by Nora Roberts
It was a mistake, but it wouldn’t be his first. He gripped her hips and ran his hands up her sides.
The scent of her was both ripe and elusive. A deliberate and effective torment for a man.
“Look at me,” he ordered, and took the mouth she offered.
Took what and how he wanted. Long, slow, deep. And he let the taste of her slide over his tongue, as he would with a fine wine, then slip almost lazily, certainly pleasurably, into his system.
His lips rubbed over hers, turning her inside out. Somehow he’d flipped it all around on her, and the tempted had become the tempter. Knowing it, she couldn’t resist.
There was so much more here than she’d imagined. More than she’d ever been offered, or had accepted.
He watched her, intensely. Even as he toyed with her mouth, sent her head spinning and her body churning, he watched her with all the patience of a cat. That alone was a fresh and shocking thrill.
He ran his hands down her sides again, those wide hands just brushing her breasts. And drew her away.
“You push my buttons, Sophia. I don’t like it.”
He turned away to take a pull from the bottle of water used to cleanse the palate.
“A vintner’s also a scientist.” The air felt thick as she drew in a breath. “You’ve heard of chemical reactions.”
He turned, held the bottle out to her. “Yeah. And a good vintner always takes his time, because some chemical reactions leave nothing but a mess.”
The little stab disappointed as much as it stung. “Can’t you just say you want me?”
“Yeah, I can say it. I want you, enough that it sometimes hurts to breathe when you’re too close.”
Like now, he thought, when the taste of her was alive inside him.
“But when I get you into bed, you’re going to look at me the way you looked at me just now. It’s not going to be just another time, just another man. It’s going to be me, and you’re going to know it.”
There was a ripple along her skin. She had to force herself not to rub her hands over her arms to chase it away again. “Why do you make that sound like a threat?”
“Because it is.” Moving away from her, he picked up the next glass of wine and went back to work.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Claremont studied the Avano file. He spent a great deal of what he could eke out as spare time studying the data, the evidence, the crime scene and medical examiner reports. He could nearly recite the statements and interviews by rote.
After nearly eight weeks it was considered by most to be a dead end. No viable suspects, no tangible leads, no easy answers.
It stuck in his craw.
He didn’t believe in perfect crimes but in missed opportunities.
What was he missing?
“Alex.” Maguire stopped by his desk, sat on the corner. She already wore her coat against the misery that was February in San Francisco. Her youngest had a history project due the next day, her husband was fighting off a cold and they were having leftover meat loaf for dinner.
Nobody was going to be happy at her house, but she needed to be there.
“Go home,” she told him.
“There’s always a loose end,” he complained.
“Yeah, but you’re not always able to tie it off. Avano stays open, and it looks like it’s going to stay that way unless we get lucky and something falls in our laps.”
“I don’t like luck.”
“Yeah, well, I live for it.”
“He uses the daughter’s apartment for a meet,” Claremont began and ignored his partner’s long-suffering sigh. “Nobody sees him go in, nobody hears the gunshots, nobody sees anyone else go in or out.”
“Because it was in the neighborhood of three in the morning. The neighbors were asleep and, used to city noises, didn’t hear the pop of a twenty-five-caliber.”
“Pissant gun. Woman’s gun.”
“Excuse me.” She patted her own police-issue nine-millimeter.
“Civilian woman’s gun,” he corrected with what was nearly a smile. “Wine and cheese, late-night meet in an empty apartment. Sneaking out on the wife, apparently. Victim’s a guy who liked to cheat on the wife. Smells like a woman. And maybe that’s the angle. Maybe it was set to smell like a woman.”
“We looked at men, too.”
“Maybe we need to look again. The ex–Mrs. Avano, as opposed to the widow Avano, has been seen socializing in the company of one David Cutter.”
“That tells me her taste in men has improved.”
“She stays legally married to a philandering son of a bitch for nearly thirty years. Why?”
“Look, my husband doesn’t run around and I love him like crazy. But sometimes I wonder why I stay legally married to him. She’s Catholic,” Maguire finished with another sigh, knowing she wasn’t getting home anytime soon. “Italian Catholic and practicing. Divorce wouldn’t come easy.”
“She gave him one when he asked.”
“She didn’t stand in his way. Different thing.”
“Yeah, and as a divorced Catholic she wouldn’t be able to remarry, would she? Or snuggle up with another man with the approval of the Church.”
“So she kills him to clear the way? Reaching, Alex. On the Catholic sin-o-meter, murder edges out divorce.”
“Or somebody does it for her. Cutter’s brought in to the company, over Avano. Got to cause some friction. Cutter likes the look of Avano’s estranged and soon-to-be-divorced wife.”
“We ran Cutter up, down and sideways. He’s squeaky.”
“Maybe, or maybe he didn’t have a good reason to get his hands dirty before. Look, we found out Avano was in financial trouble. Unless the widow’s an Oscar-caliber actress, I’d say that came as a big, unpleasant surprise to her. So, going with the theory that Avano was keeping his money problems to himself, and wasn’t the type to do without his beluga for long, where would he go for a fix? Not one of his society friends,” Claremont continued. “Wouldn’t be able to show his face at the next charity ball. He goes to Giambelli, where he’s been bailed out periodically for years. To the ex-wife, maybe.”
