Chad Griffin wandered over, orange juice in hand. “No card?”
When had the pilot returned to the resort?
“Ooh, a secret admirer.” He sang, “Kellen’s got a lover. Kellen’s got a lover.”
This man was obnoxious, on her list of probables for the Librarian and on her list as first to be slapped for being an ass. She snapped, “Don’t be stupid. It’s a lost card, not a secret romance. What suitor sends a stupid bowl of fruit, anyway?”
Kellen supposed she shouldn’t have said that. The guests and staff were eyeing her askance, and Patty in the Shivering Sherlocks group said, “I like fruit!”
Kellen reined in her irritation. “I do, too.” She pointed at a decorative tin visible behind the cellophane. “Especially when the fruit is covered in chocolate.”
The Shivering Sherlocks laughed.
Crisis averted.
Until Chad Griffin stuck his nose in again. “Sorry. You don’t have admirers, secret or otherwise. I didn’t know that was a tender spot.”
She maintained a reasonable tone. “There’s another storm coming in. Shouldn’t you be getting that plane off the ground?”
“Okay.” He held up his hands. “PMS, much?”
Mara put her hands on her hips. “Really?”
Sheri Jean said, “Your job’s on the line, mister.”
Kellen stepped up to him, nose to nose. “Get. Out.”
He marched away, trailing tatters of offended dignity. But he didn’t get sympathy, and he didn’t put down his drink.
Kellen hoped she hadn’t made a mistake. Nils Brooks wanted to keep his suspects close. But while the events of the past several days had convinced her Nils Brooks told her the truth about the Yearning Sands Resort smuggling depot, and probably the truth about the Librarian, she still wasn’t convinced that Nils Brooks was telling the truth about himself. And that increased her apprehension and her suspicions…about everyone.
Or maybe she was simply sleep deprived.
Frances smiled after Chad Griffin’s retreating figure. “You know, Kellen, I didn’t know if I liked you before, but you’re getting to be almost human.”
Murders. Smuggling. Obnoxious men. Handsome men. Missing law enforcement. A fussy generator. A quirky communications system. Sure. The whole equation added up to a much more likable Kellen Adams. “Thanks,” Kellen said.
“What’s in the package?” Sheri Jean asked.
Kellen poked at the artistically arranged mounds of tangerines, gold-foil-wrapped pears and apples and plums. “It’s cold.”
“They refrigerated the fruit,” Sheri Jean answered.
“You’re not supposed to refrigerate bananas.” Kellen pulled them off the top and started taking the array of fruit apart, searching for the card. “Are you sure it’s for me?”
“The delivery woman specifically said it was for Kellen Adams,” Frances said. “That is you, isn’t it?”
Mostly. “I can’t eat it all.” Kellen didn’t want to eat any of it. A mystery gift made her remember that disembodied head floating outside Nils’s window, made her think about the Librarian and the people who died in agony, their hands cut from their bodies, their pleas for help unheard. In this place, at this time, she had to wonder if someone with less than honorable intentions had sent this.
“Let’s put it out for the guests!” Sheri Jean found a tray of dried chocolate-dipped apricots and a tin of chocolate-covered cherries and made a nummy sound.
Kellen looked up at the gathering crowd: Sheri Jean and her receptionists, Mara and her spa workers, the newlyweds and the Shivering Sherlocks. She could hardly say she feared poison or some other mischief. Unless she wanted to explain herself, and she did not, that could be construed as paranoia. In fact, it might be paranoia. “Help yourselves,” she said and stepped back.
Frances slid the foil off a ripe pear and took a bite, and her eyes slid closed in unadulterated pleasure.
Mara took the tray of chocolate-dipped glazed apricots and danced around to the employees and guests, offering and teasing.
Carson Lennex arrived and watched from the outskirts, arms crossed over his manly chest and a slight, charming smile lifting his lips.
Chad Griffin hid in the lobby bar and sulked.
As the staff and guests passed the chocolate-covered fruits, the tight knot of worry inside Kellen relaxed. This was the kind of treat the troops had loved receiving overseas, luxurious tidbits that reminded them of home and holidays—and so far, no one had dropped dead.
