Deceiving Bella: Book Eleven In The Bodyguards Of L.A. County Series

by Beauman, Cate

  He puffed out an incredulous laugh as he replayed his night. This was a curve ball he hadn’t seen coming. Never in his wildest dreams had he believed he would work a case for seven years, come up with jack shit for the DA, then hand in his badge, move to LA, and not only find Nicoli Caparelli but also discover his daughter living in the next condo over.

  Before long, he was making his way down Sunset Boulevard. As he drove closer to home, he spotted Bella getting gas at the plaza less than a mile from their development. Grinning his triumph, he slowed down and waited his turn to make the left into their neighborhood. Minutes ticked by before Bella finally pulled into her driveway. Reed got out of the truck as if he’d just returned home himself. “Hey, stranger.”

  Closing her door, she sent him one of her gorgeous smiles. “Hi. Welcome back.”

  “Thanks.” He walked through the grass, meeting her halfway and staring at her in the light from the streetlamp. She looked good—damn good in her pretty black outfit. Usually she wore her hair down, but tonight’s updo showed off the delicate line of her neck.

  “How was Seattle?”

  “Relatively boring.”

  “No hostile takeovers?”

  He made himself smile as he held her gaze, breathing in Bella’s usual scent. “Lucky for me, things stayed friendly.”

  “Less paperwork.”

  “Right.” He didn’t want to talk about work. He wanted to ask her about Nicoli Caparelli and find out what she knew about his mafia life. “How was dinner?”

  She frowned. “How did you know I went to dinner?”

  “Those look like leftovers.” He pointed to the Styrofoam container she held in her hand.

  “Oh. Yeah.” She chuckled. “Scallops. It was really good.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “To the North Basin Country Club—just outside of Reseda.”

  “Huh. I’ve never been. I don’t golf, so I doubt I can get in.”

  “It’s open to the public.”

  He kept waiting, hoping she would say something more about whom she’d dined with, but she didn’t. “Good to know.”

  “Yeah.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets, sensing that their conversation was quickly coming to an end. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

  She nodded, smiling. “Good night.”

  He started toward his door and stopped. “Don’t forget about that bike ride.”

  “I won’t.” She let herself into the house, waved, then closed the door.

  “Damn,” he muttered when he circled back to the truck for his camera and went inside, hurrying upstairs to get a look at the shots he’d taken. His shoulders tensed as he sandwiched an image of Bella between a current photo of Vincent Pescoe and a younger Nicoli Caparelli. “Holy shit.”

  Why hadn’t he picked up on this sooner? Their eyes were exactly the same—minus the mascara Bella always wore and the deep lines Nicoli now had. And their chins.

  He’d been obsessed with the Caparellis since he turned thirteen, studying every detail about the family he could get his hands on. Nicoli had been a handsome man in his younger days. He’d passed on his black hair and dark eyes to his child—classic Italian traits. Reed grabbed his cell phone and found Joey’s number as he searched the web for more information about his neighbor.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m one hundred percent sure we’ve found Nicoli Caparelli.”

  “And that’s a damn good thing, ’cause it’s almost one in the fucking a.m. here.”

  He winced as he glanced at the time in the corner of his screen. “Sorry.”

  “Hold on.” Joey cleared the sleep from his throat as he muttered something to Melanie and rustled the sheets, getting out of bed. “Okay. Talk to me.”

  “You can circle Reseda, California, on your map, because he’s definitely our guy.”

  “Yes! This is huge. Huge.”

  “It gets better.”

  “Lay it on me, buddy.”

  “Is there any possible way Alfeo has another kid, other than Matty?”

  “No, not that we know of. We’ve never heard of nobody else, and Lewisburg doesn’t allow conjugals. Why?”

  “Just covering all the bases.” Even though he already had the answers, he was still struggling to wrap his mind around this latest development. He sent off the picture of Bella along with her professional bio he found on the Pacific Palisades Dermatology and Skin Care Associates website. “Take a look at your email.”

