Deadly Intent

by Camy Tang

  “What?” Suddenly he was wide awake. He sat up in bed and reached for the lamp.

  “Two fires, actually. Someone broke the lock on the storage shed in your backyard and set fire to everything inside.”

  “There wasn’t much in there. Nothing valuable.”

  “But then they broke the window to your spare bedroom—the one filled with boxes—your other storage room.”

  Oh, no. In that room, he stored tax forms, a fire-resistant safe filled with cash and valuables, and some special family mementos. “They broke into the house? What about the alarm?”

  “They broke the window and set off the alarm, but they didn’t enter the house. They sprayed gasoline into the room and set fire to it.”

  “No. Oh, no.”

  “Luckily, your neighbor’s son—Reggie Velasquez—was sneaking into his house after staying out too late, and he saw the fire. He called the firemen immediately, so it didn’t spread beyond the storage shed and that room.”

  Talk about coincidence. Reggie was a quiet, straight-A student—this was the first Devon had heard about him sneaking out. What were the odds?

  “God was watching over your house, Devon, because it could have been so much worse.”

  “I know.” Yes, it could have been worse.

  And maybe God was watching over him, too.

  “The Velasquezes had my number as your emergency contact, so they gave that to the police, and they called me.”

  “I’m sorry they had to wake you, Martha. This is above and beyond the duties of an admin.”

  “I don’t mind because my boss is going to give me a very nice Christmas bonus,” she replied tartly. “Are you driving back here soon?”

  “I’ll leave in a few minutes.” He tossed off the covers and searched for his shoes.

  “I’m going to tell my husband and then drive to your house. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Thanks, Martha.” He hung up the telephone.

  He grabbed his cell—three missed calls. All Martha, all about five minutes ago. He must not have heard it ring, so she had called the hotel instead.

  3:13 a.m. It was late, but he had to tell Naomi where he was going. Maybe, like himself, she wouldn’t hear her cell phone so he could just leave a message. He dialed.

  She picked up on the second ring. “Hi, Devon.”

  She sounded surprisingly alert for three in the morning. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

  “No, actually. Dad found copies of the background checks for the spa staff, so I was looking through them.”

  “Copies? That’s great. But at this hour?”

  He could almost see her give a one-shoulder shrug. “I couldn’t sleep. What’s up?”

  “There’s been a fire at my home.”

  “What? Oh, no.”

  “No one was hurt, my neighbor’s kid saw the fire in time. And it was just in one room of the house.”

  “Thank God.” It was a prayer, not an expletive.

  He felt the same way.

  “I’m heading back to Atherton right now.”

  “Drive carefully. How far away is your home? I don’t really know where Atherton is.”

  “I live south of my office in South San Francisco. About two hours away.” He slipped his laptop into the case.

  “Oh.” Silence.

  “Are you okay?”

  “It’s nothing. You just live…farther away from Sonoma than I realized.” Her voice was small, although he could tell she was trying for a light tone.

  “Naomi.” He set down his laptop bag. “When this is over, we’ll talk. And if…” He looked at the Gideon Bible he’d been thumbing through just before bed, which still sat on the bedside table. “If God wants us to be together, then it’ll work out. We’ll make it work out.”

  Now the silence was laced with shock. Finally, she said, “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

  “People change.” He picked up his laptop bag again. “I’ll call you later. Stay safe—don’t take any risks. You’ve got that bookie after you and the murderer is still around.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Naomi…” I love you. “Get some rest.”

  “I love you, too.” She hung up.

  He stared at his cell phone. Was he dreaming? Had she said what he thought she said? Had he spoken aloud without realizing it?

  Despite the worry over the fire, despite his hurry to drive back home, something sweet unfurled in his chest, something beautiful and powerful and glorious.

  The drive to Atherton was long and tedious, but free of traffic since it was so late—or early, depending on how he looked at it.

