"I'm sorry, Mo," Clarence said. "It's my fault. I created a mess by pretending to be Stephen Dagger."

"You certainly did." Mo gritted her teeth to keep more insults from flying. "Did you have to make it appear to Ross that I was lying to him about the car thing?"

"I can only say I'm sorry," Clarence said. "I just didn't want to look like a t.u.r.d to a guy who's been my idol.

"Yeah, so you made me look like one," she grumbled. "What are you going to do about all this?"

"I tried to clean up the mess I made," Clarence offered.

"By blackmailing a Russian mobster? That only made things worse."

"I know, I know. I did it all for her and now I realize she didn't really love me. She said we needed money to begin our life together."

"Again I ask, by blackmailing a Russian mobster? Are you crazy?"

"Okay," he admitted. "It wasn't the smartest thing to do, but it seemed like a good idea at the time."

He sounded genuinely scared. "You've got to call the police, Clarence. These guys are dangerous. You could get hurt. If someone's gonna hurt you it's gonna be me, mister," she said trying to joke.

Clarence laughed half-heartedly on the other end. Then he fell silent for long moments. When he spoke again his voice was choked. "I was so obsessed with my love for this woman, I would've done anything she wanted me to."

Mo heard a clatter in the background. "Maybe Betsy's come back," he said.

"Betsy?"

"She's Kubikov's wife," Clarence said.

"You're having an affair with his wife and blackmailing him?" Mo shouted. "Don't go to the door, it might be the mobster's goons."

"You're right," Clarence whispered. "I'm going to hide until you get here. Hurry."

Mo ran from the building and sprinted for her Mini parked across the square. As she got closer, with the trees and the monuments of the square behind her, she spotted Milton leaning against the hood.

"Get your aspartame off my car, you parasite." Mo clicked the b.u.t.ton on her key that released the car door locks.

The smarmy sneer that pa.s.sed for Milton's smile slipped a bit. "I want to talk to you."

Mo reached for the door handle. "I don't want to talk to you."

When she would have pulled the car door open, Milton clapped a hand across the window on the door and held it shut. "You don't seem to appreciate the opportunity I'm giving you to comment on the story tomorrow."

"The one you showed us earlier? What do you need my comment for? I thought you had it all wrapped up."

Milton glanced down and to the left and she knew she was about to hear a lie. "I do have it locked up. I have solid sources."

"Yeah right," Mo smiled. "Heather backed out, didn't she? She's not going to back your facts and the paper is concerned about a lawsuit." Pulling open the door against his resistance, she laughed. "Cla.s.sic."

Milton's sneer changed from smarmy to evil. "If you don't back my article about the affair, I'll run with my other story."

Mo hopped into the seat. Milton blocked her from closing the door. "What story is that?" Mo asked.

"The world will be shocked to know that Ross Grant is gay."

A spurt of laughter burst forth from Mo. "You do that. You print a story that claims Ross is gay. You haven't let the truth stand in your way so far. Good suggestion."

She tugged the door and it hit against Milton's back. "Get out of the way or I'll close you in it," Mo warned.

When he grudgingly moved to the side, Mo slammed the door shut, fired the engine, and accelerated away. She didn't have time for this s.h.i.take with Milton. What had happened to Clarence while she had her run in with the reporter?

Chapter Seventeen.

"Crepe," Mo muttered as she turned to circle the block for the third time. "The parking in this city is a crime."

Just when she thought she might have to chance parking in an illegal s.p.a.ce, she spotted a black SUV pulling away from the curb at the end of Clarence's street. "It's about time."

Mo backed into the spot just as Mrs. Truesberry emerged from the front door of the house. By the time Mo got out of her car and was striding toward the building, the landlady had tottered down the stairs and taken a position kneeling, gardening spade in hand, at her flower bed.

"Can I help you, dearie?" Mrs. Truesberry asked when she saw Mo approach.

Impatient to get to her goal, Mo slowed but didn't stop. "Not really. I've come to see Clarence." Running up the stairs she reached for the k.n.o.b of the door.

"I don't think he's home," Mrs. Truesberry called to her before springing up. The landlady was truly limber for someone in her sixties. Although she did seem somewhat winded. "I haven't seen him since you were here yesterday. I think he's out with his girlfriend."

