The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse: Books 1-3 (The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse Box Sets)

by Nic Saint

  Chapter 44

  Ever so quietly, Falcone snuck through the house. He counted his blessings that Grover had told him Rick had set up his home base at Casa di Amore. Having recently fired Jerry and Johnny, he’d briefly toyed with the idea of engaging this Bell woman to do his dirty work, but then the stingy streak that runs through every billionaire’s soul had asserted itself. He’d been staring out his bedroom window at the house next door, and asked himself why he would have to spend good money on Felicity Bell if he could simply pop over and take care of business himself?

  And so it was that he snuck in through the back door and was now on his way upstairs, where he assumed Rick had set up his office. Having been a frequent guest of his good friend Grover over the years, he knew his way around the house as if it was his own. And in a way it was. The two houses had been built by the same architect. The man, even though he’d promised absolute originality, and had charged them accordingly, had simply drawn up duplicates.

  As he placed his foot on the bottom step, he hoped he wouldn’t run into Rick. But even if he did he had his story ready. After all, Grover had once declared that his home was as much Falcone’s as his own, and so what if he was caught? He could simply say he’d been invited by his friend, who would be arriving shortly. It wasn’t even a lie, for Grover had told him his infernal son Bomer had been spotted heading into Happy Bays, and he had a thing or two to say to him.

  Loud banging noises emanated from the living room, as if a gang of movers were redecorating the place. He ignored them, and carefully trotted up the stairs. Arriving on the landing, he waited for a few moments. No sound came from any of the rooms, and he proceeded to the guest bedroom, which he assumed Rick would have picked for himself.

  Gently pushing open the door, he found the room uninhabited. With a frown, he eased back, and perceived with a shock that he had bumped into something soft and wet. Whirling around, he found himself gazing into the amiable face of Bomer Calypso.

  “Hi there, Mr. Falcone,” the young man intoned. He was dressed in nothing but a towel, his bare torso still wet from his shower.

  “Hello, um, Bomer,” the iron-willed businessman riposted, though the sudden meeting had taken some of the iron from his will and possibly some years from his life. His hair couldn’t suddenly turn white, for it already had the silvery hue that comes with age, but he still felt that Felicity Bell, that formidable woman, would never have allowed herself to get caught like this.

  “Dropping in for the party, eh? I’m afraid you’re a bit early,” Bomer continued, holding his head to one side in an apparent bid to allow water to emerge from his ear cavity. “Party’s only starting at nine, but you’re welcome to stick around, of course.”

  Making a quick recovery, Falcone asked, “Will, um, my son be attending?”

  “Rickie? Afraid not. You know Rick. Avoids parties like the plague.” He held his head to the other side now, closely resembling a parrot.

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” Even though he and this son had never seen eye to eye, he mentally commended him on his work ethic. While young wastrels like Bomer Calypso frittered their lives away by throwing parties for other wastrels, at least Rick had never gone in for that sort of thing. No, the boy had really made something of himself, even though he’d opted to spend his not inconsiderable talent trying to run his father’s business into the ground. “So I take it he’s not here?” he asked, just to be on the safe side.

  “Nope. Taken refuge in the fishing lodge. I guess he’ll be holed up there until the all-clear is blown, which I fully expect not to happen until very late. Or should I say very early?” He laughed gaily, and Falcone’s lip trembled into something resembling a smile. Not that Bomer’s joke had struck him as amusing, but the fact he was in no danger of running into Rick came as a great relief.

  It did remind him of another important matter, and he drew his face into a disapproving scowl. “I do hope you’re not thinking about returning to your partying way, Bomer. You know how much Charlene disapproves.”

  Bomer’s eyes widened. “I, um…”

  “And speaking of Charlene, I really think you should put in more of an effort to patch things up with my daughter. The sooner you heal this rift the better.”

