The décor was as unexpected as what she’d worn to dinner last night. A flannel duvet cover had ranks of stylized elephants in a very African print. An African mask carved from a very dark wood dominated one wall. On other walls were vintage flower prints, framed in simple dark woods that meshed although he didn’t know why. An antique dresser held a colorful collection of old bottles. On a small bedside table stood a funky lamp, probably artisan made, combining a green glass magnum wine bottle with twists of wrought iron that reminded him of the earrings she’d worn the day before. The only other furnishing was a rocking chair upholstered in a bold yellow and white print that looked ethnic. African, too?
She’d said she could do a South African accent.
His gaze went back to the bed. The last damn thing he should be thinking about was sharing that bed with this woman.
He shifted uncomfortably and had to tear his eyes away.
She stopped in front of a crude closet formed of cedar slats that walled off a corner of the room. Adam remembered ones like it in the cabins at a rustic resort in the Sierra Nevada Mountains his family had gone to summers, when he was a kid. Before their lives went wrong. Naomi opened the door then looked over her shoulder. Evidently she hadn’t heard him following her, because she froze at the sight of him.
He propped a shoulder against the door jamb, crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows.
In response, she glared with impotent anger he understood. After a moment, she pushed aside the hanging clothes, bent over and fiddled with something at the back, then struggled to lift out a square formed out of the same old cedar slats. Adam stepped forward.
“Let me.”
She didn’t want to let him do anything, that was obvious enough. So was the fact that she hurt. Then she nodded curtly and moved aside. Adam found himself peering into a sizable space that held one suitcase…and her canvas messenger bag.
He grabbed it and slung the strap over his shoulder, then nodded at the suitcase. “That all you left California with? What you could get in one suitcase?”
She shrugged. “And a couple of cardboard boxes. I brought some of my cookbooks and a few things I loved.”
“The mask.” No reason he should be sure of that, but he was.
“Yes.” Her voice was tight, but at least she was talking to him. “In college, I did a year abroad in South Africa. I still have some of the things I brought home. That was one of them.”
He looked around again. “I like the room.”
Under the circumstances, it was a stupid damn thing to say, and he felt his cheeks heat at her astonishment. Without another word, he walked into the living room.
He set the bag on the coffee table but let her unzip it, remove the laptop and open and fire it up.
“You’d better both come and sit here.” Naomi’s gaze shied from his. “Or maybe we should do this at the kitchen table.”
“No, this is fine.” Colburn sounded kindly, and she gave him a grateful smile that irritated Adam. He was the enemy, Daniel Colburn her friend.
A friend who had a fiancée, he reminded himself, without feeling any better.
He watched as she went online.
“It’s not stored on your computer at all?” he said thoughtfully.
Naomi shook her head. “If my laptop was stolen, I didn’t want anyone to be able to find it too easily. Because if they did, they’d know it doesn’t matter what other copies exist.”
“What other copies do exist?”
“Well… I have a couple of different cloud accounts and I sent it to an attorney who was a roommate of mine in college.”
“’If I die under suspicious circumstances, watch this?’”
“Something like that.”
She sat back when the video flickered to life. Both men leaned forward, eyes intent on the screen.
She was right; the scene was murky. Because he’d seen photos of Greg Cobb and expected to see him, Adam could tell that was Cobb sitting off to the right. To the left…shit, the camera – or the door – cut off all but a man’s hands, folded on the table. Nearly facing the smart phone camera she’d used was a third man, but he was a little farther away and grainy. And, damn it, the whole thing wobbled.
Her hand had been shaking, Adam realized, shocked by a vicious explosion of anger and fear as he imagined this small woman having the guts to lurk outside that room trying to film this unholy conversation.
Pay attention.
The voices were mostly indistinguishable mumbles. A word or two came through.
“…sure?”
A sharp, “Not until…”
The man at the head of the table made a slashing gesture. If Cobb’s expression changed even once, Adam couldn’t tell.
