The shadowy figure flung his arms into the air and said, “It’s me—Bryan DuPey. Put the firearms away!” He moved slowly into the light, revealing himself to be a wiry man of medium height with thinning brown hair and bloodshot eyes—and he was wearing a police uniform.
“Damn it, DuPey, what the hell are you doing sneaking in like that?” With a glance at Penelope, Noah slid his knife beneath his jacket.
Brooke’s pistol disappeared into the holster hidden beneath her vest.
Rafe continued to hold his gun, but he pointed it toward the floor.
Apparently they knew this policeman.
Cautiously, DuPey lowered his hands. “I parked in the alley and came through the backyard. I thought I’d come around the front; then I saw the back door was open a few inches and I—”
Rafe interrupted. “It was open a few inches?” Turning to Brooke, he asked in an overly polite tone, “Honey, did you leave the back door open?”
“No.” She couldn’t have sounded surer—or more steely. “We went back there, Penelope and I. We paced out the covered porch and talked about our plans for the backyard, and when we came back in, I distinctly remember shutting the door and setting the alarm. Didn’t I, Penelope?”
Penelope nodded and whispered, “Yes, and we’ve been together ever since.”
Rafe’s cool gaze swept Penelope, judged her, and he nodded. “All right. Let’s check things out. Noah, come with me. DuPey, check the house. Brooke, you stay here with Penelope.” He looked at his wife as if expecting her to argue.
She nodded and unzipped her vest to reveal the holster strapped to her ribs.
DuPey drew his pistol.
Noah’s knife reappeared.
The men headed toward the kitchen.
Penelope stared at Brooke, quivering with aftershocks as sharp and nasty as after an earthquake. “Why is everyone armed?”
“I told you. We’ve had problems.” The answer wasn’t so much curt as brief; Brooke appeared to be listening.
So Penelope listened, too. Listened to the sound of the men’s shoes on the floorboards, listened as the back door opened and closed, listened as the house creaked and moaned. “Problems? Like vandalism?”
“Problems.” Brooke shot a sympathetic sideways glance at Penelope. “Like murder.”
Penelope took a quivering breath. “Oh.”
“Things have been happening here. Ugly stuff. It’s not the same small, quiet town you left nine years ago. But listen.” Brooke glanced toward the back of the house, then spoke quickly. “I want to talk to you. Explain… I swear to you I didn’t set you up. About Noah, I mean.”
“Oh.” Yes. First Noah, then weapons, then a search for someone who had broken through the Di Lucas’ security while she and Brooke were actually
in
the house… maybe taking this job was not such a bright idea.
Brooke continued. “I’ve been asking Noah to come and look over the house for weeks. He knows a lot about remodeling, about building. He has to, because of the resort. But he’s been busy, and I’d given up on him. His showing up while you were here—that was pure bad luck.”
“I never thought you… It didn’t occur to me that you had set me up.” It didn’t matter right now, either. What mattered was this almost casual acceptance by a seemingly normal woman of that most heinous crime—murder.
The old house, formerly so welcoming, now felt cold, haunted. Penelope bunched up her shoulders and sidled closer to Brooke.
Still in that urgent, quiet tone, Brooke said, “I didn’t tell you my husband’s name because I thought you’d hesitate to take the job, and I’ve interviewed so many
interior decorators, and you wouldn’t believe how unwilling they are to listen. I want my house to be done my way, not theirs, and you… you have exactly the same instincts I do, and I really want you to work with me. I should have told you about Rafe. I
did
intend to, but just not yet.”
“He’s going to investigate me, isn’t he?” Penelope had secrets. Probably nothing Rafe would care about, but she hated that sense of exposure.
“He’s jumpy.” Brooke excused him. “Everybody is these days, but a couple of months ago I was almost murdered—”
“You… you…”
Brooke
was almost murdered? “When you said murder, I thought—”
“Yes, we’ve had real dead bodies, too.” Brooke looked down at her hands with a grimace. “If you don’t mind, I don’t want to talk about it. I urp easily these days.”
“Sure. No problem.” Although Penelope probably needed to know some details before she signed a contract. “But you’re okay now?”
“I’m fine. I fight back.” Brooke smiled tightly. “You’d think I should be the one having nightmares, but no. Rafe is. He’s so afraid of losing me.”
