by Nancy Bush
“Luke, right?” she greeted him with an ironic smile.
“That’s right. How’re you doing?”
“You mean the breast cancer?” She shrugged lightly. “It’s a battle I’m losing.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shook her head and sighed, then waved him inside. “Come in. Take a seat. You want some coffee? I’ve got a pot brewing.”
“Sure. Would you like some help?” He felt embarrassed that he’d pushed her into playing hostess.
“I’ve got it. You want cream or sugar?”
“Black’s fine.”
Luke saw one particular chair arranged directly in front of the television and bypassed it for a worn, overstuffed plaid chair angled to one side. He perched on the edge, wondering if he should ignore her command and follow her into the kitchen.
But she returned a few moments later with two mugs of coffee. “My vice is loads of cream and sugar. I figure, what does it matter now? I struggled with weight all my life and now I just keep losing pounds. Be careful what you wish for, huh?”
“Thank you,” he said, accepting his coffee. “Let me just say, I’m sorry I left you so many messages.”
“Don’t back down now. You want the Carreras and so do I. Let’s work together.”
“Okay.”
She settled herself in the chair in front of the television. As she sat down, one skinny white leg escaped the robe, but she tucked it back in quickly. “They killed my husband.”
“I’d like to prove that.”
“But there’s no hard evidence. It’s just a theory proposed by a grieving widow. Make that a guilt-stricken grieving widow because well, she had an affair with one of them and her husband found out.”
This was more information than Luke had expected, but he sensed that Peg was racing against time and was bound and determined to make things right, or as right as they could be, no matter at what cost to herself. “Which one?” he asked, and she barked out a short laugh.
“That’s the question? Not did your husband know? Did you tell him? Or did he go to a watery grave thinking you were still the starry-eyed ingénue from forty years earlier?” Before he could answer, she said, “Blake Carrera. The sexy one with the scar. Brian’s good, too, but Blake’s the really dangerous one. He’s the predator.”
Little birds need to fly . . .
“Can you give me an example?” Luke asked.
“Whenever Ted was away, or engaged by something that took his attention, Blake was always touching me. He was careful at first, I realize now. Testing the situation. He was funny, too. Clever. I found myself thinking about him a lot, and I looked forward to any time they would be coming by to talk about selling the cabin. At first I was against selling, like Ted. I thought, if they want it so badly, we should hang on to it. But I’ve never really liked the place, and then Ted kept stringing them along and stringing them along, and one night he was with Brian at some bar and Blake came by and . . .” She drew a slow breath and exhaled it carefully. “We just fell on each other like we were the last people on earth. Or at least that’s how it was for me. And then he was like a drug. I couldn’t have enough of him. And that’s when he started pulling back. Just a little, then a little more. You know how it goes.” She looked at the blank eye of the television, but he could sense she was seeing something else. “Then they went out on that boat. Not Blake. Brian and Ted. And then Ted was gone, and you know what my first thought was? Now I’m free.”
Luke didn’t say anything. She was on a roll, and he sensed she’d been waiting to unburden herself.
“The breast cancer came back with a vengeance after Ted’s death. Maybe it was karma. I don’t know. I’ve been away to ‘cancer camp.’”
“Cancer camp?”
“That’s just what I call it. Living with my sister. Chemo and radiation.” She shot him a sideways look. “Fun times.”
“I really would like to put them away,” Luke said.
“I’m not above manufacturing evidence,” she said, “but then, I’m dying and I don’t care. Your old partner . . .”
“Bolchoy,” Luke offered.
“He would take the risks, but I’m guessing you walk the line more.”
“I want them behind bars, not me.”
She smiled and it lit up her face. Then she immediately grew sober. “I want both of the Carreras to pay for taking Ted’s life. I owe him that.” Her eyes grew moist, but her expression was set and angry. “So, whatever I can do to help you, just let me know.”
