Revenge at Bella Terra (12 page)

“Probably a lady like you is suffering from delayed shock at discovering the body, too,” Finnegan said.

Against all evidence, Mason and Wyatt nodded solemnly.

These superior men set her teeth on edge.

But before she could contradict them, Eli put his hand under her elbow and pulled her to her feet. “I’ll take you home,” he said.

That made the law enforcement men exchange grins, which irritated her even more.

But not as much as Eli; his face turned to granite and in a goaded voice he said, “As a favor to her father, I’m allowing Miss Robinson to stay in the cottage to finish her book. I’d appreciate it if you’d remember that.”

Mason and Wyatt sobered and leaned over the body again.

Finnegan disappeared behind the still.

DuPey said, “I’ll walk you to your truck. I need to question you both about your find here. Just a formality. I’m pretty sure you didn’t commit the murder.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Eli said.

They descended in the cherry picker together—Eli let Chloë handle the controls while DuPey stood tigh-lipped and white-knuckled—and when they got to the ground, he started asking his questions. By the time they got to Eli’s truck, they’d covered why they’d come and how they’d discovered the body.

Eli helped Chloë into the truck, then turned to DuPey. “You were acting funny in there. Has someone used that still recently?”

“Not recently. But I expected to see a little more corrosion in there.” DuPey shrugged. “I’d have a lab check the still and date the last time it processed liquor, but it’s such an old crime scene that I can’t justify the expense.”

“So I can have it removed?” Eli dug into his cooler and handed Chloë a cold water; then, while they were damp, he wiped his hands again.

DuPey took a bottle as well, drained it, and handed it back. “Yep. Mason’ll take the body to the morgue and do his thing, but if it’s Massimo, as we all suspect, there’ll be no way to know. According to the stories, he had no family and no children, so no DNA.”

“Poor guy. No family to mourn when he disappeared. No gravestone with his name.” Chloë’s heart ached.

Eli glanced up at her. “If what Nonna says is true, he chose his life and by all rights had no reason to expect anything else.” He headed around the truck and got in.

“He doesn’t care now,” DuPey said.

“No, I suppose not,” she said, more to herself than to them. “But I bet in those last moments of his life, he wanted vengeance.”

Eli started the truck.

DuPey waved them off.

As soon as Eli put the F-250 in gear, executed a three-point turn, and started up the bumpy gravel road toward Bella Terra, Chloë twisted to face him. “So tell me, Eli—what did you pick up off the floor of the water tower?”

Chapter 15

E
li made her wait until they reached the cottage to answer her question, and by the time they got there, she was hopping up and down with frustration. Because he hadn’t fallen down by accident, any more than he had believed she was overcome with horror at the scene in the water tower. He had discovered something, something related to Massimo and the crime, and she wanted to know
what
.

He showed her his hands. The filth of that floor hung in the creases and under his fingernails, and he used that as an excuse to make her punch in the security code.

All the while he was grinning. Teasing her, as if he were almost human.

As soon as they were inside, she kicked the door shut, grabbed his shirt, and in the low, guttural, threatening voice of a demon, said, “Tell me all.”

He set her aside as if she were a
girl
. “Do you have a mesh strainer?”

“A mesh strainer. You want a mesh strainer?” Her voice rose.

He tapped her nose—he had her total attention and he was playing it for all he was worth.

“You are really frustrating.” She rubbed her nose, knowing he had smeared soot on it, and tagged along as he went into the kitchen.

He found the strainer, put it in the sink. Reaching into his pocket, he brought out his now-grimy handkerchief, laid it in the strainer, and carefully spread it across the mesh.

Gobs of sticky soot and filthy wood splinters filled the handkerchief. He turned on the sprayer. “It’s going to take a minute to wash the dirt away. In the meantime, look at this.” Reaching into his other pocket, he pulled out the cigarette butt he’d removed and handed it to her.

It was grimy, too, old and disgusting, and she stared at it, trying to figure out why he would pick up and keep a cigarette used to burn Massimo. That was macabre. Unless . . . “This thing has a filter on it,” she said.

