Annette Dashofy - Zoe Chambers 03 - Bridges Burned (24 page)

“Pretty strong motive for murder.” Baronick drained his cup and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “One thing that’s bothered me is the whole moving the body thing.”

“The added motive still doesn’t help explain that.”

“True. But hear me out. You kill someone and want or need to move the body. Easier said than done, right? Okay so Tierney’s a small man. He’s still dead weight. Farabee may be strong, but strong enough to lug a dead man into the basement? I doubt it.”

Pete knew where Baronick was headed. “Unless he had help.”

“You guessed it. Here’s what I’m thinking. Farabee kills Tierney. I don’t know where he killed him, but after a few days he has to move the body. Maybe it’s about to be discovered. He decides to hide the body in a nice cool root cellar, just until he can figure something else out. He gets on the phone and calls his good buddy, Ryan Mancinelli, to lend him a hand.”

Pete picked up the story. “Farabee knows how to get into the basement from the outside. The two of them bury the body in the potato bin. Mancinelli’s conscience starts to get the better of him, so he drinks himself into a stupor. The explosion didn’t trigger his fall off the wagon. Having a hand in moving Tierney’s body did.”

Baronick came forward in his chair again, planting his forearms on the table. “I’d sure love to get my hands on Mancinelli and have him confirm our theory.”

“That’s not the only reason we need to find him.”

“Oh?”

Pete hated what he was thinking. “Mancinelli’s a loose end. Friend or not, if Mancinelli’s drinking, Farabee has to be afraid he’s going to spill his guts.”

“Which means Farabee might be looking to shut him up for good.”

“Yeah.” Pete pushed his half-f cup of coffee away, his stomach soured. “If he hasn’t already.”

Twenty-four

The milky blue sky offered no hint of relief from the dry spell. As Zoe took the footpath back to the house after finishing her morning barn work, sweat glued her shirt to her back. She’d worked twice as hard as she’d needed to, taking out her frustration on bales of hay and piles of manure.

She entered the house through her kitchen, bracing the wooden door open with an antique iron to let a faint breeze waft into the room. Although the farmhouse didn’t have air conditioning, the first floor stayed surprisingly cool all summer long. Those thick post and beam walls must provide some serious insulation. They didn’t make homes like this anymore.

Zoe wondered what kind of place she’d have to live in after Mrs. Kroll sold the farm and the bulldozers made quick work of this lovely old structure.

Her phone rang, interrupting her train of thought…a train she was happy to derail. The name on the screen made her pulse quicken.

“Holt? Where are you?”

“I’d rather not say.” His voice sounded strained. Gruff.

“Are you and Maddie okay?”

A pause. “Yeah. For now.”

“What does
that
mean? For now? Holt, what’s going on?”

She heard him release a heavy breath. “You’re better off not knowing.”

“Listen. The cops don’t believe you had anything to do with your wife’s or Tierney’s deaths anymore.” Zoe bumped through the swinging door into the living room. “If you’re hiding out—”

“The cops are the least of my concerns.”

All this cryptic nonsense was wearing on Zoe’s last nerve. “Just tell me what you’re doing. You said you had to take care of something. What is it?”

Another pause. “I can’t risk telling you. For your own sake. But I do need a favor.”

“What?”

“If anything happens to me, I want you to make sure Maddie is taken care of.”

Zoe dropped into one of her upholstered chairs in front of the fireplace. For a moment she sputtered, torn between which question to ask first. “What do you think is gonna happen to you, Holt?”

“I don’t know. Hopefully nothing. But just in case, I need to know someone I trust will take care of my daughter.”

“Take care of? You know I will, but what exactly are you asking? Maddie isn’t a stray kitten or puppy you need me to feed. I don’t know what you expect me to do. Or what I
can
do.”

There was some scraping noises and a soft thud on the other end of the line. “Look. You’ve been a good friend to us when we both needed one.” He’d lowered his voice to a clandestine level, as if someone else had come into the room. Maddie perhaps? “You’re the only person I can trust,” he said, his voice dropping to a barely audible whisper, “to protect my little girl.”