“Let’s go over their tactics. How they first approached you and Ted. What they offered.”
“They were insistent right from the start. They wanted our property more than the others, at least that’s the way it seemed. They were undone that the Wrens were building the lodge, that it had been approved. That really pissed them off. Made them see red and more determined than ever.”
“Might be just the way they do business, from what I understand.”
“They’re cruel. Blake is anyway. They want it all. More than just the deal. I think they wanted to cut Ted’s balls off. Steal his wife, his home, his life. It’s like a game to them, and I fell for all of it.” She gazed back at the blank television. “Just promise me you’ll make them pay.”
“I’ll certainly give it my best shot.”
“I want to see Blake Carrera dead,” she stated flatly.
Luke understood the sentiment. “All right. Tell me all about how you met the Carreras, what your first dealings were with them, when you determined you weren’t going to sell to them. Things like that.”
She nodded and got up from her chair, heading toward the kitchen. “This is going to take a while, and if that’s the case, I’m going to add some rum to my coffee. Let me know if you need a shot yourself.”
“I think I’m okay.”
“Suit yourself.”
* * *
Waiting for Luke to contact her after his meeting with Peg Bellows was torture, and it gave Andi way too much time to review her meeting with Mimi. She texted Carter as soon as she was home, because he still hadn’t gotten back to her, and she added Emma to the string as well. Both of them got back to her almost immediately.
Emma: Shit what r we spose to do about that?
Carter: Is it Greg’s?
Don’t know yet, she texted back to both of them. She was just delivering the information, not analyzing it. Let them stew on it a while, and then maybe they could all work out how they wanted to deal with the baby’s impending birth. As far as she was concerned, the child was a Wren until proved otherwise.
It was half past four when Andi heard Luke’s truck rattling up her long drive. She glanced out the window in time to see him sweep into view from beneath the canopy of fir boughs. Her heart beat light and fast. It had been a long time since she’d seen him. Too long, she thought.
At that same moment she heard a text come in on her phone, which she’d left on the table by the door, where she always dropped her keys. She glanced at the screen and saw the message was from Trini: Bobby coming by Friday. I’m asking him if we can get together Saturday. Work 4 u?
Saturday was two days away. Andi didn’t have plans for either Friday or Saturday. Sure, she wrote back, dreading the meeting a little. It would be different if she had a date herself, she supposed, and idly wondered if Luke was busy.
Like you’re really going to ask him to go with you to meet your friend and her boyfriend. Then she thought: If you hire him as a bodyguard, you’ll see him all the time.
“I worry about you, Andi. I really do,” she murmured aloud as she, with a glance at the window, watched Luke’s long legs stride across her small yard and up the steps to the front door. He rapped once and she crossed the room in an instant.
He looked . . . good. She imagined what that hard chest would feel like pressed up against her and felt a jolt of awareness even though he hadn’t touched her in any way.
“Hey,” he greeted her with a big smile.
“Been a while,” he said as he entered her small cabin and looked around. “Looks nice.”
Andi followed his gaze to the furniture arrangement, a few items of artwork that included an impressionistic painting of sunflowers she’d done herself and hung over the fireplace. “I’ve been making it mine.”
“How’re you doing?”
“Fine. Really. I’m fine.” He looked at her closely, as if checking the veracity of her statement and she shook her head and said, “I don’t know if I thanked you enough for calling in the cavalry at Lacey’s that night.”
“You thanked me over and over. Trust me. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Yeah, well, bad things happen and we get past them.” She half laughed. “I wish that were true of the Carrera brothers.”
“One way or another, we’ll get past them.”
“You promise?” She lifted her brows.
His flashing smile made her heart squeeze a bit. “Gonna do my damnedest.”
This was a dangerous conversation. She purposely changed it by asking, “Would you like something to drink? I’ve got coffee, tea, water, and I think there’s a diet cola rattling around somewhere. Or beer, wine . . . a martini?”
