by Fiona Grace
She pulled away and glared at the four straight lines on the pale, tender skin of her inner wrist. He took that as his moment to escape, his tail splashing her face and chest with a small wave of water as he scampered out of the sink, to the counter, and finally to the floor. The floor around the sink was soaked, and Audrey’s clothes couldn’t have been wetter if she’d dove into the nearest lake.
“Ugh. Great,” she said. Water dripped off the end of her nose as she inspected her wrist. The wound wasn’t deep, but nevertheless, it began to bubble with blood.
She went to reach for her medical bag when someone rapped lightly on the door.
That was probably Luca, from the hardware store. “Come in!”
He didn’t.
He probably couldn’t hear her, or maybe it was a Sicilian custom not to go in unless the door was opened for you. Or maybe he was just being polite. She grabbed a couple of napkins from the table and clamped them over the wound as she went to the foyer.
Blood seeped through it almost immediately, though, pouring between her fingers and coating her hand. Funny how something that barely stung could bleed so much. Gross. I hope I don’t need stitches. Thanks, Nick.
“Hi,” she said as she pulled open the door to see Luca standing there with his trusty cart nearby, much of his face hidden by a slouchy hoodie. She peered out, cautiously looking both ways. No Officer Ricci, at least. He hadn’t come to “check” on her since that morning. It was still raining outside, and Luca looked vaguely miserable to be out in the chilly air.
Though he did a double take when he saw her looking just as much like a drowned rat as he was, he didn’t say anything. His eyes swept to her bloody hands. He took a step back, alarmed.
“Sorry.” She looked down. Wow, how much could one little wound bleed? It mixed with the water she’d been doused in, and now it was all over the front of her white T-shirt. “Had a little mishap. With my …” She stopped short of saying pet, even though it was on the tip of her tongue, on the off chance that Luca was as stringent about animal control laws in the city as Ernesto had been.
Quickly averting his eyes, he lifted the box of tile from the cart and slid it onto the foyer floor. He placed the tile cutter beside it, and the tub of grout atop it.
She dabbed at the wound as she inspected the delivery. The box was unmarked; she’d have to open it to make sure the tile was the right color. “Great. Thank you. What’s the damage?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled slip of paper, his hands shaking. Poor kid must be freezing. “Two-twenty.”
She tried not to let on that it was twice as much as she was hoping he’d say. Everything so far with this renovation had a price tag that was reliably double what she’d been hoping, and now that little nest egg of hers was almost microscopic. “Let me go get my purse so I can pay you,” she said as brightly as she could to disguise her woes. “Want to come in? I can make you some tea. You look chilled to the bone.”
He shook his head adamantly.
Strange, she thought as she grabbed her purse off the kitchen table. She didn’t have a pair of scissors so she grabbed the nearest knife, a butcher’s knife with a wide, silver blade. He was such a chatterbox the other day. A real ladies’ man.
Luckily, she had enough euros this time to pay in cash, plus provide a little tip for his delivery. When she got to the door, though, Luca was facing the house across the street, staring intently at it and the police tape that had been stretched across the gate to the back of the house. No doubt, he’d heard the news.
The moment she appeared in the doorway again, he jumped up like a Jack in the Box and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He stared at the knife. She handed the bills over to him with her blood-sticky fingers, which he took quickly, murmuring a Grazie.
She reached down to open the box with the knife. “Let me just check …” She stopped when she realized she was alone. He was halfway down the street before she could even say Ciao.
Odd, she thought, but only for a split second. Because at that moment, realization crept in.
For a second she thought to call him back to explain to him, but by then, he and his squeaky-wheeled cart were long gone. Besides, the tile was the correct, off-white color she’d ordered.
Great. Luca thinks you’re a mass murderer. Now you’re really on the good side of the owners of the hardware store, Aud. You might as well consider wallpapering your house in leaves and making your own tools out of branches and recycling. That is, before they run you out of town with pitchforks and shovels.