“…week.” Or was it weeks, plural?
The screen abruptly went black.
Naomi chewed on her lower lip again and eyed them. “You see?”
“Did you try to get this cleaned up?” Colburn asked.
“No, I… It’s so bad, I didn’t think it could be. I’m not very technological. Do you think it can be?”
“Yeah, let me think about this.”
Shock followed by some intense emotion crossed her face. Adam had to label it as anguish. What was she thinking? That she could have prevented Heath’s death and hadn’t?
Apparently oblivious to her shock, Colburn rambled on, “I’m reluctant to go to a private lab. If they do clean it up and hear what’s said—” The local cop looked at her. “Can you tell us what is said?”
She’d blanked whatever she felt. “More or less. I told you some of what I heard. In here, they were arguing about payment. They agreed on three hundred thousand dollars, half in advance, the other half once it was done.”
If they could sharpen this video enough to get a warrant, then they could follow the money. Suddenly Adam re-ran what she’d said.
“Is that what Greer said?” he asked. “It? He wasn’t more specific?”
She seemed unwilling to meet his eyes, but did. “I don’t think so, not then, but he did say, ‘You know how close the primary is. You have two weeks.’ And Greg said—” Her voice wobbled and she stopped, but gathered herself. “‘I can accept a two week deadline. Heath will be singing in the heavenly choir, but his earthly reputation won’t be so saintly anymore.’”
“And this is all on there?”
She recoiled from whatever she saw on his face. “Yes. I think so. I guess I might have cut off something at the end.”
“Why did you stop filming when you did?” Colburn asked. “Did you think you’d been seen?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know. Because I was standing out of sight. You know. All I could see was what showed on my phone, and it was really dim in the hall, and… Mostly, I was craning my neck to see the door to the men’s room, and I was so nervous I guess I just chickened out.”
Chickened out. Adam shook his head. She’d only been videotaping a contract killer as he scheduled a hit.
“What were you thinking? You wanted to commit suicide?”
“I thought I had to have proof!” she yelled. Tears shimmered in her eyes, shaming him. Then, softer, she said, “I wasn’t thinking. I just…did it. Afterwards—” She looked at Daniel again, not at Adam. “—I hurried back to the kitchen. The whole way, I had my head turned. Just as I was going in the kitchen, I saw the bathroom door start to swing open. If I’d waited, like, five more seconds…” She shivered.
“You’d have been seen.”
“Yes.” She pressed her lips together. “But Greg did see me. Or enough to make him suspicious, anyway.”
“Or Greer or the other man saw movement and told him.”
Her lashes fluttered. “I…suppose so.”
Adam was having one hell of a hard time holding it together, but he had to do his job. “You say you made a deal.” He managed to sound almost calm. “That night?”
Naomi shook her head. “I was… Once I got in the kitchen, I was shaking all over, totally freaked
. I’m thinking the meeting has to end any minute, and then he’ll come in the kitchen, and he’ll know the minute he sees me, standing there quaking. I wanted to run. Just go out the back door. But I’d noticed before that he has another off-duty police officer patrolling outside during his meetings.”
“And it didn’t once cross your mind that meant he might be bad news?” Too sharp – Adam didn’t turn his head, but he knew Colburn was studying him.
“No!” She yanked the fleece throw up to her neck and clutched it protectively with a fisted hand. “They were police officers. We used off-duty officers ourselves for traffic control when we had something big going on and everybody arrived or left at the same time. Greg dressed really well, and he drove a Bugatti sports car. I looked it up and they’re ridiculously expensive.”
Greg Cobb owned half a dozen cars. Adam, too, had looked up the Buggatti Veyron 16.4 that Cobb owned, and knew the price tag topped $1.5 million dollars.
“I thought he was really rich, and that he hired bodyguards because he had to worry about kidnapping.”
“Is that why you dated him? Because he’s rich?”
Given his hostile tone, her glare was fully justified. “No! He’s handsome and charming. I only went out with him a few times. I don’t think it would have gone anywhere. That last night—” She didn’t seem to want to go on.