There was a faint click on the line. “Holt?” Zoe said.

Only dead air greeted her.

“
Holt?
”

Nothing. She looked at the phone. He’d either hung up or they’d been cut off. She tried calling him back, but got his voicemail.

Zoe leaned back into the chair and turned her phone over and over in her hand as she turned Holt’s words over and over in her head.

“If anything happens to me, I want you to make sure Maddie is taken care of.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. Whatever Holt was planning to do, he didn’t expect to survive.

Pete hammered on the Mancinellis’ front door having gotten no response to leaning on the doorbell. Finding Ryan Mancinelli drunk, but alive, would be the best possible scenario right about now. Of course, he didn’t expect it to be that easy. And it wasn’t.

Pete trudged across the drought-stricken lawn and through the gap in the hedges to the Naeser residence. Ashley, wearing a matched set of luggage under her eyes, stepped onto their porch before he made it up the steps.

“Chief, have you found Ryan?”

“Not yet. I was hoping you might have heard from him.”

She shook her head vehemently. “I’d have called you if I had.”

“Nothing? No texts or emails?”

“No. I’m really worried.”

Pete was, too, but had no intentions of sharing his concerns or the reasons behind them with Mancinelli’s fragile wife. “If it’s any comfort, my officer checked all the bars and called the local hospitals. He hasn’t shown up at the emergency room.” Or the morgue.

She didn’t appear reassured. “I’ve called all his buddies. They haven’t heard from him either.”

All his buddies? Pete struck his casual pose. “Ashley, do you know Holt Farabee?”

“The man who lost his wife in the explosion last week? No.”

“Did Ryan?”

Her eyes shifted side to side as if scanning her memory. “I don’t believe so. He never mentioned him to me. Why do you ask?”

Pete gave her a nonchalant smile. “Just wondering. They’re both carpenters. Ryan worked at Scenic Hilltop Estates.”

Ashley apparently had completed the search of her memory and shrugged. “Sorry. If Ryan ever said anything about him, I don’t remember.”

Pete’s cell phone rang and he reached in his pocket for it. “No problem,” he told Ashley. “But please, if you hear anything from him or think of anything that might shed some light on his whereabouts, let me know immediately.”

“I will. Thanks.”

Pete turned away and glanced at the cell’s screen before answering it. Zoe. He prepared to answer with the litany of apologies he’d been rehearsing, but her frantic voice on the other end stemmed his attempt at contrition.

“Pete, I just had a really strange phone call from Holt. I’m afraid he’s in danger.”

For the second time in as many days, Pete and Zoe stood face-to-face in her living room, although she was pretty sure this conversation wasn’t going to end with them in each other’s arms.

He had struck his all-business pose as she related the phone call from Holt including his request that she take care of Maddie if something happened to him.

Pete’s eyes narrowed, and he showed none of the concern for Holt’s safety that Zoe had hoped he would.

“Did he say where he was?”

“No.”

“And you don’t have any idea what he was talking about when he said he had something he needed to take care of?”

“None.”

“Did he ever mention Ryan Mancinelli to you?”

“Ryan? No. But I did tell Holt you didn’t suspect him of killing his wife or Stephen Tierney anymore.”

Pete winced, but tried to cover it.

“Pete?” If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he was squirming. “What’s going on? Did you find Ryan?”

“No.” Pete looked pained as he met and held her gaze. “When Baronick and I met this morning, he had some information.”

Zoe didn’t think she was going to like whatever information Baronick had uncovered. “About Ryan?” she ventured.

“About Ryan—and Farabee.”

Zoe listened as Pete told her about the friendship between the two builders.

By the time he got to the part about Stephen Tierney’s role in evicting the Farabees from their home, she’d dropped into one of the chairs at her dining table. “Now you’re back to thinking Holt’s the killer?”

“I just want to talk to him.”

“You don’t have any more evidence than you did the last two times you talked to him.” Zoe shook her head. “Honestly, Pete, you’re giving me whiplash. First you think Holt did it, and then you think Ryan did it. And now you think Holt did it.”

