Fate Actually: Moonstone Cove Book Two

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  “Girl, he is so sweet,” Megan murmured. “She might need some help.” Megan waved him over. “She threw up a couple of times from the smell.”

  “I hate you so much,” Toni hissed. “I’m fine!” she said louder. “We’d better call the police.”

  Katherine pulled out her phone. “I’ll call Drew right now.” She held out her hand. “Hello, you must be Henry. I’m Katherine Bassi, Toni’s friend.”

  He shook Katherine’s hand, but he didn’t take his eyes off Toni. “Okay, let’s get you inside. You look pale.”

  “I’m Megan Carpenter, and it is so nice to meet you.” Megan introduced herself and somehow passed Toni off to Henry in one fell swoop. “Toni’s told us so much about you.”

  Toni was walking under Henry’s arm and halfway to the house before she understood what was going on. “Henry—”

  “I’m going to make some tea,” he said. “I know you like coffee better, but you still look a little sick. I can’t blame you; that had to be upsetting.”

  Toni studiously ignored how nice it was to tuck herself under Henry’s tall frame. It was one of her favorite things about him. When they were together, she felt surrounded and safe. It was annoyingly comforting. “Tea sounds good.”

  “Was it bad?”

  I’m actually puking because I am pregnant with your love child, but sure, let’s go ahead with the dead-body explanation. “It was pretty shocking. He’s been out there for a while.”

  Henry curled his lip. “Coyotes?”

  “Yeah. Probably some cats too.”

  He glanced at the barn. “Do you think Enzo—?”

  “I’m going to allow my brain the fiction that Enzo wouldn’t have gone near a dead human body, okay? I keep him well fed.”

  “Right.” He helped her up the steps and followed. “So you and your friends were just out for a walk?”

  “Katherine and Megan both had a free afternoon and they love Nico’s wine, so I told them about the trail between our houses. I thought we could hike up and say hi.”

  “Shoes off.” They went in the house. “That’s a pretty walk, especially in the spring.”

  “Usually it is. We smelled something about halfway up the trail and Katherine went to look—she’s a biophysicist and she’s curious about everything. She’s the one who spotted him.”

  “That’s awful.” Henry deposited Toni on her couch and went to the kitchen. “Do you have chamomile tea?”

  She heard him filling the electric kettle. “I think so.”

  “Is your stomach bothering you? Mint might be better.”

  She couldn’t stop the smile. “Look at you. You like to fuss, don’t you?”

  He leaned against the doorway to the kitchen and hooked his thumb in his pocket. “Keep teasing me. I’ll tell you to put on a hat.”

  “You really are an old Italian nonna, aren’t you?”

  Henry walked over, looking very not grandmotherly. His jeans were worn in all the right places, and his work shirt was open at the collar. He knelt down on the floor in front of her, bringing his face to the same level as hers. He nudged her knees apart and braced his large hands on either side of her hips before he leaned in, inches from her face.

  “You think I’m grandmotherly?” he said, his voice low.

  “Teasing you.” She swallowed. “Obviously.”

  “You must be feeling better if you’re teasing me like that.” His breath was close enough to her lips that she felt its warmth. “Your stomach settled down?”

  “Uh-huh.” She couldn’t look away. His eyes were hypnotic and he smelled amazing. Like sunshine, sawdust, and a little red wine.

  Damn you, hormones!

  He leaned closer. His left hand started squeezing her hip. “You smell good.”

  “I smell like motor oil.”

  Henry smiled. “You smell like lemons.” He nipped the edge of her jaw. “You taste like salt.”

  “Sweaty from… walking.” She swallowed hard. “Henry—”

  “Don’t care.” Henry captured her mouth and swiftly parted her lips in one movement. His hand moved from kneading her hip to cradling her neck while his thumb ran along her jaw.

  Toni’s head swam from the intoxicating taste of red wine and Henry. She gripped the front of his shirt with her fist and spread her knees so he could lean in closer.

  Her head fell back against the back of the couch and Henry groaned into her mouth.

  The door opened.

