closing echoed back at her. Then she shut her eyes. None of her business, she reminded herself. But she could still see Jerry under her boat. And now, she could see Jonas Sharpe with grief hard in his eyes.