“Did they know he’s already been dead for about a week and a half?” Katherine said. “He’s far past cold.”
“Pretty sure it was a figure of speech.”
Katherine nodded. “Right.”
Baxter came out, carrying a tray of enchiladas and a salad. “Dinner is served.”
“Oh, thank God.” Toni was starving. She’d barely picked at her lunch that afternoon because she’d been focused on getting information from Marissa and surfing the emotional waves at the country club.
“Toni!” Baxter smiled. “You look lovely. I don’t think I’ve seen you wear a dress before.”
“Thanks, Baxter.” Toni would accept a compliment if Baxter Pang was the one offering. But maybe just him. “I got the dress for my cousin’s wedding.”
“It suits you,” he said. “But not as well as your blue jeans, I think.” He winked at her and sat at the table that Katherine had set. “Dig in, everyone.”
Archie the goldendoodle sat next to Baxter’s chair and sighed deeply.
“Don’t feed him,” Katherine said. “You heard what the vet said.”
“Just a little bit of chicken,” Baxter said quietly. “It’s rather rude not to, don’t you think? He helped me cook.”
“He waited by your feet and grabbed any scrap that fell on the floor, Baxter.”
“Exactly. And now we have a clean kitchen floor.” Baxter kept his eyes on Katherine as he broke off a bit of chicken and let it fall to the deck. “I have to pay my sous chef, darling.”
“You guys are completely adorable.” Toni served herself a hearty helping of chicken enchiladas. “Marissa tried to needle me this afternoon about why I never got married, and it’s because of people like you.” She pointed at them. “Especially now. It’s Baxter-and-Katherine levels of happy or nothing for me.”
Katherine’s cheeks turned a little red. “Oh, I don’t know that we’re all that unusual. Lots of people have happy marriages.”
Baxter said, “Statistically, in fact, the majority of married couples classify themselves as happy. The numbers are quite consistent.”
“Don’t buy it,” Megan said. “I would have called my marriage happy two years ago too. And he ended up cheating on me.”
“That was definitely his loss,” Baxter said. “But Toni, what about the young man that you’re involved with? Do you have plans to continue the relationship?”
Megan snorted. “Sure looked that way on Friday.”
Toni threw her napkin at Megan. “I’m not opposed to marriage,” she said. “But it’s more complicated now with a potential baby.”
“Did you go to the doctor?” Megan asked.
“I have an appointment on Tuesday, okay? Calm down, mom.”
“Good.” Megan took a bite of enchilada. “I need this recipe. My kids would love this. Trina’s been cooking more lately, and she’d want to try making this.”
“I’ll write it down for you,” Baxter said. “So what did you learn about the victim’s girlfriend today?”
“I think Katherine is right,” Toni said. “They had a reciprocal relationship of some kind. I’m just not sure what Marissa was bringing to the table. Fairfield was obvious. He was decent-looking and had money and status, all things Marissa wanted.”
“One thing I don’t understand,” Megan said. “The women at the club have talked enough that I’m pretty convinced they find your cousin Nico a catch. Why would Marissa leave him if she was just after money and status?”
“Nico does okay, but he’s not independently wealthy. Just like the family owns part of my garage, they own part of Nico’s winery too. Marissa didn’t buy into that side of the family business. She wanted everything to belong to her and Nico.”
“And the status thing?”
“Nico…” She shrugged. “He doesn’t really care. I don’t think he actively dislikes the people over in that social set like I do, but he’s not going to voluntarily hang out with them, you know? He can do the salesman thing when he needs to, but I’d call him a little rougher around the edges. He didn’t play the game. Didn’t feel like he needed to if he wanted to sell wine. My brother Frank is more in that group than Nico is.”
“Okay.” Megan nodded. “I get that. So Marissa got a taste of the fancy life and she decided that’s what she wanted, but Nico didn’t care that much. So she hooks up with Whit Fairfield, and she must think he’s her ticket in.”
Katherine said, “But Fairfield—from what we know about him—is probably a narcissist or had those tendencies. He wouldn’t have a real relationship with her unless he was getting something. And Marissa herself said she was valuable to him. How?”
“I don’t think we can answer that,” Toni said. “I think we need to talk to someone who worked with Fairfield.”
“Would Nico know anyone?” Megan asked. “I mean, they both worked in the wine business. They had to know a few of the same people. Is there anyone over there you think we could trust?”
“I don’t know,” Toni said. “But Nico would.”
* * *
Toni was at her garage on Monday morning when Drew Bisset dropped by again. She was leaning over the engine of the Corvette, and she shook her head as he approached.
“Nope,” she said.
Drew spread his hands. “I didn’t say anything.”
“The last time you came here, you asked me for my read on a guy that ended up being a murder victim, and now you’re trying to pin his death on my cousin.”
“Please.” Drew straightened the front of his button-down shirt. “I’m not trying to ‘pin it’ on anyone.” He rolled up his sleeves and leaned on the car. “So what are you doing here?”
“After I replaced the alternator, I discovered the ignition system needed some cleaning up, so I did that last week and now I’m tuning it.” She glanced at him. “You know cars?”
