The Villa

by Nora Roberts

  brilliant at letting things happen and remaining somehow oblivious to the damage done."

  Word spread. Across the country, and across the Atlantic. Donato sat in the office on the first floor of his home, drank brandy and considered. The house was finally quiet, though he expected the baby would be up squalling for its breast before long.

  Gina was sleeping, and if it wasn't for that habitual middle-of-the-night circus, he could have slipped out and spent a relaxing hour with his mistress.

  Best not to risk it.

  Tony Avano was dead.

  The meeting scheduled with Margaret Bowers the next morning would and should be postponed. That would buy him time. He'd preferred keeping his business dealings with Tony. He'd known just where he stood with Tony Avano.

  Now Tony was dead, and there would be a great upheaval. There would be talk, gossip, delays, snags. He could use that to his advantage.

  He must go back to California, of course. He would have to offer his support and his sympathies to Pilar and Sophia. And assure La Signora that he would do whatever she required him to do in order to maintain Giambelli's production.

  Since it was only two days before Christmas, he would convince Gina that she must remain at home and not upset the children. Yes, that was good. And he could take his pretty lady along for company.

  No one would know the difference.

  Yes, this would give him time to figure out what had to be done, and how to do it.

  Poor Tony, he thought, and lifted his brandy. Rest in peace.

  Jeremy DeMorney turned down the volume on the evening news and removed his dinner jacket. He was glad he'd made it an early night. It was better to be home, alone, when the news hit, than out in public.

  Tony Avano, the worthless bastard, was dead.

  Almost a pity in a way. The current climate had made Avano ripe for picking. And Jerry had waited a good long time for it.

  Leaving behind a sorrowful ex-wife, he imagined, a merry widow and a grieving daughter. All more than he'd deserved.

  As he undressed, Jerry considered flying back out to California to attend whatever memorial service the Giambellis planned. Then dismissed the idea.

  It was a bit too well known that the late, unlamented Avano had slept with Jeremy's wife.

  Oh, they'd handled it like civilized people, of course. Not counting the split lip Jerry had given his adulterous wife as a parting gift. Divorce, financial settlement and a pretense of manners in public.

  Well, Jerry thought, they'd all excelled at pretenses.

  He'd send a personal message to the family expressing his sympathy and regrets. Best, all around, he decided, to keep his distance from the family for the time being.

  He'd make his move there when he was ready.

  For the moment, he'd have a little wake of his own. Damned if he wasn't going to open a bottle of champagne and celebrate murder.

  Sophia spent nearly a week handling her father's murder like a business assignment. With emotions on hold, she made calls, made arrangements, asked questions, answered them and watched her mother like a hawk.

  When she ran into a wall, and she ran into plenty, she did what she could to scale over or tunnel under. The police gave her nothing but the same repetitive line. The investigation was ongoing. All leads were being actively pursued.

  They treated her resentfully, she thought, no differently than they did a reporter. Or a suspect.

  Rene refused to take her calls, and she grew weary of leaving dozens of messages on the machine. Sympathetic messages, concerned messages, polite ones, angry ones, bitter ones.

  Her father would have a memorial service. With or without his widow's input or cooperation.

  She made excuses to her mother, citing a few problems at her San Francisco office that needed her attention, and prepared to drive to the city.

  Tyler was pulling up in the drive as she stepped out of the house.

  "Where're you going?"

  "I have business."

  "Where?"

  She tried to move by him toward the garage, only to have him step into her path. "Look, I'm in a hurry. Go prune a vine."

  "Where?"

  Nerves wanted to snap, and that couldn't be allowed. "I need to run into the city. I have some work."

  "Fine. We'll take my car."

  "I don't need you today."

  "Teamwork, remember?" He knew a woman who was teetering on a thin wire, and he wasn't letting her drive.

  "I can handle this, MacMillan." Why the hell hadn't she said she was going shopping?

  "Yeah, you can handle anything." He put one hand on her arm, opened the car door with the other. "Get in."

  "Did it ever occur to you I'd rather be alone?"

  "Did it ever occur to you I don't care?" To solve the problem he simply picked her up and plopped her on the seat. "Strap in," he ordered, and slammed the door.

  She considered kicking the door open, then kicking him. But she was afraid she'd never stop. There was such a rage inside her, such a burning, raging grief. And she reminded herself, as she'd promised she would, that he had been there for her at the worst moment.

