Her father must have nodded, because he didn't speak, and Dishler's answer chilled her blood. Tonight, with a little persuasion, Sloan is going to have an attack of guilt and shame that causes her to write a note, confessing to killing her great-grandmother. And then she is going to blow her brains out Women don't like to mess up their looks when they die, but she's a cop. She would be more likely to take a quick, certain route, don't you—"

Paris slapped the intercom button off and fled from her father's office, stumbling as she raced down the hall. Her father's bedroom suite was at the end of the north wing of the house, hers was at the end of the south wing. As she passed the central staircase that led down to the foyer and divided the two wings, she saw one of the maids walking down the hall with an armful of fresh linen, and she made herself slow to a walk.

She had no idea yet exactly what she was going to do; her crazed emotions blocked logic except for two trains of thought. She had to warn Sloan, and she had to leave the house without making anyone suspicious about why she'd left or where she was going.

"Hello, Mary," she said to the maid. "I just remembered I'm going to miss my—manicure appointment I'm in a terrible hurry."

In her room, she grabbed her purse and car keys and started for the door; then she remembered throwing Paul Richardson's card in a drawer with some vague thought of writing a stern letter of complaint to his superiors about the accusation he'd made.

She saw the card, but her hands were trembling as if she had palsy and she dropped it twice.

Nordstrom was in the downstairs hall. She needed to give him a message for her father so that he wouldn't suspect why she wasn't going to be home for dinner. She tried to think of where she could say she was going on the day after her great-grandmother's funeral that wouldn't strike him as odd. "My father is meeting with Mr. Dishler, and I don't want to disturb him. Will you tell him that… that Mrs. Meade called, and I'm going over to discuss some of my designs. I think it will help cheer me up."

Nordstrom nodded. "Certainly, miss."

49

Paris glanced at the clock on the dashboard as she lifted the Jaguar's car phone from its cradle in the center console and saw that it was a little after four o'clock. If she completely ignored the speed limit, the drive to Bell Harbor would take an hour or even less. It would take her longer than that to arrange for a plane, fly to Bell Harbor, and find transportation once she landed. She decided to drive. Either way she couldn't get there before dark.

Cradling the car phone on her shoulder, she kept one eye on traffic while she dialed the number Paul had scrawled on the back of his card. Her hands were still shaking, but she had urgent details to handle, and that kept her from thinking about the unthinkable.

The phone at the number Paul had written gave out a tone as if it were a pager, and Sloan put in her car phone number, hung up, and waited for a quick return call.

Sitting in his Palm Beach motel room, Paul listened with resignation to the verbal blasting coming across the phone line from the special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami division. The cellular phone he carried was lying on the nightstand, and a small light on it began to flash, indicating a call was coming in. Paul reached over and switched it to its pager mode to keep it from ringing… and further antagonizing the angry man on the other end of the phone.

"Do you understand what's happening here, Paul? Am I making this clear? It's going to cost the bureau a fortune in man-hours just to answer the first deluge of complaints that Maitland's attorneys filed in court today."

"What, specifically, is he accusing us of doing?"

"I'm so glad you asked," Brian McCade replied with biting sarcasm. There was a shuffling of papers as he picked up Maitland's attorneys' papers. "Let's see, this one accuses us of illegal search and seizure, then there's entrapment…" Paul listened silently to the long litany of legal accusations. "Wait, I missed this one," McCade said bitterly. "This one charges us with 'malicious incompetence.' "

"I never heard of that one. Since when is incompetence a violation of the law?"

"Since Maitland's attorneys decided to try to make it one!" McCade said furiously. "His attorneys are probably writing new law with some of these. I can see this going all the way to the Supreme Court for rulings."

"There's nothing I can say, Brian."

"Yes, there is. In one of these complaints, Maitland is demanding a formal, public statement of apology because you didn't find anything illegal on either of his boats. He wants you to say you're sorry."

"Tell him to go to hell."

"Our attorneys are drafting the legal equivalent of that reply; however, I don't think it's appropriate unless you honestly feel that he got the stuff you were looking for off his yachts without you knowing it."

Paul expelled his breath in a long sigh. "There's no way he could have. He flew back after he had the last meeting in South America aboard the Apparition. We kept that ship under surveillance on its way back here, and we've had it under surveillance every hour of every day that it's been in Palm Beach."

"So, what you're telling me is that no contraband was brought aboard in South America or you'd have found it."

Paul nodded; then he said it aloud. "Right."

"And there was nothing aboard the Star Gazer, either?"

"Nope."

"So, basically, Maitland is innocent."

Paul thought of the personal lives he'd destroyed over his wrong hunch, and he felt far worse than he could let McCade know. "That about sums it up. Although, legally you can hang your hat on the machine gun we found. That constitutes an automatic weapon, which constitutes 'illegal' "

"Thank you for that enlightening observation. Now, what do we say about the fact that the damned thing is practically an antique, and one that he confiscated to boot?"

Paul sighed again and thought of Sloan and the way she'd steadfastly defended Maitland because her own judgment was more reliable than his. "Do you think it would be worthwhile for me to try to pay Maitland a visit and try to soothe his sensibilities?"

"He doesn't want soothing, he wants blood—yours."

"I have to talk to him to straighten out another matter," Paul said, thinking he had to at least try to convince Maitland that Sloan had no idea Maitland was a target of the FBI's investigation.

"Don't go near Maitland," McCade warned, growing angry again. "By doing that, you could jeopardize our defense. Did you hear me, Paul? That's an order not a suggestion."