Secrets of Bella Terra: A Scarlet Deception Novel

by Christina Dodd

  “You heard him not say that he had hurt her.” Rafe put just the right note of disbelief into his tone.

  Her hackles rose. “No. I heard him not say he knew she’d been hurt.”

  Rafe’s blue eyes held all the warmth of an iceberg. “I want to interview him.”

  “He’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  “When I came back from the hospital, he’d left town. No one’s seen him since.”

  Rafe’s teeth snapped like a wolf’s on the attack. “How very convenient.”

  People who lost their tempers easily were ill suited to the job of concierge, and Brooke’s early life with her parents had taught her the advantages of a placid disposition. Yet every time Rafe came into town—every time—she found herself riding a series of highs and lows best suited to a drama queen. Now, although she knew better, she got mad. “Are you accusing me of being behind the attack on your grandmother? Or perhaps even attacking your grandmother?” She was pleased to note her tone remained even.

  A beat. “No.”

  “Generous of you.” She smiled faintly, and looked him right in the eyes, challenging him.

  “Yes.” He seemed serious. “What was this gardener’s name?”

  “Luis Hernández.”

  “I’ll get his Social Security number from the office. See if I can track him down. He’s got to be somewhere.” Turning back to the wheel, Rafe put the car in gear and drove on up the road toward the home ranch.

  Brooke turned her face back to the breeze, let the wind cool her cheeks, and tried to be glad of the reminder of Rafe’s suspicious temperament before she tumbled back in love once again.

  Chapter 7

  Bella Terra was just a place.

  Ever since he could remember, Rafe had been making this drive up to the home ranch. Before he was five, he had strained to see past the sides of the car seat, uncaring of the vineyards and the olive trees, the signs advertising little wineries and the long driveways leading into them. He had longed for that first glimpse of Nonna’s house, decorated for Christmas with its lights like beacons leading him home. Even in the chilliest weather—and the hills of central California got occasional blasts of cold—she was always there on the porch, waiting for them to drive up so she could unhook his seat belt and carry him inside. His grandfather had a deep, gruff voice. His brothers were whirling dervishes. The smells had flooded Rafe’s senses: evergreen, cinnamon, and Nonna’s warm scent, like flowers dipped in vanilla. The tastes had been glorious: ham, turkey and dressing, fruit salad with whipped cream, cranberry apple pie, and fruitcake bursting with dried fruits and walnuts.

  It had been a horrible shock the day he’d eagerly accepted a piece of fruitcake from a friend’s mother and discovered it was nothing like Nonna’s.

  But then, no one was like Nonna.

  He glanced at Brooke, who stared pensively out the window.

  Brooke was just a woman.

  On the first day of school in the first year he’d returned from Italy, fresh from his movie career, hating himself and everyone else, Brooke had been standing in the corridor, hunching her shoulders and clutching her books. Something about the way she had looked—wretched, depressed, and terrified—appealed to him. After all, misery loved company.

  He had been two years older than the rest of his classmates because he hadn’t gone to school, not consistently, and the schools he had attended had been Italian or Indonesian or Australian. Wherever his mother filmed, he went to schools or had a tutor.

  So Bella Terra didn’t know where to place him. He was miles ahead in logic and math; he read and spoke English perfectly—and about five other languages—but didn’t understand a speck of English grammar. He didn’t play baseball or football, not the American kind, or basketball, and he refused to have anything more to do with acting. And he had a surly attitude, one developed during all the years of listening to his parents and their shouting matches, then of watching his mother conduct her flamboyant love affairs and constantly profitable marriages. She’d finally given up and sent him to live with his Nonna, his half brother Noah and his half brother Eli, who was back from Argentina and closed up tighter than a drum.

  But Nonna always made everything better.

  Brooke was the same personality type. Loving, generous, understanding. He’d been attracted to her not because she was like his Nonna but because . . . well, because she was tall with a nice rack and good legs. Not admirable reasons, Rafe now admitted, but hell—he’d only been fourteen. At that age, higher aspirations were beyond him.

  So he’d hauled her along in his wake as he swaggered and sneered his way through seventh grade.

  By eighth grade she was a habit.

  By the time they reached high school, she had grown into her awkward beauty and every guy envied him. Not that he laid a hand on her. She was too young, too innocent, too adoring of him, and he was by God determined not to be the jerk his father was, grabbing at every young woman bowled over by his looks. So he kept her at arm’s length, and kept all the other guys there, too, and he was pretty proud of his restraint right up to the time when her crap-ass father came for graduation. When he left, she told Rafe everything went well.

  He snorted.

  She looked at him, blue eyes wide and unblinking, and even he, dumb, insensitive guy that he was, saw the anguish she concealed. What was he supposed to do? Leave her to suffer alone?

  He wasn’t inexperienced sexually, hadn’t been since his earliest adolescence. He knew better than to sleep with her, but my God! They were best friends . . . who fell so wildly in love.

  First love, bright and clean. Forever.

  Except, of course, it wasn’t forever.

