Noah punched in the code to pop the lock. The door issued a quiet click as the latch released, then sighed quietly as he shoved it wide.
He blinked at the light in the hallway. He shut the door behind him, listened until the lock set, then headed for his office.
He stepped inside to find Chloë sitting in his chair behind the desk, her feet propped up, reading a book. “What’s the matter?” he said. “Did you get tired of pacing up and down outside the basement door waiting for me to come up?”
“No!” She smiled brightly. “I came to the resort to do research for one of my mysteries and I just happened to—”
He looked at her, head cocked, eyes knowing.
She sighed. She was a writer. She told lies for a living. But she told them well only on paper. “Yes, this body cast is driving me nuts, and I didn’t expect you would be up for at least another hour.”
“I finished.”
“You searched the whole basement?” She perked up. She glanced at the map he had stuck on a corkboard over his desk, then back at him. “No luck?”
“None.”
She stuck her finger in her place in the book. “What’s next?”
“Good question.” He’d been thinking hard about that. “With my brothers dealing with the search up at Nonna’s, I need to consider more possibilities here at the resort. So I’m going to take my grandfather’s workroom apart right down to the studs.”
“Good strategy.” The mystery author nodded her head in approval. “How come you didn’t do that sooner?”
“Because there’s no way to keep wine cool in there—it’s just a bare room full of tools and shelves—and in my heart I still believe he would have preserved the bottle’s contents.” Although, despite his assertion, he was beginning to get a horrible churning in the pit of his stomach.
“Then why look?”
“Nonno was good with his hands.” Helping his grandfather with his work was one of Noah’s fondest childhood memories. “He could fix everything around the house, around the resort.” Noah looked around, remembering how much his grandfather had done here even after the dementia had taken so many of his memories. “If Nonno wanted to install and wire a small wine cooler
inside the wall under the Sheetrock, the voltage would be tough to trace.”
“Seems unlikely he would do that.”
“Seems unlikely he would hide the damned bottle.”
“True enough.”
“But first”—he turned toward the door—“I’m going to go do my job and check on the running of the resort.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” She turned down the page on her book and stuck it in her bag.
“Why not?”
“Have you looked at yourself lately?”
He stared down at his filthy hands, then pulled his shirt away from his stomach and examined it. Dust and cobwebs.
“The rest of you looks just as bad.” She tried to launch herself out of the chair, failed, then used the desk to help her stand and wiggled, trying to settle her abbreviated body cast into a comfortable position. With a sigh, she gave up.
“How much longer do you have to wear that thing?” he asked.
“The doctor promised me he’d remove it next week. On Thursday. In eight days. Not that I’m counting.” She sounded petulant. “I shouldn’t even have to wear it. If I had healed correctly, and if my surgeon wasn’t so old-fashioned…”
“But he’s the best, right?”
“So Eli says. But if I go in next week and have X-rays, and that doctor says he can’t remove the cast yet, I swear I will take a can opener and cut it off myself.”
He hoped he would be alive to see her released from her body prison.
“Why don’t you go home and catch a shower?” she asked. “Have some lunch? Maybe take a nap? You look so worn-out you’ll scare the tourists if they see you.”
He tried to smile, but didn’t think it worked too well.
She scrutinized him, her gaze clear and knowledgeable. “You know, when it comes to actual walking, talking, real live human beings, I don’t always pay much attention. But I think you look like a man with something on his mind, and it’s not good. Sometimes it helps to tell other people your problems. Sometimes those other people can help.”
He didn’t dare tell her, but the truth was, no one could help him. Not if they wanted to live. He had to carry this burden alone. “I’ll go home,” he said. “A shower and a few minutes of rest would do me good.”
She nodded. “Remember, if you want to talk, I’m your sister-in-law, and I’m on your autodial.”
“Thanks.” He touched her arm, then strode down the hall toward the parking lot.
He stepped outside into the afternoon’s dry, comfortable heat. This time of year, the sun shone, the clouds pretended they had never heard of Bella Valley except for a few discreet nighttime showers, and summer made promises on the wind.