Everything about this conversation was surreal. “I thought… Wasn’t it Rafe who broke your heart all those years ago?”
“We’re the proverbial star-crossed lovers. But this time, we got it right.” Brooke passed her hand over her belly again. “We were supposed to move to Sweden. Then we found out we’re having this baby.”
Penelope wavered between joy at a new arrival and envy… and a surge of sorrow. Concentrating on the joy, she said, “Congratulations.”
“We didn’t mean to, not yet, but you know what? Mess up one time…” Brooke’s mood turned in a moment; her laughter was a lighthearted trill of amusement. “I can’t believe it. It’s such a miracle. My mom is so excited, and Nonna—so we’re staying in Bella Terra, and we bought this house, and we’ve only got six months, maybe a little more, to get it in shape. I want to make the little bedroom into a nursery—”
“And the attic into a playroom.”
“Yes!” Brooke took Penelope’s hands. “See? I told you. You have the same vision for the house I do. Please stay and work with me. I know what the rates are for interior decorators”—she named a price that took Penelope’s breath away—“and I could help you get more work. There’s demand here. You could move to Bella Terra.”
Penelope shook her head. “No, I couldn’t.” Because no matter what she told herself, she couldn’t live every day knowing she might run into Noah.
Brooke started to speak, then turned her head toward the back of the house.
DuPey appeared, pistol in his hand.
He walked quietly for a man in boots.
He focused his nondescript gaze on Penelope, for the first time really observing her. “Who are you?” he asked bluntly.
Brooke introduced them. “Penelope Alonso Caldwell, chief of police Bryan DuPey.”
“Welcome to Bella Terra.” He nodded with a little more sociability. “I hope to see you soon in better circumstances.”
But Penelope noted his pistol never wavered, and she would bet a second investigation of her background
would be conducted before the day was out. She didn’t like being treated like a felon when her worst crime was a shoplifting charge at the age of fourteen. She didn’t like this whole setup.
“I’ve got to finish looking around.” DuPey entered each ground-floor room with his pistol at the ready, clearly anticipating trouble hiding behind every door.
Could Penelope stay here when people she thought seemed perfectly normal pulled guns and knives and handled them competently, as if they’d had far too much experience in their use? “Brooke.”
Brooke turned back to Penelope. She must have read Penelope’s wariness, for she said in despair, “You’re going to quit before we even start, aren’t you?”
Penelope was going to back off. She really was. But Brooke’s pleading eyes reminded her how much they’d enjoyed their time together.
Brooke waved a hand around. “Look at this place! It needs us. It needs
you
. Just from the few hours we’ve been together, I know how much you would enjoy seeing the house come back to life. Things aren’t as bad as they look.…” She hesitated, then corrected herself. “That is, they are, but you’re not involved. The trouble won’t touch you. We’ll keep you safe.”
“I’d like to work with you on the house,” Penelope admitted. “But—”
Still in high-alert mode, DuPey walked through the entry again and started up the stairs.
Penelope’s gaze followed him as he disappeared into the dim light above. She needed to remember that she had no stake in the Di Lucas and their lives. She needed to recall what happened the last time she was in Bella Terra, and act with caution.
On the other hand, she had to remain here until she saw Joseph Bianchin, and God knew when he would be back in town.
Was meeting him at last worth the worry of working with a family that had already caused her so much pain? Was meeting Joseph Bianchin worth seeing Noah again?
She straightened her shoulders.
She’d already made that decision. Yes, she could deal with the Di Lucas and with Noah. The unexpected element was… murder. “Let me think about it before I agree.”
Chapter 12
T
he back door opened and closed again.
Brooke reached for her pistol.
Rafe called, “It’s us!”
Penelope realized she had been holding her breath, and let it out with a sigh.
The men tromped back from the kitchen, weapons stowed but, Penelope suspected, still easily accessible.
Brooke looked at Rafe grimly. “Well?”
“No footprints in the dirt in the back, but the porch has been swept,” Noah said.
“I didn’t do it,” Brooke said.
“I told him that,” Noah answered. “I said, ‘Brooke doesn’t do housework. As soon as she came to work for me at the resort, she established that very clearly and loudly.’ But Rafe is still under the delusion that his wife can be trained with firmness and affection to shake, sit up, and beg—and clean house.”
