Revenge at Bella Terra

  Rafe laughed. “That last is damning evidence.” He typed, and crowed, “I’d say you have a winner!”

  Eli leaned forward. “Tell me.”

  “A member of the police force in Keddington, Kansas. Got into huge trouble, apparently opening a safe in the department and stealing something pretty valuable.” Eli heard the creak of a chair as Rafe moved restlessly. “This is hearsay, because the records are expunged. I’ll have to get my hacker to dig them out.”

  “Did Finnegan use explosives to open the safe?”

  “I can’t tell, but I do know breaking a safe without harming the contents requires either a lot of knowledge of some kind of small explosive or a real ability to get around a security system. Finnegan is fitting the profile.” Rafe sounded very satisfied. “And . . . hmm.”

  “What does ‘hmm’ mean?” Eli wanted to jump through the phone and drag the words from Rafe’s mouth.

  “There were rumors Finnegan was sleeping with the mayor’s wife and the wife of a county commissioner and—”

  Eli wheeled around and headed into the house. “I’m going down to the police department.”

  “Wait. It’s getting interesting. The mayor’s wife ended up dead.”

  Eli rocked back on his heels. “What?”

  “Motive uncertain. They questioned the mayor and Finnegan. Both were suspects. Finnegan was caught with her pearl earrings in his possession. He went to trial and was acquitted for lack of evidence. That was reported in the newspaper and online.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Don’t get excited. I don’t think he’s guilty.” Rafe’s voice was grim. “It looks to me like he was railroaded.”

  “And if he wasn’t?”

  “Either way, he’s our prime suspect,” Rafe admitted. “Want me to come down to the station with you?”

  “I’ll call you if I need you. I’d like you to keep looking at anybody and everybody . . . in case we’re wrong.”

  “I am looking. Keep in contact. When we heard about the explosion, it wasn’t clear who was involved and . . .” For the first time, Eli heard the echo of worry in Rafe’s voice. “Keep in contact, okay? Answer your damned phone when I call.”

  “I will. I am not going to get myself killed now.” Not when Chloë needed him.

  Chapter 46

  Eli walked into the Bella Terra Police Department, leaned over the counter, smiled toothily at Terry, and asked, “Is DuPey in?”

  Deadpan as ever, Terry said, “For you, he is. Now, if you were a reporter, he’d be out on a call.” Terry picked up the phone, punched a number. “Hey, Chief, guess who showed up at the front desk? Our wandering hero. That’s right. Eli Di Luca.” He hung up. “He’s on his way up.”

  Eli straightened.

  Terry took his turn to lean across the counter. “There’s speculation going around town that your new wife didn’t die in that blast.”

  Who started these rumors? How did Bella Terra know this stuff? Did Julia down at the beauty parlor have a microphone hidden in Eli’s bedroom? After all that had happened, he wouldn’t doubt it a bit. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I know we didn’t find any trace of her at the cottage, not that I thought we could have, after the way that thing blew.” Terry eyed him warily. “Plus I can’t tell if you’re pissed or sad or both.”

  “Hint: I may be sad, but I am definitely pissed.” Eli improvised with a little dab of the truth. “I married that woman for her father’s money, and we weren’t married very long.”

  Terry’s eyes got huge and his dimples quivered. “Not long enough to collect? Uh-oh.” He scratched behind his ear. “But if she’s dead, where the hell did you disappear to last night?”

  “I remembered I was out of milk for my cereal and hightailed it to the grocery store.”

  “That’s what I figured.” Terry nodded solemnly. “Glad to have that cleared up.”

  DuPey yanked open the door to the secure area behind the desk. “Come back, Eli. I want to talk to you.”

  “Funny. I want to talk to you, too.” Eli walked with DuPey to his office.

  DuPey seated himself behind his desk, doing his best to project authority. “Shut the—”

  Eli shut the door, turned, put his knuckles on the desk, leaned forward, and said, “Tell me Finnegan is under arrest for suspicion of setting that bomb in the cottage.”

  “Finnegan?” DuPey blinked, alarmed and confused. “No! Why would I—”

  “He broke into a safe at his police department in Kansas.”

