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  “I wasn’t suggesting—I just thought—hell, Em, I don’t know what to think. You and I are on two different paths and it’s not always easy to—”

  As I spread my hands on the table, she put hers on top of mine. “Skip, I think he’s working toward that, but it’s not going to happen. I am not going to let it happen. There are a lot of emotions going on inside, but I care for you more than you think I do. Let’s not go there again.”

  I let out a breath. Inside, I was cheering.

  “I needed some perspective, Skip. Sometimes this thing with you and me, it just seems to go nowhere.”

  I was afraid the next question would queer the relationship altogether.

  “I’ve got another question.”

  “What? I just told you that I am not screwing around. That should be enough questions and answers for one session, don’t you think?”

  “Under normal circumstances. But these aren’t normal circumstances.”

  Em sighed, brushing at some imaginary speck on the table-top in front of her.

  “What’s your question?”

  “Before I ask—”

  “Skip, ask the question. I don’t need qualifiers. If you ask, then it must be important.”

  It was as if she already knew what was coming.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Who stole the diamond ring from Kahn’s Jewelers?”

  She shook her head. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to revisit that story, Skip. Can’t you respect that?”

  I reached out and touched her hand. She immediately withdrew it, burying both of her hands in her lap.

  “I think it’s important.”

  “Well, I don’t think it is.”

  A stand off.

  Em looked into my eyes for fifteen, twenty seconds, studying them.

  “How much do you know?” she asked. “Or I should say, how much do you think you know?”

  “I talked to Amanda’s mother.”

  “Oh, Jesus. No. She’s vulnerable. How could you do this? She doesn’t even know the story, Skip.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  Em grabbed for her purse, pulled out a ten, and laid it on the table.

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  She’d picked up the tab, so it was her call. I followed her out the door into the dewy Miami night.

  We walked a city block. No words were exchanged. Dim streetlights highlighted a laundry, a boarded-up restaurant, and a twenty-four-hour FedEx business center.

  “You see, it’s not important who stole the ring.”

  “I talked to Kevin Kahn.”

  “What? You what?” She spun around and stopped in her tracks. Looking at me like she’d never seen me before, she said, “Do you have any respect for our relationship? Behind my back, you talked to these people?”

  “He threw me out of his store. What the hell happened, Em? I thought I knew you. Apparently, I don’t know you at all.”

  She covered her face with her hands.

  “There’s something in that story that is important. What is it?” I needed to know. Even if it meant a rift in our relationship. “If it reflects on Amanda, then maybe there’s something there. Something that we can use to understand her better.”

  “Oh, I understood her.” She said it in a sarcastic tone of voice as she turned and started walking.

  “I thought she was your friend. The way you just said—”

  “Do all your friends play by the rules?” Raising her eyebrows she looked at me in the streetlight. “I’m reminded of one of your best friends.”

  “Somebody else just asked me that. Kelly Fields. The answer, of course, is no. And you’re right, James is a good example.”

  “Well, Amanda didn’t always play by the rules. But she was a good friend, a listener, and loyal. So I let things slide.”

  “What things?”

  “Her relationship with Kevin Kahn. His father did not ap -prove. She was from the wrong side of the tracks, you know what I mean?”

  I was from the wrong side of the tracks. Way down the tracks. Of course, I understood. But I didn’t want to bring up the abortion. That was up to Em if she wanted to go there.

  “They were sixteen, and getting pretty serious, and his dad was ready to put his foot down.”

  “Come on, Emily. We’re talking about kids. Sixteen year olds. I mean they were just kids. I had the hots for you back then.” I still did.

  “We weren’t serious, Skip. You and me. At least I wasn’t. As I recall, we weren’t even dating then, were we? These two were inseparable.”

  “So what? They were going to get engaged?”

  “He told her he wanted to show her something at the store. Kevin was working by himself on a Saturday and he invited her to stop by. I think she did that often, and when there were no customers in the store there was some fooling around in the back office. I’m pretty sure she told me that.”

  “Kinky.”

  She shot me a look.

  “So, for whatever reason, she asked if I wanted to tag along.”

  “Well, obviously there wasn’t going to be any fooling around with you there, was there?”

  “I’m not sure that I wasn’t supposed to be the lookout,” she said sheepishly.

  It sounded to me like she’d done that before. Another side of Em I hadn’t seen. Helping young lovers with their sex lives.

  “Anyway, we get there, no one else is in the store, and he opens up a case and pulls out this gorgeous diamond ring.”

  “You were right there?”

  “I was. And he was showing off. A sixteen-year-old kid with access to this expensive piece of jewelry. He asked her what she thought of it. Can you imagine? She was wide eyed. So was I. And she was like—it’s beautiful. You know, to two sixteen-year-old girls, any diamond was beautiful.”

  I nodded, not really knowing at all. I wondered if I’d ever be able to afford one for Em.

  “He starts stammering a little, like he wants to say something. Finally, he blurts it out.”

  “What?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “Sixteen?”