  He slid behind the wheel. Maybe it was because he'd known her more than half his life. Maybe it was because he'd paid more attention to her over the past few weeks than he had over the last twenty years. Either way, Ty thought, he knew that face almost too well. And the composure on it was no real mask, at least not at the moment.

  "So." He turned the car on, glanced toward her. "Where are you really going?"

  "To see the police. I can't get any answers on the phone."

  "Okay." He shifted into first and headed down the drive.

  "I don't need a guard dog, Ty, or a big, broad shoulder or an emotional pillow."

  "Okay." He just kept driving. "For the record, I'd just as soon you didn't need a punching bag, either."

  As an answer, she folded her arms, stared straight ahead. The mountains were shrouded with mist, laced with snow, like a soft-focused photograph. The staggering view did nothing to cheer her. In her mind all she could see was the torn-out sheet from an industry magazine that had come in her mail the day before.

  The photograph of her, her grandmother, her mother that had been published months before had been defiled, as the Giambelli angels had been. Red pen had been used this time, slashing bloody ink over their faces, branding them murdering bitches this time.

  Was it the answer to her repeated calls to Rene? Sophia wondered. Did the woman think such a childish trick would frighten her? She wouldn't let it frighten her. And as she'd burned it in the flames of the fireplace, Sophia had felt disgust, anger, but not fear.

  Yet still, a day later, she couldn't get it out of her mind.

  "Did Eli ask you to baby-sit me?" she demanded of Tyler.

  "No."

  "My grandmother?"

  "No."

  "Then who?"

  "Here's the deal, Sophia. I take orders in business when I have to. I don't take them in my personal life. This is personal. Clear?"

  "No." She looked away from the mountains now, studied his equally compelling profile. "You didn't even like my father, and you're not that crazy about me."

  "I didn't like your father." He said it simply, without apology and without pleasure. And for that reason alone it didn't sting. "Jury's still out on you. But I do like your mother, and I really don't like Rene, or the fact that she tried to sic the cops on Pilar, and maybe on you, over this."

  "Then you'll be thrilled to know my second stop today is Rene. I need to go a round or two with her about a memorial service."

  "Boy, won't that be fun? Do you think there'll be hair pulling and biting involved?"

  "You men really get off on that kind of thing, don't you? It's just sick."

  "Yeah." He sighed, heavy and wistful, and made her laugh, the first easy, genuine laugh in days.

  It occurred to Sophia that she'd never been in an actual police station. Her idea of one had been fic
tionally generated so that she'd expected dark, dank corridors with worn linoleum; noisy, cramped offices; surly-eyed, snarling characters and the stench of bad coffee served in paper cups.

  Secretly, she'd been looking forward to the experience.

  Instead she found an office atmosphere with clean floors and wide hallways that smelled faintly of Lysol. She wouldn't have said it was quiet as a tomb, but when she walked toward the detectives' division with Ty, she could hear her heels click on the floor.

  The detectives' area was scattered with desks, utilitarian, but not scarred and dented as had been her hope. There was the scent of coffee, but it smelled fresh and rich. She did see guns, so that was something. Strapped to belts or harnessed over shoulders. It seemed odd to see them in the well-lit room where the major sound was the clicking of computer keys.

  As she scanned, she connected with Claremont. He glanced toward a door on the side of the room, then rose and walked toward them.

  "Ms. Giambelli."

  "I need to talk to you about my father. About arrangements, and your investigation."

  "When I spoke to you on the phone—"

  "I know what you told me on the phone, Detective. Basically nothing. I think I'm entitled to more information, and I'm certainly entitled to know when my father's body will be released. I'm going to tell you my next step will go over your head. I'll start using every connection I have. And believe me, my family has many connections."

  "I'm aware of that. Why don't we use the lieutenant's office." He gestured, then cursed under his breath when the side door opened and his partner walked out with Rene.

  She was magnificent in black. Pale of cheek, with her hair shining like the sun and coiled at the nape, she was the perfect picture of the society widow. Sophia imagined she'd studied the results carefully before stepping out and she hadn't been able to resist relieving the black with a delicate diamond starburst brooch.

  Sophia stared at the pin for a long moment, then snapped her attention to Rene.