  Joey tapped keys in the background and whistled low through his teeth. “Well, hello, beautiful. Who the hell is this? Your new California chick?”

  “Nicoli’s daughter.”

  “What? What the hell are you talking about? How do you know he has a daughter?”

  “Take a look at her eyes and chin. Search for one of the pictures of Nicoli before he got old.” He heard more taps on the computer keys.

  “Holy shit. The resemblance is right on.”

  “She’s my neighbor.”

  “What?”

  “That, my friend, is Isabella Colby. She lives right next door.”

  “Get the fuck out.”

  “We’ve had dinner and she’s cut my hair.”

  “You’ve been dining with a mafia daughter?”

  “Apparently.”

  “You gonna ask her about her pops?”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but knocking on her door and asking her to tell me about her killer family probably won’t go over well.”

  “So be smooth about it. We’ve got our in, Reed. Take advantage of it.”

  He stared out at the high-end patio furniture on her deck and the fancy little grill. It wasn’t every day an opportunity like this fell into his lap. “I told her I would take her out on my bike.”

  “See? There you go. Take her out on the fuckin’ bike. Do whatever you have to do to get her to talk.”

  Sweet, funny Bella was his in. And she wasn’t being square with anyone. What would Ethan or Jerrod or any of his coworkers say if they knew their wives’ girlfriend was the daughter of a mafia man? “I’ll see what she’s doing tomorrow.”

  “You get her to trust you, maybe you can get her pops to trust you too.”

  Bella did trust him. He glanced out at her fancy furniture again and squashed any stirrings of guilt. Getting Nicoli to confide in him was a long shot, but he had to try. Bella’s family was due a little payback. “That’s the plan.”

  “You be careful, buddy. If this goes sour, you’re a dead man. Nicoli Caparelli might go by another name, but something tells me he won’t hesitate to end you if he has to.”

  “I guess we’ll have to end him first. Get me everything you can on Isabella Colby. You have her work address and now her home address as well. We’ll see what we can do with that.”

  “I’ll call you sometime tomorrow.”

  “Talk to you then.” Reed hung up and stared at the pictures on his screen, wrestling with an odd sense of betrayal. Long ago, he’d learned that nothing and no one were ever what they seemed to be. Apparently, his neighbor was no exception. Beautiful Bella Colby was going to help him bring down the most powerful crime family still in existence. She just didn’t know it yet.

  Chapter Eight

  Reed’s phone rang, waking him out of a deep sleep. Groaning, he rolled to his side, keeping his eyes closed to the brilliant sunshine boring in through the windows as he felt around on the floor for the damn thing. His fingers finally made contact with the plastic edge and he yanked it up, silencing his obnoxious ringtone for Joey. This no-furniture thing was getting old. Next time he was at the office, he was going to look at the mock-ups Wren dropped by a few days ago. “Yeah.”

  “Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.”

  He blinked against the bright light and turned his head, glancing at the alarm clock across the room on the edge of his desk. Barely seven thirty. “Is this payback for waking you up?”

  “Nah, that’s just a bonus. Ma
ke yourself some coffee ’cause I sent some stuff your way.”

  He tossed back the covers and sat up, scrubbing at his face and yawning loudly.

  “Jesus, you’re losing your touch. What happened to up at five and off to work?”

  He stumbled out of bed, tripping over the pair of shoes he hadn’t bothered to put away before he’d called it a night. “I have the day off.”

  “That never stopped you before. California’s making you soft.”

  “Bull. I slept like crap—couldn’t shut off my mind with everything that’s going on,” he said on his way down the stairs to the kitchen.

  “I hear ya. Do you have that coffee yet?”

  “No.” He opened the cupboard door and grabbed one of the two mugs he owned, shoving it under his Keurig and pressing the button. “How about you tell me what you’ve got while I get something going in my cup? Then I’ll take a look at what you sent me.”