“No cigarette without one could survive up there so long.”

“When did they start making filtered cigarettes?”

“I don’t know, but I doubt it was during the Depression.”

She pulled out her computer, put it on the counter and opened it, and searched for the answer. “Filters on cigarettes were specialty items until the 1950s, because there weren’t a lot of machines that could make them.” She picked up the butt and examined it again. “Brand is . . . Kent? Looks like. Kent started using a filter in 1952. So someone was up in that place in the fifties or later? With Massimo’s dead body? Doing what?”

“Might have been using the still. DuPey seemed uneasy about that.”

“With a dead body watching? That’s cold.”

“So was the torture.” He turned off the water. “Where’s your flashlight?”

She pulled it out of the case and handed it to him.

He flicked it on and pointed into the strainer in the sink. “There. Look.”

Something glinted. Sparkled. A small cut stone. She bent toward the sink. She took a long breath, trying to quiet the sudden thunder of her heart.

Handing her the flashlight, he picked up the stone and placed it in his still-grimy palm.

It sparkled like a diamond against a black velvet setting.

“No . . .” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

“It’s a gem. Maybe a diamond?”

“Yes. Maybe a diamond.” She shone the flashlight, and the stone gathered the light, blazed with sparks of blue and red and . . . “About a half carat. It looks pink. A pink diamond?”

“Let’s find out. Let’s use it to cut some glass.” He turned toward the window.

“Not the window! Let me get my travel mirror.” She hurried into the bathroom and returned with the round, cheap mirror she kept in her makeup case. Putting it on the counter, she gestured to him to proceed.

She watched, breathless, as Eli used the edge to cut through the glass.

“I don’t suppose that’s a conclusive test, is it?” Her voice quavered with excitement.

“I don’t suppose. But if this
is
a diamond”—he placed the gem in his palm again—“it would explain what the torturers were looking for. Why someone in the fifties took a chance and returned to the scene of the crime.”

“Yes . . .” She couldn’t take her eyes off the stone. “But you picked it up off the floor. Was it unseen on the floor for eighty years?” Without drawing a breath, she answered her own question. “Yes, of course. If it had been seen, it wouldn’t have been there. How did it go unnoticed, especially if someone was up there?”

“I didn’t see it right away. Neither did you.”

She nodded in agreement.

“At one point, when the tower was full of water, the wood was probably damp and soft.” Eli rolled the stone around with his thumb. “We know a thick layer of soot and dirt covered everything. This was buried, and its sharp edges kept taking it deeper.”

“Right. It wasn’t until you knocked out the wall and let the light in that we even had a chance to spot the, er . . .” She found herself unable to say the word. Knowing what it was, knowing it was in her cottage, made her nervous, as if villains lurked outside waiting to torture her as they had tortured Massimo.

“Our biggest stroke of luck was the coroner. Mason wears running shoes, and when he stepped on the stone, it clung to the tread and came up in a clod of dirt. The clod dropped and I saw the diamond flash.” Eli seemed unworried, more interested in the mystery than in any danger.

“So the diamond gave us the clue we needed. I told you Massimo wanted revenge!”

Eli looked at her as if she were nuts.

The man had no imagination. “Okay, maybe it was pure chance. But the other is a better story!”

“You’re the writer.” It did not sound like a compliment. “Anyway, I pretended to trip, picked up the stone before someone else saw it, and figured we’d better get out of there.”

“I knew you were faking.”

“I hope the others aren’t as suspicious as you.” He put the diamond onto a plate, set it aside, and used the dish soap to really scrub his hands. “Especially not DuPey. I’ve known him since high school.”

She dismissed that with an airy wave of the hand. “He thinks you’re an upstanding citizen. He as good as said so.”

“Yeah. I’ve got him fooled.” Eli sounded amused.

