Secrets of Bella Terra

The driver must have seen her standing there, for he drove up and hopped out. He opened the door for her, and only when she started to slide in did he see her face, for he asked, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  He shut the door and came around to the driver’s seat. As he put the car in motion, he said, “It’s the hospital, isn’t it? The hospital is a trial for most people.”

  “No, it’s not the hospital.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and met her eyes. “You found the gardener’s body. That must have been tough.”

  Bella Terra always ran a background check on their drivers. But right now, after lifting Hernández from among the garbage last night, and with Rafe’s warnings ringing in her head and Gagnon’s alarm, she looked at the pleasant-looking, formally dressed gentleman and wondered whether he was going to drive her to some secluded place and murder her.

  He didn’t.

  But right now, everyone looked like a suspect.

  When they pulled into the resort’s parking lot, she thanked him profusely, then walked swiftly along the paths toward her cottage, avoiding the guests, the employees, and any potential muggers lurking in the bushes. With a sigh of relief, she let herself into her home. She locked the door and set the dead bolt . . . not that she wasn’t good about locking her doors. Any single woman with the slightest shred of a brain took that precaution, but—

  An African-American man, tall and broad, with long hair and colorful tattoos, stepped out of her kitchen.

  She screamed.

  Chapter 43

  Zachary held up his hands. “Please, Miss Petersson, I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I wasn’t trying to scare you, but I wanted to talk and I didn’t want to do it where, you know, people could see us.”

  Brooke put her hand on her racing heart. “Zachary, if I had a gun on me, you’d be dead right now.” Then she cursed herself for admitting she wasn’t carrying a gun. Because she liked Zachary, and admired the drive that had taken the big man from a Southern prison to the head of gardening at a California resort. But she’d seen that body in the Dumpster close up—and Luis Hernández had been one of Zachary’s employees.

  He seemed to read her mind, though, because he stayed where he was, kept his hands in the air, and waited for her to decide whether to scream again and run.

  That helped. “How did you get in?”

  “I have access to the resort master key.”

  “Right. What’s up?” she asked.

  Zachary sighed. “I’ve got to talk to someone. I thought you’d be the most likely to listen.”

  “You know something about Luis’s murder?” She told herself she wasn’t scared. But she didn’t walk any closer.

  And he didn’t lower his hands. “I don’t know anything. That’s part of the problem. Please understand; I know I’m not one to point fingers. I’ve made my mistakes, and they were big ones. But I’ve been getting bad vibes from one of my guys, and when that body turned up in the Dumpster . . .” He waggled his giant head. “I wasn’t going to say anything. He’s supposed to leave as soon as he gets the money for college. Except I think that he’s planning on getting a lot of money and not going back to college, and I think he needs to go to prison. Or rather, back to prison.”

  Brooke’s heart sank. “Are you talking about Josh Hoffman?” Bright, handsome, hometown Josh, who always talked about going to college.

  “Yes, ma’am. He’s got . . . problems. You know how he volunteers to catch those gophers? That’s because he likes to pull their legs off and watch’em try to run away.”

  Brooke shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself.

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s gross.” Zachary’s slow, Southern-accented voice rumbled with distaste. “I knew guys like that in prison, and they were always in there for torture or rape or murder, usually all three.”

  She took a long breath. “Why haven’t you said something to somebody?”

  “First—it’s not against the law to torture gophers. There’s lots of folks with lawns who think gophers deserve to die.”

  “But they kill them. They don’t torment them.”

  “Yes, ma’am. As far as I’m concerned, that is a big difference.” Zachary was still immobile, his hands in the air. “Then there’s the other thing. This is America. It’s a great country. I recognize that in any other country in the world I couldn’t have changed my life. But still, a black former convict is going to think twice before he accuses a handsome college-bound white boy of bad things, especially without proof.”

  He had a point, a good one. “You said Josh had been in prison?”

  “Some foreign prison in Asia. He’s got a tattoo on his shoulder that I’ve seen on other convicts. I don’t know what it says, but I’m pretty sure it’s not ‘Welcome to Macy’s.’”