  “Sure thing. The hottie next door is definitely hiding something.”

  Reed glanced toward Bella’s house, frowning despite what he’d seen for himself last night. Something about all of this wasn’t adding up for him. At no point over the last few days had he ever gotten the impression that Bella wasn’t on the complete up and up. His instincts were rarely wrong, but he had two scars to remind him that he wasn’t immune to the occasional blip.

  “What do you want first?” Joey asked.

  He yawned again. “Surprise me.”

  “I’ll keep it routine since you’re half-asleep.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Isabella Raine Colby. Born April twentieth, 1990 in Clinton, Ohio. Mother’s name is Kelly Colby. Interestingly enough, there’s no father listed on her birth certificate.”

  “Very interesting.” He walked over to the fridge and grabbed the creamer, waiting for the coffee to stop its teasing trickle into his cup.

  “Mother’s deceased. Died late December 2014. Death certificate says cirrhosis of the liver.”

  “Alcoholic, maybe?”

  “Could’ve been.”

  “There’s a couple of different addresses on an old credit report Leo was able to dig up. Looks like Isabella and her mother lived in Kentucky, Nashville, Kansas City, Albuquerque, but stayed in Las Vegas the longest.”

  He snagged the mug, dumped creamer in, and headed back upstairs, wanting to be able to follow along with Joey as they looked over the documents. Two sets of eyes were always better than one.

  “I took a minute to pull up the website for their old address—luxury apartment complex not far from the Strip. And somewhere around here I thought I saw that payments were made to a private school.”

  Reed took his seat at the desk and opened his laptop, typing in his user name and password to access his emails. “What did Mom Colby do to make such a fine living?”

  “I haven’t found that one out yet. There’s no track record of her employment. But one thing I do know is beautiful Bella’s got herself an interesting banking history.”

  “What does that mean?” He opened the “Colby Bank Records” document and scanned the spreadsheet. Bella had made several sizeable deposits to her Nevada savings account last year: eighty-three thousand here, twenty-five grand there, an eighteen-thousand-dollar chunk of change at one point, and a few other large amounts after that. “All in January 2015 except for the one deposit on February first.”

  “Adds up to about two hundred thousand.”

  “Did you find a paper trail to go along with this? Maybe some of it’s a life insurance payoff from her mother’s estate. The timing fits.”

  “Leo couldn’t find a policy or any records along those lines. Nothing we have matches anything like that.”

  He rubbed at his jaw, trying to find some sort of pattern, but nothing made sense. “A couple days after the last transaction, she closed the account and opened a new one in Los Angeles.”

  “Definitely makes you wonder, boss,” Joey said, tapping on a table in the background, a habit Reed had long since gotten used to. “Especially after I looked into her last few filings with the IRS. She does okay, but she’s not wealthy by any means. In 2012 through 2014, she pulled in right around twenty-five to thirty a year. Between 2008 and 2011, she was making chump change—fifteen or so. When she moved to LA and hooked up with the dermatologist, things started getting better. Last year, she made sixty-eight. This year she’s filing quarterly and is on pace to hit eighty-nine.”

  Reed glanced at her California savings account, noting that Bella had never touched a dime of the two hundred thousand after the initial deposit. “She’s gotta carry some serious debt, then. She has expensive taste.”

  “Nope. One credit card with a current balance of one hundred fifty bucks.”

  Reed thought of Bella’s high-end furnishings, designer clothes, and sporty little Volkswagen. Something wasn’t adding up. “She must be taking something in on the side—something she’s not reporting—because she’s A-plus all the way. Everything I’ve seen is top end. Top, top end, Joe. Sixty-eight thousand sounds great, but when you compare what she has to what she’s bringing in, it’s way off, especially in an expensive area like the Palisades.”

  “Since we’re keeping things interesting, I’ll point out that Bella’s move to California coincides with Vincent Pescoe opening his account in Reseda a couple weeks later.”