  He arrived two hours later. The fire trucks had already left, but water still dripped from the eaves of his home. Sticky heat wrapped around him as he got out of his car.

  The next thing that wrapped around him was Martha, hugging him fiercely. “I’m so thankful you were in Sonoma and not in that house.”

  So was he. The acrid smell of smoke and ash seemed to clog his throat, layer in his lungs.

  Martha released him. He bent to kiss her cheek gratefully. “Only one room was burned?”

  She nodded. “And the storage shed. The fireman I talked to said it was obviously arson, unless you make a habit of keeping gasoline in your storage shed and your back bedroom.”

  “After everything that’s happened, I’m almost not surprised it’s escalated this way.” He had kept her informed about the events in Sonoma, since he was still away from work. He just couldn’t go back to his normal routine while Naomi was in so much danger. “Can I go in back?”

  “I don’t think so. There’s a fire official around here somewhere. He’ll want to talk to you.”

  “Are they sure it’s arson?”

  “Can’t you smell the gasoline? I heard one of the firemen say it looked like whoever set the fire splashed gasoline everywhere outside, but the blaze didn’t grow large enough to catch it on fire.”

  The next few hours were a blur. Devon spoke to an arson investigator about what had happened, where he’d been, when he could schedule a walk-through.

  He spoke to his neighbors. He thanked Reggie Velasquez, although Mr. Velasquez was still giving his son a hard eye that promised retribution later for the reason his son had been able to call the fire department in the first place.

  They looked with curiosity at the cut over his eye from the car accident, but didn’t mention it. Thankfully, he hadn’t fulfilled Monica’s dire prediction and didn’t have a black eye, and most of his other injuries weren’t visible.

  Martha stayed with him the entire time, silent but supportive. It was almost as if she didn’t want to leave him, for fear that something would happen to him if she did. Maybe she wasn’t too far off base with those sentiments.

  Late in the morning, he stood in front of his house, which looked like normal from this angle. If he went to the Velasquezes’ yard and got up on tiptoe, he could see over the side fence and catch sight of the blackened roof of the metal storage shed in the backyard.

  Why the shed? What had he had in there? Some gardening tools, his old mountain bike…and boxes belonging to Jessica. Lots of boxes of her belongings.

  Most of them had been things like clothes or old magazines. But there had also been a few boxes of knickknacks, mementos, pictures.

  Was this the connection, then, between her murder and the attacks against him? Was he being targeted because of Jessica? Had she been killed for some obscure reason rather than her stolen necklace? Was the murderer now after him because of his old connection with her?

  What could he know about Jessica that was worth killing him for?

  SEVENTEEN

  Naomi fell asleep over the background checks, and woke up just as the sun cascaded through her window into her bedroom. But it wasn’t the sun that had awakened her—it was Aunt Becca’s strident voice.

  “You can’t go back there.”

  “I don’t see why not.” Rachel sounded patient and reasonable, b
ut Naomi caught the undercurrent of irritation in her placid voice.

  “It’s not safe. There’s a murderer on the loose.”

  “It’s perfectly safe. The lab is probably one of the safest places in Sonoma because of the card key entrance and the security guards on duty. And the outside video surveillance.”

  “You heard Naomi—the murderer is one of the spa staff.”

  “The solution is simple. I’ll enter the lab and tell the security guards to reprogram the card key entrance not to let anyone else in.”

  “So you’ll be all by yourself in the lab?”

  “I’ll be locked in, protected by the card key doors and the security guards.”

  “Why do you need to go in to work so soon? Can’t it wait?”

  “Aunt Becca.” Now Rachel’s voice had a definite annoyed edge to it. “I need to work on my research. We have a new project launch already scheduled. I can’t put off my experiments any longer.” Her voice started to move away. “Besides, Naomi and Devon are the ones targeted, not me.”

  Naomi jumped up from the floor, rubbing the cheek that had been pressed against the background checks when she’d fallen asleep. She flung open her bedroom door. “Rachel.”