  Bomer stood on one leg for a moment, now looking like a parrot about to perform a party trick. “I—ah—well, that is to say—”

  Ignoring the other’s inane babbling, Falcone continued, “Charlene is a very proud young woman, but I’m sure that if you explain the situation to her, and show the proper remorse, she will be more than willing to take you back.”

  Bomer hopped onto the other leg. “Oh. Ah…”

  “As it is, I’ll have a word with her myself.” He stole out a hand to clap his future son-in-law on the shoulder, but changed his mind when he realized the young man was still naked from the waist up. “Better put on some clothes. Nudity is something best kept private.” And he gave Bomer a withering stare.

  The young man gulped, muttered something unintelligible, and quickly retreated into his room.

  Falcone stared after him for a beat. He was doing the math in his head. If that room belonged to Bomer, and the guest bedroom was empty, that only left the master bedroom and the second guest bedroom to be explored.

  He decided to approach this the same way Sherlock Holmes would: in a methodical and logical fashion. The most likely option was the second guest bedroom, and the moment he entered it, he found that he’d finally struck gold. A small suitcase had been placed on the bed, and next to it, a briefcase. Quickly crossing to the bed, he peered inside, and found the laptop he’d been searching for. Not bothering to take it out, he simply gathered up the briefcase, and was off and rapidly making his escape within moments.

  It had taken two professionals days to find, and he had done so within the hour. He congratulated himself on a job well done, and before long was out the back door and heading back to Casa di Vitae.

  Chapter 45

  Felicity sat nursing a glass of wine, checking the clock over the mantel for the umpteenth time. Eight o’clock had come and gone, and no sign of her dinner date. At first she’d resisted the urge to call him and inquire as to the reason for his delay, but pride had come crashing down after half an hour, and when she’d found the call going straight to voicemail, had felt a pang of concern.

  Five fruitless attempts to contact Rick later, and three glasses of wine, she was starting to feel the strain acutely. The man was clearly not going to show. And when finally the hands of the clock pointed to nine, she decided to forget all about Rick Dawson. The man was a cad, a scoundrel and a no-good piece of scum. The first impression she’d had of him had proven correct after all, and now she was glad—glad!—that she’d taken a frying pan to his head. She wished it had been a battle-axe.

  Squeezing back the tears stinging behind her eyes, she decided never to open her heart to any man ever again. They were, it was now obvious, not to be trusted, even the ones as smooth-talking and good-looking as Rick Dawson. Correction: especially the ones as charming and handsome as Rick.

  And she’d just spent considerable mental energy thinking up ways and means of torturing the no-good son of a billionaire, when the doorbell rang, and she jumped up from her chair, all thought of roasting Rick over a slow fire wiped from her mind and replaced by the love light, burning as bright as ever. So he had come! He’d probably merely been delayed. A flat tire. A fallen tree branch. A…

  She stared blankly at the stranger. He was short, portly, and his face sprouted eyebrows like the late Leonid Brezhnev. She resisted the urge to blurt out, “Who the hell are you?” and instead merely goggled at the man.

  “Good evening, Miss Bell,” her visitor said in a deep, rumbling voice. He made a slight bow, then added, “My name is Chazz Falcone, and I would like to obtain your services.”

  “My…services?” she asked, puzzled. Why Rick Dawson’s father would decide to visit her at this time of night was a mystery to her, but then a frightf
ul thought occurred to her and she clutched a hand to her heart. “Did—did something happen to Rick?”

  The man’s face darkened. “If you allow me to come in, I’ll tell you all about it.” He gave her a meaningful glance. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Of course. Please come in.”

  Stepping inside, Falcone admired the decor. “Nice place you got here.”

  “Thank you. If you don’t mind, could you tell me what happened to Rick?”

  Falcone’s lips tightened. “He tricked me. The briefcase I took was not his at all.” Then, seeing Felicity’s blank stare, he promptly took a seat. “I’ve been informed by reliable sources that you’re very good at what you do, Miss Bell. I saw the pictures. And of course I saw the video.”

