by Renee George
He shook his head and chuckled. “Something like that.”
I put my glasses on. “The drive thingy is just under this flap.” I flipped a small plastic panel open on the computer tower. “Here.”
Pippa walked into the workroom. “Easy, the team you ordered is here.”
Ezra glanced up at the three male officers standing with Pippa. “Can you show them the shelf where the shampoo was and anything else you remember him touching?” he asked Pippa.
“On it,” Pippa replied, ushering the men back out into the shop.
“Something’s happening,” I muttered, watching the screen.
“It says one of ten updates are processing,” Ezra said. “It’s going to take a couple minutes to load.”
While Ezra waited for the computer to do its thing, Pippa came back to the office and I took her aside.
“I showed them all the areas he might have touched,” she said with a small shiver.
“Excellent,” Ezra said, still focused on the screen.
“Thank you.” I gently touched the sleeve of her shirt. I had a few minutes, and I was going to use them wisely. “How was the riding lesson the other day?” I asked.
“It was fun,” she said with a shrug. She hesitated, then said, “Jordy says I’m a natural.”
I arched my brow. “Is that before or after you got that road rash on your forearm? I told you we were going to talk about it. Especially since you promised me you wouldn’t ride without a helmet or pads.”
She puffed up her cheeks then let out the breath. “The rash happened before I could even get on the road with the bike,” she admitted with a fair amount of chagrin. “Jordy was teaching me how to get the dang thing started, and I thought I had it down. So I jumped the gun, punched my foot down on the kickstart, or at least I tried to. The bottom of my boot was slick and I slipped off the lever, lost my balance, and tumbled to the ground. And to top off my humiliation, I pulled the stupid motorcycle on top of me.”
“Cripes, Pippa,” I squeaked. “Those things weigh like four hundred pounds. Are you okay?”
“Obviously,” she said with a grin. “You see me here, walking, talking, no casts or crutches.”
“Okay, smart aleck. Then what happened?”
“Jordy cleaned my arm and doctored it with antiseptic and ointment. He said it would heal faster uncovered, so I didn’t put a bandage over it once it stopped bleeding.”
“How did the rest of the lesson go?”
Pippa blushed and busied herself by straightening the bottom of her blouse. “Fine.”
I eyed her suspiciously. “How far into the lesson did you get?”
“Honestly, we never made it back out of his house. One thing led to another, which led to another, and that all led us right into the bedroom.”
I laughed. “So, when you said you were learning to ride, you weren’t talking about motorcycles.”
“Nora!” she said with a scandalized tone.
“Things are going good with you two.”
She brushed her hair away from her face, her smile beaming. “It’s wonderful. He’s wonderful. He makes me feel like I’m the only woman in the world.”
“I’m really happy for you, Pippa. Has he told you anything about his past?”
She stopped and looked at me. “He’s not an ex-DEA agent, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Before Pippa and Jordy began dating, she used to muse about the history of the biker barista, and undercover narcotics officer had been one of the many hats she’d imagined him wearing. Unfortunately, I was more worried about him being on the wrong side of the law where drugs were concerned.
“That’s not what I’m asking. He’s not from Garden Cove, and I was just wondering what he was doing before he decided to move to town and open a coffee shop.”
She shrugged. “He worked construction in Minnesota for a while. When his grandmother died, she left him some money. He used it to move here and start a new life.”
“Is that all?” When I’d been stoned on morphine and accused Jordy of loving a good high, maybe I’d imagined Pippa’s knowledge of his situation. Was I sticking my nose, pun intended, where it didn’t belong?
“What more do you need to know?” Her question was slightly accusing.
“I might have…seen something.”
“You mean one of your…” She twirled a finger around her face. “Will it change the way I feel about Jordy?”
“Maybe.”
“Then I don’t want to know, Nora.”
“Are you sure?”
“He’s not cheating on me, right?”
“Not that I know of.”