Frances ran her finger around the edge of the bowl. “I wonder if this is really a Japanese Awaji piece. If it is, you’ve got a secret admirer with expensive taste.”
The whole secret admirer thing gave Kellen the willies. “I hate that crackle glaze.” The decorative bowls at the Greenleaf mansion had sparkled with that glaze, and Erin and Gregory had both adored them. Looking back, Kellen thought it was because they enjoyed the idea of something that was prebroken. Like them. “You take it,” she told Frances.
“Really? Okay, I will. Thank you!”
Kellen went back to work unpacking the fruit. Tiny tangerines with their zipper skin smelled like sunshine, summer and citrus. The prickly skin of a fresh pineapple gave off the scent of faraway tropical plantations. Only people who lived where the continual rain bleached the world gray could understand. Kellen lifted one of the last tangerines to her nose, took a long sniff—and something long and slim and alive and colorful slithered out of the bowl.
Guests squeaked and screamed and scattered.
By some trick of levitation, Kellen found herself ten feet back from where she’d been.
The snake, ten inches long, with black, gray and red stripes running the length of its body, slid off the table and onto the floor. It moved rapidly across the cool marble toward the front door.
Sheri Jean moved with intelligence and speed. She dumped the last of the fruit out of the bowl and inverted it over the snake, stopping its escape and the burgeoning panic. “It’s nothing more than a garter snake,” she announced in a loud, firm voice. Then more quietly she said, “Although I’ve never seen one like that.”
“I have,” Debbie said faintly. “In our garden in Maine.”
Maine. Kellen stared at the familiar-looking bowl. She thought about the snake writhing underneath, trying to find a way out. Maine. Her concerns about smuggling, murder and the Librarian changed, and for one moment she reverted to Cecilia, afraid of cruelty, broken bones and violence committed to satisfy a petty despot. She dropped the tangerine and pressed that hand against a marble column. She closed her eyes and breathed in, and banished the memories… They were not Kellen’s memories…
She felt a man’s arm around her waist. Chad Griffin… Or Gregory Lykke?
No! Her eyes snapped open. She turned and…it wasn’t either one of them. Not even close.
A tall man in a dark business suit bent over her in concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She recognized him from her research the day before. “You must be Maximilian Di Luca.”
MAXIMILIAN DI LUCA:
MALE, 30S, 6’5”, 220 LBS., ITALIAN AMERICAN. FORMER FOOTBALL PLAYER. CURRENTLY WORKS FOR DI LUCA WINES. STERN FACE, HANDSOME, TANNED SKIN, BLACK SHADOW OF A BEARD, CURLY BLACK HAIR CROPPED INTO A BUSINESSMAN’S LENGTH, A LITTLE LONG AND DISHEVELED. BROWN EYES WITH LONG BLACK LASHES. GOOD CHEST. RUMBLY VOICE. EYES, VOICE FAMILIAR?
He smiled, a slow signal of delight. “You know me?”
Too much delight. Too much anticipation. She briskly freed herself and stepped away. “You look like your uncle.” Or like Leo had looked fifty years before.
“Of course. You’re right. I do.” He said, “You turned white when you saw that snake. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I don’t like snakes. But who does?” A quick glance around the lobby showed all the guests
and all the staff standing close to the wall, staring at that bowl as if the snake could somehow escape. “I’m fine. Really, fine.”
Sheri Jean was glaring at her, head tilted, wanting her to snap out of it.
Kellen did. One didn’t refuse Sheri Jean’s demands, spoken or otherwise. In a loud, firm voice, she said, “Let’s all go into the lounge, shall we? We’ll send the fruit to the kitchen to be well washed and our unwelcome visitor can be taken elsewhere. As fast as he was moving toward the door, he must have been late for an appointment.”
A little ripple of laughter.
But no one moved.
“Come on, we’ll pour some refreshments and give ourselves a chance to relax again.” Kellen made a surreptitious shooing gesture to Mara Philippi and did the head-tilt glare at Frances.