Not that she was even allowed to leave town. But maybe they’d make an exception for a crazy person like her.
As she was about to close the door, Nessa appeared in her own doorway across the narrow street. Doing everything possible not to look Audrey’s way, she stuck a hand out to check for rain. Satisfied, she started to fasten her earbuds into her ears, when she finally looked at Audrey.
“Just so you know,” she called in a sing-song voice. “You’re going to get in a lot of trouble if anyone finds out you’re harboring a wild animal.”
Audrey’s jaw dropped. So the girl who seemed oblivious to her in general only noticed her when she was doing something potentially illegal. Check.
“What did it do?” She motioned to her arm. “Scratch you? Bite you? Figures. They call them wild animals for a reason. Better get yourself some rabies shots.”
“He just got overexcited. He doesn’t have rabies. I should know. I’m a v—”
“Whatever,” she muttered. “Just don’t be snooping around my place anymore, okay? I saw that construction worker leaving your house. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but these are my designs. I worked hard on them. So just butt out of my business. I don’t want to have to sic my team of lawyers on you.”
She took off on her run in her skimpy running shorts and bra top before Audrey could even think to respond. Her designs? Snooping around her place? There was so much wrong with that, Audrey couldn’t even begin to process it.
Audrey watched her go, her ponytail swishing out behind her, and realized her nose was wrinkled in a scowl. She is not a nice person. In fact, she’s a nightmare. If Luca should be scared of anyone, it’s her.
Audrey closed the door and caught Nick staring up at her, and was that an apologetic look on his face?
“I don’t care, fox. You’re in the doghouse,” she said, even though she’d already started to soften to him. She sat down on a kitchen chair and inspected the wound. The flow of blood had stopped. She applied antibiotic and wrapped her wrist in gauze, then taped it up.
Was Nessa really more concerned about someone stealing her home designs than about the fact that someone had lost his life on her property?
Must’ve been nice, being able to go on a run and enjoy life despite that. Audrey didn’t have the luxury of simply blocking it out of her mind and forgetting. She wasn’t wired that way. In fact, ever since it’d happened, it’d never left her mind, even for a second. When she closed her eyes, it was Ernesto’s body she saw, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the cliff.
One event, and her life had been turned completely upside down. And she hadn’t even committed the crime. She’d just been accused of it, thanks to Nessa.
She grabbed paper towels and slipped to the ground to clean up the small lake in her kitchen, wishing she could be more like Nessa, completely oblivious, like absolutely nothing had happened. Nessa, who had effectively turned all suspicion on the wrong person, leaving the real culprit to get off scot-free. Would she even feel guilty if Audrey was proven innocent? Or was she so above it all that she really only cared for herself?
I hope Ernesto overcharged her for her materials before he was killed. Grossly overcharged her.
Something tickled at the back of Audrey’s mind. She froze.
If Ernesto had overcharged her, and Nessa had found out about it, well, that would be motive for her to commit murder, too. Just like G said. Half the town has a r
eason to murder him.
Audrey straightened as a thought occurred to her. What better way to take suspicion off oneself than by throwing it on someone else?
Nessa had a motive. But did she have an alibi?
Kind of. Audrey had seen her go for a run.
It was not watertight, though. Nessa had been in the area. It wouldn’t have taken long to commit a murder … seconds at most. What had she been doing before Audrey saw her? Audrey strained to remember. Had she just come from her house, or had she come from the backyard?
And yes, Nessa had said she went for a jog, and had come back because she’d forgotten her sunglasses.
Or had she?
Maybe she’d invented the ruse of going for her run just so she could return at the right moment to throw the blame on Audrey.
Audrey shivered as the thought planted itself in her mind.
Nessa’s not a nice person, but … is she a murderer?
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
“Hey. Look at you. Still walking among the free.”