  “Yes, but that’s hardly—”

  “He went to trial for murdering the mayor’s wife.”

  “He was acqu—”

  “He set the bomb to kill my wife.”

  DuPey leaned aggressively back toward Eli. “Was your wife killed in that blast? I’m not the right kind of investigator, but I don’t think so.”

  Eli ignored him. “Where is Finnegan now?”

  “Probably at his desk.” DuPey got to his feet. His saggy eyes looked grave and his weary voice was earnest. “Look, I wouldn’t put an officer on the force, no matter how I’m related to him, if I thought he was a danger to anyone. Finnegan’s not a killer. He’s an idiot when it comes to women, sleeps with all of them, and when there’s trouble, he tries to help them. The mayor’s wife . . . The mayor was beating the shit out of her every night, and Finnegan tried to help her get away. She went back for her stuff and the mayor killed her.”

  “Finnegan had her earrings in his possession.” It felt good to let DuPey realize how much Eli knew.

  DuPey hesitated, then picked his words with great care. “That is a bit of a problem.”

  “Serial killers keep souvenirs.”

  “He’s not a serial killer!” DuPey rubbed his face in his patented weary way. “Serial killer. No. Finnegan developed a bad habit of collecting bits and pieces from crime scenes he visits and selling them on eBay. As soon as he got here, I put a stop to it, told him he could live with us and work here, but no more shoplifting.”

  DuPey might say he wouldn’t allow a dangerous relative on the force, but Eli knew what families were like, and more important, he knew that in their whole married life, DuPey had never won a fight with his wife. If she told him he was hiring Finnegan, he would hire Finnegan.

  But he knew DuPey, too, had for years, and DuPey wouldn’t look the other way if he thought Finnegan was a killer. So what was going on? “Let’s go talk to your wife’s nephew and see what we can rattle out of him.”

  DuPey led the way past the private offices and into the patrolmen’s room. “There.” He pointed out the most dilapidated of all the dilapidated desks in there. “That’s Finnegan’s.”

  “Where is he?” Eli asked.

  “Probably in the men’s room.” DuPey turned to the officer at the next desk. “Right?”

  The furiously typing Robin Webster never lifted her brown head. “He hasn’t been in all morning. I’ve had to file last night’s reports by myself.”

  “Damn it.” DuPey picked up the phone. “I’m going to kill that boy.”

  “You’re going to kill him?” Robin bared her teeth.

  Eli walked around Finnegan’s desk and rattled the drawers.

  They were locked.

  “Give me your key,” he said to Robin.

  “It doesn’t open his desk,” she said.

  “Then give me your sledgehammer.”

  She grinned. “If I had one, I’d use it on his head.”

  DuPey hung up. “Karina hasn’t seen him all morning.” As Eli lifted his leg and prepared to kick the desk, DuPey caught his arm. “Give me a minute and I’ll find a key.”

  “I don’t have a minute.” Eli slammed the heel of his boot into the belly drawer.

  The cheap old wood splintered. The contents splashed all over the floor. Grocery store receipts, pens, a staple remover, three staplers, lip balm, scissors, a flashlight, and a legal-size pad with one sheet of yellow paper.

  “T
here’s my stapler.” Robin leaned over and snatched it up. “I asked if he had it, and he said no. The jerk.”

  DuPey scowled. “Damn it, Eli, you broke a desk. The police department doesn’t even have money for toilet paper, and you go around breaking the . . .”

  Eli knelt among the scattered jumble and stuck his arm into the desk, into the space where the drawer had been. From the back, he pulled out a folder stuffed full of papers, car keys, a pipe connection used on Massimo’s still, and a blackened remnant of the cottage.

  DuPey’s voice trailed off.“ . . . furniture.”

  “I’ll buy the department a new desk.” Eli opened the folder and flipped over photo after photo of Chloë in the cottage, in his house, outside at his grandmother’s, taken with a telephoto lens. Opening one of the side drawers, he found books: The Greatest Crimes of the Twentieth Century, The Greatest Unsolved Crimes in History , Explosives and Structure, Stalking Runs, and, of course, a well-thumbed copy of Chloë’s Die Trying. Eli’s rage grew ice-cold, and he spoke with quiet intensity. “Does Finnegan have access to a truck?”

