Tied Bond (Holly Woods Files, #4) (15 page)

Rumor has it he assumed he’d get sex at the end of the night, but apparently, she’s not a hit-it-and-quit-it girl. Who knows? Roll on Friday night when I can corner everyone and annoy information out of them.

I scrunch up the cupcake wrapper and drop it in the trash can next to my desk. I wonder if going to see Trent will be of more benefit to me than calling him. If I call, he can hang up, but he can’t exactly throw me out of the police station.

I mean, he can try, but I’ll just threaten to tell Nonna, and he’ll stop.

I blow out a long breath. Yep. I’m gonna have to make a trip to the police station if I hope to find any kind of lead for my investigation.

I swear, if I didn’t love Gianna this much, there’d be another murder in town.

I slip my heels on, grab my purse, my phone, and my keys, and head out of the building. It’s unusually quiet in the office today, so I’m assuming everyone is out doing work instead of paperwork or working at home. I really need to inject little GPS trackers into them or something.

It takes me only a few minutes to drive from my office to the police station and pull up. Drake’s truck isn’t here, and I’m more than a little thankful for that. If I don’t see him, it means I don’t have to explain why I’m here. He knows I only turn up when I need something.

Damn relationships. It’s a problem when your partner knows you so well… Mostly because I can’t surprise him anymore. Or get away with anything.

Yeah, it’s the last part I struggle with.

“Hey, Noelle,” Charlotte greets me as I walk in. “What’s up?”

“Hey.” I smile at her as she sits behind the counter with a stack of papers in her hand. “Is Trent around?”

“Uh, I think he’s in his office. Do you want me to check?” She goes to stand, but I shake my head to stop her.

“It’s okay. I’ll do it. Thanks.” Again, I smile. Then I head down the hallway to my eldest brother’s office.

His door is slightly ajar, and when I peek through the gap, I see him standing in the middle of the room in front of his whiteboard. From what I can see, he’s staring at a blank board.

“I know you’re there, Noelle.”

“Damn. How’d you know?” I push the door open and step in.

He looks over his shoulder at me and half smirks. “You’re the only person who’d stand in my doorway and spy on me. Plus, I have a four-year-old. I know when I’m being watched.”

“I suppose.” I sigh and perch on the edge of his desk. “What are you doing?”

“Working,” he answers evasively. “What are
you
doing?”

“I wanted to see my favorite brother.”

“Did we not just have this conversation, oh, yesterday?”

“So I stopped by to see you twice in two days? If that isn’t proof you’re my favorite, I don’t know what is…”

“Noelle,” he says sharply and turns. “I’m not playing this game with you today. What do you want?”

Fine. Cutting to the chase it is. “Information.”

“Nope.” He turns back to his board. His blank board.

“You don’t even know what I want to know.”

“Yes, I do. You want information on Wally’s death. You want to know what we’ve found out since we named Gianna our top suspect, and you want to know whether or not the autopsy has been completed, and you want the results if it has been.”

“You know, it totally ruins everything if a woman can’t be even a little mysterious.”

“There’s nothing mysterious about you. Except perhaps your very existence. I swear you were born to test me.”

“That is in the job description of ‘sister.’ To test you.”

“Yeah, I figured.” He caps his pen and puts it on the little tray beneath the board. Then he turns to me. “I can’t tell you anything. I’m sorry. I wish I could. Sheriff Bates doesn’t want Drake to know anything, and I know that you’d let it out one way or another.”

I squint at him. “You don’t trust me?”

“Of course I trust you. I just know that his being happy is more important to you than keeping information to yourself.”

Well, that’s a bit of a guilty twist of a knife in my stomach, even if he doesn’t know why.

“I don’t want to know for him,” I say. “I want to know for me.”

“You could be under the orders of President Obama and I still wouldn’t tell you a damn thing. We’re in lockdown over this case. No information leaves the building.”

I scratch the side of my forehead and then rub my hand down my face. “All right. I get it. Just… Gianna. Is she really all you have?”