Audrey hadn’t meant to walk past Mason’s door, but after Nessa’s comments and Luca’s behavior toward her, not to mention an altogether frustrating experience with her travertine tile, she needed to get away. She didn’t mind the last downpour because there was no one out there to give her the stink-eye. But now that the rain was over and the day was just overcast, as her wet hair hung in ropes on her face, and her waterlogged clothes sagged on her body, she had to admit she felt self-conscious.
Why did Mason always have to look so effortlessly good? His clothes were wrinkled like he’d just rolled out of bed, he hadn’t shaved, probably hadn’t showered, and there were paint splotches on his arms. The things that would serve to make a woman look like crud actually enhanced his image.
And really, she didn’t have time for perfect, problem-free people right now.
She muttered a response and tried to walk past him, but he jumped from his front stoop, where he’d been enjoying a beer, and blocked her way. “Is it really that bad?”
She looked down at the remaining puddles on the ground. “It’s not bad. I’m fine. I’m just not in the mood for talk.”
“Oh, yeah? Does this have to do with a certain crime you didn’t commit?”
He said it with a lilt in his voice, like it was all a joke.
“Obviously. And it’s not funny.”
“Never said it was.”
“You implied it.” She tilted her chin back to look into his eyes, and wished she hadn’t. He had her dangerously close to giggling moronically again. Why couldn’t he allow her time to mope?
“Why don’t you come in, take a load off, have a beer with me?” He held up a dark bottle, as if trying to tempt a dog with a treat. “I’ve got Minchia Tosta. Sicilian beer. It’s delicious.”
There it was, the giggle. She’d never been one for beer but she realized that even though he was an animal-hater, his eyes made it pretty hard to say no. Nick would be so disappointed in her. “All right. Just one.”
“Good.” He turned to go back into the house, and as she trailed in behind him, trying to ignore how well he filled out those jeans, he added, “Then I can borrow you for a project.”
She groaned. “What do you need now? Another animal for me to rescue?”
“No, nothing like that. Hey,” he said, looking back at her. “What happened to your arm?”
“Don’t ask.”
“I think I already did.”
“All right. Then I won’t answer.”
Instead of leading her into his kitchen, he brought her to the back of the house, where there was a yellow living room that looked like something out of Better Homes. It was probably as big as her entire Boston apartment, and it had floor-to-ceiling greenhouse windows that looked out onto the patio. Despite the clouds in the sky, the room was sunny and bright and cheerful—and exactly what she’d envisioned when she’d planned to move to Sicily, all those weeks ago. Audrey sighed wistfully.
He snapped his fingers at her again, like she was a dog. “Hello? Focus here.”
For someone who hated animals, he had no trouble treating people like them. She crossed her arms and went to him at a stepstool, noticing a couple of floating shelves on the ground. He picked up one and held it against the wall.
“Yeah, so if you can just hold this for me, right about … here …” He squinted, making sure it was level. “Then I can get this show on the road.”
“Fine.” She held it for him as he said, “Don’t move it!”
“I’m not!”
He held up a drill. “Yes you are.” He placed it again, in exactly the place she’d been holding it. “There. Right there. Don’t move.”
She groaned. The drill whirred. The nails drove into the plaster.
“All right. Good. You can let go.”
She did and relaxed her arm. “That was heavy. You have Luca from the hardware store deliver?”
“No. I have my own car. I get my own supplies.” He motioned to a small stack of them that Audrey hadn’t seen before. “Now the next one.”
“Ugh. How many of these are you putting up?”
“Three more.”
“Three? Where’s my beer?”
“In a second. I need to get these up,” he said, grabbing ahold of the next shelf. “Otherwise I have nowhere to put my books.”
She snorted. “You can read?”
“Funny.” He didn’t laugh.
Eventually, she wound up on the sectional, a soft, buttery yellow monstrosity that was so much more wonderful than her lumpy mattress at her place. When she collapsed in it, she didn’t want to get up. It’d been a long time since she’d lain in actual, nice furniture. She wondered if he’d get the wrong idea if she asked to sleep there. “Where’d you get this?”