  “He’s been borrowing the department’s fourwheeler on a regular basis.” Robin had changed from a disgruntled woman to an officer on the verge of action.

  Eli shot a glance at DuPey.

  The police chief was still shaking his head in disbelief.

  Now was the time for Eli to tell the truth. “That might explain how last night someone ran Chloë off the road in a big truck. She survived, but it was a close call.” When Eli pulled out a copy of Chloë’s publicity picture with a bull’s-eye drawn on it in pink Magic Marker, he showed it to DuPey. “What do you say about your wife’s nephew now?”

  “I don’t,” DuPey said. “I don’t understand it, but I swear that kid is innocent of anything but souvenir shopping.”

  Eli stood, folder in hand. “We’ve got to find him before he does any more damage.” Pulling out his cell phone, he said, “I’ll tell Chloë to keep an eye out. He’s obviously been doing his research. He apparently has unexpected, deadly skills.”

  Eli called his home phone. It rang, but no one answered. He left a message on the answering machine.

  He called Chloë’s cell. Same thing.

  Terry appeared in the doorway, no longer deadpan but grim and angry. “We’ve got a call in from the Marinos’ Sweet Dreams Hotel out on the highway. A maid found Finnegan in one of the guest rooms. He’s been beaten up and shot. He’s unconscious, and the EMTs are giving him less than a fifty percent chance of recovery.”

  “He’s got an accomplice”—Eli kept leafing through the photos—“and the accomplice turned on him.”

  “No. I’m right about him.” DuPey turned to Terry. “Who checked into the room?”

  Terry checked the paper in his hand. “Some guy named Proctor N. Gamble . . . Oh, shit. Fake name.”

  “What a surprise,” Robin said.

  “Description?” DuPey snapped.

  “White. Tall. Well built. Blond hair, blue eyes, light tan.”

  “Sounds like a million guys in Bella Valley,” Robin said.

  “I know him,” Terry said. “Sounds like—”

  “Wyatt Vincent,” Eli said—and held out a photo of Wyatt inside the cottage, setting the explosive he intended for Chloë.

  Chapter 47

  When Chloë woke up, she was in their bed—no, Eli’s bed—still heavy with exhaustion and sore as hell, but awake and aware, last night’s ordeal almost a dream, or more correctly, completely a nightmare.

  By the look of the sun, it was afternoon. The clock said four o’clock. She was pretty sure it was the same day.

  She rubbed her eyes and noticed . . . the wedding band.

  The platinum circled her finger. The diamonds glittered seductively.

  When had Eli placed that on her finger . . . for a second time? Did he really think she was going to wear it as if nothing had happened?

  He’d placed the pink diamond engagement ring on the nightstand, where she’d be sure to notice it. Blink. Blink. Blink. It sparkled at her insistently, using all its allure to degrade her resolve.

  No. She was not wearing those rings. She was taking her wedding band off right now.

  But first, she needed to figure out what was happening in the house.

  She swung her legs off the bed. She was wearing Eli’s shirt and her panties. Her jeans were off. Eli had done that, she supposed, too.

  Cocky bastard.

  He had also left a note on the end table.

  Gone to the police station to talk to DuPey. If you wake up, go back to sleep. If you can’t and want to avoid your parents, you can do research in my office. Or maybe when you come out, they will have stopped fighting. That seems unlikely. Security alarm is set. Don’t show yourself outside. Don’t open the door to anybody. E.

  He was so bossy. He irritated her like a bad rash.

  Then she noticed she was holding the note to her heart like a Victorian maiden. Fiercely, she crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash.

  She headed into the bathroom, turned, and marched back to the trash. She dug out the note, smoothed it out, carried it into the bathroom with her, and propped it tenderly up against the backsplash. The wedding band on her finger caught her attention again. She smoothed it, marveling at the silky platinum and flashes of pure color deep in the white diamond.