  “He wants to put the ring on layaway. I know, it sounds idiotic. What guy in his right mind would consider this? He was—they were—so young. It was romantic, yes, but marriage? Come on.”

  “You said his father wouldn’t approve. He was dead set against it. Even against them dating? Am I right?”

  “He didn’t approve. But Kevin didn’t care. He was in a jam and only wanted to do what was right.”

  She paused, obviously not comfortable in telling me the rest of the story that I already knew.

  “She’d told him she was pregnant, Skip.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded.

  “And Kevin Kahn wanted to make sure that he was totally involved in her life. Her life and the baby’s life.”

  So she’d confirmed Kelly Fields’s story.

  “I had a feeling that was the case.” I shouldn’t have admitted that, but I told Emily everything. I always had.

  “Oh? You knew?” Em looked at me with the question in her eyes.

  “When I talked to our pastry chef, Kelly, she’d said that Amanda told her some rich guy had paid for her abortion. I thought that it was probably—”

  “Jim Kahn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then maybe you can fill in the rest of the story, since you’ve apparently been looking into it since the beginning of this investigation.”

  “Em, I want to find Amanda’s killer, just like you do.”

  She was quiet for a moment. Thinking the situation through. I’d shared my every thought with this girl for almost as long as I’d known her, and it was becoming obvious to me that she was reluctant to share hers with me.

  “The ring came up missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “When we left, the ring disappeared.”

  The rest of the story was about to be told.

  “The value was well
over two thousand dollars. Kevin Kahn told his dad that he thought I was the last one to hold the ring. This guy who was dating my friend told his father that I must have stolen the ring. Do you believe it? What kind of a person would put someone else in jeopardy like that?”

  I had no answer.

  “I was arrested at home the next day, and as soon as Amanda heard, she raced down to the police station and confessed to the theft.”

  “Really?” This story, that I thought I knew, was spinning out of control.

  “Really. She knew I hadn’t taken it. There was absolutely no way I would have even considered that.”

  “So she stole it? Amanda took the ring?”

  “No. Kevin didn’t want Amanda taking the rap, so he then claimed that he’d left the diamond ring on the counter. He told the authorities that he now remembered it was there when Amanda and I left the store, and he finally announced that a stranger walked in and probably walked out with it. There was a lot of confusion, but Amanda and I were both cleared.”

  “So, who stole the ring?”

  “I told you,” she had that exasperated tone to her voice, “it doesn’t matter. That’s not the issue.”

  “What is?”

  “The fact that Amanda had admitted to being pregnant. And Jim Kahn, Kevin’s father, wanted nothing to do with her or any baby that she and his son had made.”

  “So he buys the abortion.”

  “He gave her the money and told her in no uncertain terms that she was never to come back to his store or his son.”

  “Pretty harsh words.”

  “They were.”

  How could anyone consider killing off their unborn grandchild? I thought about the jeweler I’d talked to and his love-struck son. All of a sudden I had a different perspective of them. The kid, I could understand. He was head over heels in love with Amanda, but the father? A real piece of work.

  “What did she do?”

  “Oh, there was a tearful goodbye, and Kevin tried to talk her into keeping the baby, but she told him she didn’t want the wrath of his father, and she impressed upon him that they were probably too young to get married anyway. And then she walked away.”

  “And she got the abortion.”

  “No.”

  “She had the kid?”

  “No.”

  “Em, you’re not making any sense.”

  “She was never pregnant, Skip. She made the whole thing up just to snag Kevin Kahn. When the father paid her off, she put the money in her pocket and walked away.”

  “You knew? Back then?”

  “No. I didn’t have a clue.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn’t believe that Em would have bought into this kind of deception.

  “I assumed she got the abortion and so I kept it all quiet because she was my friend. I even volunteered to take her to the clinic.”

  “I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “Neither did I, Skip. We were having a talk one night when she mentioned something about ripping off Kevin Kahn’s dad. When I asked her about it, she laughed and said she’d never been pregnant in the first place.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah. I know. She was devious.”

  We headed back to her car.

  “Why couldn’t you tell me this?”

  “I was arrested for theft.”

  “You didn’t have anything—”

  “And Amanda confessed so I could walk away.”

  “Still.”

  “Skip, I was embarrassed, not only because of the arrest, but embarrassed to be friends with Amanda. Yet she stood up for me. I didn’t ever want to visit this story again, okay?”

  “Em, she put you through all of this.”

  “She put Kevin Kahn through all of this.”

  “Did she steal the ring?”

  “No. I’m certain she didn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know who stole it.”

  “Now you’re going to tell me?”

  “Kevin Kahn. He offered it to her a year later. He was still passionately in love with her.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  We slept late. James was the first up and I heard him making coffee in the kitchen about ten feet away from our bedroom in the cramped quarters we called home. It was time to make some money and move.

  I struggled to my feet, pulled on a pair of jeans, and walked into the living room. “Are you okay?”

