In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [15]
“Good, Alberto. Everything okay with you?” Usually when people sought him out at parties it was because they wanted a bit of free medical advice.
“Fit as a fiddle, thanks, Art. I see you have an important patient now. Ed Vincent?”
“Yeah. Poor Ed. He’s a good friend of mine.”
“Is he doing okay?”
Jacobs shrugged. “He’s holding on. For now.”
“Any chance he’ll recover?”
“There’s always a chance. I doubt it, though, he’s a very sick man. Still”—he shrugged again— “Ed’s held on for two days now, he’s a tough bastard. You never can tell.”
“Well, let’s hope,” Ricci said as he nodded good-bye.
And just what was all that about? Art wondered. Why would Alberto Ricci want to know how Ed was doing? As far as he knew, the two had never met. He shrugged one more time. Probably just idle curiosity. The shooting had made the headlines. Now Ricci could tell his friends he’d heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Ed Vincent had a chance. But not much.
12
“I’ll tell you how it all began.”
Melba was in a small windowless cubicle in the precinct house in midtown Manhattan. She was sitting upright in an uncomfortable wooden chair, knees crossed, showing a lot of leg and looking alert now, though still disturbed. Camelia thought she was oddly beautiful. There was just something about the slant of her copper-colored eyes, the graceful length of her neck, the sweetness of her full mouth.
At least she wasn’t crying, he thought, handing her a cup of coffee. He took a pack of Winstons from his jacket, shook one out, offered it to her.
She shook her head. “No, thank you.”
He watched silently while she sipped the coffee. He didn’t trust her an inch. Thirty percent was a lot of shares. He wondered exactly what Ed Vincent had left her in his will.
Waiting, Melba thought. He’s waiting for me to tell him that I did it. He thinks he has me. For a second she wished she smoked, it would have given her something to do with her hands. Then she told herself to stop being nervous of this man, who looked like Al Pacino in a cop role.
She looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. He was handsome in a tough sort of way: sleek black hair, broad lined forehead, dark eyes under heavy black brows, a firm blue-stubbled chin. In good shape too, a hard, muscular body. A tough cop.
For a minute she felt the unreality of the situation, as though she were playing a part in a movie. And then reality hit her like a punch in the stomach. She looked the detective in the eye, reminded herself he was there to help Ed. He needed her.
“I told Ed someone wanted to kill him.” She set the Styrofoam cup unsteadily on the scarred wooden desk. “I told him so.”
“Oh? And when exactly did you tell him this, Zelda?”
She glanced sharply at him and Camelia knew he had made a mistake. “Zelda” was Ed Vincent’s private name for her.
“I told him three months ago,” she said coldly. “The first time I met him.”
Camelia loosened his silver tie, letting that one sink in. Only three months—and he’d given her thirty percent of those shares. . . . She must really have something. He took a drag on the cigarette his wife had forbidden him to smoke, then stubbed it out in the glass ashtray as Zelda/ Melba waved the smoke away.
“Excuse me, I didn’t realize the smoke would bother you.”
“You should know better, Detective Camelia,” she said disapprovingly. “Smoking kills.”
So do bullets from a .40mm semiautomatic, he thought, but said nothing.
They sipped their coffee in silence.
“Perhaps you’d better begin at the beginning,” he suggested helpfully.
She nodded. “Okay, but the beginning is before I met him.” She put her elbows on the desk and leaned toward him. Her swollen eyes looked into his.
“I feel so guilty,” she whispered, anguished. “I feel I could