  “Sorry!” Megan squeaked.

  The door slammed, and Toni blinked back to awareness as Henry ended the kiss.

  He was pressed against her, practically humping her on the couch while one of her hands was fisted in his shirt and the other was tangled in his hair.

  “Right,” she panted. “People.”

  “Tell them you need to rest.” He ran his lips along her neck.

  “Uh…” Why was that a bad idea again? “Police, Henry. Dead body. Murdered… person.”

  He pulled away, and she saw his lips form the word fuck even though he didn’t say it.

  The fact that he only cursed silently and usually only when they were intimate made him even sexier. He had a vocabulary with manners and a mind with none.

  Hormones. They would be the death of her.

  She released his shirt, and he sat back on his knees. “Okay. Um… tea?”

  He glanced down, back to her, then stood, adjusting himself quickly before he walked away. “What kind of tea do you want?”

  Whichever one tastes like you.

  “Uh… mint.” She rubbed her flushed cheeks. “Let’s go with mint.”

  Chapter 8

  Drew sat on the edge of the recliner, facing the couch where Toni, Katherine, and Megan all sat. Henry was sitting next to Toni, a dining room chair flipped around so he could straddle it.

  Focus on the stern police detective, Toni. Not Henry’s thighs.

  “Why’d you decide to take that trail today?”

  Toni could sense Drew was suspicious. He didn’t want to be, but he was.

  Toni shrugged. “I hike that path a few times a month. It goes right behind my house and leads all the way up the hill to the winery. I’ve been bringing Nico’s wine over to Katherine’s for months now and—”

  “We just wanted to see the winery,” Megan said. “Thought it would make a fun Friday afternoon.”

  “A fun Friday afternoon for the county forensics team,” Drew said. “I don’t know that we’ll be able to find every part of that body before next week.”

  “You’re welcome to park here as long as you need,” Toni said. “It’s probably the closest access to the trail.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.”

  Henry piped up. “I already called Nico. If you need to widen that trail at all, we can bring a little Bobcat tractor down from the barn. We have one narrow enough to get down that trail and clear it out a bit.”

  “Thanks,” Drew said. “I’ll let you know. For right now, we’re still trying to pick up evidence.”

  “How long?” Katherine asked. “Was it about a week and a half? I was looking at the insect life on the cadaver and—”

  “I can’t tell you that, Katherine. You know that.” Drew cleared his throat. “Can you tell me why you ladies keep showing up any time there’s a violent event in Moonstone Cove?”

  Megan’s eyes were wide and innocent. “What do you mean?”

  “Near shootings. Car crashes. Ambulance accidents.” He slid his eyes toward Katherine. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that one, Professor Bassi.”

  “The important thing is, we found out who the finger belonged to,” Toni said. “That was really bugging me.”

  “Was it?” Drew’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “So glad we could clear that up for you.”

  Toni shrugged. “What? I’m not saying I’m glad he’s dead or anything. Just that the mystery was annoying me.”

  Drew rubbed a hand along his beard. “Okay, so if Katherine is right and he w
as killed about a week and a half ago, that would have been…” He thought quickly. “Saturday or Sunday weekend before last.” He looked at Toni. “You’re the closest house to the crime scene. Did you hear or see anything suspicious?”

  She shook her head. “I was home, but I didn’t see anything weird. Sometimes during the spring, tourists will walk along the creek, but I didn’t see any hikers that weekend that I can remember.”

  “Did you hear anything? He was shot. Did you hear gunfire? Anything that you thought was a car backfiring maybe? Anything like that?”

  “Not that I can remember. If it was the middle of the night, I’m a pretty sound sleeper.”

  Henry opened his mouth but closed it quickly when she shot him a look.

  “Also, you’d be amazed,” Toni added. “The way the hills are around here, sometimes they just swallow sound. The creek runs right behind my house, but unless it’s really high in the winter, I hardly even hear it.”

  “So you didn’t see or hear anything strange when Whit Fairfield died,” Drew said. “And it looks like your footprints are the only ones we found on the trail so far.”