Mo hesitated, curiosity getting the best of her. "Girlfriend?" she asked.

"Yes, Betsy something," the landlady said with a frown. "What a liar he is. The dear boy has been telling me for months that he didn't have a girlfriend."

"I just spoke to him on the phone and he said to come here." Mo glanced around but didn't see anyone.

"Oh." The landlady's face set into a frown that made the lines in her forehead and around her mouth p.r.o.nounced. Mrs. Truesberry swiped at her flushed cheek with a hand clad in a pink gardening glove and left a smudge of dirt in the marionette line by her mouth. "Come to think of it, there was quite a racket in his apartment earlier. So maybe he did come home. Can I show you upstairs?"

"No thanks," Mo called as she threw open the door and ran up the stairs of the entryway to second floor apartment. The soles of her feet sounded like horse hooves on the heartpine wood treads.

The bulb in the sconce on the wall at the top of the stairs flickered as she knocked firmly on the door. No sound came from inside.

"Clarence? It's me, Mo."

When no response came, the eerie silence produced shivery goose b.u.mps on her arm.

With trembling fingers, Mo worked her cell phone to call his. The theme from the SpyMatrix ring tone played faintly in the apartment.

Mo saw her hand as if from a distance as it twisted the doork.n.o.b and pushed the door open. The heaviness of her breathing hurt her chest. Sprawled, face down on the floor by the bed, was a body. Clarence lay there with his legs bent at odd angles as if he had dropped to the floor like an accordion collapsing in on itself.

Holding her breath, Mo crept closer searching the body for the movement of breathing.

Nothing.

She bent at the waist and saw that a dark substance she suspected was blood coated the back of the head, matting the wavy brown hair. The wavy hair Clarence was always so proud of. Mo blinked back tears.

Next to his body, near his right foot, a replica of the SpyMatrix big gun lay with its stock covered in the same sticky substance-blood. Clarence's blood.

The room felt like it revolved around her. The pounding of her heart was so furious she heard it in her ears. Mo straightened before she toppled over. A scream that sounded as if it came from under water hummed through the room. Mo swallowed and her ears popped allowing sound to flood in.

Mrs. Truesberry had entered the room behind Mo and was making a high-pitched wail. "He's dead," she moaned and then the landlady screamed again.

The room stopped turning like a carnival ride and Mo felt like she could bend forward again without fainting. With a ginger carefulness, she checked Clarence's neck for a pulse and could feel nothing.

The screaming continued and Mo turned to grip the landlady by the arms. "Mrs. Truesberry," she said with a little shake of the old lady. "Get a hold of yourself. You have to call the police."

Mrs. Truesberry stopped keening and blinked. "The police? Oh no, dearie. I can't do that. I have some pot growing in the backyard."

"Then call 911 for an ambulance."

"But he's dead. He doesn't need an ambulance." The landlady's voice was monotone.

Thank gouda the woman was no longer hysterical.

"Call them anyway. We don't really know for sure he's dead."

But Mo did know. Clarence had that same look of a deflated balloon she'd noticed when, as a child, she'd discovered her grandfather's body. But Grandpa had died of old age. Clarence was murdered. But who had done it? Maybe the question was not who had done it but who wouldn't.

"I could've killed you," Ross yelled. His car had come perilously close to clipping an old man walking on the shoulder of the road, before Ross's rage filled eyes finally cleared enough to slam on the brakes and wrench the wheel, taking his car into the lane of oncoming traffic. The red Toyota coming towards him veered off the pavement and onto the gravel with its horn blaring as a musical accompaniment.

"Dammit," Ross yelled, twisting the steering wheel to swerve back into his lane again. By the sight of the codger's upraised fist in his rearview mirror-with clearly visible single vertical digit at its middle-there was no permanent damage done.

No permanent damage done ...to the old man anyway. Ross felt as if he was permanently damaged. He couldn't even begin to process all that had happened to him today.

What should he do about Mo?

His introspection was cut off by a blaring horn behind his car. Glancing up, Ross saw a black SUV looming in his rearview mirror, perilously close at mere inches from his b.u.mper. Dammit, sixty mph in a thirty-five mph zone wasn't fast enough for this guy? The SUV fell back a bit.