  The two of them looked at each other, making judgments and decisions.

  Brooke nodded. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll pass this on right away.”

  “If you can, you’ll keep my name out of it? Because even if he has nothing to do with the goings-on here at Bella Terra, that young man Josh is not someone I want to get cross of.”

  “I promise.” If Zachary was right, they had found not only their hacker, but also their murderer, and as Brooke remembered Josh’s height and strength, she realized she should avoid him at all costs.

  “Now, Miss Brooke,” Zachary said, “I’m going to keep my hands up over my head and head toward your back door. Hopefully no one will see me and we’ll both come out of this without anyone noticing we had a conversation.”

  “Yes. Thank you.” She watched him back toward the kitchen and open the door.

  “Listen to me. I’m going to secure this”—he twisted the lock on the doorknob—“but as soon as I’m out of here, I want you to use the dead bolt. I’m sure Mr. Rafe has told you you’re in danger, and I’d feel guilty if you disappeared like poor Luis.”

  “I’ll shoot that dead bolt,” she said.

  Zachary shut the door behind him.

  She darted across the kitchen and flipped the dead bolt, then leaned against the wall, her heart racing.

  She knew what to do now.

  Grabbing her cell, she started to call Noah—but if Rafe’s phone was compromised, possibly hers was, also. And maybe Noah’s. She couldn’t call nine-one-one yet, not without involving Zachary. But the house phones—they were busy all the time with calls from the guests. The murderer didn’t have time to listen to every line, and Brooke could call from the lobby.

  So she did. She walked to the lobby and called Noah on the house phone, and when he didn’t pick up, she left a message. Then she went in search of Madelyn.

  She had questions to ask, private questions that could change both their lives . . . again.

  A dozen twelve-inch monitors alternated views of the corridors and pathways of the resort, and on one, Josh Hoffman watched Brooke head into the main building and pick up the phone in the lobby. He almost didn’t listen in, because on the big monitor he was watching the Di Luca brothers exult over their bottle of wine, and that was pretty damned entertaining. But Brooke had proved both a great distraction for Rafe, and a troublesome problem for Josh. So he groped for the phone and heard Brooke say something that got his attention.

  “Noah, I need to talk to Rafe.” She hesitated. “It’s about one of the gardeners.”

  Josh leaned forward.

  She continued. “I’m going to find Madelyn—I’ve had a thought. You can try my cell, but it occurred to me it might be, um, bugged. . . .” She trailed off as if uncertain.

  Josh jerked. Had they discovered Rafe’s phone had been hacked?

  Brooke continued. “No matter what, I’m not leaving the grounds, so come find me.”

  Josh put down the phone. He looked back at the monitor.

  Noah wouldn’t be receiving that call. Not while he was underground. And Rafe wouldn’t be picking up the message from his girlfriend. If Josh had anything to say about
it, he would never talk to her again.

  Chapter 44

  Brooke poked her head into Housekeeping. Ebrillwen stood with a clipboard resting on one arm and a pencil in her hand, making an inventory of cleaning supplies. “Ebrillwen, where do you have Madelyn working?”

  Ebrillwen looked over the top of her black-framed reading glasses. “In the bar. I wanted to keep her close today in case she had problems after yesterday’s Dumpster incident.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you.” Although “thoughtful” was not the term Brooke usually associated with Ebrillwen.

  “It’s simply good management,” Ebrillwen said frostily.

  “Of course.” Brooke subdued a smile. “Could I speak with her?”

  Ebrillwen sighed. “Yes, although this continued disruption of service is playing hell with my schedule.”

  “I know,” Brooke said in apology. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”

  Ebrillwen put her clipboard on her desk, slipped the pencil behind her ear, and clicked into her pager. “I have summoned her. Would your desire to speak with Madelyn have anything to do with what happened with her husband?”

  Brooke widened her eyes, all innocence and wonder—and at the same time, she was horrified at the turn of the conversation. “Husband? Madelyn is married?”