Pippa looked relieved. “Well, then I don’t care what you know about him. He’s a good man now, and that’s all that matters.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “I’ll respect your wishes.”
“Wait.” She glanced toward the front of the shop. “Does Gilly know?”
“No. I didn’t tell her.”
“Well, I think I know what it is, but go ahead and say it.” Pippa braced herself for the incoming blow.
As gently as I could, I said, “Jordy’s a recovering drug addict.”
I’d expected shock and dismay. Instead, I got relief again. “He told me,” she said. “Before we even went on our first date.”
Now it was my turn to be relieved. “Oh. That’s great, Pip. You never said.”
“It’s not something he’s ashamed of. He even sponsors addicts. I’ve heard him talk more than one person on the verge of a relapse off the edge. When did you have the vision?”
“Last night at Players. One of the cooks, a guy named Chad, attends Narcotics Anonymous meetings. I saw Jordy in his memory.”
Her eyes darkened and she paled. “Oh,” she said.
“Do you know Chad?”
Pippa shook her head. “Last night…”
“Last night what?” I pressed.
“It’s not my story to tell.”
“Okay, I get that. Let’s try this another way. Why was Jordy at the ER?”
She frowned. “It’s called Narcotics Anonymous for a reason. But I will tell you that one of the guys he sponsors overdosed last night.”
“Chad?” I asked, ignoring the anonymous part. I hoped not. He might have had a troubled past, but from what I knew, he seemed like a nice guy who’d fallen in a love with a girl, only to lose her. “Fiona’s death was too much for him to deal with,” I mused. “He really loved her.”
Pippa pursed her lips. “I can’t tell you who, because it’s supposed to be anonymous. But I will say that his sponsee is expected to make a full recovery. However, I will also cryptically add that you are very good at guessing.”
Being right didn’t always feel good.
Ezra glanced up from the monitor. “Hey, you two. Updates are done and I got the drive open.”
We joined him at the desk. I looked at the screen and saw one folder listed on the USB drive as DPI, and when Ezra clicked on it, it was full of spreadsheets and .docx files with undecipherable lines of numbers and letters.
“Well, crap, that’s disappointing,” I said.
“What were you expecting?”
“Pictures, recordings, and videos of bad guys doing bad things, of course. This might as well be gibberish.”
Pippa moved closer to the monitor. “Those look like BANs.”
“Say it like I’m stupid,” I told her.
“Banking codes,” Pippa explained. “They’re identifiers for banks. I recognized that one there. GCCB20489000 is the bank identifier for Garden Cove Community Bank.” She pointed at the screen. “I do most of our bills and banking online, so I’m really familiar with that one. And that line there is a routing number.”
“Why would Fiona have files with bank codes and routing numbers?” I asked.
“See these columns here,” Pippa directed us to two of them, “these look like money columns, and the third column is the difference between them. There are five bank codes, but
I only recognize the one.”
“What’s going on?” Reese McKay, in uniform, joined us in the office.
I was startled to see her. “Where’d you come from?”
“I got the call to come out here and help secure the scene. I heard about your place this morning.” Reese fidgeted with a lower button on her police shirt, a stricken look on her face. “Did this place get robbed, too?”
“We think the guy who dumped my house was in the shop this morning.”
“I’m sorry, Nora, if this is my fault. I shouldn’t have involved you in Fiona’s stuff. I…I feel like I let her down when she was alive, and now I feel like I’m failing her again in death.” Her voice choked.
“You need to take some time off, Reese,” Ezra said. “You should be with your family.”
She drew her shoulders back. “My brothers and sisters in blue are my family.”
Impulsively, I hugged her. The sweet aroma of honeysuckle tickled my senses. “You smell good,” I told her.
A woman stands on a boat deck. It’s night. The sky is clear and bright with stars. She’s wearing jeans and a light jacket. I recognize Fiona’s curves, her youthful bounce, and her hair as she pushes herself off the rail and confronts a man who steps out on the deck. The smoothly sweet aroma of honeysuckle wafts through the air. “Give me the fifty thousand dollars. I’ll go away, and he’ll never have to see me or the baby ever.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” The man grabs her by the arms and gives her a shake. “I told you to stay away from all this. You have a get out of jail free card. Use it.”