“You having anything?” he asked curiously.
Andi’s thoughts returned to Mimi and her baby bump. “I sure am. Red wine and a lot of it.”
“Ah. You met with—”
“Mimi Quade. About six months along maybe?” she added brightly.
“I think I’ll take some of that red wine, too.” Then, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not like I didn’t know she was pregnant.” Andi walked toward the kitchen. “It was just kind of hard, seeing her.”
“I can imagine.”
“What did Peg Bellows have to say?” she asked, deliberately changing the subject again as she pulled a bottle of Cabernet from her tiny, black wrought-iron wine rack.
“Well, there’s no love lost over the Carreras there anymore.”
Andi opened a drawer and took out the corkscrew, but her mind was stuck on the image of Mimi’s baby bump. It was like she couldn’t see anything else all of a sudden. She sensed herself sinking into despair and was surprised that it had come up on her so fast when she’d thought she was past it.
Luke went on, “The brothers worked both Peg and Ted, coming off as friends, benign investors who would buy their house for a maximum price. They’d done the same thing with the Bellows’s neighbors. A little different scenario, but all with the same goal.”
Andi stood perfectly still. Loss had her in its tight embrace, squeezing the breath from her. Unaware, Luke said, “It’s the same tale I hear whenever the Carreras are involved.”
She tried to speak but couldn’t find the words. Her nose burned and she sensed tears building. She clutched the corkscrew with a death grip.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, coming nearer until he was right beside her as she faced the counter. “Something happen?”
She shook her head.
“Here, let me do that.” He took the opener from her now unresisting hand. Tears filled her eyes. She was embarrassed, but there was nothing she could do. Luke shot concerned looks at her as he uncorked the bottle. To her consternation, he reached forward and caught a tear with the tip of his finger. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said softly, and that opened the floodgates.
“I’m fine.” Her voice shook.
“I know.” He reached forward and folded her into the strength of his arms. She could smell the earthy, masculine scent of him and she wanted to cuddle into him and weep. Instead she stood like a stiff rod and squeezed her eyes closed, trying to stem the flow. “I don’t want to cry.”
“I know.”
“Doesn’t do any good and it makes you look like hell.” She choked out a miserable little laugh.
“I don’t think you could ever look like hell.”
“Don’t be nice to me.”
He tightened his grip. “Okay, I’ll treat you bad.”
That made her laugh for real and she pulled back, but his arms wouldn’t completely release her. “I’m so sorry,” she said shakily. “I’m fine. Really I am. It just came over me.”
“It’s okay.”
“I want to hear more about what Peg said. I really do.”
He hesitated a moment, then admitted, “She said she wants to see Blake Carrera dead.”
“Dead?” Andi swiped at her tears, turned away from his scrutiny, and he finally, somewhat reluctantly, released her.
“They had an affair. It ended badly, and Ted died.”
“I thought it was Brian on the boat with him.”
“It was, but where there’s one Carrera brother, there’s another. You sure you’re okay?”
“No, but I’m trying. Okay?”
He nodded and she managed a thin smile before opening an upper cupboard and pulling out two crystal stemmed wineglasses.
“That’s a little fancy for me,” Luke said. “I could break that. How about a small tumbler?”
“No. Sorry. If you break it, you break it. But I need a little bit of... ceremony and beauty.”
“Like that, huh?”
“Yes, like that,” she said, pouring them each a glass. The red liquid shone like blood under the lights. “You want to walk out to the lake?” she asked.
“Sure.”
They carried their wineglasses as Andi led the way out the back door. The rain had ceased and the afternoon was easing into a soft evening, with the smell of damp earth rising upward. A capricious breeze teased the willow branches. Luke picked up a denuded branch and curved it into a circle. “Art Kessler still doing your yard?” he asked.
“Yeah, I like Art.”
“Good.”
“What else did Peg say?”