“Absolutely not.” He looked intently at the engine. “But I feel like I should.”
“You know how to change a tire?”
He nodded. “I do know that.”
“You know how to change your oil?”
“I do, though I will admit that I take it to the drive-through fifteen-minute place over on State Street instead of doing it myself.”
“If you know how to change oil and a tire, you know more about cars than about ninety percent of the population.” She stood up straight and placed her torque wrench on her work cart with a small sigh of regret. Goodbye, beautiful, distracting engine. “Let’s go in my office. I don’t need you putting Everett on edge.”
Everett, her German car mechanic, had known a few too many cops in his past life to ever be comfortable around them. He was a magician with classic German engines and a nervous wreck around cops.
Toni led Drew into her office and reached into her mini fridge for a ginger ale. “Drink?”
“Any kind of cola you have.”
Toni tossed him a Pepsi and sat down. “So what’s up?”
“The coroner narrowed down the time of death based on decomposition and evidence at the scene.”
“And?”
Drew frowned. “Nico doesn’t have an alibi. Said he was sleeping at home, alone in his room. Which has a door that leads outside, so he could have snuck out without the kids even hearing him.”
Toni groaned. “Or he’s just a normal father of two who was home exactly where he said he was on the night Fairfield bit it.”
Drew raised his hands. “I agree. It’s far more likely that’s the case. Unfortunately, I can’t eliminate him. I was hoping he’d have an alibi once we had a time of death.”
Toni took a long drink of her soda to settle her stomach. She was going on nine weeks pregnant and so far, the morning sickness had been more of a problem at night. She was hoping it stayed that way. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hide the pregnancy from her guys forever, but she didn’t want to deal with their questions quite this early.
“So why are you here?” she asked. “You want me to help you
get more insight into the guy who made Nico miserable? How’s that going to help my cousin?”
“I’m more curious why you were questioning Marissa Dusi yesterday at the country club. She mentioned it when I talked to her today.”
Toni crossed her arms over her chest. “Did she?”
“She said you were, and I quote, ‘intimidating her.’”
She snorted. “Marissa would find a stiff breeze intimidating. I was giving her shit about her dead boyfriend because she annoys me and I’m a horrible person. It was nothing.”
Drew wasn’t buying it. She could feel the doubt rolling off him in waves.
“What exactly did she say I did? I’m surprised that the Moonstone Cove Police Department is that interested in country-club gossip.”
“When that gossip involves the woman a murder victim was known to be sleeping with, we get interested.”
Toni cocked her head. “The woman he was sleeping with? Not his girlfriend?”
“According to friends in San Jose and his secretary there, Whit Fairfield is engaged to a woman named Angela Calvo. In fact, they’re considered a ‘power couple.’ She works in finance, is the daughter of a city council member, and has a business degree from Wharton.”
“Huh.” So Whit Fairfield had a country girlfriend to keep him busy when he was slumming it in Moonstone Cove. Toni wasn’t surprised. Did Marissa know? Did she have delusions that she was going to get Whit to leave his fancy, well-connected girlfriend in the Bay Area and make things with her permanent?
“So Marissa wasn’t nearly as important to him as she thinks she was,” Toni said. “I’m petty enough to be happy about that, but what does it mean for the investigation?”
“It’s possible that this all stemmed from old-fashioned ‘other woman’ problems and had nothing to do with wine.” Drew crossed his arms over his waist and knit his finger together. “If you knew anything that would support that… I would be happy to listen.”
“I wish I did, but I don’t. I will say that Whit Fairfield doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d waste his time on any kind of relationship—even a casual one—unless he was getting something out of it.”
Drew nodded. “You are not the first person to mention that.”
“Oh yeah? Who else is talking about Fairfield that way?”
“Your… friend,” Drew stood and opened the messenger bag he’d brought with him. “Henry Durand.”
Henry again.
What the hell was going on?
“Well, Henry’s a smart guy.”
“He thinks very highly of you. And your cousin.”
“Right.” Toni nodded. “That’s nice. I better get back to work.”
“Better not forget the real reason I came.”
“Oh yeah?” She stood and waited while Drew pushed papers around in his bag before he took a blue plastic container from the bottom. “What’s that?”
“Brownies.” He set them on her desk and tapped the top of the Tupperware. “They are as good as I told you. Don’t wait too long to eat them.”
“That won’t be a problem.” Toni couldn’t stop her smile. “Thanks, Drew. And… I know you’re not trying to pin anything on Nico. If I hear anything else that might be helpful, I’ll let you know.”
“You or your friends,” he said. “For you three, I’m all ears.”
Chapter 11
“I think Drew knows we’re psychic.” She mumbled into her phone. She’d only been able to get Megan’s voice mail for the past two days, and she was starting to get annoyed. “And I’m at the doctor alone. Call me.”
She was walking into her usual gynecological office after a somewhat embarrassing conversation with Dr. Patel, the grandfatherly doctor she’d been seeing since she was sixteen. He’d known her for over half her life, and she could tell he was shocked to hear she was pregnant.