  His own fault, he guessed. Because ever since Rafe figured out his own father was far from the hero he portrayed on the screen, since Rafe had done his role in that dragon movie and realized people expected him to be who he had pretended to be—Rafe had been determined to become the real thing. Not some silly on-screen superman, but a brave man. A man of integrity. A true hero.

  At the end of that magical summer, he had followed his dream and joined the military.

  When Brooke found out, she had thrown a fit unlike anything he had ever imagined from the cool, composed girl. She said he should have consulted her.

  Now, looking back, he knew why she’d thought that. They had a relationship.

  And she talked. She talked about going to college and what she was going to study. She discussed her mother’s puzzling behavior in moving them here, and how it was fate that Kathy Petersson had chosen Bella Terra and he’d moved in with his grandmother at the same time. She speculated about their future, painting mental pictures of their lives entwined together forever.

  But it never occurred to him that his plans mattered to her, or that she’d consider his determination to join Special Forces a clear sign that he would turn into a jerk like her father. She hadn’t understood that his decision had nothing to do with her father and everything to do with his.

  In the annals of arguments, theirs had been epic, and by the time he boarded that plane to go to basic training, their relationship was over and she vowed never to speak to him again.

  That hadn’t worked out so well. Her senior year in college . . .

  He sighed.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing.” They were like two planets circling each other, and each time it was a cosmic event filled with light and heat and always, always a colossal explosion.

  They pulled up to Nonna’s house and Rafe had a choice—get right down to business or have a frank and open discussion about their relationship.

  He got down to business. Not because he was a coward, but because his priority was Nonna’s safety. He told Brooke, “I want you to follow me through the house. I’m looking for something, anything that strikes you as odd. Anything out of place. Anything . . . anything.”

  “You want a second pair of eyes,” she said.

  “I want a fe
minine perspective. You taught me early on that women look at things differently.”

  “Not differently. Women look at things properly.” She grinned.

  “Hm.” He didn’t grin back, but not because he wasn’t amused. Because when he saw that impish smile light her whole face, it tugged at his heart, his memories, his . . . Damn it. At his groin.

  He needed to get this mystery solved, and soon, so he could clear out.

  At his lack of response, her pleasure faded and she got out to stand beside the car.

  He got out, too, and listened. It was quiet up here. A light breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees and brought the scent of spring from the orchards and vineyards. Nonna was a sharp old lady. If it had been this quiet up here that day, she would have heard an accomplice moving around outside. So probably there was the one guy in the cellar.

  Rafe looked up and down the driveway, then up at the house. At the steep steps, clean of any betraying footprints. At the wide covered porch with the swing that hung from chains from the ceiling, Nonna’s rocking chair and table beside it, the hanging baskets filled with fluorescent orange impatiens. He gazed thoughtfully at the tall blue-flowered hydrangeas that flourished on either side of the steps and down the sides of the house.

  “I don’t see anything,” Brooke said.

  He walked into the flower bed, pushed aside first one hydrangea, then another, until he found what he was looking for. “Here.” He pointed at the track of the single wide tire. “Did DuPey note this? That the perp arrived by motorcycle and hid it in the bushes?”

  “No.” Brooke looked at Rafe with a renewed respect.

  Stupid to want to preen.

  Plunging deeper into the foliage, he found the marks made by shoes with a distinctive tread, and came out satisfied that he’d made a start. He headed up the steps—listening to them creak, he made a note to replace and paint them while he was here—and onto the porch.

  Brooke followed.

  Up here, everything looked routine, including the condition of the lock on the front door. There were no scratches, no sign of forced entry. As he knew and his brothers had said, if the intruder had come from this direction, he’d have walked right in.

  Rafe unsuccessfully tried the door. At least now it was locked.

  Gazing out over the yard, over the valley, he saw the familiar vista and yet . . . how different things were now, knowing as he did that somewhere out there, a predator lurked and, perhaps, a plot to harm his grandmother. Why, he didn’t yet understand. But he would. He would.

  “If you don’t have the keys, I do.” Brooke fished them out of her purse.

  Well, of course she did. In the years since he’d lived in Bella Terra, Brooke had received the key to every Di Luca lock.

  Opening the door, she gestured for him to precede her.

  He entered the house, and stopped just inside to listen and observe.

  The dim hallway went straight back to the kitchen. To the left, a wide arch opened into the old-fashioned parlor complete with crocheted doilies on the arms of the chairs and the couch, and . . . “When did Nonna get a flat-screen TV?” he asked.

  “When she realized she could watch football in HD.”

  “Of course.” His Nonna had always been an outstanding athlete, as competitive in badminton as she was in softball, and that translated to a fierce love of pro sports.

  Brooke smiled fondly at the massive television that covered most of the wall over the fireplace. “She’s into Australian football now.”

  “What’s so great about Australian football?”

  “She says it’s faster, more exciting, and since the guys don’t wear pads, she can really see their tushies.”

  Rafe rounded on Brooke.

  She held up her hands. “Hey, I’m just repeating what she said.”

  Women. He turned back to his examination of the room.

  “But she’s right,” Brooke said reflectively.

  “You’ve been up here to watch with her?” He kept his tone noncommittal.

  “Yes. It’s fun. I bring hors d’oeuvres, she serves champagne, and we shout at the TV.”