Noah stopped and stretched, and thought about how much he loved his home, and how much he would miss it. Perhaps that was hell, looking back at a life spent in the Di Luca family home and knowing he would never step foot there again.…
His car was parked in the sun, and heat whooshed out as he opened the door. The leather was hot under his butt. The steering wheel burned his hands. But a few minutes running with the windows wide-open brought
the temp down to bearable levels, and the breeze blew the cobwebs out of his mind, if not his hair.
He drove in the opposite direction from Rafe and Brooke’s fancy Victorian, toward the small bungalows built in the 1950s. His home was smaller than most in the neighborhood: one bedroom, one bath, eight hundred square feet on the main level, with a tiny, bare, concrete basement underneath built for God knew what reason. Perhaps it was supposed to eventually become a rumpus room, but no one had ever even tried to finish it, and so he kept his projects down there.
Or rather, his project—a decent-size bomb built to strap around his waist and detonate at the same time as the necklace around his throat. The plans for such a contraption were easy to find on the Internet, and he intended to be close to Liesbeth and her gang at the moment of explosion, so they could all descend into hell together.
For Noah, that was heaven enough.
He parked in the tumbledown single-car garage and headed toward the back door. He got out his key, reached out to put it in the lock—and saw that the door was already open about an inch. He hesitated, then pushed it wide.
The scent of fresh-brewed coffee wafted out.
That figured.
He walked into the kitchen. “Hello, Mother.”
Chapter 45
L
iesbeth turned away from Noah’s coffeemaker and smiled fondly. “I can’t surprise you, can I?”
“Nothing you do surprises me.” He strolled into the tiny kitchen.
But apparently he had surprised her, for she viewed him with a frown and said, “Son, you look like a coal miner.”
“That’s what happens when I spend days underground searching for Nonno’s bottle of wine with the aim of giving it to you… and saving my miserable, puny, vacuum cleaner–filled life.”
“You and your vacuum cleaners!” she huffed. “I can offer you a better life than that.”
“Goody. A proposition. Give me a minute. I need to wash up. And then… we can talk.” He smiled unpleasantly and headed into the bathroom.
It took him fifteen minutes to shower, change into
jeans, his favorite old shrunken white turtleneck T-shirt—he thought it would annoy Liesbeth—and a shabby pair of running shoes, and wander back out to the kitchen.
He caught his mother rummaging through the cupboards as if searching for something, anything of interest. “Find what you’re looking for?” he asked.
Had she been in his basement?
The stairway down, and the door, were outside, as worn as the rest of the house, and although Noah had been working down there every night, he had taken care to assure it looked unused.
Yet Liesbeth noticed everything.
“Why do you live in such a tiny, unkempt hovel?” She gestured around at the worn countertops, the aging appliances. “If you don’t want to care for a home, why not live at your resort? Or at your grandmother’s?”
Would Liesbeth believe every inch of his home was worth investigating?
Or did she believe he was so scared of dying he would do her bidding… and no more?
“Nonna deserves to live as she wishes in her own home. I have to get away from the resort occasionally or I am always working. And ever since I visited you in Europe, I have known that my days on earth were limited. So why should I marry?” he asked. “Why have children? Why waste my time on creating a beautiful home when I know I’ll leave it too soon?”
“You are a practical man. That is much to be admired. I despise my prey all the more when it begs. It’s so dispiriting.” She spread her hands as if helpless. “I hated to invade your privacy by searching your cupboards, but have you got sugar? And cream?”
“I can see digging through my personal belongings
would offend your code of ethics,” he said with fine-tuned irony. He fetched the sugar canister off the counter and the skim milk out of the refrigerator, and two spoons. He placed them on his tiny, drop-leaf table, and gestured. “Have a seat?”
As Liesbeth walked toward him, he noted that she listed a little to one side. “You’re hurt?” he asked.
She rubbed her leg right above her knee. “I had a run-in with a tapestry needle.”
Hendrik must be challenging her more and more. “Be careful. A woman your age doesn’t always heal well.”
“Yes. That’s why I came to you.” She sank down in the chair.