Fiona yanks out of his grasp and stumbles backward. She braces herself against a metal rail. The man is wearing a hat, and in the dark, I can’t make out his hair. He isn’t the same guy from the first vision. He’s got a different voice.
He approaches her. “Give me the files you stole, and you can be done with this.”
Fiona sidesteps him. “No. It’s the only leverage I have. I need to help myself. You have two weeks to get me my money, or I swear I will blow up their whole operation here in Garden Cove.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Try me.”
I blinked as the memory left.
Ezra stood behind me. “What did you see, Nora?”
My gaze went to Reese. “Are you wearing Fiona’s perfume?”
“Yes.” She blushed. “It’s Honeysuckle Rose. It’s…it was her favorite. I took the bottle from her bedroom yesterday. Did it trigger a vision?”
“It did.” And boy howdy, it had been a doozy. “I believe you, Reese. I don’t think Fiona’s death was an accident.”
Chapter 17
“Did you recognize anything about the man in your vision?” Ezra asked. “Or the boat?”
“No, I don’t know the guy’s voice. There’s something familiar about him, but nothing I can nail down,” I told him.
“What about hair color?” he pressed.
“He wore a hat, so it’s hard to say for sure.”
“Did he have sideburns?” Pippa asked.
“He had a hat on, and it was dark,” I told her, shaking my head. The memory had taken place at night. The scent of honeysuckle had been less strong than the perfume. It was a cleaner scent, like the actual flower. “When did the honeysuckle start blooming around here?”
“Early May,” Pippa said.
Reese nodded. “And it’s all along the banks of the Cove now. Did you happen to see if the boat was in a dock or anything?”
I quirked my mouth to the side as I tried to remember all the details. I’d assumed the boat had been in a dock, but I hadn’t seen any of the overhead lights that most of the commercial resort docks had installed. Also, I gotten the impression that Fiona could get off the boat anytime she wanted to. “It had to be a private dock.” I looked at Ezra. “Something like what you said you have behind the cabin. Fiona didn’t look trapped. And this guy acted like he might have cared about Fiona.”
Ezra scrunched his face. “So, you don’t think the guy was Phil Williams?”
I’d exchanged only a few words with the man, but the encounters had left their mark on my psyche. “It wasn’t him.”
He narrowed his brow. “You thought Fiona had been afraid of him at the pharmacy. Do you think Phil’s the man who got her pregnant?”
Reese gasped. “Pregnant?”
“I’m sorry, Reese,” Ezra said, running his hand through his hair and closing his eyes for a moment. “I didn’t think…I thought you knew.”
Reese’s stance faltered. Ezra stepped around me and helped her to a nearby stool. “I can’t believe she was pregnant.”
“The medical examiner put her right around three months,” Ezra said.
“Fiona had always talked about being a mom when she was young. She’d obsessed over her baby dolls.” Reese wrung her shaking hands together. “She had wanted to talk to me, but I wouldn’t let her. When she got that DUI…” She dropped her chin down and stared at her knees. “I was so mad at her. I’d tried to help her before, but she kept messing up. Christ, I turned my back on her. What have I done? I should have been there for her.”
Pippa handed Reese a tissue from a box on the computer desk. “We can’t live our lives on should’ves,” Pippa said. “It won’t bring Fiona back, and it won’t bring you any solace.”
“Besides,” I added. “You didn’t cause Fiona’s death. It was beyond your control, even if you had known. She was blackmailing the father of her baby, so she could get out of town. I don’t think that would have changed even if you had known.”
The sob that left Reese’s throat gutted me. Her pain was raw and real. Pippa and I put our arms around her like a shield.
“I’ll get to the truth of it for you. I swear it,” I whispered, meaning every word.