  “I mean, it’s rained since then, so even if there were prints, they’d probably be gone.”

  Megan asked, “Did you find any bullets? Casings?”

  “Better than that, we found the gun.” Drew crossed his ankle over his knee and his arms over his chest.

  “You did?” Megan said. “That’s great news!”

  “It was in the creek,” Drew said. “Covered in mud. We’ll see what we can get off it, but I’m not very optimistic.”

  “Oh.” Megan deflated. “That’s not good.”

  “The main problem I’ve got is that I have a murder victim, and it seems like half the town didn’t like him much.”

  Henry snorted. “At least.”

  “Exactly.” Drew nodded at Henry. “Whit Fairfield pressured people to sell their land, had numerous affairs with married women, and lied… a lot. But specifically…” Drew frowned. “He was actively pressuring your cousin to sell his land and appeared to be tampering with his business.”

  “Hey.” Toni sat up straight. “Nico didn’t have anything to do with this. He’s not a hateful person, and he’d never get involved with anything violent.”

  “Fairfield was messing with him, pressuring him to sell his land, and flaunting an affair with his estranged wife.”

  “Ex-wife except on paper. Nico doesn’t care about that shit. He wants her to sign the papers and move on. Ask anyone. He’s not jealous about Marissa. And the tampering with the tractor happened after Fairfield was already dead! So that must have been a coincidence.”

  Drew shifted in his seat. “His body was found on your cousin’s land, Toni.”

  “It was found on a trail! Lots of people know it’s there. It’s marked in hiking guides. There’s a sign on the highway for it. Ferraro Creek Trail. Look it up. It’s not exactly a secret.” Toni felt her anger rising. “Whoever killed Fairfield probably killed him there to make it look like Nico was guilty. Have you thought that someone may be trying to frame him?”

  “It’s possible, but I can’t ignore all the other coincidences,” Drew said. “I have to look at your cousin.”

  Toni felt like Drew had punched her in the chest. “You told me you trust my judgment. I’m telling you, Nico would never do anything like this.”

  “I have to look.”

  Henry put a hand on Toni’s shoulder. “You can look at Nico for this,” he said, “but you’re not going to find anything. You’re barking up the wrong tree, Detective Bisset. I promise.”

  “Trust me, I’m not stopping with your cousin,” Drew said. “We don’t have a lack of suspects—we have too many.” He looked at them meaningfully. “So really, anything you can give me to narrow it down a little would be very appreciated.”

  Toni exchanged a look with Megan and Katherine, but both of them looked as clueless as she was. She had no idea who might have killed Whit Fairfield.

  “Not Nico. That’s all I can say right now,” Toni said. “My cousin had nothing to do with this.”

  * * *

  “Do you think he knows?” Megan stood at the sink, staring out the kitchen window as the sun started to set over the hills. The last of the police cars were pulling away.

  “Who?” Toni was drained. Henry had left a few minutes after Drew, telling her he was going up to the winery to let Nico know what was going on. She wanted to crawl in bed and fall asleep, but she knew she needed to eat something, and Megan had offered to cook.

  “Knows what?” Katherine added. She was staring at Toni’s bookshelves, which were mostly filled with classic-car manuals and gardening and home-repair guides. “You have very little fiction here.”

  “I keep the steamy romance novels in my room.”

  “Oh.”

  Katherine might think she was joking, but she wasn’t. Toni loved romance novels. She always knew how they were going to end, and with all the stress in her life, she liked knowing that things in a book would always end well.

  She’d read a book with an intriguing cover that her mom had raved about and read in her book club. At the end, everyone died except for like two people, and the romance she’d thought was developing had been part of the main character’s delusions.

  Worst. Book. Ever.

  “I mean, do you think Drew knows about us?” Megan walked back to the living room. “About our abilities. Did you notice he brought up the ambulance thing with Katherine? How we’re always in the middle of violent stuff in town?”

  “Maybe he thinks we’re secretly serial killers or something,” Toni said.