“And following your line, if she agreed, Cutter got steamed over it. If she didn’t, and Avano got nasty, Cutter got steamed over it. It’s a long way from steamed to putting three bullets in a man.”
Still, she considered. It was something to chew on, and there’d been precious little so far. “I guess we’re chatting with David Cutter tomorrow.”
David juggled the hours of his workday between the San Francisco offices, his home office, the vineyards and the winery. With two teenagers to raise and a demanding job, he often put in fourteen-hour days.
He’d never been happier in his life.
With La Coeur he’d spent most of his time behind a desk. Had occasionally traveled to sit on the other side of someone else’s desk. He’d worked in an area that interested him and had earned him respect and a good salary.
And he’d been bored brainless.
The hands-on approach he was not only allowed but expected to use with Giambelli-MacMillan made each day a little adventure. He was dipping his fingers into areas of the wine business that had been only theory or paperwork before.
Distribution, bottling, shipping, marketing. And above all, the grape itself. From vine to table.
And what vines. To be able to see them, stretching, stretching, wrapped in the fogs and mists of the valley. The linear and the insubstantial that mingled light and shadow. And when the frost shimmered on them at dawn, or the cold moonlight drizzled down at midnight, there was magic there.
When he walked through the rows, breathing in the mystery of that damp air, and the wispy arms of the vines surrounded him, it was like living in a painting. One he could, and would, mark with his own brush strokes.
There was a romance in that romance he’d forgotten locked behind steel and glass in New York.
His home life still had bumps. Theo pushed and shoved against the rules on a daily basi
s. It seemed to David the boy was grounded as often as not.
Like father like son, he often thought. But it wasn’t much of a comfort when he was in the middle of the combat zone. He began to wonder why his own father, faced with such a surly, hardheaded, argumentative offspring, hadn’t simply locked him in the attic until he’d turned twenty-one.
Maddy wasn’t any easier. She appeared to have given up on the nose ring. Now she was campaigning to have her hair streaked. It baffled him constantly how a sensible girl could forever be pining to do weird things to her body.
He had no idea how to get inside the mind of a fourteen-year-old girl. And wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to.
But they were settling in. They were making friends. They were finding a rhythm.
He found it odd neither of them had commented on his relationship with Pilar. Normally they teased him mercilessly about his dates. He thought perhaps they assumed it was business. Which was just as well.
He caught himself daydreaming, as he often did when his mind drifted to Pilar. He shook his head, shifted in his chair. This wasn’t the time to indulge himself. He had a meeting with department heads in twenty minutes and needed to review his notes.
Because time was short, he wasn’t pleased to be interrupted by the police.
“Detectives. What can I do for you?”
“A few minutes of your time,” Claremont told him, while Maguire scanned the office and got the lay of the land.
“A few minutes is exactly what I can spare. Have a seat.”
Big, cushy leather seats, Maguire noted. In a big, cushy corner office with a kick-ass view of San Francisco through the wide windows. A thoroughbred of offices for a desk jockey, and totally masculine with its biscuit-and-burgundy color scheme and glossy mahogany desk.
She wondered if the office was tailored to suit the man, or vice versa.
“I assume this has to do with Anthony Avano,” David began. “Is there any progress in the investigation?”
“The case is still open, Mr. Cutter. How would you describe your relationship with Mr. Avano?”
“We didn’t have one, Detective Claremont,” David replied matter-of-factly.
“You were both executives for the same company, both worked primarily out of this building.”
“Very briefly. I’d been with Giambelli less than two weeks before Avano was killed.”
“In a couple of weeks, you’d have formed an impression,” Maguire put in. “Had meetings, discussed business.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? But I’d yet to have a meeting with him, and we had only one discussion, which took place at the party the evening before his murder. It was the only time I met him face-to-face, and there really wasn’t time to talk much business.”
Didn’t mention his impression, Claremont noted. But they’d get to that. “Why hadn’t you met with him?”
“Scheduling conflicts.” The tone was bland.
“Yours or his?”
David sat back. He didn’t care for the direction of the questioning, or the implication. “His, apparently. Several attempts to reach him proved unsuccessful. In the time between my arrival and his death, Avano didn’t come to the office, at least not when I was here, nor did he return my calls.”
“Must’ve annoyed you.”
“It did.” David nodded at Maguire. “Which I dealt with during our brief conversation at the winery. I made it clear that I expected him to make time to meet with me during business hours. Obviously, that never happened.”
“Did you meet with him outside of business hours?”
“No. Detectives, I didn’t know the man. Had no real reason to like or dislike him or think about him particularly.”
David kept his voice even, edging toward dismissive, as he would when winding up a tedious business meeting. “While I understand you have to explore every avenue in your investigation, I’d think you’re scraping bottom if you’re looking at me as a murder suspect.”
“You’re dating his ex-wife.”