He doesn’t answer. Which is, yet again, ironically, his answer.

“Thought so.” I stand and go to his door, a heavy feeling settling in my stomach. If he won’t tell me, then no one else will, either.

“Why do you want to know?” he asks just as I’m about to close his door behind me.

Ha.

Slowly, I turn and meet his eyes, which are the exact shade of mine. “Sorry. I’m not at liberty to divulge that information to you.”

Trent flattens his hand against the wall above his head and leans against it. We stare each other down for the longest moment, the silence zinging with tension. I know the exact moment realization hits him.

“She hired you, didn’t she?”

My lips twitch to the side. “Trent, you could be under the orders of President Obama and I still wouldn’t tell you a damn thing.” I throw his words back at him. Then, with what I hope is sassy finesse though it probably resembles a frustrated toddler tantrum, I loudly close his door behind me and stalk out of the station without acknowledging anyone else.

I keep my expression stoic until I get into my car, where I drop my forehead onto my steering wheel. Shit. I was hoping that he’d help me, given his relationship with Drake outside of work. How can he feel right about potentially charging his best friend’s mom?

How does Drake feel about his best friend potentially charging his mom?

Jesus, this case is already so fucked up. Why can’t it just be simple? Just once, it’d be nice to have someone turn themselves in or be standing over a dead body with a smoking gun in hand or something. Something. Anything. Someone. Anyone. Just… Ugh.

There’s only so much a person can take, and I’m the one in the middle of all the people who will, in all likelihood, be on the verge of breaking by the end of this case.

My phone rings in my purse, but I ignore it. My conversation with Trent garnered me no information—all I found out is that I’m at a loss for any information. I didn’t want to have Carlton look into the system, but now, I might have to.

Contrary to popular belief, I do actually like to get my information legally. Mostly.

As Sheriff Bates says, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

My phone beeps with a text message, so I finally pull it out and check it. It’s my provider notifying me that I have a message on my voicemail. I dial the number, and once the stupid robot woman is done, I listen to the message.

“I have a lead on Katherine Thornton’s credit card,” Carlton’s voice comes through the line. “She checked into the Oleander ten minutes ago. Just to let you know she’s in town.”

Well. That’s good news.

I put my phone down and consider my next move. Kat will need some time to settle in and, presumably, find out if she can organize her father’s funeral. Which means I can probably throw in a visit to Rosie.

Nonna needs to get me some ice cream.

“Halloween-a is-a over! Take-a it down-a!”

“No!” A door slams. “My house. My decorations. My rules.”

“Demon wench!”

“Kellie! I can-a not-a take it! I hate-a it!”

“Good! It’s how I feel about living with you!”

Nonna gasps theatrically. “You do-a not-a mean that!”

“Yes, I do!”

“Demon wench! Demon wench! Bitch wench! Bakar!”

I don’t even want to open the front door.
When I can hear every detail from the front steps, it’s bad. And if Gio the parrot is involved… Yeah. I wanna run. Far away. Fast.

“What is going on in there?” Dad appears behind me.

I jump. “Holy shi-eep, Dad! You scared the crap outta me.”

“Sorry, kid. I thought you would have heard the truck.”

I glance over my shoulder at the driveway. He’s right, I should have.

“How can anyone hear anything with those three screaming like they’re in an ear-wrenching performance of Hamlet?”

“Three?”

“Bitch wench!”

“Ah.” Dad nods. “Perfect timing, as always.” He reaches around me and opens the front door. “Mamma! Kellie!”

Instantly, they both stop yelling at each other. I can’t see them through the doorway, so God knows where they are. Nonna’s probably taken over the kitchen yet again and that’s the root cause of the argument.

“Hot wench!” Gio follows this up with a wolf whistle, his beady little eyes fixed on me. “Hot wench! Hot wench!”

“Nonna! Control your creature,” I plead, following Dad into the kitchen. Nailed it.

“I-a tried,” Nonna sighs, bringing a large knife down onto a chopping board and slicing beef steaks into strips. “But-a your-a mamma just-a won’t listen.”