  “Her husband.” Ebrillwen enunciated each word. “The criminal now deceased—Cruz Flores.”

  Brooke thought hard and fast.

  Either Ebrillwen managed to figure out the whole situation by herself, or Madelyn had spilled her guts. And while Brooke had the greatest respect for Ebrillwen’s acuity, Brooke had even more respect for Ebrillwen’s ability to interrogate any subject until she cracked—Madelyn being the subject in this case. “Madelyn told you she had been married to Cruz Flores?”

  “She told me everything. She married Flores out of a misguided desire to get him his green card—”

  “And because she was pregnant,” Brooke said.

  “Once he had his green card, it quickly became clear to her he was a thug and a drug dealer and would eventually kill her and her daughter.” Ebrillwen spoke confidently. “When he almost did, she disappeared off the face of the earth. She’s been safe at Bella Terra.”

  “At the time, I didn’t know what her problem was.” Madelyn’s skittishness had broken Brooke’s heart. “I only knew she was frightened.”

  “Like the animal he was, he tracked her here, stalked her for a while, scared her enough that she got a gun . . . and when he trapped her while she was cleaning a hotel room, she shot him.”

  Every detail was correct. Madelyn really had spilled her guts.

  Brooke saw no point in lying to Ebrillwen—but she would like to put the facts to her in such a way that Ebrillwen would understand and condone what she had done. “If the cops had investigated Madelyn for murder, they would have discovered she was working under an alias, they would have treated her as if she were the criminal, and they would have taken her little girl away from her. Neither Madelyn nor her daughter deserved that, and I knew if I said I’d killed Flores, I could get out of the charge without jail time.”

  Ebrillwen folded her arms over her chest. “I told her she should tell the police the truth.”

  “Good God!” Here was trouble. “Why?”

  “While I respect your desire to do the right thing for Madelyn, you didn’t take into account all the consequences of these actions. She has parents, parents of strong and proper morals who disowned her when she married Flores. She wants to see them. She wants her daughter to meet them. She can’t explain to them that she’s assumed an alias.” Ebrillwen’s own strict moral code was evident in the starch of her words.

  “I didn’t know. She didn’t tell me. There wasn’t time.”

  “After the shooting, you mean? Yes, I understand; you had to make quick decisions without knowing all the facts.” Ebrillwen’s comment was kind, but she continued speaking of Madelyn, making it clear she had thoroughly discussed the situation with the young woman. “Once Madelyn has achieved contact with her parents, she wants to go back to school, to get a different job, become a teacher or a counselor. For all that, she needs to assume her real identity.”

  Brooke stopped protesting. “Yes, she does.”

  “There’ll be trouble . . . for you both,” Ebrillwen warned.

  “Yeah, thanks.” But Brooke wasn’t really angry.

  “In the end, while the police will have to slap both of your hands for falsifying the events, they can hardly prosecute Madelyn for the killing any more than they did you. Especially since it was, as you both claimed, self-defense. In the end, she’ll come out without undue distress.”

  “Yes. Good point.” With wry amusement, Brooke realized it would be as Ebrillwen declared, because Ebrillwen had declared it. “I still want to talk to her, though, because at the time, she didn’t know how Cruz had tracked her from L.A.”

  Ebrillwen looked at her pager and frowned. “Where is that girl?”

  An ugly thought occurred to Brooke. “Rafe’s phone has been hacked. Perhaps your pager has been compromised, too?”

  “Come on, then. Briskly.” Ebrillwen headed out the door, Brooke on her heels. “What do you hope to discover from her?”

  “Before the police arrived, Madelyn went through Flores’s pockets, said she wanted any money he had on him. Said he owed it to her daughter.” Brooke hadn’t argued. She figured it was true.

  Ebrillwen nodded. “So she told me.”

  “She took everything he had on him. I want to know if she found anything more than money on him—a letter or a notice offering a reward for retrieving an object of value for an unknown buyer.”

  Ebrillwen stopped. She turned on her heel. Her horror was palpable. “You think he was here for some reason other than the fact that he tracked Madelyn down?”