Rafe smacked him in the chest. “Shut up, you idiot.”
“I was trying to help!” Noah protested.
“God protect me from your kind of help.” But in the first bit of humor Penelope had seen in Rafe, one corner of his mouth kicked up in a crooked grin.
Brooke chuckled and shook the hair back from her face, and when Rafe pulled her into his embrace, she went willingly.
Noah’s glance touched Penelope, but for her he didn’t seem to feel the good humor he felt for his brother and his brother’s wife. For her, his gaze was grave, considering, and she looked back steadily. She wanted to speak up, to tell him that if she fled Bella Terra, it wasn’t because of him. He meant nothing to her now; all that mattered was finding her place in a world that had become cold and lonely.
Oh—and staying alive.
But she didn’t speak. Of course not. To start that discussion would be perilous in the extreme.
“So who swept the back porch, and why?” Brooke asked Rafe. “Are you sure it wasn’t the neighbors trying to be social?”
“I’m sure.” Penelope noted that although Rafe held Brooke close to his side, he kept his shooting hand free. “The lock contains a computer chip that records all the activity at that door, and is supposed to send the record to my security team. The door was not only opened from the outside, but the electronics in the lock were scrambled in such a way that the alarm didn’t go off and the report was not sent.”
“If the lock was scrambled, how did you get that information?” Penelope asked.
Every eye turned to her with varying degrees of suspicion.
DuPey replied from the head of the stairs. “Rafe always has a backup system.” Slowly he descended and he, too, kept Penelope locked in his gaze. “Everything’s fine upstairs. You might do a sweep for monitoring equipment, though, Rafe.”
“Oh, believe me, I intend to.”
Penelope had never felt so awkward, so embarrassed, as if she were guilty of some heinous crime, of distracting Brooke while these people, these criminals, slipped in and did… nothing.
“What about the video? Surely you can see who broke in,” Brooke said.
“It’s been wiped,” Rafe said. “This is my best system. Or was. It’s about to be upgraded.”
Penelope still struggled to understand. “Why would someone do that? Break in and do no damage?”
“It’s a warning.” Rafe gazed pointedly at Noah.
Noah stood still and silent, and that did seem… odd. But now he turned to DuPey, and in a quiet voice, he asked, “What are
you
doing here? Is this a social call?”
“Hardly. With all the crap that’s been happening in Bella Terra, I don’t have time for social calls.” In the flash of an eye, DuPey assumed a different attitude, one of a sheriff questioning suspects. “I was going to call you Di Lucas and have a little chat about this guy who’s currently in the hospital with ten broken fingers.”
“Ten broken fingers.” Noah’s voice was very quiet. “Sounds like we have a gang in town.”
“Yeah, what Noah said. So why do you want to talk to us?” Rafe asked cautiously.
Brooke’s mouth tightened into a thin, grim line. “Why would you assume we’re involved?”
As far as Penelope was concerned, no one was asking
the right questions. Shouldn’t they be asking how a guy got ten broken fingers? Or why? Why were they acting like ten broken fingers were a usual circumstance in Bella Terra?
“I know you’re not involved, Brooke. Not Chloë or Mrs. Di Luca, either. It wasn’t a youth gang, if that’s what you mean, Noah. Just possibly the Di Luca brothers. The hospital called when this guy showed up at the emergency room with his hands looking like someone took a crowbar to them. We don’t see stuff like that here.” DuPey pushed his hat toward the back of his head and scratched his forehead. “Or we didn’t used to. It took a while to dig the story out of him, especially since he’s got a record dating back twelve years: breaking and entering, vandalism, suspected murder.”
“An upstanding citizen, then,” Rafe said sardonically.
“This is a bad son of a bitch,” DuPey said.
Brooke stirred in Rafe’s arms. “Let me guess. He stumbled across the job posting on the Internet about someone being willing to pay good money to find and retrieve a bottle of wine.”
DuPey’s worn bloodhound eyes looked like they were barely open, but his gaze touched every one of them with screened acuity.
Noah stood apart, in the shadows by the stairs, his face turned away, but his very immobility made Penelope think he was listening intently.
No one asked about the wine, so they knew something Penelope did not, and she wasn’t about to interject herself into the conversation. Every time she did, someone viewed her with suspicion.