Mara walked to Max Di Luca, took his arm and smiled into his face. “And you are…?”
Frances walked toward the lounge, calling, “This calls for a giant bottle of champagne and some fresh-squeezed orange juice. Any excuse for mimosas, I say!”
Carson Lennex offered his arm to Patty and Rita, two of the Shivering Sherlocks who were indeed shivering. “Let me help you to a seat.”
Now Sheri Jean flashed her evil-supervisor-look at her own staff. Desk personnel began to smile, be the kind of hospitality team that helped guests move beyond their shock and back into a vacation state of mind. Soon the lounge was crowded and buzzing with excitement.
The noise died down when a rumpled Nils Brooks stepped into the doorway, pushed his glasses up on his nose and in a bewildered tone asked, “Did I miss something?”
28
The laughter this time was loud and prolonged, leaving Nils looking confused and the other guests in a much better frame of mind.
Mara returned and took the opportunity to push Kellen around the corner into the lobby. Sheri Jean had disappeared. The snake had disappeared. The bowl sat on the concierge desk. “Thank God for Sheri Jean,” Kellen said. “Where do you suppose she took that thing?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” In a low, furious voice, Mara said, “That fruit trick was deliberate!”
Brilliant deduction, Mara. “Why do you say that?”
“The doorman didn’t recognize the delivery car or driver. There was no card. The fruit was refrigerated, which would have made the snake lethargic until it warmed up and out it popped! Deliberate!”
“I didn’t know that. About the doorman.” Kellen still felt a little queasy. “Was it Russell? He knows everybody.”
“Yes, it was Russell!” Mara’s eyes sparked. “Someone has it in for you!”
“The whole setup was not very nice,” Kellen acknowledged.
“Not nice! It was awful. Are you having problems with a man?”
“No. Honestly, I don’t know who did that.” My dead husband.
“You don’t have to tell me anything. I understand it’s embarrassing to be the victim of harassment.” Mara glared at Nils Brooks’s back. “But listen. My girls and I are glad to help handle any man problems. You say the word.”
“Huh? No, it’s not him.” At once, Kellen realized she had incriminated herself. “I mean, he’s not likely. He’s a gentle nerd.” And Kellen was a big fat liar.
“Then who is it?” Mara wanted an answer, and she wanted it now.
Not my dead husband, that’s for sure! “Probably a disgruntled guest. We’ve had some winners over the past few months. Remember the weight lifter who decided he could drop the dumbbell bar and grope your boobs while you spotted him? When you banned him from the gym, he was going to sue for you damaging his marriage.”
“No one has sent me a snake!”
“It wasn’t poisonous.”
“Get real. Snake. Snake!” Mara flickered her tongue.
Kellen groped in her mind for another memory. “How about this golden oldie? Remember the first week I was here? Remember the drunk lady who didn’t chew her food, got a giant piece of steak stuck in her windpipe? I gave her the Heimlich maneuver, dislodged the steak into her boyfriend’s soup, and she slammed me against the wall for trying to steal her boy toy?”
Mara relaxed a little. She eyed the now-empty bowl. “That snake trick does seem like more of a female’s mean prank than a man’s, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” Hmm. “Yes, it does.”
Mara looked over Kellen’s shoulder. “Your new security man wants to speak with you. Did you know Max is a Di Luca?”
“Annie told me, and yes, when he introduced himself, it was pretty obvious.”
“I looked him up. He’s one of the important Di Lucas—and he likes you.”
Kellen wanted to moan. She didn’t know which was worse, Mara thinking that Max was attracted to her and being wrong, or Mara thinking that Max was attracted to her and being right. Either way was uncomfortable. “That’s ridiculous. He just met me.”
“Instant attraction.” Mara rubbed her fingertips together. “The Di Lucas have a lot of money.”
“Then you go after him!”
“He doesn’t like me.”
Right now, I don’t much like you, either. “Use your wiles.”
Mara batted her eyelashes. “Wiles? Why, darling, I don’t have wiles. I’m sincere clear to the bone.”
Kellen snorted most unattractively.
