Hemlock Bay

This time you don’t have to be afraid of me. The woman who hired you—chances are good she wants you dead, and she’s capable of doing it herself.”
    “You know who she is?”
    Lily said, “Oh yeah, we know. She’d eat you with her poached eggs for breakfast. Hey, what happened to the thousand bucks she gave you?”
    Morrie’s eyes slid away. “None of your damned business.”
    Lily laughed, shook her finger at him. “You pissed it away in a poker game, didn’t you?”
    “No, dammit. It was pool.”
    Clark Hoyt was waiting for them in Lieutenant Dobbs’s office. His arms were folded over his chest. He looked very odd. “I got a call from Savich. He was calling from Saint John’s, in Antigua, of all places, said to tell you that all hell will break loose in the media really soon now, but that he and Sherlock are okay. It seems that Tammy Tuttle got ahold of Marilyn Warluski and they’re gone. There was a big situation there at the airport. Savich called it a fiasco.”
    “Antigua?” Simon said. “I guess he couldn’t tell us he was there.”
    Lily said, shaking her head, “Dillon will not be a happy camper about this.”
    Hoyt himself wondered what had happened, but he said only, “Savich didn’t give me any details, said he’d call again this evening. I told him where you guys are staying now. Okay, tell me who hired Morrie.”
    “Yeah,” Lieutenant Dobbs said as he came into his own office to see the two civilians and the Fed. “Who was it?”
    “It was my mother-in-law,” Lily said. “No doubt at all that it was Charlotte. She didn’t give Morrie her name, but that accent of hers—it has so much syrup in it, you could sweeten a rock.”
    Lieutenant Dobbs shook his head. “So now you know, but there’s still no case. Both Hoyt and I interviewed the Frasiers—all three of them—separately. In all three cases, their lawyer, Bradley Abbott, a real son of a bitch hardnose, was present. The Frasiers refused to answer any questions. Abbott read a statement to us. In the statement, the Frasiers claim all of this is nonsense. They are sorry about Mr. Monk, but it has nothing to do with them, and this is a waste of everyone’s time. Oh yeah, then their lawyer told us that you were nuts, Lily, that you’d do anything to get back at them, for what reason they don’t know, but no one should believe a single word you say. We need more evidence before we can bring them to the station and put them in an interview room again.”
    Hoyt said to Simon and Lily, “We’ll have two agents on Morrie Jones. Lieutenant Dobbs hasn’t got a problem with that, especially since he’s short officers right now. We won’t let the little twerp out of our sight.”
    “Good,” said Lieutenant Dobbs. “All right, listen up. I’ve got a murder to solve. As for you, Lily, you’re just an attempted murder, so I guess I can let you slide just a bit. I understand this thing is more complicated than a Greek knot, and that all of it ties together.”
    Simon said, “If it’s okay with you, Lieutenant, I’d like to go to Wells Fargo to see if there’s a record of who gave Morrie a thousand dollars for the hit on Lily. That’d be too easy, but it’s worth a shot.”
    Lieutenant Dobbs said, “She paid that little dip just a thousand bucks to off Lily?”
    “Oh, no,” Lily said. “I’m worth lots more than that. There was another five thousand bucks when the job was done.”
    Simon said, “Okay, then, let’s get cracking.”
    On the way out the door, Lily looked at Simon for a moment, at his too-long, very dark hair, and realized she hadn’t really noticed before how it curled at his neck. “Those little curls—they’re cute,” she said and patted his nape.
    Simon rolled his eyes.
    Hoyt, who was walking behind them, laughed.
    Since Hoyt was along, they got instant cooperation at Wells Fargo. One of the vice presidents, who seemed more numerous than tellers at the windows, hustled onto the computer and punched up the money transfer transactions for the very morning Morrie had attacked Lily on the city bus.
    Mr. Trempani raised his head, looked at each of them in turn. “This is very strange. The money was wired in care of Mr. Morrie Jones by a company called Tri-Light Investments. Any of you ever heard of them?”
    “Tri-Light,” Lily said. “I don’t think Tennyson ever mentioned that company.”
    “Who are they?” Hoyt asked.
    “All we have is an account number in Zurich, Switzerland. It