"Go around me," Ross shouted and motioned at the other driver to pa.s.s. The monster SUV revved forward again and this time nudged at his b.u.mper before falling back. The slight touch was enough to send the steering wheel jerking to the right under his hands and the car lunged toward the shoulder in response. Ross wrenched the wheel to the left and the car leapt back-on its two left wheels-onto asphalt, with gravel spurting behind it.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l! Are you crazy or just an idiot?"

Ross slammed the accelerator pedal to the floor and the Mercedes shot forward, but the SUV matched it and hovered behind him like a giant spider eyeing its prey. A slow moving compact car that had been a mile ahead a moment ago loomed only a few yards away and Ross slammed at the brake pedal to avoid running the Mercedes up its tailpipe. Ross tweaked his horn and he saw the driver, with a head of gray mop-like hair, lift a hand and wave.

"Son-of-a-"

A glance in the rear view mirror revealed that the SUV smoothly slowed so that its b.u.mper stayed at a controlled distance from the Mercedes. d.a.m.n, he was sandwiched between the two vehicles now.

Ahead of the Granny car, the two-lane highway continued into the distance as far as he could see with no way of exit. The solid yellow markings on the pavement and the curves in the road made it dangerous to veer into the oncoming traffic lane to pa.s.s the Granny.

The SUV continued to loom large in his review. Then Ross saw the black monster start to close the small distance before he felt the b.u.mper begin to nudge and then push at the Mercedes. Ross slammed on the brake to keep from being thrown forward into the Granny. The brakes stuck but only slowed the Mercedes' relentless forward momentum. The tires squealed against the asphalt and he smelled the distinct odor of burning rubber.

Fearing that if he didn't do something his car would hit the Granny's and start a dangerous chain reaction, Ross acted on instinct and jerked the wheel, while simultaneously taking his foot off the brake. The Mercedes slid to the right and spun one hundred eighty degrees, digging a rut into the gravel shoulder. Rocks went flying in a shower into the adjacent bog before the car came to a stop.

Ross saw the Granny car continue blithely down the road. The SUV had come to a stop crossways of the road in front of the Mercedes. The door of the monster SUV opened and, as if in slow motion, a hulking figure unfolded itself from inside and stepped out. A smaller man emerged from the pa.s.senger side of the SUV. He looked like a shrimp beside Gigantor.

It was then that Ross realized that the Mercedes had stalled and he wrenched the key in the ignition to restart the car. Before it could fire, the driver's side door of the Mercedes was thrown open and he was hauled out.

Ross swung at Gigantor and his fist connected with the bigger man's gut. He was rewarded with a grunt. Before he could follow up, Gigantor pulled a hand from behind him and brought the muzzle of the gun he held to Ross's forehead.

The shrimp produced a plastic zip line and cuffed Ross's hands behind him.

"Take car," Gigantor shouted at his smaller colleague as he nodded his head toward the Mercedes and tugged Ross toward the SUV.

"What are you doing? What do you want?" Ross asked.

His questions went unanswered.

The big man marched him forward and Ross soon found himself tossed into, and lying across, the SUV's back seat.

"Why don't you say something," Ross demanded. "Do you understand me?"

"I have the understand," Gigantor said in his halting English.

The engine of the SUV roared to life. And Gigantor glanced over the back of his seat at Ross.

"Then why don't you tell me the answer?"

"That all I say." He reached down to the seat and came up with a gun.

Ross thought of Mo. He'd never get a chance to apologize to her. "s.h.i.take," Ross murmured as the gun came closer.

When he thought the git would pull the trigger, the side of the barrel accelerated forward and slammed into his temple. Sparks ignited in his head and then there was darkness.

Officers Tim and Dan were the first to arrive at the scene of Clarence's death. Mo wondered if they were the only officers who were ever on duty in Savannah. Officer Dan went upstairs with the crime scene investigators and Officer Tim stayed downstairs with Mo and Mrs. Truesberry.

"And you say you spoke to the victim on the phone about ten minutes before you arrived here and found him dead?" Officer Tim had his notebook open and jotted something on it with a stubby pencil.

"Yes," Mo said. "He told me to hurry over. That someone was at his door. As I said before, he seemed to be afraid but he wouldn't tell me any details until I got here."

The officer scribbled frantically on his pad.