We held her for a moment, and Ezra stayed out of the way until Reese pulled herself together. I loved that he hadn’t swooped in to try and make it better. A lot of guys would have been scrambling to figure out a way to make the emotional moment stop. Sometimes people needed to cry, to let go of the pain.
“I wish I’d seen more in my vision. I think I need to see where she lived. Maybe something there might trigger my mojo.” It would have been super convenient if Fiona’s memory would have included some names. My frustration mounted. “Why can’t I make out faces? It’s just so maddening.”
Reese began pacing. The rubber soles of her shoes made a hiss sound as they scrapped along the concrete floor. “Maybe what you saw was the moments before she drowned.”
“It was nighttime,” I said gently. “She was wearing different clothes. Besides, I found her body around dusk, when it was still light out. The vision was later at night. I’m only guessing, but in the vision, she said the guy had two weeks to get the money. That was the same time frame she’d given Chad to decide if he wanted to go with her. So, it was probably a few weeks back.”
“Chad?” Reese asked with a pained expression of confusion.
“He worked with Fiona at Players.”
“You mean the cook. Big guy.”
I nodded.
“I met him one time a few months ago.” Reese’s eyes clouded. “I didn’t know they were dating.”
The more we said, the more Reese realized how little she knew about her cousin. I was sure this was going to compound her guilt, but there was no time to try and soften any blows. Skirting issues to be kind could get someone killed. I had no time to die, and I wasn’t going to let anyone I loved die either.
“He’s a cook at Players. He loved Fiona.” I recollected how she had asked Chad to come with her. “I think she might have loved him back.” I grabbed Reese’s hand. “Fiona had been sober for two months. No drugs. No drinking.”
Even if I hadn’t seen the meeting, I knew that the detective who had arrested her, Frank Lopez, had been screening her for drugs, and according to Shawn, she’d been clean every time.
“I need to talk to Chad.” Reese patted her pockets as if search
ing for keys or a phone. “Do you have a last name?”
I glanced over at Pippa, and she nodded.
“He was in the hospital last night.” I sighed. “Drug overdose. I think Fiona’s death took him over the edge.”
Reese closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “Is he alive? Please tell me he’s alive.”
“Yes,” Pippa said. “He went into a treatment program this morning.”
“I want who did this to Fiona.” Reese raised her chin defiantly. “I want the bastard’s balls.”
“And you shall have them,” I said, willing it to be true. “And, if I can, I will serve them up on a platter.”
“We should probably clue in the chief,” Ezra said. “But I’m afraid there’s still not enough to make a case. The coroner and ME had declared her drowning accidental, and it’s going to take some proof for them to change their minds.”
“Then let’s go get some proof.” I nodded to Reese. “Do you have the keys to Fiona’s house?”
“I can get them,” she said. “She lived in the guesthouse at my aunt and uncle’s. We’ll have to go over there. They’ll let us in.”
Ezra put the drive into his pocket. “Then we should get going.”
On a picturesque area of the Garden Cove Lake amidst tree-laden rolling hills, the Dogwood Hills private subdivision could only be described as palatial. The luxury estates were located three miles past the road that led to Ezra’s cabin. According to Reese, four homes perched on ten acres of land, making up the entirety of Dogwood Hills.
“This wasn’t here when I was in high school,” I said.
“Yesterday was the first time I’ve ever been behind the gate of this place. The homes were built a few years back. Don and Claire Portman live over that way.” Ezra pointed down an immaculately paved road that split off to the right.
The McKays’ place had a private entrance with a security gate. Reese, who was in the car ahead of Ezra and me, punched the code into a panel, and we followed her inside when the gate swung open.
“It might sound naïve, but I still can’t reconcile how a girl from all this privilege could’ve gotten herself mixed up in this mess.” I stared out the window at the lush landscape marred only by a golf driving range and a tennis court. “It just goes to show you that money is no substitute for happiness.”