  “What?” came from the bottom of the stairs.

  Naomi hurried around the corner to the landing and down the stairs. “Has Gloria Reynolds tried to talk to you recently?”

  Rachel paused in slinging her purse over her shoulder. “No. But why would she want to speak to me?”

  “I think she knows about your research.”

  Rachel grew very still. Her eyes widened slowly as she stared at Naomi. “That’s impossible.”

  “When I went to talk to her, she mentioned having the family over to dinner, and more importantly, she wanted to get better acquainted with you. Why would she target you if she didn’t know about your research with diamond powder?”

  Rachel worked her bottom lip with her teeth. “It didn’t even work very well.”

  “It doesn’t matter. How did she know about it?”

  “Do you think it’s connected to the murders somehow?”

  Naomi shrugged helplessly. “We know the murderer is a staff member. But not everything makes sense. Maybe this thing with Gloria is completely separate. Maybe everything is completely separate.”

  “I don’t know about Gloria, but I do think Devon Knightley’s accidents are connected to Jessica Ortiz somehow.” Rachel picked up her keys from the basket in the hallway.

  “But there’s no proof.”

  “If we wait long enough, we’ll probably get proof.”

  “If we wait long enough, Devon might be dead.”

  Rachel’s face fell. “Oh. That’s true.” She opened the front door. “Well, I’ll be at the lab,” she said, then left.

  How like Rachel to say something like that, and then abruptly leave. Some days Naomi couldn’t believe they were related.

  She headed back upstairs to change. She wondered how Devon was doing, how his house was.

  I love you, too.

  She squeezed her eyes shut at the memory. Had she really said that to him? It was just that when he’d hesitated, she heard the words I love you almost as clearly as if he’d spoken them. And the response had just popped out of her mouth. Maybe she’d been tired and not thinking clearly.

  Except she had meant it.

  She wasn’t sure how things would work out with them. He lived and worked so far away from Sonoma, and for now, her life was here—running the spa while her father recovered, and then being groomed to take over later…

  Except she was only managing the spa out of a sense of obligation. Because she wanted to please her dad, to fulfill family expectations. But she’d known for months that it wasn’t what she wanted to do.

  But who else could do it?

  Was she again doing something based on feelings—in this case, guilt and a desire to please—rather than what God wanted? Was this just like her shaky faith?

  She had other things to think about for now.

  As she and Aunt Becca ate breakfast, they looked over the background checks.

  “Here it says James worked in a car garage for a while,” her aunt said, reviewing a folder.

  “So?”

  “So, he might have known how to tamper with Devon’s brakes.”

  “But the driver who tried to run him down was a woman.”

  “Oh. Well.”

  “How about Kallie?” Naomi asked.

  “What about her?”

  “Jessica always asked for Kallie for her facials.”

  “But on this visit, she had an appointment with Haley for the day after she was killed,” Becca said.

  “She did? I wonder why?”

  “Remember the last time Jessica was here? Kallie was going through a rough time—she was taking care of her mother.”

  “That’s right. She was distracted at work. And then her mom died.”

  “She seems almost okay now. She knew her mom was near the end, so she wasn’t unprepared.”

  “And it’s been four months since she died.” Naomi flipped to another paper—and stopped. “Do you remember when Sarah was hired?” she asked.

  Aunt Becca frowned as she thought. “April?”

  “This background check is dated April. But the last time Jessica came into the spa was March—before Kallie’s mother had passed away.”

  “And?”

  Naomi put down her fork, because it was trembling. “How did Sarah know Jessica Ortiz liked to talk? Or that Jessica liked to come in early before her appointments?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Sarah, Iona and Haley came into my office after Jessica died. They were the ones who suggested I talk to the other Tamarind members who might have spoken to Jessica. I remember Sarah saying to me, ‘Do you know how Ms. Ortiz likes to talk?’ Or something like that.” Naomi could picture Sarah’s face in her mind as she suggested that Naomi speak to the Tamarind members. Her eyes had been wide and excited that the girls had come up with something that might be useful. All three of the girls had been talking, but she definitely remembered one of them saying the idea had been Sarah’s.

