Page 88 of The Bride Wore White

“It’s going on eight o’clock,” he said. “We need to get dressed for our evening at the Paradise Club.” The new evening gown and a tuxedo had been delivered late that afternoon by the hotel’s housekeeping department.

She winced. “I really don’t like this plan.”

“Trust me, it’s got a very high probability of working.”

Chapter 41

The waiting was always the hard part.

Jack was standing in the deep shadows behind the large padded reading chair in the darkened living room when the front door of the villa opened. The lights had been turned off earlier when he and Prudence had left to take a cab to the Paradise. Prudence was there now, safe in the hands of the club’s excellent security personnel. He had returned to the hotel an hour ago and reentered the grounds via the service entrance.

The door widened, allowing the weak glow of the outside lights to slant through the opening. A figure moved through the entrance and was briefly silhouetted. A man.

The intruder shut the door and switched on a flashlight. There was a nervy excitement about his movements. The flashlight beam swept back and forth in frantic, jerky arcs, searching the shadows. Jack crouched behind the big reading chair.

The light landed on the drinks cart and abruptly stopped.

The intruder moved quickly across the room, stopped at the cart, and set the flashlight down so that the bottles and decanters were illuminated. Jack watched around the edge of the chair as the man reached inside his dinner jacket, took out a small bottle, and started to remove the cap.

Jack stood and switched on the floor lamp. “I was sure you would use poison, Flood. Something of a family tradition, isn’t it? Odds are your father died that way.”

Harley Flood whirled around and stared at Jack. The nervy excitement that had energized the atmosphere around him a moment ago blossomed into something very close to panic. But he relaxed when he saw that Jack was not holding a pistol.

“I realized this afternoon that you were going to be a problem, Wingate,” Harley said.

“So you figured you’d get rid of me by dumping poison into the liquor bottles here in my room.”

Harley put his hand back under his jacket and took out a pistol. Holding the weapon infused him with confidence. “I knew there would be a drinks cart in here. The Burning Cove Hotel is a classy establishment.”

“Did you use that stuff to poison Clara Dover in the hospital?”

“No. I told you, I didn’t want the old bitch dead. I wanted her to end up in an insane asylum. I wanted her to go through what I did all those years. I wanted her to pay.”

“Clara was hallucinating the night she showed up at my house.”

Harley grimaced. “I used one of the drugs they gave us at the asylum. It makes people hallucinate. They’ll see whatever you tell them to see. Believe anything you want them to believe.”

“You made Clara believe her dead son was communicating with her from the Other Side.”

“It was almost too easy to fool her. Everyone thought she was sosmart. So sharp. A brilliant businesswoman. Maybe she was. She certainly built Dover Industries into an empire. But when it came to Gilbert, she was remarkably gullible.”

“You didn’t murder Gilbert Dover, either, did you?”

“No. I heard the scene in that honeymoon suite was a real mess. If I’d gotten rid of Golden Boy, I would have done it with this stuff.” Harley motioned toward the bottle he had put on the drinks cart. “It’s the same poison Maud and Clara used on dear old dad. It doesn’t leave a mess. The results look like a heart attack.”

“A gun is going to make another mess,” Jack said.

“Unfortunately, you haven’t left me any choice.”

“How are you going to explain shooting me in my own hotel room?”

“I won’t have to explain anything. There’s a genuine Maxim Silencer on this pistol. Cost me a couple hundred bucks, thanks to the damned National Firearms Act tax, but worth it. By the time someone finds your body, I will be nowhere near this hotel. My alibi is solid.”

“Because Maud Hollister will swear you were with her at the house on Sundown Point? That won’t work, Flood. Hotel security saw you come in tonight. You were not stopped because management instructed the staff to be helpful. That’s why it was so easy to find the right villa. I knew you would show up here.”

“You’re lying.” Harley’s voice quivered with rage.

Jack spread his hands. “Why the hell do you think I was waiting for you?”

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