Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [22]
It would prove an amusing interlude while he went about his business. Who knew how long it would take to do the job right? He sure as hell wasn’t going to rush into anything and blow his setup. For the past ten days the papers had been full of the story about the antiques dealer from Broeder who’d been found murdered in his car. Vince had bought every newspaper he could find and read them with fascination. He’d forgotten what a rush it was to read about your deeds in print. To be the only one who really knew what had happened; the only one who knew just how it really went down.
Vince had found England’s house after its owners had departed for Europe, as was announced in big red letters across the calendar that hung on a wall in the kitchen. Knowing that the house would be vacant for a few days gave Vince some time to relax in the comfortable home of his intended victim, time to plan how best to accomplish his goal. He’d left on the morning the pair was due back, and had returned later that night, at which time he’d planned to shoot both men. But then there had been England in the doorway, obviously going someplace. He’d turned to say something to the man behind him in the house, and Giordano had taken advantage of the opportunity to pop into the backseat of England’s car, where he’d stayed until they were almost to town, stopped at a light.
He could still see Derek England’s eyes as they widened at first with surprise, then with fear, when he saw Giordano’s face in the rearview mirror. The confusion when Vince told him to drive to the park. Felt the rush when he put the muzzle of the gun up close to England’s head and pulled the trigger, just like that.
Well, that was then.
This is now. And now he was sitting here in this bar, taking the first steps into this new life he was creating for himself with the new friends he’d share it with until his job was done and it was time to move on.
In the meanwhile, he’d have this fun little world, this new identity. He could be anyone he wanted to be. After all the time he’d spent in prison, a social life—and hot damn, if he played his cards right, maybe even a love life!—sounded pretty damned good.
And no one would ever connect the dark-haired Vinnie Daniels with the redheaded Vince Giordano.
Even his own mother wouldn’t put it together.
CHAPTER
SIX
Sean Mercer leaned closer to the window in an attempt to cut the glare so that he could see inside the neat three-story white clapboard Victorian house that Amanda Crosby called home, but the sun was behind him at precisely the wrong angle and he couldn’t see a damned thing.
He rang the doorbell for the third time, though he suspected that she’d have answered the door if she were there. She didn’t seem to be the type who would hide. Then again, she didn’t seem to be the type to put a gun to the head of an old friend and pull the trigger, either. It remained to be seen whether she’d done just that.
Curious, though, that her car was in the drive.
Maybe he’d just take this opportunity to look around the property. One never knew what one might find.
The front lawn was neat and newly trimmed, the flower bed mulched. Baskets of purple and white flowers—tired blossoms at summer’s end, in need of a watering—hung from the porch railing. Out back, black-eyed Susans grew in an unwieldy clump near the base of an apple tree that was long past due for a pruning, and daylilies with withered blooms grew in a patch along one side of the one-car garage. The lawn mower stood abandoned near the back porch, and the yard looked half-mowed, as if the person doing the job had been called away in the middle of it. He wondered what it was that had called Amanda from her yard work on this Sunday morning.
Peering through the glass panes in the back door gave him a view of the unlit back hall. As tall as he was, he could lean up to a high, small window to the right of the door and see into half the kitchen. It was a small square-shaped room, with a short row of cabinets and counters along the inside wall. The