“Wait. I should come with you when you see Nicole. Just in case she’s a homicidal maniac.”
Roz quirked her mouth at him. “I can handle it. But it might be fun to have you along. John told me to go out and nail this story with you, so I say we do it.”
“He said I should nail you?” he teased. “We should do it?”
She smacked his arm again. “Men!”
He snickered. “Can’t live with us, can’t kill us.”
“Unless you’re Wayne Vandershell,” Roz said. “Somebody killed him, one way or another.”
“And we still don’t know who,” he said. “Let’s track down Blake.”
Chapter Twenty
A woman answered when Alden called Blake’s house, but to his disappointment, it wasn’t Lexie Wintergarten. He’d know the actress’s voice anywhere. Instead, he was pretty sure it was some sort of housekeeper, and when Alden explained who he was and that he and Blake were tight, she was unimpressed, said Blake was playing golf, and hung up without offering to take a message.
“He’s got to be at Vesper Lakes,” Alden said as Roz drove them south from downtown in her silver hatchback.
“Of course he’s at Vesper Lakes.”
Alden still stung from his inability to charm the housekeeper. “There’s that little municipal course up north, but that doesn’t seem like his speed.”
“He’s probably practicing for the celebrity golf tournament coming up this weekend,” Roz said. “Maybe it’s better that we talk to him with a bunch of people around.”
“You’re not worried about Blake, are you?”
Roz shot him a sidelong glance as she navigated to Highway A1A. “For one thing, he knows about airplanes. But I can’t figure out why he’d want to kill Sebastian Esquivel, unless Sebastian’s problems with the movie studio were somehow standing in the way of Blake’s big comeback.”
“At the very least, he might be able to tell us when and why Wayne was at the airport. Chuck said Wayne was hanging around with Blake there one day.”
“He was? You didn’t tell me that,” Roz said accusingly.
“I had so much other stuff to tell you!”
“True,” she acknowledged as she turned south on A1A toward the inlet bridge. “But doesn’t that make Blake even more suspicious? Maybe he and Wayne were working together to screw over Sebastian.”
“You have an evil mind.” But Alden loved it when she got going.
“I’m just good at imagining other people’s evil minds.” As if to prove her point, she went on, “Even if Blake didn’t have it out for Sebastian, he might’ve wanted to kill Wayne. Blake didn’t tell us he’d given Wayne money, but I’d bet anything he did, and for what? He’s probably angry at Wayne for telling him he was going to cast him in some nonexistent movie.”
“We can’t go in there all guns blazing at Blake. Maybe there was a movie project. We don’t know for sure. Have you talked to Duke lately? He might know if Wayne had a laptop, and that should tell us what he was really working on.”
“After he told me about the book?—”
“What book?”
“The one you found in the alley. It had blood on it.”
“Ha!” Alden said. “And you accuse me of withholding information.”
Roz chortled. “It’s a lot of moving parts, OK? Anyway, Duke confirmed Wayne was renting a furnished beach condo, short-term. He didn’t say there was a computer, but I can’t imagine there wasn’t. Now that we know more, I’ll ask him if he found any evidence of movie deals or money changing hands. Oh, and the only family he has is an estranged father who lives in California and has been on a European trip for the past two weeks. Probably not the killer.”
“Did Wayne have a will? Maybe Sheryl’s the beneficiary and she’ll get all her money back.”
“Unlikely.” Roz sounded amused. “But I’ll ask.”
“Think Duke will tell you?”
