Widow - Anne Stuart [31]
He was particularly interested in the week of the nineteenth, when Pompasse died. Her schedule was devoid of an alibi—there were no dates, no work, no appointments during the five days surrounding her husband’s death. He wondered if anyone had bothered to ask her where she was when the old man bit the big one? He had every intention of doing so when he got the chance.
The rest of the room had proved to hold little of interest, despite the fact that it had been kept like a shrine to Charlie’s lost memory—the five-year-old clothes still hung in the closet, the drawers were still full. She used to favor a different sort of underwear, he’d noticed with great interest. Aristide’s wife had worn silk and lace, in exotic colors. Aristide’s widow wore cotton.
Of even more interest were the paperback romances stuck in the drawer of the bedside table. They were a greater contradiction than the silky underwear. Charlie must have once believed in passion, or at least been vaguely interested.
He turned off the light, sinking down in the bed. He didn’t like the idea of Charlie and the old man doing the nasty in this bed, and he couldn’t blame her for preferring the other room. He just wished he had a good excuse to join her there.
He was running out of time. It was Wednesday night—he had until Saturday at the latest to find out all the dirt he could dig up on Pompasse, Charlie and the myriad of women who still clustered around the villa. He needed to find what had happened to the lost paintings, and who had murdered the old goat. If he could come up with that information he’d be set for life.
It was possible a real insurance adjuster would appear on the doorstep, in which case he’d just have to get the hell out of there before Charlie went after him with a shovel. He had to admit the thought of seeing her startled out of her unruffled calm, blazing mad, was tempting. But he was counting on the notoriously slow workings of the Italian bureaucracy to keep him safe for a long enough interval. By the time a real insurance adjuster showed up he’d be gone.
Besides, if he had to choose between seeing Charlie lose her self-control and the big bucks that would be coming his way when he finished the book for Gregory, there was no contest.
He didn’t need much sleep, and he worked best in the early hours of the day. He’d catch a few hours, then head down to the study he’d claimed as his work space and get more written. He was a journalist—he could work fast under pressure, and the bigger the delay on this the less valuable it might turn out to be. He wasn’t the only tabloid reporter on the trail of this story, though he had the inside track. But in the news and trash business, timing was everything. He needed to capture Charlie on paper, now that he’d met her. He needed to describe her eyes, the long, slender body, the touch-me-not calm to her that needed to be shaken free. He needed to understand both her mysterious strength and her indefinable uncertainty. He needed to capture her in words.
And then maybe she wouldn’t haunt him.
Charlie woke early, before anyone else. She showered quickly, half-afraid that Maguire would wander in while she was undressed, but the room beyond the adjoining bathroom door was silent. She thought he would have been the kind of man who snored, but the night had been pleasantly silent.
Even Lauretta and Tomaso were still asleep—a small blessing. She loved them dearly, but she liked to make her own coffee, and Lauretta would want to weep and talk about Pompasse, and at least for one morning Charlie didn’t want to talk about her dead husband.
Where the hell had those paintings disappeared to? Had he sold them? He couldn’t have—his work was highly valuable for a living artist, and the kind of money they’d bring in would make news. Would he have given them away? Not Pompasse. He reveled in the fame and money—he knew his own worth to the last penny and cherished