With only one more piece of helpful information forthcoming—the name of the prison Dennis Arnett, Cecilia’s fifty-four-year old brother, was in—Laurel and Scott prepared to take their leave. They made sure Bettina Warren had Scott’s cell phone number—and obtained her assurance that she’d call the second she thought of anything else.
* * *
NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, Laurel desperately wished that Scott were Paul as she sat with him at a diner across the street from Hamilton Lending and watched him make a series of calls, trying to find out what he could about Dennis Arnett.
Immediately she felt guilty for being disloyal to Scott, her very dear friend. She should be celebrating her chance to be with him again. And then, in her twisted way, she felt guilty for the disloyalty to Paul that thought generated.
It hadn’t quite been dinnertime when they’d left Bettina Warren, so they’d just ordered coffee. Black. Laurel was seriously considering loading up with enough cream to dilute the thick liquid, but wasn’t sure how to get enough room in her cup to do so.
Drinking the nasty stuff to make room was not an option.
She noticed that after an initial sip, Scott hadn’t touched his cup, either.
She’d already given her impressions of the afternoon to the trusty little machine in her purse and was eager for Scott to get off the phone and tell her what he’d found out about Dennis Arnett.
“He’s out of prison.” Scott’s voice was clipped as he dropped his cell phone on the table. “He got out last month. Has a place in Worcester...”
Heart pounding, Laurel held his gaze, trying to read his mind. “Where Leslie’s from.”
His nod couldn’t have been more serious.
“You think he’s involved in all of this?”
“I think we’d be remiss to dismiss the possibility.”
“What would he be after?” Rearranging her silverware on the paper napkin on which it lay, Laurel came up with her own silent answers to her question.
“Money would be the obvious thing. He has a very wealthy sister.”
That had been her guess.
/> “But from what Ms. Warren said, that Cecilia was always protecting him, wouldn’t you think she’d just give it to him?”
“Unless his years in prison made him greedy and he asked for more than she was willing to part with. You have to consider this was a woman who gave up her youth to marry a sugar daddy. Money’s got to be pretty big on her list of priorities.”
She frowned, only now realizing something that had been bothering her. “Ms. Warren’s description of Cecilia sure doesn’t fit the profile of a gold digger, does it?”
Shaking his head, Scott added several packs of sugar to his coffee. “People change. Plus, you have to consider that Bettina Warren is Cecilia’s employee. She’s bound to have a biased view.”
“It’s also possible that Cecilia wasn’t a gold digger at all. Maybe she just fell in love with William Sr. and wanted to spend her life with him.”
“Anything’s possible.” Scott didn’t sound as if he thought it likely, though, and that bothered Laurel a lot.
“So where do we go from here?” she asked.
“I put a call into his parole officer, but he’d already left for the day. I think he’s our next bet.”
Without even tasting the coffee to see if there was any improvement, Scott threw a couple of bills on the table and stood.
“Shall we go?”
Laurel followed him as naturally and willingly as if she’d vowed to do so for the rest of her life.
She almost stalled in her tracks. Where had that thought come from?
She’d just confused him with Paul again. That had to be it. It wouldn’t happen again.
* * *