by Dana Moss
“No problem.” Taffy took a tiny sip of her wine and perused the space. Everything was perfectly placed, as if ready for a photo shoot. Nothing seemed personal. Books, magazines, and fat, scented candles had been professionally arranged on the wide coffee table. Taffy pulled out one of the drawers tucked under its surface. She wasn’t all that surprised to find more style magazines and various remote controls. The drawer was heavy and harder to push back in, so she had to shake it a little to get the groove to run smooth. One of her shakes caused the slippery magazines inside to skew, and her eye caught a glimpse of the corner of a composition notebook. She pulled it free from under the magazines. The label on the front said MBC. It looked just like Janet’s. When Taffy opened it, she was certain it was Janet’s. Where had Austin gotten this? She thought Maria had taken all this paperwork, apart from the small notebook she still had in her purse, the one she had taken from Janet’s bowling bag. Why did Austin have this one?
She heard his voice getting louder. He was walking back toward the living area as he said goodbye one the phone.
“We’ll talk more about this tomorrow,” he was saying. Taffy tucked everything back in the drawer and maneuvered it shut.
“So sorry about that.” He picked up his wine glass from the coffee table and sat on the couch next to Taffy. “Now where were we?”
Taffy blinked and assessed her situation: handsome potential murder suspect about to make a move on semi-drunk, newly suspicious, and possibly paranoid, amateur-sleuth socialite.
She forced a yawn. “I think I need to go home.”
Austin looked disappointed but not angry. He set his drink down. As far as Taffy could tell he hadn’t had a sip.
She set her wine glass down, too. “It’s been a lovely evening. I’m just a little tired.”
“I promised I’d take you home any time you asked. I’m a man who keeps my promises.”
He stood up and offered Taffy a hand. She took it. It was warm and strong. Could Taffy be wrong about him? He’d been charming all evening. Maybe she’d been spending way too much time trying to figure out who had murdered whom, and maybe, just maybe, there were no murderers to be found.
As if tuning into her thoughts, Austin asked, “Do you think you’ll feel differently once Janet’s murderer has been brought to justice?”
She was surprised he’d brought it up, but her shoulders almost sagged with relief. It was as if he knew the toll it was taking on her. And he didn’t question or argue the point the way Ethan did.
As he helped her into her coat, she said, “When that case is dead and buried, I’ll sleep better at night, I’m certain of it.”
Austin smiled as they walked out the front door. “And after that restful sleep, will you consider going out with me again?” He cast a flirty grin over his shoulder as he opened the Corvette door for her.
She just smiled back. She didn’t know what to say because she didn’t know what she would do.
Flying back down the ridge roads, they crossed a bridge over a gorge that Taffy knew was filled with raging river water. She felt a pinching in her chest. A pang of painful memories about her mother gripped her— the call in the middle of the night, the trip to the hospital, the long wait during the coma from which her mother never woke—made her tense in her leather seat. Her breathing grew ragged, and she had to close her eyes.
Austin glanced over. “Are you okay?”
Taffy took a few deep breaths. The bridge was behind them now. She’d had images of them skidding and falling, the car hitting the water and sinking…
She gulped in more air, worried that she might be sick. They were closer to her house.
“I’ll be fine. Just need to get out.”
Austin pulled into her driveway. In the beam of the headlights, Taffy saw Midnight bolt up the steps to the front door. When the car stopped, her queasiness settled.
“Do you want me to take you in?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine.”
“Let me at least walk you to the door.”
He opened the car door for her and helped her out.
Taffy was dizzy with drink. When she opened the front door, Midnight slipped through the gap. Then Austin leaned in for a kiss. Taffy turned and offered her cheek.
“It’s only our first date, Austin.”
He frowned, looking past her into the foyer and seeming frustrated at being barred from entry, but he quickly recovered and shot her an enigmatic smile.
“Then how about a second date? Let me take you out tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’ll get tickets for something.” He growled playfully. “Don’t you dare turn me down.” She saw something sharp and fierce in his blue eyes.
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
She wriggled out of his sweet-scented embrace.
“Good night.”
Taffy stepped through the door. Midnight slipped through the gap. Austin peered past her into the hall again, and then he smiled and said, “Sweet dreams.”
A minute after the door closed, Taffy heard the gurgle and purr of the Corvette starting up and then, a moment later, backing out of the driveway.
CHAPTER FORTY
Taffy dreamt she was crying. When she woke, her cheeks were wet. It was still nighttime and unbearably hot. She couldn’t breathe very well. She coughed and realized that rather than having tears in her eyes, her eyes were watering from stinging irritation. She coughed again and nearly choked.
The room was filled with smoke!
“Fire!” Her scream was a mere whisper.
Pulling her sheet against her mouth, she rolled off the bed and onto the floor where the air was slightly clearer.
Her throat throbbed painfully. On elbows and knees she crawled toward the bedroom door. It was hot. She didn’t risk opening it. She crawled the other way, toward the turret windows. Pushing up the sash, she slithered out onto the roof overhanging the wraparound porch. A flame glow lit up the trees surrounding the yard.