  Standing there in just a pair of cutoffs, he handed me a cup of milky looking coffee and I inhaled the aroma. Some cheap instant, but caffeine nonetheless.

  “Room service. Really good, isn’t it?”

  I sipped it and it tasted like bitter dishwater. “Very good,” I said. “You went through a lot last night. How do you feel?”

  Throwing himself down on the threadbare sofa he said, “A little rough. I’ve got some sinus problems and—” he hacked long and loud, “cough. Some water still in my ear, but other than that, you know—”

  He’d actually finished his shift on the boat. Here was a guy who would skip on a regular job if he had the chance, but he went back and finished the gig. James was actually showing a little responsibility.

  “Lil Wayne actually walked into the kitchen and shook my hand. Pretty cool, Skip.”

  “James, it’s getting personal. Now someone is trying to take you out.”

  “Tell me who pushed me. I’ll be happy to agree with you. Whoever did that, that’s the killer.”

  “It’s very possible. Maybe this whole thing that Chef Jean came up with will actually work. We’ll flush the killer out because Bouvier told the staff you were a new sous chef in training.”

  “Joaquin Vanderfield.” James closed his eyes for a moment. “I would have bet on him.”

  And I told him what Em had discovered about the surly sous chef.

  “He threatened another sous chef with a knife, man. Over in Sarasota. Violent kind of guy.”

  “Dude, he wasn’t there last night. On the boat.”

  “No. Not that we know of.”

  “What, you think he was a stowaway?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” I said.

  “What about the dishwasher?”

  “Castro? Em doesn’t hold out much hope. She thinks he moved on to another job. I guess dishwashers don’t last too long at any one place.”

  He smiled as he sipped the coffee. “You, my friend, may hold the record for moving out faster than any of them.”

  “Look, I want to get this killer. Then I’ll retire my wrinkled hands from the steamy, soapy water.”

  “Pally, I’m going to do some research on Chef Marty. He was obviously on board last night, and if Kelly Fields says that Amanda could have been sleeping with him, I want to know if it happened. Executive chef had the perfect opportunity to sneak out and push me overboard. Let me work on that today.”

  “And I’m going to find another Amanda Wright conquest.”

  “Yeah? Who’s that?”

  “Someone who I’m sure will not want to revisit the past. Nathan Brandt. The guy she accused of sexual battery.”

  James smiled and nodded. Draining his cup of lukewarm coffee, he said, “I always thought that was what powered a vibrator. A sexual battery. But I could have been wrong.”

  James isn’t always the funniest guy in the room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I didn’t figure a phone call would get me an appointment, especially if I told him what I wanted, so I visited the campus of Sam and Dave University. A cold call was worth a try. Ever since the sixties, the school had been nicknamed Sam and Dave, and every student at Samuel and Davidson had to know the melody and lyrics to “Soul Man,” the song made popular by the vocal duo Sam and Dave. Even as a joke, it was a prerequisite.

  James was busy on the Internet trying to find a little background on Chef Marty, and he’d gladly handed me the keys to the truck. I say gladly because the white monster needed gas.

 
“Needs a couple quarts of oil too, amigo. Oh, and Skip, while you’re buying the gas and oil, get some WD-40. Those doors are going to work a lot better.”

  I had about fifteen bucks on me, but I filled up with enough to get me a round-trip.

  Nathan Brandt’s schedule was online, so I knew where he’d be. Samuel Hall was a building where I’d taken most of my business classes, and the old stone steps leading up to the heavy, paneled glass doors were familiar. We’d had some good times while we were there. Maybe we would have done a little better if we hadn’t had such a good time.

  Having seen his picture online, I knew what to look for. Late thirties, shaved head, about six feet tall. He was the last one out of class and he was accompanied by a mousy brunette wearing tattered jeans and a T-shirt announcing her affection for Velveeta processed cheese. There was the familiar yellow box pictured on her chest with simply the word “Cheesy” underneath. I thought it was.

  The short girl was looking up at him, possibly pleading her case for a better grade. As they passed me in the expansive, marble-tiled hall, I turned and followed at a respectable distance. I hoped the conversation would be brief. It was.

  “Professor,” I stopped him, “can I have a word with you?”

  Never having had him in class, and not really knowing much about the man, I’d decided not to pretend I was a student or to manufacture some lame excuse to talk to him. Either he would agree to discuss the charge of sexual battery or he wouldn’t.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Give me five minutes of your time.”

  He glanced at his watch, and I realized the age difference. I didn’t wear a watch. Neither did James. We used our cell phones. A lot more accurate and a lot more convenient. Em wore a watch, more as an accessory, jewelry, than anything else. This guy still used his wrist.

  “Okay, five minutes. Are you in one of my classes?” He was studying me, trying to figure out if he knew who I was.

  We continued walking, I assumed to his office. He must have thought I knew where we were going.

  “No. Not at the moment. I was a student here about three years ago.”

  He did a quick turn and there we were. Inside his tiny cubicle.