  “I think it’s a strong possibility.” Had Flores been the first man Bianchin had brought in to retrieve Massimo’s bottle of wine? Had he accidentally set up the tragic reunion between Flores and Madelyn, and then had to hire someone else, someone local? Had he hired Josh Hoffman?

  Chapter 45

  In the wine bar, the glass doors that protected the wines still hung open, some with broken hinges. Plastic garbage cans filled with glass shards lined the walls of the bar. Most of the wine had been mopped up, but the fruity, aged oak odor still permeated the air.

  A gloomy Tom Chan worked behind the bar, doing an inventory of the bottles left intact.

  Madelyn was not here.

  “Mr. Chan, where is my housekeeper?” Ebrillwen asked.

  “She left about an hour ago.” He sighed heavily as he wiped off a bottle of wine.

  “She left?” Ebrillwen was clearly horrified. “Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know.” Tom read the label; then through tearful eyes, he looked at Brooke. “At least the bastard missed the 1968 Mosberger cabernet.”

  “How did she leave?” Brooke felt bad for Tom, but there was more at stake here than the fate of his bar.

  “She walked out.” He placed the wine on the bar with the lineup of other stained and battered bottles, then reached for another.

  “Did she say anything?” Ebrillwen asked.

  “I’m not her boss!” he said in exasperation.

  With frosty disdain, Ebrillwen said, “No, Mr. Chan, I am, and I’m trying to ascertain why my employee abandoned her post.”

  Tom was a sweet guy, in no way able to stand against a hard-ass like Ebrillwen. Meekly he said, “She was sort of muttering to herself about a man. . . . Spotted somebody out the window, I think, because she jumped up all of a sudden and left.”

  Ebrillwen looked directly at Brooke. “That is not like the girl. She is supremely responsible.”

  Brooke’s niggle of panic was growing. “Do you think she’s gone to check on her daughter?”

  “Her daughter is in school. We dropped her off on the way to work this morning.”

  “Do you th
ink she went to the police?” Brooke asked.

  “She was by no means convinced she should do so. She was, as you said, frightened she would lose her child.” Ebrillwen drew herself up. “Besides, surely she would have done so in her off-hours.”

  “Right. Try paging her again.”

  “I’ve paged her twice.” But Ebrillwen did it again.

  Tom Chan now watched them with concern. “You ladies are sure worried about one housekeeper.”

  A movement outside the windows caught Brooke’s gaze.

  Josh walked through the lush garden outside the wine bar, looked inside, and smiled broadly at Brooke—and winked.

  Every nerve in Brooke’s body tightened in fear. “Did you see that?”

  “That very handsome young man?” Ebrillwen looked down her nose at Brooke as if suspecting her of lascivious thoughts. “Yes, he works here.”

  “I suspect he killed Luis Hernández.” As Brooke said the words out loud, she realized she believed Zachary. Something about Josh was just . . . off, like spoiled meat or old milk. “If he has Madelyn somewhere . . .”

  Ebrillwen’s alabaster complexion became ashen. “Why would he do that? Why?”

  “Because if it’s true”—the memory of that smile and wink sent a chill down Brooke’s spine—“if Flores came because he was working a job and Madelyn has the papers to prove there is a job, Madelyn is a threat.”

  “To Josh?”

  “To the man who hired him.”

  Tom picked up the house phone. “I’m calling the police.”

  “I’m going after him.” Ebrillwen strode out the door.

  Brooke started after her.

  Tom Chan grabbed her arm. “I usually keep a pistol behind the bar. Of course, it disappeared when the bar was vandalized. But listen, if you suspect this guy, don’t chase him without a weapon. Take this.” He ripped the foil off a scuffed bottle of champagne and handed it to her.

  He was crazy. Tom Chan was crazy.

  “It’ll work,” he assured her. “Take the wire off from around the cork, shake it up, aim it, and pull the cork. Even if you don’t pull the cork, it’ll pop on its own within a few minutes. Delayed release. A time bomb.”