  “You’re thinking he asked her to hold on to some of his money.”

  “You’re thinking it too, boss. They meet up in Vegas, he deposits some cash, and they head out of town—her to the Palisades, him to Reseda. Maybe Daddy passes her several grand to thank her for her help, tells her to set herself up nice and pretty.”

  Reed sipped at his coffee, barely tasting his favorite hazelnut blend as he focused on the Bella Colby puzzle. “It makes sense. Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Sort of,” he repeated as he continued mulling it all over. He and Joey had been at this long enough to know that pigeonholing theories too early on in an investigation could lead them down the wrong path. Alfeo’s release date didn’t leave them any room for screw-ups. Time was not on their side in this scenario. “I’m trying to see this from all the angles—keep an open mind.”

  “You got it, buddy.”

  “What else do we have?”

  “Vincent Pescoe’s got himself a small savings—’bout fifteen hundred, nothing remarkable that would raise any brows.”

  “Why keep a large sum when your daughter can do it for you?”

  “Exactly.” Joey gave another tap to the table or desk—whatever it was he was sitting in front of. “Leo was able to find a non-driver’s ID card issued to Vincent by Nebraska’s DMV.”

  Reed searched for the new documents Joey must have just opened. “When?”

  “About four or five years ago with a couple of eight-year renewals in Nebraska with an ID card issued in Wisconsin before that. I’m thinking our boy worked under the table after he told the Feds to kiss his ass, ’cause we’ve got nothin’ after that—no addresses on file other than the ones he put down on the paperwork to get his picture identification.”

  “What about a Social Security number? WITSEC would have given him new ones along with his identities. But I’m not seeing anything.” He scanned through sheet after sheet.

  “Leo couldn’t find nothin’. Me neither, ’cept for the credit line he opened in Clinton, Ohio, back in 1989, but there’s nothing before or after.”

  Vincent Pescoe had lived like a ghost for the last twenty years. He’d stopped off in Wisconsin and Nebraska at some point to collect an ID, but he could have lived anywhere after he grabbed what he needed. “Do you know how lucky we are that we found him?”

  “I’m going to church tomorrow, ’cause this is pretty much a fuckin’ miracle.”

  Chuckling, Reed clicked back over to Bella’s California savings account, staring at the balance. “We certainly have more questions than answers.”

  “I guess you better start
digging.”

  He glanced up, catching a movement in his peripheral vision as Bella walked out on her back porch, wearing a fancy mid-thigh navy-blue robe. Her silky black hair glistened in the sun as she sat in one of the loungers, cupping a mug in her hands, while Lucy followed her, taking her spot at Bella’s side. His sexy neighbor appeared to have just rolled out of bed, yet she looked like a flawless picture in a magazine. “What about her phone records?”

  “I haven’t been able to get my hands on those yet. It’s gonna be tough without a warrant. I have some favors I can call in.”

  “Just keep it discreet.”

  “No, I’m gonna shout it from the rooftop. Maybe I can get my ass fired and take another couple of bullets while I’m at it.”

  Reed took another sip of his coffee, unconcerned by Joey’s offended tone. “For less than eight hours on the job, we’re off to a great start. Leo does good work.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “We need more.”

  “And we’ll get it. You do what you can on your end and I’ll do the same on mine.”

  Reed glanced out at Bella again. “I should probably get started.”

  “Let me know how it goes.”

  “You’ll be the first.” He hung up and swallowed the last of his coffee as he stared at her basking in the sun. Today was the beginning, his and Joey’s shot at actually building a case against Alfeo Caparelli. They’d waited a long time for this. He wasn’t about to waste another second. Setting down his cup, he opened his window and crouched in front of the screen. “Morning.”

  Bella looked up, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Good morning.”

  “What are you up to today?”

  “Right now, I’m drinking a cup of decaffeinated coffee.”