“So Massimo disappeared in 1930?” Chloë took her computer to her desk, typed in “pink diamond,” “robbery,” and “1930.” This search took a little longer, and required some digging on her part, but finally she said, “I had to have Google translate this old news story from Dutch, so it’s a little sketchy, but I think this is it.” She read, “‘Amsterdam, December twenty-sixth, 1929. On Christmas Day, a Vermeer titled
View of the Harbor
was stolen from the Rijksmuseum by a talented team of burglars. The carefully planned robbery bears the hallmark of other thefts in Italy and France. Vermeer, noted for his work with light, was one of the finest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.’”

“What has that got to do with our diamond?” Eli used paper towels to dry his hands.

Chloë held up one finger. “‘Amsterdam, December twenty-seventh, 1929. A cache of prized pink diamonds vanished from a shipment on its way to be set in platinum for the Duchess of Wheatley. The diamonds range in size from a half carat to the proposed diamond centerpiece, a six-point-eight-carat pink diamond, the Beating Heart, with an inclusion that, when viewed through a jeweler’s loupe, looks like a red heart that appears to pulse.”

“My God. Massimo had
guts
.” Eli’s tone was reverent.

“I assume he stole the painting on commission for an art collector, then used the police’s distraction with the theft to take the diamonds undetected.”

“It’s possible he had done it before.”

“But this time someone caught on.”

“Probably the guys he stole the diamonds from.”

“Security had to be hands-on and pretty harsh in those days.” Eli leaned over the counter toward her. “Did anyone ever find the pink diamonds?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ll do more searching, but so far I’ve turned up nothing. So where did Massimo hide them?”

Eli stood frowning at the crumpled paper towel he held, and something about his silence got her attention.

“Eli? Do
you
know where he hid the diamonds?” she asked.

“What?” He looked up. “No. I . . . No. But I think it’s time you met my grandmother.”

“You think she’ll have information we can use?” Chloë asked eagerly.

“Nonna read your book and she’s been nagging to meet you. But I’ve taken enough of your time today.” He tossed the paper towel, picked up the diamond, carried it to the desk, and stuck it in the skull in the gap between the two front teeth. “There. It should be safe there. After all, no one knows we have it. Now, get some work done.” He walked to the door. “I’ll pick you up for lunch tomorrow.”

Chapter 16

E
li came home early to take Chloë to lunch. Stupid thing to do; a guy never showed up early for a date. But he’d been up at dawn to go over the schedule with Royson and he’d seen her light burning. He’d almost dropped by then to see if everything was all right.

He was sure it was. She’d set the security system yesterday when he left. But the idea that some guy with designs on her father’s money would take her from him made him antsy. She was lucky she hadn’t been abducted before.

He
was lucky she hadn’t been abducted before.

Not that he had the guts to hold himself up as a worthy suitor; calling it a marriage of convenience was like calling a Massimo a gem redistributor. Eli knew himself to be an opportunist, plain and simple.

But at least he was sensible. He could make her happy.

For all his self-lecture, he found himself standing on her porch an hour early. He knocked on her door.

It gave beneath his knuckles.

It was open.

He thrust the door open. The place looked better than the day before; she’d picked up. But no one was here.

His kernel of worry blossomed.

He checked the bathroom, the deck. Her computer was open on the desk; it was still warm.

She hadn’t been gone long. Had someone taken her? Or had she gone off on her own?

Walking out on the front porch, he looked around. Saw her footprints on the grass leading out toward the vineyards and followed them.

And there she was, on the grass between the tall rows of vines, flat on her back, with her arms and legs outstretched and her eyes staring skyward. “Chloë!” he shouted, and took two sprinting steps toward her.

She rolled onto her side and looked at him. In a normal voice, she said, “What?”

He stopped. Felt foolish. Snapped, “What are you doing?”

“I’m listening.” She rolled onto her back and flung her arms out.

“To what?”

“To the vines talking to one another.”

Had she fallen and hit her head?

Had someone
hit
her on the head?

He took another few steps toward her.

She was dressed in navy gym shorts, a loose button-down white shirt tied at the waist, and battered running shoes. She glistened with a light sweat. She looked comfortable. Boneless. Complacent.