“It’s not up to me to determine who murdered two people. That’s up to a jury. My job right now is to keep a killer from striking again.”

Zoe choked out a humorless laugh. “Who do you think he’s out to kill now?” She didn’t expect him to have an answer, but from the look on his face, she was wrong. “Pete?”

With a sigh, he sat down across from her. “Ryan Mancinelli’s missing.”

“You just said they were friends. Why would Holt want to kill him?”

“Maybe Mancinelli was helping out his buddy. I don’t know how deeply he was involved with the explosion that killed Lillian, but suppose he helped Farabee kill Tierney. Helped him hide the body in your nice cool root cellar until they could figure out what to do with it.”

“None of which explains why you think Holt wants Ryan dead.”

Pete held up a hand, palm toward her. “Hear me out. Mancinelli doesn’t have the stomach for murder and starts drinking again. Farabee starts worrying Mancinelli will spill his guts. You said yourself Farabee had something he needed to take care of. Maybe the ‘something’ is Ryan Mancinelli.”

Zoe tried to wrap her mind around Pete’s words. Tried to fit Holt into the mold Pete had built for him. Although for a brief moment she’d considered the possibility, she’d leapt at the reasoning that Holt would not hide a body under the house where he was living with Maddie. She shook her head. “No.”

“Zoe, Mancinelli’s been missing for at least two days now. He could know Farabee’s gunning for him and is hiding. Or—” Pete reached out and put a hand on hers. “Or Mancinelli could already be dead.”

“No,” she repeated to herself as much as to Pete. Her own spin on the scenario started forming in her mind. “It could be the other way around, too. Ryan killed Lillian and Tierney and now is after Holt. He told me if anything happened to him, I’m to take care of Maddie. Holt’s afraid someone is after
him
.”

Pete closed his fingers around her hand. “Or he knows he’s going to jail for the rest of his life.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t
want
to believe it. Zoe, you’re wrong about Holt Farabee. You saved his life the day of the fire. Hell, maybe he even set you up to
think
you saved his life. We don’t know he was really going to run into those flames. He might have been trying to make himself look like the frantic, grieving husband.”

Her chest ached as she struggled to control her breathing. She remembered that moment. A man—panicked, hysterical—charging toward the raging fire consuming the house where his wife had perished. Pete chasing him, but she’d known Pete wasn’t going to catch him in time. The man—Holt—showed no signs of stopping or even slowing. She remembered tackling him. They both went down into the mud.

Could that man have been responsible for the fire? For his wife’s death? Had she saved the life of a cold-blooded murderer?

“No.” She pulled her hand from Pete’s grasp. “I was there. He wasn’t going to stop.”

“I was there, too, and I can’t say that for sure.”

She fixed Pete with a hard stare, pleading him to hear her. To believe her. “Holt did not kill his wife. Or Tierney. He’s in trouble and needs help.”

Pete sighed. “Zoe…” he said, his voice thick with disappointment.

“You need to trust my gut on this.”

He shook his head. “Zoe, I love you. I do. But your gut isn’t exactly trustworthy.”

Her gut, trustworthy or not, felt as if a block of ice had formed in it. She wished the ice could cool the heat of tears she refused to shed. Jaw clenched, she stood and nodded. “Thank you for clearing things up for me.” She stalked to her back door and opened it, standing to one side. “You can go now.”

Pete climbed to his feet, a little unsteady. “Don’t do this.”

She pointed outside. “I want you to leave.”

He moved as if he’d taken a bullet and stopped in front of her. “You need to listen to me.”

“Why? Because you know better than me? Because your gut instincts count and mine don’t? Because my feelings aren’t to be trusted?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Funny. I think that’s exactly what you meant.”

“Zoe—”

She pointed again. “Go. And don’t worry about me bothering you anymore. We’re done.”

She felt him trying to draw her eyes to him. But she refused to meet his gaze.

With a soft groan, he stuffed his ball cap onto his head and left.

Zoe slammed the door. The glass pane in its upper half rattled, but didn’t shatter. Her heart, on the other hand, was another matter.