“Ethan!” Another scream-whisper. A functioning part of her brain said, call 9-1-1, but she’d left her phone in her purse in the foyer. Fighting an intense urge to climb back into the burning house to retrieve it, she scooted along the sloped roof and around the corner, toward the kitchen and the wraparound porch. She could jump from there onto one of the hay-strewn garden beds. The porch roof rumbled and lurched under her as one of the posts gave way.
“Damn house.” Taffy felt her nightie catch and tear on a shingle.
Over the roar and cracks of burning, she heard a meow.
“Midnight!”
Looking up, she saw him on the pitch line above the attic. What was he doing up there? “Come down,” she called, a little more loudly this time, and then she started coughing again.
Smoke billowed out the front of the house. Taffy heard sirens in the distance. Another porch post buckled. She was going to have to jump soon. She wasn’t that high really, was she? Maybe twelve feet? High enough to cause breakage. That was a chance she was going to have to take. Through the trees she saw flashing red and yellow lights as a fire truck barreled down the road.
Midnight meowed mournfully. Looking up, she saw him trying to creep down the steep slope to get to her.
“Taffy!”
She turned her attention to the ground. Ethan was standing below her in his boxers and bare feet. “Jump! I’ll catch you. That roof’s going to give way! Go on, jump!”
She looked back up, but Midnight was gone. The roof shook and cracked. She lost her grip and start falling, arms flailing. She heard a hideous feline yowl as she landed on Ethan, who hadn’t managed to catch her but did successfully break her fall. He gasped, the breath knocked out of him. Taffy tried to get up off of him, but he held his arms around her tight.
“I’m okay,” she said to Ethan. “I’m all right.”
Ethan nodded to show he’d heard her, but he didn’t let her go. Taffy felt a wet spray as the fire hoses started up. Squirming from Ethan’s tigh
t embrace, she got to her feet and helped him to his. He bent over double, trying to recover his breath.
“How did you know to come?”
“I… got… a… call.” Each word needed its own breath. Taffy’s fall had totally winded him.
It had to be three or four in the morning. Who would have called Ethan in the middle of the night?
“A… warning.”
Ethan straightened up now. He reached out for her hand.
“I’m sorry… it never… should have… come… to this.”
Before she could ask him what he meant an ambulance arrived, and soon after, a police car.
A cute paramedic administered oxygen to Taffy, and she snuck Ethan a little puff as they sat together in the open back of the ambulance. When the police cruiser pulled up, it wasn’t Maria behind the wheel.
Gravely approached Taffy with his little notepad flipped up at the ready. “So everyone alive and well here?”
Taffy coughed her assent. Ethan nodded. Gravely looked up at the house. The firemen had contained the flames. Black clouds of smoke blended into the black sky and blotted out stars.
“Did you ever repair that faulty wiring, Miss Belair?”
“Uh, no. Not yet.”
Gravely nodded sagely. “Lucky for you we caught the conflagration in time.” He looked at Ethan. “It was you who called the fire department?”
“I got this weird call right before—”
“Good thing your neighbor acted so quickly, Miss Belair.”
He looked up at the house again.
“Any idea of the extent of the damage?”
“Not a clue,” she said. The house was still standing. The main floor, the second floor, and even the attic, though the insides would end up being a disastrous mess.
“I assume you have insurance?”
Taffy didn’t know. Only if her Nana had bought it for her.
“We’ll get the adjusters in for an assessment,” continued Gravely. “Doesn’t look too bad from here though. You’re lucky.”
“I don’t know how it started,” Taffy said. “What if someone was trying to—” But Taffy didn’t have the heart to finish her sentence. It had to have been an accident—probably due to the faulty wiring—but with so many accidents lately, Taffy was feeling paranoid, and scared, and tired. Would Austin have tried to kill her? No, that wasn’t possible.
“What if someone tried to what?” said Gravely, his pencil poised.
She would sound crazy if she suggested someone might be trying to kill her. Especially if she pointed her finger at Austin Vallee. Everyone in town thought he was wooing her. Lieutenant Gravely was friends with him and would probably have a hard time believing her paranoid suspicions. She wasn’t thinking straight. She was still in shock.
She shook her head, deciding to keep her suspicions to herself. “It was probably just the wiring, like you said.”
“If you have any other theories, be sure to call. You know where to find me.” He smiled at her. “You’ll need a place to stay tonight. Do you want me to call Ellie? Or Salinas?”
Taffy hadn’t thought that far ahead. Sleep was the furthest thing from her mind.
Ethan said, “She can stay with me.”
Gravely gave him a once over and then looked at Taffy. “Suit yourself.”
“Thanks,” Taffy said, leaning toward Ethan with a smile. “I can’t believe it took something as dramatic as my house burning down to get you to ask me over for a sleepover.”
But Ethan didn’t match her smile. He looked lost in deep thought.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Taffy coughed up some more smoke as she sat in Ethan’s kitchen drinking coffee. It was nearly five a.m., and there was no point in going back to sleep.
Ethan paced. Each stride ate up three twelve-inch floor tiles, which amounted to four paces before he had to turn around again. As Taffy followed his movements, her head moved back and forth as if watching a slow tennis match.
