Revenge at Bella Terra (33 page)

Made sense. “Because if the guy had been watching for his chance to activate the bomb, he would have seen Chloë leave and stopped the timer.”

“Right,” Rafe said.

“But why such a long delay between the time she set the security code and when the bomb went off?”

“It was a malfunction, either mechanical or human. My guess is the perp was in a hurry and set it for one hundred and fifty minutes instead of fifteen.”

“We got lucky?” Eli could hardly conceive of that.

“Considering how many times lately we’ve been unlucky, it’s time we won one, wouldn’t you say?” Rafe sounded exasperated. “Now . . .
why
is someone after Chloë? Because I have to tell you, Eli, that bomb shows all the markings of someone who is seriously pissed off and bent on obliterating her from the face of the earth.”

“We’re pretty sure it has to do with the lost pink diamonds.” Eli filled Rafe in on the details of Massimo’s story.

When he finished, Rafe made the right conclusion. “You set her up with the engagement ring.”

“I’m an all-around great guy. She wants to divorce me because I took her father’s money, and I tried to get her killed with my romantic gesture gone sour.”

“She could have international jewel thieves after her. They’re not nice guys.” Rafe sounded as if he’d met a few. “Eli, this means they’re after you, too.”

“Besides some hair crisping and a bump on my head, I don’t have a scratch on me.”

“
Yet,” Rafe said ominously. “Any foreigners hanging around?”

“My father-in-law.”

“He into jewel robbery?”

“No.” Eli thought about Conte, his wealth, and his claim to be a leather merchant from Milan. “Maybe so—I don’t know what he really does for a living—but he would never hurt his darling daughter.” Of that Eli was sure.

“I’m getting a guard on your house ASAP—”

“I’ve got one. Tamosso Conte came with a guy named Arvid something-or-other.”

Rafe knew the name right away. “Arvid Dijkstra. I know him. Impeccable credentials. I couldn’t do better for you than him. Does he have backup?”

“I’ll ask him.” Eli walked to the deck, looked around, and found Arvid pacing around the house. “Do you have backup?” he called.

“There’s a replacement every eight hours.” Arvid produced words slowly and with a Swedish accent. “He is on his way in from San Francisco right now.”

“That’s good,” Rafe said. “Tell him we’re expecting trouble. Does he have people he can call in as additional personnel, or should I send in one of my people?”

Eli repeated the question.

Arvid glanced at the blackened hole where the cottage had stood, and looked up at Eli. “I’ll stay when my replacement arrives. Is that sufficient for the moment? If there is a problem, I can do more.”

“Give him my name,” Rafe said. “He knows me. Tell him we’ve no reason for immediate alarm, but we’re uncomfortable and I’m sending someone over.”

Eli repeated the message.

Arvid nodded stiffly, probably because it was hard to nod when he had no neck.

Eli remained on the deck looking out over Bella Valley. His valley, his home, so gloriously peaceful. “I will miss this place,” he muttered.

“What?” Rafe’s voice sharpened. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. Just that if Chloë insists on leaving me, I’ll have to go after her.”

“Eli, she’s an author. She can live anywhere!” Rafe was clearly incredulous. “You’ve got a job here. A job you love. A job you do well. A job that’s making me money as a shareholder of the family winery!”

“If Chloë wants to go to Texas or Italy, there are wineries in both places. I can always get a job as a vintner.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Eli. You don’t even go on vacation!”

“Rafe, she’s my wife, and I want it to stay that way. She’s mad at me, and you said yourself that I was a fool for thinking I could seduce her and take a dowry for marrying her. So what am I going to do?” Although Rafe couldn’t see him, Eli lifted his hand hopelessly. “I love her.”

“Wow.” Rafe sounded stunned. “I never thought I’d hear you say that. Wow. Wait until I tell Brooke.”

“I’ve got to keep Chloë alive.” Eli transferred his attention to the crater in his yard, and the rows of broken vines, and said, “She and I both suspect someone in the police department.”

“Security expertise, bomb expertise, access, and trust. I agree. That’s a good place to start. Anybody in particular?”

“Wyatt Vincent. Mason Watson. Finnegan Balfour. Terry.” Eli hesitated. “DuPey.”

“Looking them up,” Rafe said.

Surprised, Eli said, “You didn’t balk at Terry or DuPey, and we’ve known them both forever.”

“We knew both the people involved in the attack on Nonna and the destruction of the wine bar. We didn’t catch either one of them until the harm was done and Brooke had almost been killed.” Rafe’s voice grew ugly with memories. “I don’t acquit anyone when it comes to this stuff. You don’t know what motivates a man—or a woman—especially when it comes to priceless gems. And sometimes, it pays to go with your gut. Any of these guys in particular your gut doesn’t like?”

“I don’t like Mason,” Eli admitted. “He’s too damned jolly about the corpses.”

Rafe typed. “No record. He looks clean. Which is not to say you’re not right, only that he hasn’t been caught.”

“I don’t like Finnegan, either. He’s DuPey’s wife’s nephew from Kansas. Terry says he’s got some kind of record. DuPey seems to dislike him.” Eli felt stupid, but he had to add, “And he’s got a crush on Chloë.”

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

E
li 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.

“There’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?”