He popped the top on his beer and sat in a modern wingback, propping his work boots on a reclaimed-wood coffee table. “All this was actually in the place when I moved in. I struck the jackpot. Just had it cleaned.”
She groaned. “How fortunate for you,” she said through her teeth, trying to squelch her envy.
“So … how are the police getting on with their investigation?”
Audrey took a sip of her beer. It was bitter, but she didn’t mind the taste now. She shrugged. “They haven’t come to ask me any questions since it happened. But they do send an officer by every so often to check on me. Make sure I haven’t skipped town. So I guess they really haven’t made much headway. They’re probably too busy building their case against me to go out and find the real killer.”
“Okay … but if you didn’t do it, someone else did. Who?”
She shrugged. “I heard he had a big reputation for overcharging his clients, so maybe one of them.”
He scratched his chin. “What happened that morning? Didn’t you see anyone around there before you found him?”
“I saw Nessa. My neighbor. The American who lives at the place where the body was found. He was working for her.”
“You mean the hot girl?”
Of course he’d taken notice of Nessa. She was probably used to getting attention, just like him. Two peas in a pod. “Right. She said she was going for a run, but she could’ve argued with him and pushed him over. I don’t know.”
He shook his head definitively. “Nah.”
Audrey frowned at him. Nessa was her main suspect. “Why not?”
“Because she’s hot. She doesn’t look like the murdering type.”
Audrey rolled her eyes. “Oh, right. Of course. What we’re really looking for is the murdering type. Black cloak? Shifty eyes? Maybe a ski mask?”
Ignoring her, he drained the rest of his bottle, thinking. “And what about the other guys that work on the crew? It could’ve been one of—”
“I don’t think so. I spoke to one of them. He said they’re like family. And most of them were at another site. But this guy, Ernesto Fabri, had a lot of enemies, supposedly. It was well-known that he liked to bilk his customer
s by overcharging them for materials,” Audrey explained. “So my thought is that maybe Nessa found out, and there was a fight, and she accidentally pushed—”
“Nah,” he said again.
“Oh, right. I forgot. She’s too hot to do such a horrible thing.”
He nodded as if it made absolute sense. She picked up a pillow and made like she was about to launch it at him.
He held up his hand in defense. “Come on. No, what I mean is that she’s rich, right? She doesn’t exactly strike me as the type to even notice if she’d been overcharged.”
Audrey nodded. He had a point there, even if he was a total ass. Not only was Nessa probably wealthy enough that being gypped out of a few dollars wouldn’t have even registered in her massive bank account, she was tiny, too. She’d have a hell of a time pushing a giant guy like Fabri over a cliff. “I guess. But she was there. No one else was. At least, no one I saw.”
“All right, but he had a lot of enemies. Someone knew he was there, and whether they went there to talk to him, or to kill him, it doesn’t matter. So someone who knew he’d be there?”
“Well, according to his crewman, he was supposed to be at another site but he went to Nessa’s house instead. Maybe to check on something. So I don’t think it was planned, because he really wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. All I know is that Nessa was there. And maybe she didn’t shove him. Maybe he just fell on his own, somehow, and the sign of struggle was her trying to help him back up. But then, why wouldn’t she say that? Ugh! None of this makes sense.”
“Right. It could have nothing to do with the renovations,” Mason said. “Maybe it was meant to look like that.”
Audrey took a swig of her beer. “Oh, right, so they could frame poor, innocent, hot Nessa?”
He nodded. “Dang shame.”
She scowled at him. He may have dismissed Nessa, but she wasn’t going to let her off the hook so easily. After all, she was the only suspect she had. And, if she was being honest, a little part of her wanted Nessa to be guilty, after what she’d done to her, thrusting her to the top of the suspect list.