Mara grinned, then sobered. “Remember—if you figure out who did that snake stunt, I’ll help you make them sorry. No one comes to my resort and gets away with that kind of stunt.” She skipped away toward the lounge, as sparkly and charming as ever, and just as irritating.
Maximilian Di Luca moved to take her place. He did not skip; his feet were so absurdly large, seeing him approach was akin to watching Godzilla crush Tokyo.
Kellen smiled, extended her hand. “We didn’t meet properly before. Mr. Di Luca, I’m glad you’re here.”
He took her hand, cupped it between both of his and looked into her face. “Call me Max.”
Those eyes. Not brown, as she had first thought, but golden and intense.
So intense he made her uneasy. She withdrew her hand from his grasp. “Max, then. You came very quickly.”
“I would do anything for Annie and Leo.” He had a nice voice, rumbly and warm. “When Annie said there was a crisis here, I grabbed that pilot, Chad Griffin, and had him fly me up. He was just mooching around Bella Terra, anyway.”
She shot Max a disgusted glance.
Without her saying a word, he caught her drift. “Yes, he’s annoying. Say the word, and I’ll send him away.”
“I already did. Now, will he do as he’s told?”
“Not unless he leaves quickly. Snow is predicted for tonight.”
“I suppose we should keep him here.” She walked across the lobby, toward the stairway to Annie’s office.
“Why?” Max answered his own question. “Because you’re suspicious of him. For murder? Or smuggling?” He followed, not too closely, and he moved quietly.
But she knew he was there. He had a presence, and she wanted to put her desk between them. She took the stairs. “Leo and Annie filled you in on all the details?”
“What there are of them. I suspect we’re looking at the tip of an iceberg.”
“I hate being on the Titanic,” she muttered.
“Full speed ahead,” he said, proving he had good hearing. “And no way to make a sharp turn away from the peril. You don’t mind if I play the Kate Winslet role, do you? I don’t even like to walk in the rain.”
She couldn’t help it. She turned and laughed at him. “You’re our new security man!”
He was two steps down, smiling faintly, looking fine in the suit, the white shirt, the blue tie. One didn’t see many suits in casual Washington State. “A good security man knows when to duck and run. I was a linebacker. I’m very good at running.”
/> “So…you’re fast?” She winced. That sounded faintly sexual.
He sobered, and suddenly he was no longer big and handsome, but rather sad and lonely. “Not always fast enough.”
The transformation made her vaguely uneasy. Not only Carson Lennex wore a mask. Everyone at the resort wore a mask of some kind, and trying to peel them away to see the face underneath was more dangerous than she could have imagined.
As soon as they entered the office, he went to the window. “Such a view. I don’t know how Annie gets any work done.”
“It is amazing, isn’t it?” Kellen seated herself and looked at him across the room, silhouetted against a pale blue winter sky and a murky sun that skipped behind the dark gray clouds. Of all the people in the resort, Max Di Luca was the only one she fully trusted. He wasn’t the Librarian, he wasn’t a smuggler, he was the man Annie and Leo had sent to help her. But where to start, what to say about security? How to explain, to warn, without betraying the information Nils Brooks had given her? For she didn’t know how Max would react, whether he would use those big feet to stomp all over Nils Brooks’s plan. He might say, and rightly, that his concern wasn’t solving a crime, but protecting the resort. At last, she began, “Max…”
He faced her. “Kellen.”
“If you would shut the door, we need to talk.”
“Indeed we do.” He moved toward the door.
Kellen wondered if she’d made a mistake.
Her phone chirped. “Hold on,” she said.
Russell texted.
The sheriff is here.
29
Sheriff Kateri Kwinault was in no way what Kellen expected. She was female, tall, Native American and beautiful, regal in the way of a New World princess, and yet she looked and moved as if she had been broken and put back together. Later, Kellen discovered that was true, but for the moment, she concentrated not on the tracery of scars on Sheriff Kwinault’s hands or the walking stick she carried, but on the information she imparted.
The sheriff thanked Russell for bringing her to the office. She shook hands with Kellen and exchanged grins with Max.