  “Aren’t hors d’oeuvres and champagne contrary to the spirit of Australian football?”

  “Probably. Does that kind of nefarious activity make me even more of a suspect?”

  He fully faced her. “Yes.”

  “Which part?” Brooke’s eyes sparked with ire. “The hors d’oeuvres and champagne, the tushies, or enjoying an evening with the matriarch whose grandsons don’t spend enough time with her?”

  Chapter 8

  Rafe winced. Brooke never hesitated to make her opinion known, at least not to him, and he should have seen that reproach coming. “What makes you a suspect? All of your activities. None of them. I may not have been here for Nonna when she needed me, but I’m not going to fail her now.”

  “She worries about you.”

  “No need.”

  “You’re not Teflon. You already proved that once.”

  “Nonna knows I’m fine.”

  “Avoiding the issue. I guess you’re not as brave as the military medals might signify.”

  Brooke could always talk rings around him.

  He turned to the bedroom on the right, Nonna’s bedroom. He pushed the door open, stepped inside, and breathed in Nonna’s perfume, flowers dipped in vanilla. The flowered comforter was spread precisely over the queen-size bed; the dust ruffle brushed the off-white carpet; the pillow shams were arranged against the headboard. Family photos covered the walls and the cedar chest, and Nonna’s collection of glass perfume bottles was arrayed on the dresser. Everything looked exactly as it had every morning when Nonna left it.

  He was lucky. Nonna kept her house habitually and with precision. If she’d been a different woman, this investigation would be a lot more difficult.

  Beside him, Brooke said, “It’s amazing how this house makes me feel like all the generations of Di Lucas have worked to create a safe haven.”

  Because she had said exactly what he was thinking, he curtly answered, “Somehow this generation blew it, since a few days ago the heart of the family was hurt. See anything out of place?”

  “No.”

  He moved on to the dining room, a good-size room where a dozen chairs of various shapes and sizes surrounded a long, battered walnut table. Cabinets were built into the far wall. All were constructed in the forties by Palmiro Di Luca, a carpenter. The top row of doors was glass, displaying Nonna’s heirloom china and cut glass. Nothing expensive, just stuff that had been passed down through the generations and was precious to the whole family.

  He scanned the shelves. Eventually, he’d look in the cupboards, but right now, everything looked as it had looked all the years of his life.

  Yet here in the dining room, something was out of place. . . .

  He narrowed his eyes, putting the room out of focus.

  “The candles,” Brooke said uncertainly. “They’re . . . sort of . . .”

  “Yeah.” Ever since he could remember, Nonna had lit the dining room table with tapers inserted into empty Di Luca wine bottles. Now instead of lining the center of the table, the six bottles and their candles were lined up before the master’s chair.

  Brooke started to walk forward, but he gestured her back, flipped on the overhead, and walked in a slow circuit around the table, examining the floor.

  “What are you looking for?” Her voice, always low and throaty, was quieter than normal, as if she feared being overheard.

  “A man’s dirty footprint.” He barked out a laugh that mocked his expectations. “The driver’s license he dropped.”

  “I already looked for that.”

  She spoke so solemnly he looked to see if she was serious. Only when he realized her expression was deadpan did he sigh and shake his head reprovingly. He donned a pair of latex gloves. “Don’t touch anything,” he warned, and walked to the table.

  She followed. “Nonna could have been cleaning the bottles.�
��

  He pointed at the wax drippings that dusted the table, then lifted one candle out of its base. It easily came free. “He removed all the candles, looking for . . . what?”

  “More important, he replaced all the candles when he was done. Why would a thief care enough to tidy up after himself?”

  Of course Brooke would observe the fact that most interested him. “We’ll see if Dopey can lift a fingerprint off any of these,” he said.

  “Don’t be childish, Rafe. His name is DuPey.”

  Her sharp tone was a slap to his pride. “Dating him, are you?”

  “I would, but his wife has access to his guns.”

  Is that where you got the pistol with which you shot and killed a man?

  But he didn’t ask. Not yet.

  He glanced around one more time, then gestured her back into the hallway. They checked the bathroom and second bedroom, but all was in order there.

  They entered the kitchen. He saw the dent in the plaster wall Nonna’s head had created, the splotch of blood on the floor where she’d lain unconscious. His cold, clear anger grew, and for that he was grateful. That icy rage gave him the edge that had made him the best tracker in his unit.

  Out of respect for Nonna’s wine collection, someone had shut the cellar door her attacker had left open.

  Still, it smelled off in here, and Brooke gave an exclamation of dismay. “Honestly. You men. Couldn’t you have cleaned up the groceries?”

  He looked. A puddle of ice cream had leaked from the cloth bag and dried on the table and the floor. “I wasn’t one of the men who . . .” He shut up. He wasn’t going to win that one.

  Brooke went to the counter to collect paper towels.

  “Leave it,” he said. “We’ll get someone up here to clean it up. One of the maids from the resort.”

  “No. I want to do it.” Brooke pulled a swath off the roll and used it to wipe up the worst of the mess. “Nonna wouldn’t like it to sit here on her table and floor.”