  “The video? Oh, that.” A blush crept up her cheeks. Having forgotten all about that YouTube thing, she made a mental note to tell Alice to take the video down as soon as possible. It really didn’t do for the father of the man she loved to hear her views on sex.

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what made you go after Rick?”

  She folded her hands in her lap. She understood now what this was. Somehow some form of reconciliation must have taken place, and Rick’s father had decided to check out his son’s date. In many of the romance novels she enjoyed reading, the billionaire father routinely did a background check on his future daughter-in-law, in case she turned out to be a gold digger of some kind. “The first time I met Rick, I thought he was a common thug.”

  Falcone inclined his head approvingly. “Very perceptive of you. I have often thought the same thing myself.”

  “He was throwing a can of beans at me, so I felt I needed to defend myself.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Next thing I knew, he was being dragged off to prison and I felt I’d done my hometown a great service.”

  Falcone was still nodding. It was obvious he liked where she was coming from.

  She cast down her eyes. These kinds of scenes were never agreeable, but she had to be strong. “I guess you want to hear about the egg incident.”

  “I’ve seen the egg incident. It was all over that YouTube video. It had a profound effect on me.”

  “Yes. Well. I didn’t—”

  “I admired your great aim. The way you hit the bullseye.” He shook his head, a fruity chuckle escaping his lips. “Priceless, Miss Bell. Absolutely priceless.”

  She was speechless for a moment, starting to feel that the conversation was skewing into the realm of the surreal. The members of Monty Python might have enjoyed Mr. Falcone’s company but Felicity felt quite unequal to the strain. “What do you mean? You enjoyed the fact that I threw eggs at your son?”

  “Absolutely. Just what the doctor ordered.” He held up a hand. “I’ve heard enough, Miss Bell. You’re everything I’d hoped for and more. I don’t know how much Jerry Vale and Johnny Carew have told you, but I need to obtain Rick’s computer before he goes and publishes that damn article of his. I thought I had the whole thing in the bag when I took a laptop from Casa di Amore but upon arrival at my house I discovered it was Bomer’s laptop instead. The young idiot must have decided to turn the second guest bedroom into his office for some reason. Now, can you or can you not steal my son’s computer for me?”

  Chapter 46

  Rick emitted a quiet moan. Contrary to popular belief, investigative reporters don’t enjoy being whacked over the head by large and burly attackers. And even though Rick had shot the breeze with fundamentalist terrorists in Afghanistan caves, warlords in the Somali jungle and reality show stars in Beverly Hills, he hadn’t quite gotten used to being treated roughly.

  He gingerly opened his eyes, half expecting to find himself on the floor of some bar in the heart of Shanghai’s port district, the victim of a barroom brawl, when ever so slowly the truth came home to him that he wasn’t in any of the world’s danger zones but in what should have been the safest place on earth: the Calypso family’s fishing lodge.

  The moment the floor stopped moving beneath him, and the walls stopped dancing the shimmy shake, he tried to sit up. The shooting pain lancing through the back of his head told him this was not a good idea. Reaching a tentative hand to the injured spot, he discovered a bump the size of an egg where there had been no bump before, and he was seriously thinking the Department of Homeland Security should issue a warning against Happy Bays as a tourist destination.

  When the pain had sufficiently subsided, he slowly moved into a sitting position, staring before him with the vague recollection that something was missing. The table was there, the fishing rods were there, and the chair on which he’d been sitting was there, now lying next to him on the wooden boards. With a frown he suddenly realized that his laptop was missing, and he closed his eyes in dismay. He now saw all. Somehow, his crook father had finally managed to lay his grubby little hands on his most cherished possession.

  “Damn,” he muttered forcefully. “Damn, damn, damn.”

  Even though he’d saved most of his work in the cloud, the words he’d put in over the course of these last couple of days hadn’t been uploaded. And as they contained some of his most important insights, he keenly felt the loss.