  As soon as she got finished in here, she was putting it back with the engagement ring, but for right now . . . she’d had a tough couple of days. If she wanted to be a Victorian maiden, then by God, she would be a Victorian maiden.

  Stripping off her clothes, she climbed into the shower.

  As spare as Eli’s bedroom was, his bathroom was the opposite, a Roman bacchanal of warm browns and ambers accented by copper sinks and copper accent tiles shining with subtle beauty. His shower slid from a gentle rainlike downpour to a pounding massage, easing the worst of the pain in her muscles, and she stood there, working her shoulders, examining the bruises she couldn’t recall getting, enjoying the luxury of endless warm water and scented steam. As she washed away the grime, Eli’s soap smelled so very much like him that she was both aroused and irked.

  She was leaving this guy. Would she never be able to smell warm spices, cool citrus, and that deep, dark, sexual scent without remembering him?

  That thought got her out of the shower in a hurry.

  When she knew she was going to leave Eli, she had packed everything—her clothes, her books, her computer, her backup for her book—and stowed them in her car. Except for her computer, which Eli had rescued—she refused to be overly grateful—her belongings were still up there on the mountain, which would make dressing herself a challenge.

  But she dried herself on a towel, found one of Eli’s button-down shirts in the closet, put it on, rolled up the sleeves, stuck his note in the pocket over her heart, and went looking for some kind of pants.

  She found them draped over a chair in the bedroom: a pair of jeans that looked like they belonged to her mother.

  She tried them on and decided she was right—they were too high in the waist and she had to roll up the legs. Definitely her mother’s.

  The new In and Out Gas and Food T-shirt awaited Chloë, too, but with her shoulder ache, she could never get it over her head. Eli’s shirt might be too big, but she would stick with it. Besides . . . there was that pocket where she could keep his note.

  Obviously, she wasn’t finished being a Victorian maiden yet.

  She glanced at the pink diamond ring on the nightstand, sparkling enticingly. Blink. Blink. Blink.

  Gorgeous ring.

  Stupid ring.

  Stupid Chloë for wanting to put it on. Her trembling fingers hovered over it. That ring, and the one on her finger, were symbols of Eli’s betrayal, and she was not going to give in to temptation and wear them.

  Pulling her hand back, she worked the wedding band off and firmly placed it beside the engagement ring. She took the note out of her pocket and slapp
ed it down beside them.

  There. She was free.

  Her tennis shoes rested on the floor.

  She stared down at them. Someone had washed them, but one had a huge slice through the vinyl at the toe, and the other one was no longer gray, but camouflage or some other color that couldn’t be described in polite society. “I am not wearing those,” she muttered. So she wandered barefoot through the house in search of her parents.

  They weren’t hard to find. As Eli had predicted, they were still fighting, although they’d moved to the lower level.

  Chloë tiptoed down the stairs and peeked into a bedroom—her father’s, from the look of the shaving kit Tamosso was getting out of the suitcase.

  Her mother blocked his way. “Chloë is too young to be married.”

  “Chloë is married,” her father said smugly, and walked around Lauren and into the bathroom. “To a good man,” he called.

  Lauren followed him and stood in the bathroom door. “It will never last. She’s an intelligent woman, not someone to be taken in by some money-grubber you’ve dug out of your pocket.”

  Ugliness. Chloë backed away and walked toward the stairway.

  “You give me no credit at all. He’s not a money-grubber. He didn’t want to take the money. He didn’t want to marry my darling Chloë.”

  Chloë stopped. She didn’t want to hear this, yet suddenly she couldn’t tear herself away.

  Papa said, “But Eli was a man desperate to save his winery, so he had no choice.”

  Chloë nodded and grimaced. She had that one figured out.

  “What kind of husband did you think he would be when you had to blackmail him into marriage?” Lauren asked indignantly.

  “A good one. He’s driven away demons I don’t understand to protect his family above all else.”

  Unable to resist the lure of the real story as told by her father, Chloë slowly eased her aching body down onto a step and cupped her chin in her hand.