Kind and professional? Always. But shocked.
It’s only the beginning…
Her mind drifted to every shocked reaction she’d have to deal with. Her parents? Brutal. Her sister? Fine. Her brother? Preachy.
Her employees? Awkward.
And maybe the most complicated of all? Henry.
She sat in the waiting room and opened one of those mindless games on her phone. She’d spent the past nine weeks pretending none of this was really happening, and now she was going to have to face the music.
A ball of panic started to spin wildly in her chest.
“Hey!” Megan’s voice snapped her out of her panic spiral. “Sorry. It is not easy to find a parking spot around here.”
Toni stared at her. “You came to my doctor’s appointment?”
“Katherine was going to come, but she has class today and she couldn’t miss it for some reason, so she called me because I’m closer.” Megan shrugged. “We couldn’t let you go alone, could we?”
Toni blinked back tears that Megan very carefully ignored. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She sat next to Toni and took out her own phone. “But the next one should be Henry with you. Unless he’s an asshole about it, in which case he will be banished and burned in effigy.”
Toni sniffed and sank into her chair. “He won’t be an asshole about it.”
“I kind of get that feeling too.” Megan glanced at her. “He’s in love with you. You know that, right?”
“He likes me. It’s not—”
“That man is in love with you.” Megan kept her voice low. “You are a freaking empath, Toni. If you were honest with yourself, you’d know I’m telling the truth. Added to that, he’s sweet and takes care of you with Baxter-level consideration. If you don’t love him, that’s one thing. But I think you better stop dismissing his feelings for you because he’s younger.”
“It’s not because he’s younger.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Okay, what is it then?”
“I don’t know.” It’s because he’s younger.
Shut up, inner voice of honesty!
“Antonia Dusi?”
“Yep.” She stood and Megan followed her. They walked back to the nurses’ station, and Kerry, Dr. Patel’s regular nurse, took her vitals and weight. Then she and Megan were ushered into a back office to wait.
Toni took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.
“That’s good,” Megan said. “You’re practicing your breathing already.”
“Oh, will you shut up.”
“Nope.” Megan picked up a magazine. “Katherine and I are walking a very fine line in all this with you. We want to be supportive, but do you know how many lectures I’ve listened to in the past couple of weeks about the abysmal maternal mortality rate in the United States as compared to other developed countries? She is extremely worried, and you cannot just ignore this and pretend like nothing in your life is going to change. Beyond the baby, you have to take care of your health.”
“I’m processing, all right? Remember how long it took me to accept that I was a supernatural fucking feelings wizard?”
Megan narrowed her eyes. “I did not put any bad language on your official wizard mug. You take that back.”
“Fine.” Toni leaned her head against the wall. “I don’t want to get rid of this baby, Megan. I just don’t know how any of this is going to end well. Everything about my life is going to turn upside down. And I liked my life.”
Megan put down the happy mommy magazine she’d been perusing. “Before you got pregnant, what did you envision your life was going to look like… a year from now?”
Toni shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t plan ahead like that.”
“Well, maybe that’s the problem.”
“Okay, enough. I know I should have been practicing safe sex; I already got the lecture about—”
“Not that.” Megan smiled. “Maybe it’s not so much that this baby is going to change the life you liked, it’s that you’re going to have to start planning ahead. You’re going to have to start thin
king about the future instead of just letting life happen.”
Toni sighed. “Is it worth it?”
Megan’s whole face transformed. “Oh yeah. Yeah, it is.” Her eyes shone. “Being a mom is… It’s gonna sound cheesy, but it’s the greatest joy of my life. And it made me a better person. I was so shallow and judgmental and selfish when I was younger.” She smiled. “And kids are hilarious. You are going to laugh so much, you have no idea.”
Toni stared at the chubby-cheeked baby on the poster on the opposite wall. “Keep talking.”
“I hesitate to say that you’re going to experience love like you’ve never understood before because I think that’s dismissive of other kinds of love in your life, but it’s different. It’s unique. And if you’re the right kind of mom—which I know you’re going to be—then you’re going to understand empathy in a very new and real way. It’ll be one of the most challenging things ever. But one of the most rewarding too.”
Toni nodded. “Okay.”
“Just let your heart open up to it, and it’ll change your life in ways you never expected.” Megan reached over and squeezed her hand. “I promise.”
* * *
An hour later, Toni was holding a small black-and-white photograph of something that looked like a lima bean after what could only be described as the worst ultrasound ever. She felt as if she’d been sucked into an alien ship and probed internally. Nothing magical about that motherhood moment, that was for sure. Megan told her she’d only have to do that kind once though, and she’d be holding her to that.
She’d seen the heartbeat. She’d heard it even.
Wild. Weird. Kinda cool.
She wanted to tell Henry. She wanted to share this with him, but she didn’t know how. They’d never talked about the future and definitely hadn’t talked about kids. What if he didn’t want kids?
Are you kidding? That man has peewee soccer dad written all over him.
Fate Actually: Moonstone Cove Book Two Page 9