  Then, as reason returned to its throne, there was the nagging sensation that there was somewhere he needed to be. And with a second pang of dismay, he remembered the date he’d arranged with the most beautiful girl in the world. Startled, he jerked upright, only to be struck down again by those shooting pains. His second attempt, more careful now, bore fruit, and he got to wobbly feet, snatching his phone from the desk. At least the thieves had left him that.

  He saw that it was already nine o’clock. Felicity had been waiting one hour. Without further ado he initiated the call. After several rings, it went to voicemail, and even though he’d fully intended to explain the situation in a few powerful phrases, he realized how he must sound.

  He’d missed a date, and here he was, about to babble on about being attacked. Women, he knew, liked their men strong and in control. True alpha heroes capable of taking care of any contingency life throws at them. Until now, the powerful image Felicity had of him as a successful reporter had cast its spell on her and had in no small way contributed to his appeal. If he were to tell her he’d allowed himself to be overpowered by some two-bit goon working for his father, the fascination he held over her would instantly vanish.

  No, he had to find some other reason for the delay, and decided to make his way over to her home and tell her in person. It would give him the time needed to come up with a good story. A story where he came out the hero—not the victim. Perhaps this way he could still salvage something from the wreck.

  He raced to the house, uttering silent curses at the plaintive shoots of pain in his head and reaching his destination, stormed inside in search of Bomer. Finding him upstairs, he was surprised to discover that cheery party animal in a state of great distress. Clutching his hands to his hair, Bomer cried, “Someone has stolen my laptop!”

  This bewildered Rick a great deal. That his own laptop would be stolen he could understand. But why anyone would bother with Bomer’s computer was a mystery to him, and frankly he didn’t really care.

  “So? Just get yourself another one, why don’t you?”

  For a man as rich as Bomer, the price of a laptop was no biggie, he knew.

  “It held all my pictures!” Bomer bleated.

  Rick could make head nor tails of this. “Pictures? What pictures?”

  “Charlene’s pictures.”

  “So?” It seemed strange to him that anyone would want to take pictures of that foul half-sister of his, but then he knew from experience that the world was full of strange people. He knew this because he’d interviewed quite a few of them. “Don’t you have a back-up?”

  “No, I don’t,” Bomer muttered, visibly in the depths. “I was going to but I forgot.” He sat slumped on the bed, next to his suitcase.

  “Well, then I guess you better call the po
lice,” suggested Rick. He was starting to think that he’d jumped to conclusions regarding his father stealing his laptop. Perhaps there was a gang of laptop thieves at work in Happy Bays.

  “I don’t want to call the police.” Bomer gave him a look in which despair and embarrassment were nicely mingled. “Those pictures of Charlene…” He gulped. “They’re nude pictures. She’d kill me if she knew I’d told anyone.”

  Rick held up a hand. The prospect of anyone being mad enough to get involved with his half-sister was enough to sicken him, but that any man would go as far as to take pictures of Charlene in the nude? “Please,” he muttered, “say no more. Whatever compelled you to take those pictures in the first place?”

  “She made me!” he cried. “You know how much she’s dying to make a name for herself in show business.”

  Rick knew this all too well. On more than one occasion Charlene had begged him to introduce her to some celebrity or movie star, in hopes the mere association would get her name into the tabloids. He’d never really understood her reasoning behind this. She was a billionaire’s daughter. If she wanted fame, she simply had to ask daddy, who could probably get her a record contract, or a movie deal, or even a reality show. But then she didn’t merely want to be famous. She wanted to be notorious. A bad girl. And being daddy’s girl didn’t fit into this scheme.

  “She told me she wanted to make a…” Bomer shuddered, then continued in a low whisper. “She wanted to make a sex tape.”

  Rick started violently. “No,” he muttered, horrified.

  “Yes. She said it was her ticket to fame. That it would secure her name in the limelight. Those pictures were only the start. A dress rehearsal so to speak. She had the whole thing planned out in minute detail. First she would leak the tape, and then she would do the same thing with the pictures. She called it her media campaign.” He threw up his hands. “And now the whole thing has gone kaput!”