Colburn cut an irritated glance at Adam and intervened. “Let’s get back to that last night. Did he come into the kitchen while you were still shaking?”
“Yes. Well, I’d started pulling myself together. I mean, as much as I could. I dropped my phone into my bag, so at least I wasn’t clutching it. I told myself I could act. Five minutes, tops. Smile, say I hoped his meeting was successful. Only, he noticed right away that I was agitated.” The way she was staring, expression stark, Adam could tell she was seeing that night instead of the present. “I told him I’d just discovered I was missing some ingredients I needed for the next day and I was mad at staff. I said I had to stay, fire off some emails.” She blinked, as if summoning herself back to the here and now. “I had a small office off the kitchen.”
Colburn nodded. Adam sat frozen.
“I thought I’d pulled it off. Only then he stopped me and—” This shudder was visible even under the blanket. “He was going to kiss me. I jerked away.”
Adam closed his eyes. “And he knew.”
“Yes. I mean, I didn’t know then for sure. He just kind of shook his head and said, ‘Naomi,’ as if he was disappointed in me. He said goodnight and left, but nothing about calling me or anything. So I thought—” She made a face. After that, her voice sounded tight. “I waited a few minutes, in case he was watching, then left.”
“The next time you heard from him?” Colburn asked, in that same patient, soothing way Adam couldn’t have summoned right now to save his life.
“After—” She sneaked a quick look at him. “I almost always opened the restaurant myself. I was sort of a workaholic.”
He made himself nod his understanding.
“But when I opened the next day, there was this dead man in my restaurant. He was, um, lying on his side so I could see the knife sticking out of him. A big handgun lay on the floor and I saw that he had a badge on his belt. You know. S.L.P.D.”
Adam had seen the crime scene photos. For all that he worked homicide himself, it was different when the victim was someone you knew well. Sometimes the faces were contorted, sometimes slack. Frank’s had been like that – vacant.
“Your restaurant wasn’t in Santa Lucia,” Colburn said.
“No, Santa Monica. That’s who came when I called 911. They grilled me, because my fingerprints were on the knife, of course.”
“Just yours?”
Adam knew this, and wanted to see how honest she was. This was one of the things that had bothered him.
“Yes. That particular set of knives was mine. Others did use them, but would usually be wearing gloves. I usually wore gloves, too. So there were also all kinds of smudges from when I or someone else had handled it with gloves on.”
“The knives didn’t go through a dishwasher?”
She looked shocked. “That would be like driving the Bugatti through the car wash behind the Shell station.”
He almost cracked a smile.
“So,” she went on, “I helped schedule and oversee interviews of all my staff, too.” She seemed to be gaining confidence, as if this part wasn’t so bad. “A couple of them had keys.”
“Who?” Adam asked.
“I had a front of the house manager. She scheduled waitstaff, bookings, did some of the marketing. My sous chef – assistant chef – had a key, too, obviously. He had to open when I took a day off, or if I couldn’t for some reason.”
“They were the only two people.”
“Yes.”
“So when did you hear from Cobb again? Or did you call him?”
“Call him?” Her incredulity had to be real. “Are you kidding?”
“All right. He called you. Or did you see him?”
“No, he called. He said, ‘I like you, Naomi, but you listened to a conversation you shouldn’t have.’ I thought about pretending, but…” She grimaced again, an unnatural expression on her pixie face. “I told him I’d not only listened, I’d used my phone to shoot video. I said I had him and Senator Greer in living color and audio. He said, ‘That’s a problem, Naomi. I can’t let that go.’”
It was Colburn who nudged her. “And?”
“I threatened to go to the police. He laughed. He said he had connections everywhere. And…I knew that was true. I told him I could find someone. ATF, DEA, someone, somewhere. Because it wouldn’t be just my word. But if he would leave me alone, I’d close the restaurant, move away and keep my mouth shut. I claimed I’d already emailed copies to several people, just in case. The last thing he said was, ‘If you break your word, I’ll find you, Naomi. You’ll never make a promise again. Or break one.” Now her voice shook, and those caramel eyes were haunted. She turned them on Adam. “He’s found me, hasn’t he?”