He looked her over. Liesbeth was still tall, fit, healthy. She dressed neatly, and her blond hair was coiled at the nape of her neck. But for the first time in his memory, she had bags beneath her eyes, a sallow tint to her skin, and she too plainly watched the window over the sink and the door. “Not sleeping well, Mother? Afraid to close your eyes for fear one of your beloved family will take you out?” he asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous, dear; it’s
you
that I’m worried about. Half of your allotted time is gone.”
“I promise you, no one knows that more than me.” He sat down opposite her.
“You look haggard.” Reaching across the table, she grasped his hand. “I’m fond of you. You’re my son, and I have my hopes pinned on you.”
“You’re fond of me as long as I do what you wish.”
“I’m fond of you regardless. If I weren’t, would I bother to come here to urge you to save your own life?”
He didn’t relax, didn’t indicate in any way that she had relieved his mind. But if she had seen the makings of the
bomb downstairs, she would have flaunted her knowledge. His mother enjoyed nothing so much as being a know-it-all.
No, she hadn’t been in the basement… yet. “If I knew how to save my own life, do you think I wouldn’t?”
“But you can.” She squeezed his hand. “I want to talk to you about just that.”
“About killing Hendrik and taking over his position as heir apparent?”
She withdrew her hand. She ladled two teaspoons of sugar into her mug, then topped off the coffee with milk until it was a smooth, pale tan. “It would take a bit of ruthlessness to step into my place. But without the ruthlessness, you’re not capable of filling my shoes.” She sipped.
Reaching across the table, he pulled her mug toward him and pushed his toward her. When she looked startled, he said, “Yes, Mother, you taught me to be cautious of any cup you give me.”
“I would not poison you.” Her indignation sounded real. “That would be counterproductive to my goals.”
“Poison me? No. Drug me? I think so.” He took a sip of her sweet brew, then with a shudder pushed it back toward her. “Such a shame Hendrik doesn’t know the real reason you brought the gang to town.”
Liesbeth lifted her brows with assumed innocence. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’ve been trying to remember how and when I discovered you had traced the Propov diamonds to Bella Terra.”
She played with her spoon. “It was while you visited us in Europe.”
“I know
that
. But at first, I don’t think anyone said
anything about the diamonds. At first, you had told me I was to watch my grandfather’s bottle of wine, to make sure it was safe.” He remembered her sitting while he stood, making clear for the first time the inescapable control she now exerted over his life. “You said when it was time, you would come and get the wine.”
“Give me the wine and I’ll go.”
“My grandfather hid it.”
“So you say.”
“You believe me, I think.”
“I don’t know if I believe you,” she admitted. “I do know if you’d watched over the bottle as you should, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” She smacked her spoon on the table, then used it to scoop more sugar into her coffee. Or rather… his coffee.
“Very true,” he said patiently. “I never anticipated my grandfather would hide the bottle before he died. But, Mother—I feel as if you don’t want to discuss how I came to realize there were diamonds in that bottle. I don’t think you told me. I seem to remember an
aha
moment when I realized your devotion to the legend of the Propov pink diamonds was exactly the same devotion you paid to Nonno’s wine.”
Liesbeth stared at him, her mouth pursed. Then she relaxed back in her chair and chuckled. “Yes. Yes.” She nodded repeatedly, proudly. “You are a fit heir to me. To observe me so closely, to draw that conclusion with accuracy—such cunning, such intelligence!”
“I also seem to remember you hustling me away from my cousins before I could say anything in front of them.”
Liesbeth stopped chuckling, stopped nodding.
Noah now reached across and clasped her hand, holding her in place. “My cousins do
not
know the truth, do they?
Hendrik knows you’re here after a rare and expensive bottle of wine, he knows you’re using me, but he doesn’t know what treasure is in the bottle. He thinks it’s all about the wine. He thinks he’s going to make a fortune auctioning off the wine.”
“Hendrik is a boy.” Liesbeth smiled scornfully. “He doesn’t need to know everything.”
“You don’t trust him. Wise move, Mother.”
And for the first time, Liesbeth eyed Noah with some trepidation. As she should. If he chose to talk, he could make a bargain with his cousins, a bargain to save his own life and end hers or, at the very least, end her dream of owning an important part of her heritage—the Beating Heart.