All or Nothing by Elizabeth Adler

Author:Elizabeth Adler [Adler, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, Women Lawyers, Contemporary, Legal, Fiction, Romance, Suspense, Women Sleuths, Crime Fiction, Missing Persons, Mystery and Detective Stories, Romantic Suspense Novels
ISBN: 9780440234968
Google: Nv33x8cbbUUC
Amazon: 0440234964
Publisher: Island Books
Published: 1999-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

That afternoon when Giraud got to the hospital, Marla was sitting in a chair by the window, sipping orange juice through a straw and looking a hundred percent better than she had the day before. That didn’t mean she was a hundred percent yet, he thought, examining her critically from the doorway. Black eyes, bruised throat, a lump on her head with fifteen stitches in it, more stitches along her arm . . . but she was alive and she was smiling at him and that was all that counted.

She was wearing a long white cotton T–shirt and a red silk robe and with her blond hair scraped back and no makeup she looked like a little girl playing dress–up in her mother’s clothes.

Her bottom lip was ragged where her teeth had bitten into it when Steve had slammed his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming, so instead he kissed her left cheek, the one without the stitches. “This is getting tricky.” He smiled at her. “There’s almost no place left to kiss.”

“Wanna bet?” She smiled sexily back at him––or as sexily as a woman with a split lip and two black eyes could manage. “Like some orange juice?”

“No, thanks. I’d like you out of here though, back home where you belong.”

“Safe and sound,” she teased.

“I’ll bet that’s what your father said.”

She took a slurp of the juice. “You just missed him––and my mother. You’re not exactly their favorite boy right now.”

“Or ever,” he bet gloomily, making her laugh.

“So what’s with Steve Mallard?”

“He claims he didn’t do it, that he got an anonymous phone call warning him his wife was in danger. When he got there she was lying on the floor bleeding to death. He put pressure on the artery––the medics say he saved her life.”

She frowned, puzzled. “You mean he tried to kill her––then when he heard the cops coming pretended he was attempting to save her life?”

“That’s the way it looks.”

She shook her head. “It was him, Al. I saw him. . . .”

“You saw him with the knife in his hand?”

“Damn it, Giraud, where do you think I got these cuts? I looked right into his eyes.”

He sighed. “You’re right, of course.”

“Vickie is still in intensive care,” Marla said. “Still in a coma.”

“I know.” He had telephoned that morning to find out how Vickie was, as well as Marla.

“So? How was Falcon City, Texas?”

Al filled her in on the interview with Miss Gwyneth Arden, then he told her about meeting the real Laurie Martin. And about his talk with Boss Harmon’s son.

“So, honey,” he said finally. “Ms. Bonnie Hoyt/Victor/Harmon took her no doubt ill–gotten inheritance. I believe she killed Jimmy Victor and got the car, then she killed old Boss Harmon and got his money. Plus she stole the real Laurie Martin’s social security number from the handbag left in the rest room that afternoon. Then with Boss dead and a couple of hundred thou in her pocket, she turned up in L.A. with a new car, a new wardrobe and a new blond hairdo, as well as a new identity .

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