He just wished he knew how she’d come to Croc’s attention.

When the phone rang, he picked it up on the first ring. “Croc?”

“None other,” he said.

“I need a way to reach you.” Jeremiah suddenly felt grouchy. “I can’t just sit around waiting for you to call. You have a phone number, an address?”

“I’m calling from a pay phone up in Broward. It’s costing me. You got anything?”

“No.”

“Shit. I know this Mollie Lavender’s hooked into this thing somehow.”

“Why her, Croc? Tell me the rest. You’ve got more, and I know it. Is it something to do with Leonardo Pascarelli, a client, the gardener, someone she pals around with? I’m not playing games with you. I need everything you’ve got.”

“I gave you my best lead.”

Best didn’t mean only. Jeremiah gripped the phone. “Croc, you’d better not be this damned thief yourself. If you are, I swear to you I’ll find out and I’ll nail your hide to the wall one inch at a time.”

Croc took no offense. “What, you think I wouldn’t stick out in Palm Beach? I’m insulted. Keep digging, Tabak. I’ll dig on my end. Anything comes up, I’ll let you know. Right now, I’m hearing stirrings. I don’t like it.”

“What kind of stirrings?”

“Just talk. I think this thing could get dangerous.”

“Croc, goddamnit-”

“I don’t have shit, Tabak. Just feelings. One thing I know for sure is, none of the hot ice has been fenced locally. Not one rock. So our thief’s either sending it out or holding on to it.” He paused, and Jeremiah pictured him at some rat-hole pay phone, resisted a surge of sympathy for a wasted life. “Any chance you can search Pascarelli’s place?”

“Jesus Christ, Croc. No, I can’t search Pascarelli’s place. I’m a reporter, not a goddamned burglar. And I’m not a lunatic.” Jeremiah went still, eyeing his turtle, thinking. “Croc…don’t you go trying to search Pascarelli’s place yourself. I don’t need a loose cannon on my hands.”

“Hey, I was just kidding. I know you play by the rules.”

“You’d best play by those same rules. You break the law, don’t expect me to be landing at your jail cell with bail money.”

“A cheap bastard like you? Nah. I wouldn’t expect that. Whoops, I’m running out of time. Hate to spend another quarter listening to you spout off. Keep digging, okay?”

“How can I reach you?”

But Croc had hung up, and Jeremiah growled at the phone and hurled it into the kitchen. He went through a lot of phones that way. His lizard stared at him, motionless. His snake slept. His turtle continued to eat his spinach. Jeremiah swore viciously. His gut burned. His head pounded. Whatever calm he’d managed to find en route south had deserted him. Things didn’t feel right. He couldn’t pinpoint what, or why it was getting to him. Rich people were losing a few baubles to a clever, nonviolent thief. It wasn’t dangerous, it wasn’t sick, it wasn’t controversial or depressing, and he probably shouldn’t trust his instincts to work right up in Palm Beach.

He should find a real story or go fishing with his father for a week. He had no business chasing down a jewel thief, especially not on behalf of a street creep who wasn’t being straight with him.

But Croc wasn’t the problem. Mollie, Jeremiah knew, was the problem. He’d picked her off a beach filled with college students ten years ago because something about her had grabbed at his soul.

He groaned at his own romantic idiocy. A decade hadn’t made him any smarter about her. He grabbed his own whittling knife and went down to join the boys on the porch. Four eighty-plus-year-olds and him. They passed him a cigar and a hunk of wood, and Jeremiah figured it beat driving back up to Palm Beach and sneaking around Leonardo Pascarelli’s house just in case his big-eyed ex-flute player ventured out tonight. He could follow her, search her house, or just sit out on the street talking to himself like a damned fool. Best he just sit out with the guys instead and let the night sort itself out.

It wasn’t until after eleven that Mollie got the brush of Jeremiah’s lips off her mind. She couldn’t even characterize it as a real kiss, and yet she’d obsessed on it for hours. Work had not served as a distraction. She made her West Coast calls, brainstormed with pad and pen, and spent thirty minutes updating her contacts database. Then she threw darts and, finally, sank into a hot, scented bath. As a means of restoring her universe to some semblance of order, she projected herself five years into the future. She’d have a cute little house, an office, a small staff, talented clients, and a fun man in her life. It wouldn’t be Jeremiah. It couldn’t be Jeremiah, no matter how dark and sexy she still found him.

Jeremiah, she reminded herself, wasn’t fun.

When she bundled up in her bathrobe and slid into bed to watch a late-night rerun of I Love Lucy, she found herself almost wishing for a Boston winter. Winds howling. Radiators hissing and knocking. Thermometer plummeting. Instead a cool breeze filled the room with the scents of the tropical night and the sounds of the ocean not far off, and crickets chirping madly, dozens of them, as if to remind her she was up above Leonardo’s garage, all alone.

The telephone rang, jolting her upright, sending the remote flying out of her hand. She picked up, heart racing wildly.

“Mollie, sweet Mollie,” Leonardo Pascarelli crooned.

“Leonardo! Good heavens, you almost gave me a heart attack! Isn’t it the crack of dawn or something in Italy?”

“Or something. I’ve been wandering and pacing in my suite for hours. I sang La Bohème tonight.” He hummed a few bars of the overture. “Now I’m having a drink on my balcony and unwinding. Did I wake you?”

“No, I’m in my room watching I Love Lucy. It’s the episode with Lucy and Desi in London and she wants to meet the queen.”

“Yes! I remember! And she makes Desi let her perform with him. Ah, those were the days of the great shows. Sometimes,” he went on in his wonderful voice that even when not performing resonated in the listener’s soul, “I wish I’d stuck to singing in the shower and worked in my father’s butcher shop.”

“Your father’s butcher shop went out of business twenty years ago.”

“I could have sold lamb chops in Haymarket Square and sung Desi Arnaz songs to snotty young conservatory students.” Mollie could hear him gulping his drink, his melancholy palpable. He had always wanted more-more love, more romance, more acclaim, more everything-and yet wished he didn’t, wished the abyss inside him, that he could neither define nor ever fill, would just vanish, even if it took his drive and ambition with it. He sighed heavily. “If Papa could see me now…”

“He’d be proud of you, Leonardo.”

“I don’t know. No wife, no children. I forget even where I am. Florence, Venice?”

“Leonardo, this isn’t your first drink, is it?”

“It is. I’m just being mournful because I haven’t been to bed yet and I’m alone in the country of my ancestors, and I’ve just sung Puccini.” He cleared his throat, pushing through his dark mood. “But never mind me. Tell me about you, sweet Mollie. How are you? How’s your business? How’s your life?”

She sank back against the pillows, the room suddenly feeling strange with its warm colors and sprawling bed, its tasteful paintings of flowers and its beautiful blown-glass lamps. Everything in the guest quarters was chosen by an interior decorator because Leonardo had used up his limited patience for decorating in the main house. He didn’t care, didn’t have time. His world-his abyss-lay inside him, not outside, as much as he tried to find it there. He enjoyed the material success his talent brought him, but ultimately it didn’t matter, couldn’t help quiet his demons. Mollie smiled, remembering Leonardo and her parents engaging in a loud discussion of a new conductor’s interpretation of Mozart as they drank tea from a chipped teapot. It could have been Austrian china or a Kmart special, and none of them would even have noticed.