  Naomi pointed to the background check. “She was hired after Jessica’s last visit. How would she know Jessica liked to talk?”

  “Maybe Iona or Haley told her.”

  “Haley never had Jessica as a client. She always asked for Kallie. And Sarah spoke as if she knew Jessica.”

  “Did she know Jessica from before she came to work for us?” Aunt Becca asked. “Could that be possible?”

  “But she never said anything about it.”

  “Maybe she forgot?”

  “Well, where did she grow up? Here it is. Glory, Californ—” That name was familiar, partly because it was so unusual. Where had she heard that town before?

  “Glory. Glory. Where did I hear that town lately?”

  Devon. She vaguely recalled hearing his voice say the name of the town. Why would he tell her about Glory, California? Why would he mention it?

  “Jessica’s from Glory! That’s the connection!” She jumped up and raced upstairs to get her cell phone. She dialed Devon just as her aunt followed her into the room.

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  Even with her heart pounding with a mix of fear and apprehension, the endearment made her smile. Thank goodness she hadn’t put the call on speakerphone yet. She did so now. “Devon, Aunt Becca’s here with me. She and I just discovered something. Did Jessica ever mention knowing Sarah?”

  “Sarah who?”

  “My receptionist, Sarah Daniels.”

  “Um…”

  “The one who was just engaged to a very wealthy boyfriend,” Aunt Becca supplied.

  “Oh, yes, I remember. The one with the gigantic diamond engagement ring. No, Jessica didn’t mention someone named Sarah. How did she know her?”

  “From her hometown—Glory, California,” Naomi said.

  “Jessica
didn’t often talk about her friends from Glory. She lost touch with them after her parents moved the family to San Francisco.”

  “How about the yearbook?” Naomi said.

  Aunt Becca shook her head. “Sarah is in her mid-twenties and Jessica was around thirty-five. They wouldn’t have gone to high school at the same time.”

  “The yearbook!” Devon’s voice crackled on the speakerphone. “Naomi, that’s why someone set fire to my storage shed.”

  “What?”

  “The arsonist torched my storage shed and the back bedroom, which I was using as storage. The storage shed had boxes of Jessica’s things, all labeled with her name. The arsonist could have easily seen them just by looking inside the shed—it has a small window.”

  “The murderer was trying to get rid of some type of evidence,” Aunt Becca said.

  Naomi thought back to when Devon brought the box to the spa. “Do you remember, Aunt Becca, when you and some of the staff looked at the box of Jessica’s things before Devon showed it to me? Was Sarah there?”

  “Yes.”

  “It must be the yearbook, Devon. And it’s gone,” Naomi said.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “But the fire—”

  “I never got around to putting the box back in the storage shed. I forgot. It’s still in my car trunk.”

  The world stopped turning for a brief moment. Then she took a gasping breath. “Devon.”

  “I’m opening the trunk now.” The sound of the trunk popping open. Pages ruffling. Then silence.

  “Devon?”

  “Naomi, I’m going to send a few pictures to you.”

  “Devon, what’s wrong?”

  “Just take a look at the pictures. I can’t be sure…”

  “Sure of what?”

  Her phone blipped as she received the pictures he’d taken with his phone. Her aunt crowded next to her to see. She pressed a few buttons—and stared at a complete stranger.

  “Who is that?” she said.

  “That’s Sarah Daniels from Jessica’s yearbook,” Devon replied.

  It took a moment to sink in. This stranger was Sarah Daniels.

  The real Sarah Daniels.

  “Devon.” Her voice came rushing out of her throat, raspy and sharp. “Who is the woman I’ve been calling Sarah Daniels?”