My eyes widen, and I’m sure my eyebrows are so high up that they won’t be coming back down any time soon. She went here. She went there and back again. Oh no.

“Did you just—did she—Liliana!” Mom yells, slamming her glass down on the draining board. She does it with such force that she actually breaks it, and glass shards fly into the sink and onto the floor. “Did you just refer to me as your pet? That’s unbelievable!”

“I am-a the eldest.” Nonna continues her cutting, unaffected. “I-a in charge.”

“You’re also the craziest and eligible to be put in a dang care home, and I have the power to do it.”

“Dad,” I mutter, poking his arm. “Do something.”

“Like what?” he hisses, leaning into me.

“Anything. Literally anything. Fake heart failure or something.”

“You-a dare-a threaten a care-a home!” Nonna turns, waving a knife toward Mom.

“It’s adorable you think I’d be faking it.” Dad pats my shoulder and moves to Nonna. “Mamma, maybe put the knife down.”

Maybe?
Maybe?
Try definitely, Dad. She needs to
definitely
put the knife down.

When she doesn’t, Dad forcibly removes it from her hand then gives it to me. I take it, grimacing. It’s always nice when he does everything possible to get me involved with their fights.

“Now, everyone just needs to calm down,” he goes on in a low voice. “Yelling and screaming ain’t gonna get you anywhere. Kellie, why don’t you start takin’ down some of those decorations, and, Mamma, you stay in here.”

“No.” Mom stubbornly folds her arms across her chest. “I won’t. This is my house and I don’t want to take down my decorations yet.”

This is going one way—to shit.

“Mom.” I step forward. “Just…do it, okay? This fighting isn’t doing anyone any good.”

She looks at me, her bright eyes blazing. “Are you siding with her?”

“What? No. I’m siding with Dad. I learned not to side with either one of you before I could walk.”

“You’re supposed to side with your mother.”

“She can-a side-a with-a who she likes-a!” Nonna starts. “She is-a—”

“We need a vacation, dear,” Dad says to Mom, interrupting Nonna. “Why don’t you go into Austin and visit the travel agents for some brochures?”

“I can do that online.”

“Well, you can speak to someone there.”

“I am not leaving this house or pulling down decorations, Antonio. That’s the end of this discussion. Are we clear?” Mom’s eyebrows go up. “If anyone should leave, it’s your mother. She’s insane. If she doesn’t like my decorations, I’ll call the care home and she can have a sleepover with people her age.” She turns and storms into the living room, leaving us alone. Unfortunately, her bad mood still lingers.

I shuffle back a few steps.

“Mamma.” Dad gently takes Nonna’s wrinkled hands in his. Honestly, he’s holding them like he’ll break her fingers, yet out of the two of them, she’s probably more likely to break
his.
“Maybe we should consider you having a few days away. Send you somewhere warm.”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Si.
It was-a my-a house first.”

“Oh, God.” I take a few more steps back. I should probably come back for that ice cream… And I probably should have had that thought five minutes ago at the very least. Like, before the damn door opened.

“Well, why don’t you stay with Noelle for a couple of nights?” Dad looks between us. “You wouldn’t mind, right, Noelle?”

I’m sorry. What did he just say? Nonna? Stay? Me? “What?”

Nonna wrinkles her face. “I-a suppose.”

“What?” I repeat. “Dad, are you serious? Four kids and I’m the one who has to babysit?”

“The boys are all busy working,” he says, clearly attempting to reason with me.

“And I’m not, right? Dad!”

“Oh, come on. It’s only a few nights. I can convince your mother to take the decorations down before she comes back for dinner on Friday.”

I look between my dad and my grandmother. Both are looking at me with the same imploring gaze, their eyes an identical shade of chestnut brown and their skin both tanned with an olive hue.

This is ridiculous. Nonna’s being my houseguest is simply asking for trouble, and I like my privacy. If I wanted a roommate, I’d live with my best friend. But I don’t, so I don’t. Plus, Nonna and me living together? That’s hardly any better than Nonna and Mom living together.