“Yes. That’s how I found you.”
Naomi stared. “What do you mean?”
He didn’t want to name Sam. “I have a friend in the Los Angeles office of the FBI. Awhile back, aware of my interest, he let me know they had a wiretap on Gregory Cobb’s phone. Or, I should say, phones. He changes mobile phones the way most of us change our socks. He’s careful, and so is everyone who works for him. But last week, he didn’t throw away the latest phone quick enough. The task force was listening to calls to and from that number. My friend said another man called Cobb to say he’d found the chef. The conversation didn’t include your new name, but the guy did say you were in Cape Trouble. I caught a flight the next morning, drove straight over from Portland.”
“Was that…the same day I thought my house was searched?”
Adam nodded.
Colburn leaned forward. “Play it again, Naomi.”
She did, then sat back, letting the two men all but press their noses to the screen.
“The guy we can’t see on the left. That’s the FBI agent?” Colburn asked. “Did you get a look at him?”
“Sort of. A quick one.”
“Enough to identify him if you met him face to face?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. He was looking at Senator Greer, so I saw his face partially turned away. He had brown hair and…I don’t know. There wasn’t anything special about him.”
“Big guy? Small?”
She bit her lip. “Sort of…medium, I think. It’s hard to tell when someone is sitting, you know.”
Yeah, it was. Adam pictured those hands, utterly relaxed, and thought, Scum-sucking son of a bitch.
“Do you know a lab that would handle this confidentially?” Colburn asked him.
“No.” Adam thought it was time for some honesty of his own. “My lieutenant doesn’t know I’m here. He started to get annoyed at my interest in the investigat
ion into Frank’s murder. Told me to drop it. Threatened me with a suspension if I wouldn’t.”
“Maybe he’s on Greg’s payroll,” Naomi suggested, calm as you please. Still huddled behind her fleece barricade, though.
He had to consider the possibility coldly, blocking any emotional filter. More honesty: “I don’t know. I do know I can’t go around him, and convincing him to pursue this…” He shook his head.
Daniel stood, stretched, and moved to sit on a chair on the other side of the coffee table from Naomi and Adam, leaving a cushion between them. “I still have connections in San Francisco, but anybody there would recognize Dominic Greer and we’d lose control of this.” He sounded thoughtful. “I have an idea, though. We have to report today’s shooting to the sheriff’s department, if someone from the hospital already hasn’t. I trust Sheriff Mackay. He came from Portland P.D. He might have the right connection for us. I think we need to bring him in anyway.”
Adam didn’t like bringing in anyone he didn’t know, but he also recognized that he needed allies. So far, his impressions of Daniel Colburn were all positive, however irked he was to see that Naomi apparently already trusted him.
“Let’s not lose sight of our main problem,” Colburn added. “Who tried to kill Naomi today?”
She laughed. She actually laughed. It was a moment before Adam realized there was some hysteria in the sound. “Our problem? Don’t you mean, my problem?”
“My job is to protect the people in my community,” the police chief said. “That includes you.”
“Except I don’t live in Cape Trouble.”
“You work in my town. One of the assaults took place in Cape Trouble. You’re…a friend, Naomi.”
She swallowed. “Okay.” Then she turned a fierce stare on Adam. “What’s in it for you?”
“I still think you can help me figure out who killed Frank.” He frowned. “I’d protect a woman I saw being assaulted no matter what. And now I know you.”
“Plus, think what a coup it would be if you could be responsible for arresting Greg Cobb for murder.”
He controlled his flare of temper. He’d lied to her. More than that – he’d kissed her. He deserved the blazing anger directed at him, as it wasn’t at Daniel Colburn who was also pushing for action.
See How She Runs (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 2) Page 10