David felt the jolt in the belly, but his face stayed passive as he leaned forward again. Slowly. “That’s right. His ex-wife, who was already his ex when he was murdered, already his ex when we began seeing each other socially. I don’t believe that crosses any legal or moral line.”
“Our information is that the ex–Mrs. Avano wasn’t in the habit of seeing men socially, until very recently.”
“That,” David said to Maguire, “might be because she hadn’t met a man she cared to see socially, until very recently. I find that flattering, but not a reason to murder.”
“Being dumped for a younger woman often is,” Maguire said easily and watched cool eyes flare. Not just seeing her socially, she concluded. Seriously hung up.
“Which is it?” David demanded. “Pilar killed him because he wanted another woman, or she’s heartless because she’s interested in another man so soon after her ex-husband is murdered? How do you bend that premise both ways?”
Furious, Maguire thought, but controlled. Just the sort of makeup that could calmly sip wine and put bullets in a man.
“We’re not accusing anyone,” she continued. “We’re just trying to get a clear picture.”
“Let me help you out. Avano lived his own life his own way for twenty years. Pilar Giambelli lived hers, a great deal more admirably. Whatever business Avano might have had that night was his own, and nothing to do with her. My socializing with Ms. Giambelli, at this point, is completely our business.”
“You assume Avano had business that night. Why?”
“I assume nothing.” David inclined his head toward Claremont as he got to his feet. “I leave that to you. I have a meeting.”
Claremont stayed where he was. “Were you aware Mr. Avano was having financial difficulties?”
“Avano’s finances weren’t my problem, or my concern.”
“They would have been, if they connected to Giambelli. Weren’t you curious as to why Mr. Avano was dodging you?”
“I’d been brought in from the outside. Some resentment was expected.”
“He resented you.”
“He may have. We never got around to discussing it.”
“Now who’s dodging?” Claremont got to his feet. “Do you own a handgun, Mr. Cutter?”
“No, I don’t. I have two teenage children. There are no guns of any kind in my house, and never have been. On the night Avano was murdered, I was at home with my children.”
“They can verify that.”
David’s hands curled into fists. “They’d know if I’d left the house.” He wasn’t having his kids interrogated by the police. Not over a worthless excuse of humanity like Avano. “That’s all we’re going to discuss until I consult an attorney.”
“That’s your right.” Maguire rose and played what she banked was her trump card. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Cutter. We’ll question Ms. Giambelli about her ex-husband’s finances.”
“I’d think his widow would know more.”
Maguire continued. “Pilar Giambelli was married to him a lot longer, and part of the business for which he worked.”
David slipped his hands into his pockets. “She knows less about the business than either of you.” And thinking of her, David made his choice. “Avano had been, for the last three years, systematically embezzling money from Giambelli. Padded expense accounts, inflated sales figures, travel vouchers for trips not taken or taken but for personal reasons. Never a great deal at a time, and he picked various pockets so that it went unnoticed. In his position, professionally and personally, no one would have, and no one did, question his figures.”
Claremont nodded. “But you did.”
“I did. I caught some of it the day of the party and, in double-checking it, began to see the pattern. It was clear to me he’d been dipping for some time under his name, under Pilar’s and under his daughter’s. He didn’t trouble to forge their signatures on the vouchers, just signed them. To a total of just over six hundred thous
and in the last three years.”
“And when you confronted him . . .” Maguire prompted.
“I never did. I intended to, and believe I made that intention clear during our conversation at the party. My impression was he understood I knew something. It was business, Detective, and would have been handled through the business. I reported the problem to Tereza Giambelli and Eli MacMillan the day after the party. The conclusion was that I would handle it, do what could be done to arrange for Avano to pay the money back. He would resign from the company. If he refused any of the stipulations outlined, the Giambellis would take legal action.”
“Why was this information withheld?”
“It was the wish of the senior Ms. Giambelli that her granddaughter not be humiliated by her father’s behavior becoming public. I was asked to say nothing, unless directly asked by the police. At this point, La Signora, Eli MacMillan and myself are the only people who know. Avano’s dead, and it seemed unnecessary to add to the scandal by painting him as a thief as well as a philanderer.”
“Mr. Cutter,” Claremont said. “When it’s murder, nothing’s unnecessary.”
David had barely closed the door at the cops’ back and taken a breath to steady himself when it opened again. Sophia didn’t knock, didn’t think to.
“What did they want?”
He had to adjust quickly and folded his concern and anger together, tucked them away. “We’re both running late for the meeting.” He scooped up his notes, slid them with the reports, the graphs, the memos into his briefcase.
“David.” Sophia simply stayed with her back to the door. “I could’ve gone after the cops and tried to get answers I haven’t been able to get from them. I hoped that you’d be more understanding.”
“They had questions, Sophia. Follow-ups, I suppose you call them.”
“Why you and not me or several other people in this building? You barely knew my father, had never worked with him or as far as I’m aware spent any time with him. What could you tell the police about him, or his murder, that they haven’t already been told?”
“Little to nothing. I’m sorry, Sophia, but we’ll need to table this, at least for now. People are waiting.”