“I want to believe it was faulty wiring, but I just can’t.” He shook his head and mumbled quietly, “If it’s what I think it is, it wasn’t supposed to come to this.”
“You said that over at the house, after I fell on you. What do you mean by that?”
Ethan stopped pacing and turned to her. His face was a shifting map of indecision, concern, and anger.
Quite suddenly, he pulled out a kitchen chair and twisted it around in front of him and positioned it not far from Taffy’s knees. He sat down on it backwards, his legs straddling the seat and his forearms balanced on the back of the chair.
“I want you to hear me out. Don’t interrupt me until I say everything.”
Taffy set her coffee mug on the table. She had some things she wanted to say, too, but if Ethan had something to get off his chest, she could wait.
“I knew Janet had been killed.”
“What? And yet you—?”
“Hear me out, please. I’ve been a part of the MBC for years.”
“I knew it!”
He held up his hand to silence her. Apparently she wasn’t very good at waiting.
He continued. “It’s a cover for a covert group of activists.”
“The eco-terrorists!” Like what she’d read in the files.
“Taffy, stop! Listen to me.”
She bit her lip to stop from making another sound, but it was so hard.
“It’s true I’m a park ranger, but I’m also ex-FBI.”
That shut Taffy up. And made her eyes bug out.
“I’ve been helping some old colleagues track down a mafia kingpin. Rumors were he was investing in real estate out west, using front men. We were aiming to catch him on a technicality, through his front men.”
He met Taffy’s gaze. His green eyes were so serious and sincere.
“Can I say something now?”
“In a minute. Listen, Janet knew what I was doing, and she was helping me. She’d had dealings with this mafia guy in the past, and she wanted to do everything she could to stop him. She said, even if she got hurt, I had to keep going until we nailed him. That’s why I couldn’t make a big deal about her death yet. We’ve been narrowing in on this guy. We’re close.”
“Close to the mafia guy or the front men?”
“Both.”
“This is the real reason you don’t like Austin, isn’t it? Not the coffee business, not his flirtations with me. Because he’s the front man.”
“You knew that? And you still went out with him?”
“I only started figuring it out while I was out with him. You could have warned me.”
Ethan shook his head. “You never would have listened to me anyway.”
Maybe he was right. Unless he’d said the thing she’d wanted to hear then. Something like, don’t go out with Austin because I really want you to go out with me and I’ve just been too scared and shy to admit it, but I really, really like you and I think we have a shot at something good.
Ethan was still talking. Taffy got her head out of her heart and back in the moment.
“Austin is the best chance I have to track down the Vegas kingpin. I believe he’s the Vallee brothers’ out-of-state investment source.”
Taffy nodded. Then she said, “His name is Umberto Secca.”
Ethan blinked. “How did you know that?”
But Taffy had more questions before she was ready to give answers. “What about the police? Does Maria know about you? About the FBI thing?”
Ethan seemed to flinch. “No one knows. Well, no one but you now.”
“But don’t you guys work with the local police?”
“Not when we suspect they might be involved.”
“Not Maria!”
“I don’t know, Taffy. I can’t be sure. But I don’t think Maria knows anything about this. She wouldn’t be working so tirelessly with you to solve Janet’s case if she were trying to cover something up. It could be someone higher up, maybe at the county level, but that’s the reason my colleagues called in
some old favors. They knew about Janet, too, because of her activist history.”
Taffy nodded. “She used to get in a lot of trouble. I found all her old files in the attic.”
“Files?”
“News clippings and such. They’re probably nothing more than ashes now. But that’s how I knew about Umberto Secca. Janet was fighting him years ago. He was mentioned multiple times in some articles.”
“He’s probably the one who wanted her out of the way. Just before she died, she told me she’d uncovered a pile of useful information for the FBI, going back years, plus a bunch of evidence of corruption locally. She was going to give it to me, but she never had the chance.”
“Was it in those files?”
“Maybe. It might have been too valuable to keep in the house. But if it was in the files, they won’t help us now.”
“Us?”
“You and me. Don’t you see? We’ve always been on the same side.”
“Have we? You could have told me this sooner.”
“Look, I’m putting us both at risk by telling you now. If I was still carrying my badge, I never would have risked it.”
Taffy nodded, trying to understand, trying to put the pieces together.
“So you went along with Swain’s conclusion about the bowling ball instead of tracking down the truth.”
“I knew the truth would come out eventually.”
“Did you put Swain up to the lie?”
“Of course not. He was part of the MBC, too. He knew Janet’s wishes. He’d gotten himself in some trouble, though, because he thought he could play both sides. First he started gathering information he picked up from meetings he overheard at the resort, and he’d bring it to our meetings, but then I think he got caught and was forced to give up some MBC secrets, like divulging when our last meeting was, so that someone could be there to scare Janet when she got home.”
“Then it could have been Swain himself, if he’d been playing both sides.” Even though that didn’t fit the deep guilt Taffy had seen in his face on the boat. It seemed to be the guilt of betrayal more than murder, but maybe he hadn’t been able to live with himself after that.