“She said after the Carreras cultivated a friendship with them, they began to pressure them to sell, slowly at first but then with more push. The brothers had a vision for the south end of the lake, and the Bellows’s cabin was the linchpin of their plan. If the Bellowses sold, then other property owners would fall like dominoes, and the Carreras would control the south end of the lake.”
“Greg worried about that,” she murmured.
“With good reason. The Carreras have bought and sold tons of property all over the Northwest, but it sounds like they were really on this one. Meanwhile, your family was doing the same thing on the north end.”
“We weren’t pressuring homeowners. Mr. Allencore sold us his ten cabins before he died, and the junior camp was something Greg worked on for a long time.”
“The lodge was approved. Peg said the Carreras were undone about that. That’s the word she used. Undone.”
“You think that’s why they gave me the bird message? To scare me off?”
“Yeah, but why just you? Why didn’t Emma get one, or even Carter? I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
“Did Peg say anything else?”
“Just that the Carreras thought they could beat you to the punch and control more properties because they had connections within the county. They’re planning on stopping the lodge any way they can.”
“It’s too late. Carter has connections, too. And Greg had connections.”
“Yeah, I think the brothers made a mistake there. They thought they could gum up the lodge works through the county, but whoever’s in their pocket wasn’t able to stop your construction.”
“I don’t get why it’s such a fight. The lake’s big.”
“I keep telling you: the Carreras don’t like to share.”
“What is that?” Andi asked, gesturing to the ring Luke had made out of the willow branch.
“Art. Can’t you tell?” He grinned.
Andi gazed at him in amusement. It was way too easy being with him. “I’m embarrassed about falling apart.”
“Forget about it.”
“I’ll try.” She took a couple of
steps closer to the broken-down dock that had once afforded access to the water. “Carter keeps meeting with different people in the county.”
“Then maybe he’s the one who foiled the Carreras’ plans. After Ted Bellows’s death, the tide turned away from them politically. The county balked on issuing them building permits. The homeowners stopped trusting them. A few of the Bellows’s neighbors did sell, but most held firm, although one of them told me the Carreras had upped their offer to a price that was hard to resist.”
“Recently? So, there is some action with them?” Andi had hoped they’d closed up shop and moved away from Schultz Lake, even though she knew that was unlikely.
“The owner didn’t say when, but he admitted he didn’t sell out of respect to Ted and Peg.”
“Which means it’s probably only a matter of time.”
Luke took a swallow from the crystal wineglass. Andi focused on his hands, thinking how strong they looked. “Does Peg want Brian dead, too?”
“Maybe.” He started to say something, thought about it, shook his head. Finally he said, “She’s been gone because she’s been having cancer treatment. Chemo. Radiation. She’s been living with her sister.”
“Oh no.”
“The cancer recurred after Ted’s death and she’s living with a lot of guilt and regret.” He shook his head. “She probably wants ’em both dead.”
Just as Luke finished his glass of wine the rain returned in a soft drizzle. They walked back to the cabin together. “I’d better go,” Luke said. “I’ll let you know if and when I learn something more about the brothers.”
“Okay.”
He handed her the willow ring and they both smiled. Then she walked him to the door.
“Keep in touch,” she said lightly, feeling like having him on retainer was more of an indulgence than a need. But it was her money to spend.
“Will do,” he answered, then he ducked his head against the rain as he headed for his truck.
Chapter Fourteen
Friday morning Gretchen, full of nervous energy, swiveled back and forth in her desk chair. She’d been waiting for Wes to come into the squad room, but so far he was MIA. They’d finished their reporting on the homicide stabbing, and Lieutenant D’Annibal had suggested they work with their original partners again. Cutbacks were still a worry, and D’Annibal had called George into his office and drawn the blinds on the glass wall that separated it from the squad room. Whatever was said between them, George had come out looking grim. Though he was currently seated at his desk, his eyes on his computer screen, he hadn’t been interested in joking around.