  "What's she doing here?" Rene demanded. "I told you she's been harassing me. Calling me constantly, threatening me." She clenched a handkerchief in her hand. "I want to file a restraining order on her. On all of them. They murdered my poor Tony."

  "Have you been practicing that act long, Rene?" Sophia asked icily. "It still needs a little work."

  "I want police protection. They had Tony killed because of me. They're Italian. They have connections to the Mafia."

  Sophia started to laugh, a little bubble of sound at first that built and built until she couldn't stop. She staggered back and sat on the low bench along the wall. "Oh that's it, that's right. There's a hotbed of organized crime in my grandmother's house. It just took an ex-model, a social-climbing bimbo gold digger to ferret it out."

  She wasn't aware her laughter had turned to weeping, that tears were streaming down her cheeks. "I want to bury my father, Rene. Let me do that. Let me have some part in doing that, then we'll never have to see or speak to each other again."

  Rene tucked her handkerchief back in her purse. She crossed the room, a room that had gone very quiet. And waited until Sophia got to her feet again. "He belongs to me. And you'll have part of nothing."

  "Rene." Sophia reached out, sucked in a breath when her hand was slapped sharply away.

  "Mrs. Avano." Claremont's tone was a warning even as he took her arm.

  "I won't have her touch me. If you or anyone in your family calls me again, you'll deal with my lawyers." Rene threw her chin up and strolled out of the room.

  "For spite," Sophia murmured. "Just for spite."

  "Ms. Giambelli." Maguire touched her arm. "Why don't you come sit down, let me get you some coffee."

  "I don't want any coffee. Will you tell me if there's any progress in your investigation?"

  "We have nothing new to tell you. I'm sorry."

  "When will my father's body be released?"

  "Your father's remains are being released this morning, to his next of kin."

  "I see. I've wasted my time, and yours. Excuse me." She walked out and was already yanking her phone from her purse. She tried Helen Moore first, only to be told the judge was on the bench and unavailable.

  "You think she can stop Rene?"

  "I don't know. I have to try." She called James Moore's office next, frustrated to be told he was in a meeting. As a last ditch, she asked for Linc.

  "Linc? It's Sophia. I need help."

  Pilar sat on a stone bench in the garden. It was cold, but God, she needed the air. She felt trapped in the house in a way she never had before. Trapped by the walls and the windows, guarded by the people who loved her best.

  Watched, she thought, as carefully as an invalid who might pass at any moment.

  They thought she was grieving, and she let them think it. Was that the bigger of her sins? she wondered. To allow everyone to believe she was devastated by grief.

  When she felt nothing. Could feel nothing.

  Unless it was, horribly, the slightest twinge of relief.

  There had been shock and sorrow and grief, but it had all passed so quickly. And her lack of feeling shamed her, so much so, she'd avoided her family as much as possible. So much so, she'd spent nearly the whole of Christmas in her rooms, unable to comfort her child for fear the child would see her mother's falseness.

  How could a woman go from loving to not loving to callousness so quickly? Pilar wondered. Had the lack of passion and compassion been in her all along? And had that lack been what had sent Tony away from her? Or had what he'd done so carelessly throughout their marriage killed whatever capacity she'd had to feel?

  It hardly mattered. He was dead, and she was empty.

  She got to her feet, turned toward the house, then stopped when she saw David on the path.

  "I didn't want to disturb you."

  "That's all right."

  "I've been trying to keep out of your way."

  "That wasn't necessary."

  "I thought it was. You look tired, Pilar." And lonely, he thought.

  "I suppose we all are. I know you've pulled a lot of extra duty these past few days. I hope you know how much it's appreciated." She nearly stepped back when he walked toward her, but made herself hold still. "How was your Christmas?"

  "It was busy. Let's just say I'll be glad when January rolls around and the kids start school. Is there anything I can do for you?"

  "No, nothing, really." She intended to excuse herself, escape to her rooms. Again. But there was something about him. And looking at him, she heard words pouring out of her mouth. "I'm so useless here, David. I can't help Sophia. I know she's trying to take her mind off everything with work, and spending so much time trying to train me in the office here. I just bungle everything."

  "That's a foolish thing to say."

  "It's not. I do. I never really worked in an office, and the short time I did was over twenty-five years ago. Everything's