Jeannette. He’ll be surrounded by friends. Besides, I can’t imagine Roger Lafferty killing Tessa, much less Liza and me.”
“Who knows what measures a desperate man might be driven to take.”
A vague chill stole over Molly for the second time that day. “You aren’t having one of those visions of yours, are you?”
“I do not have visions,” Jeannette said huffily. “I am just sensitive to certain auras.”
“I don’t believe in all that stuff. You shouldn’t either. You’re an educated woman.”
“It is because I am educated that I have learned to trust what I feel in my heart,” she retorted, her expression quietly serene.
With her mahogany skin and regal bearing, Jeannette came across as a high priestess of some sort, one whose words of wisdom should not be taken lightly. She scared the daylights out of Vince, who was convinced she had the power to cast spells. Molly was less easily frightened, espe-cailly when one of Jeannette’s feelings butted headlong into her curiosity.
“I’m going,” she said firmly.
Jeannette shook her head, but said nothing more. Her visible disapproval did take some of the spirit out of the anticipated meeting, however. Molly could hardly wait to leave the film office with Liza.
Unfortunately, Liza appeared to be as unenthusiastic about going to the Lafferty house as Jeannette. She had dressed in what was, for her, a sedate outfit—black stirrup pants, a black silk tank top, and a loose-fitting jacket in black-and-white silk that floated around her. Chunky onyx and silver jewelry acquired on some Mexican adventure accented the ensemble. Her pixie face, normally animated, seemed pinched. Not even the dash of her clothes could stave off the overall impression of gloom.
As they drove to Roger’s, it didn’t help that dark, heavy clouds were gathering in the west, promising a typical afternoon thunderstorm. A ‘gator pounder, as one local weatherman sometimes referred to the brief but violent storms. With the skies rapidly turning a gunmetal shade of gray, the winding, heavily shaded streets of old Coral Gables took on a threatening ambience. The twisted trunks of the spreading banyan trees along Coral Way added to the eerie atmosphere. If they’d been approaching a dreary castle on thecoast of Cornwall, Molly couldn’t have felt any more as if she’d stumbled into some gothic novel. She shivered. Obviously, Jeannette’s dire warnings had thoroughly spooked her.
“Have you been to Tessa’s before?” she asked Liza, hoping that conversation would dispel the odd sense of impending disaster she hadn’t been able to shake all day.
“A couple of times for meetings. It’s quite a place, built in the thirties and filled with tile and odd-shaped rooms. When Roger and Tessa bought it, ten years ago I think it was, they redid the interior and upgraded the kitchen to something that half the chefs in Dade County would kill to have in their restaurants. They had a major hassle when they painted the outside, though.”
“Why?”
Liza grinned. “One of those typical Gables things. The painter didn’t check his color chips against those the city of Coral Gables permits. He had to do the whole damned paint job over again, because the shade of paint was slightly darker than the law allows. Roger was fit to be tied, tried pulling strings at City Hall, but to no avail. Coral Gables may not be able to keep out the drug dealers, but they sure as hell can control what color paint people use.”
“Wouldn’t you love to meet the person in charge of enforcing the color palette?” Molly said, envisioning some poor soul creeping around
at dawn matching approved colors to the newly painted exteriors of houses.
As much as they tended to ridicule the restrictions, however, there was no mistaking the effect of the watchdog effort. Even with the storm approaching, there was a quiet serenity to the Gables, a sense of stability and longevity that was lacking in most other