  Megan rolled her eyes. “And then he said if we could give him ‘anything to narrow it down’ that would be really helpful. I mean, why would he think we would know anything unless we… knew things.”

  Katherine turned. “But we don’t know anything. I didn’t see Mr. Fairfield get killed. I just saw him dead. Rather, I thought he was sleeping, but obviously he was dead.”

  Toni frowned. “You didn’t think it was weird that you saw a guy sleeping on the side of a creek?”

  Katherine raised her eyebrows. “I see a lot of things far stranger than that. Psychic power has opened my eyes to the peculiarities of human behavior, that’s for sure.”

  “So who had a motive to kill Whit Fairfield?” Megan asked. “It can’t be that many people.”

  Toni raised an eyebrow. “You said you met him.”

  Megan grimaced. “Okay, there were probably quite a few.”

  Katherine frowned. “Was he really that unpleasant?”

  “He struck me as completely self-centered,” Megan said. “A narcissist, probably. Very focused on money and making himself look good. Very dismissive of anyone who wasn’t useful to him in some way or another.”

  “We should stay out of it,” Toni said. “I don’t want anything I do to make it look like I’m covering up for Nico or anything. The last thing he needs is me accidentally pointing fingers at him. Or making it look like I’m trying to cover something up on his behalf. Plus I have work! I can’t keep asking Glenn to pick up the slack for me at the garage while I’m off solving mysteries.”

  “Has he complained?” Megan asked. “Are things falling behind?”

  “No.” Of course Glenn hadn’t complained. The garage could probably run without her, but that wasn’t the point. “I just need to work.” To maintain the last shreds of my sanity.

  Katherine was staring into the distance with pursed lips, clearly not listening to anything Megan and Toni were talking about. “If Megan is correct about Mr. Fairfield, we do have a lead. And a possible suspect other than your cousin.”

  “Who?” Megan asked.

  “Nico’s former wife,” Katherine said. “If he was a narcissist, then any relationship he initiated would be transactional in nature. He’d only spend time with someone who could give him something. What did this woman have that could interest him? Was she wealthy?
”

  “Marissa?” Toni asked. “No. She sells real estate and she’s pretty good at it, but she’s not rolling in money. Nico has to give her some spousal support, but she doesn’t own any part of the winery. The house and the land all belong to the family trust set up after Grandpa Dusi died. Nico gets a salary like the rest of the staff.”

  “So Fairfield wouldn’t want her money. Would she burnish his reputation in some way? Were her social connections good? Is she notably beautiful?”

  “She’s beautiful, but is she more beautiful than half a dozen other women in her social circle?” Toni sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not the right person to judge that stuff.”

  “Well, I only skirted the edge of that crowd for a little while with Rodney, but Marissa Dusi wasn’t considered a social queen bee or anything close to that,” Megan said. “I moved here around the time she and your cousin were breaking up. I never met Nico, but most of what I heard about Marissa was other women saying she was a fool for leaving him.” Megan cleared her throat and smiled a little. “There might have been a few comments about Nico being back on the market too.”

  “Weird.” Toni shook her head. “I guess he’s good-looking enough, but he’s like my brother, so he’ll always be a gross teenager to me.”

  “So we have one mystery we can try to solve,” Katherine said. “And one that wouldn’t be likely to point fingers at Nico. We can find out why Whit Fairfield was dating Marissa. There has to be a reason.”

  Megan nodded. “Agreed. He wouldn’t date someone unless he was getting something in return. Something more than sex, because Fairfield was good-looking enough to get sex if he wanted it. I can see him as being one of those guys who’d just pay for sex if that was all he was after. So Marissa must have something he needed.”

  Toni shook her head. “I don’t know about this. I still think we should keep out of it. Just clear out completely and let Drew do his thing.”

  “Listen, we can find out things that Drew can’t,” Megan said. “This case has to be solved for your cousin’s sake and your whole family.”

  “Why? No one is crying about Whit Fairfield being dead, Megan. He wasn’t a good person. I’m not saying I’m glad he was murdered or anything, but I’m not broken up about it either.”