Free High Tide by Jude Deveraux Page A

about this place, so we won’t be found here. I called my brother to find out what he can about Eric and your Roy Hudson.”
    â€œ
My
Roy Hudson?” She almost exploded. “What is that supposed to mean? At least you met him before when you hit him up for money for that bird farm of yours.”
    â€œNo,” Ace said thoughtfully, “I hadn’t met him, and I never asked him for money. Oddly enough he came to me. I received a badly typed, misspelled letter saying that he thought he was about to come into some money and he wanted to give some to Kendrick Park. He said that if this was all right with me, we’d meet at the park and leave from there to go on a fishing trip; then he gave a date and time.”
    He looked back down at his huge stack of pancakes. “Ididn’t know anything about you until the day we left. Even then I was only told your name.”
    â€œOkay, so now what do we do? Or am I not to ask that? You seem to like the caveman role, where all women just obey and don’t ask too many questions.”
    â€œYou have a sharp tongue on you,” he said, looking at her from across the counter.
    â€œSome men like my tongue,” she snapped back, then regretted her words.
    He didn’t reply to that but kept his head down for a moment before looking back at her. “I want to wait until I see what my brother can find on Eric and Roy. There has to be a motive. Unless Eric just likes to kill for the fun of it, which I doubt.”
    â€œWhy? Why doubt something like that? Lots of people kill just because they enjoy it.”
    Ace picked up her plate and his, then walked with them to the sink. “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have. I think this thing was planned, and I think it has something to do with you.”
    â€œMe?” Fiona said, then started to defend herself but stopped. “I don’t know anything or anyone involved in this.”
    â€œEven if the police dig deeply,” he said softly, “they won’t find something that could be construed as a motive?”
    â€œYou mean like he had photos of me naked and he would have published them on the Internet if I didn’t pay him, what was it you said?: ‘Everything you have, everything you will earn, and for what you plan to leave your children.’ Is that about right?”
    â€œYou have some memory on you. So?”
    â€œSo what?” she asked, staring at him.
    â€œDo you have those photos or not?”
    â€œVery funny. No, I don’t have any nudes of myself, and where have you been for the last decade? It’s fashionable to be photographed naked. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I haven’t done anything that anyone could blackmail me for.”
    â€œSurely you have some secrets.”
    She narrowed her eyes at him. “Not that I would tell you and not that Roy Hudson could know.” Her voice rose before he could speak. “Any secrets I have might cause me embarrassment, but there’s not much that couldn’t be printed in the church bulletin. What about you?”
    â€œMe?” he asked as though he were a bystander and not part of this.
    â€œYes, you! That newspaper said that you were my accomplice.”
    â€œOh that,” he said in dismissal as he put the dishes in the dishwasher. “I’m sure that was an afterthought. What I want to know is who beat up Eric? Was that part of the plan, or did he anger someone else?”
    â€œMaybe he beat himself up.”
    â€œSaw that on TV, did you?” he said, obviously laughing at her.
    At that Fiona got up and went into the living room. She really didn’t like his attitude of flippancy. He was treating all of this as some great joke and just as soon as his brother sent a fax, all would be cleared up. She heard him doing whatever it is that people do in a kitchen, and when he finally returned to the living room, he didn’t seem in the least perturbed.