Chapter 11 #2
A chill hit his gut. “Dismissed him?” In three words, she’d not only confirmed that she’d had an accomplice, but she implied that she’d got rid of him.
Dane wasn’t often taken by surprise, but this was one of those bad surprises—the kind that made him rethink everything and dread what he would find.
“Yes. Dismissed. He’s gone. Enough said.” She pushed away from him, still not meeting his eyes, pulling her dress off as she walked toward the bathroom. “Let’s get comfortable. We have plenty of time before the party.”
Once she was in the bathroom, Dane looked around for her phone.
When he found it, he checked it and didn’t like what he saw in her text history, but it didn’t surprise him.
He put her phone back exactly where he’d found it, then he quietly left the room.
Schooling his voice against the bubbling dread, he called Cap.
“Look for a missing middle-aged, fat, bald man. He’d been registered at the Sea Breeze Inn. Using the name Baylor Bellarine. Presumed dead.”
“Dead? Are you sure? Murder is a big leap—”
“No. I’m not sure—we’ll see what the evidence says.
It could be he left the island. Could be something else—I’ll give you details later.
” It could have been self-defense. He took a breath and spoke from his gut.
“She’s in over her head. She’s working with someone else—besides Bellarine—I’ll explain when I do more checking.
” It was too soon, too unreal to mention Gabriele Tavares.
“I think she trusts me—she thinks she’s seducing me—she may be counting on my help to stay out of prison. ”
“Watch your back,” Cap said. “I’ll let you know what I find.”
Dane ended the call and wrote a note to tell Angelique that he’d be back later to pick her up.
They would need Shana to confirm that their fat, middle-aged man who spoke Portuguese at the Gables’ party and the dead Baylor Bellarine were one and the same.
He wouldn’t mention the implication of the possible connection to Tavares again.
Not until they had more. He left the room behind with one backward glance at the guitar and one spiral of regret through his gut to his chest. The pain settled between his shoulder blades and he felt the searing sting as he pulled the door closed behind him.
The words to the song “Yesterday” haunted him as he walked to his car and he thought of Shana. The song was wrong. Love was never an easy game to play.
Not that the game was about love with Shana, was it?
He was too numb for that. His heart and soul too damaged to fall in love.
What the hell was it that he had with Shana?
He felt a gnawing need, she filled a void.
That was all. Wasn’t it? There was no commitment.
But even without an explicit commitment, he wasn’t such an idiot that he didn’t know it felt like one.
Even when they pushed each other away, some kind of hold kept them in each other’s orbit—and it wasn’t their partnership. Not entirely.
Whatever it was—it was messing him up—coloring his ability to keep neutral and buttoned up. Rock-like. He never should have started with her, never should have let it get physical no matter how much he needed it. He knew it was bad for them—he was bad for her.
And it made his job—his life—too damn difficult.
He got into his Jag, wishing it were the Jeep. He wanted to go back and search the dead man’s room again—because he was certain Bellarine was dead—he’d have to be quick before the police got to it. And he’d have to make sure he left no trace behind. He headed for the Sea Breeze Inn. Fast.
This time he bypassed the front desk and slipped in a back hall door and up the stairwell without anyone seeing him.
It was tough because it was the end of the day and there were people about, coming and going.
He kept his sunglasses on and his head lowered.
Times like this made him hate his notoriety more than usual.
Managing to slip into the man’s room without notice, he looked around the dim light of the room.
The drapes were drawn closed and that was good.
The room was pristine as if it had just been made up.
Checking the closet, he found no bag, no jacket, no anything.
He headed for the bathroom and from the door saw that there were no personal toiletries as there had been on his first visit. Damn. The man had already checked out.
Maybe he’d left the island and Dane had been all wrong about his assumption of murder. But running his conversation with Angelique through his mind again, he knew he was right.
*****
Shana walked into Cap’s office without knocking.
She realized she should have called, but his company soothed her.
He was on the phone, but he gave her a welcoming smile and gestured for her to sit, so she did.
She hadn’t gone home to sleep. Too restless.
She’d gone to Sassy’s pie shop and fallen asleep on the couch in her basement office for exactly one hour.
When Cap hung up the phone, before he said anything, she jumped in.
“I need to make a decision about Dane by summer’s end.
My ma and brothers are coming for a visit and—” She couldn’t continue.
She didn’t need to. Cap rose from his chair and came around to her.
She stood and stepped into his arms. He was warm and she shivered at the contrast to the ice-cold air. He’d finally gotten the AC fixed.
“You’ll figure it out,” he said over her head. She gave him a squeeze and backed up.
“The problem is that it’s not up to me—”
“Yes it is. He’ll—”
“No he won’t. He’ll fight it. If I throw myself into it, if I go all in—he’ll fight it or he’ll take advantage of it.”
Cap frowned. “What makes you so sure? He’s had relationships before. He knows how to—”
“That’s the problem, Cap. He’s too afraid to do it again. Especially with me.”
“Because you’re too good for him.”
She laughed. It sounded bitter. It felt bitter.
“On the other hand,” she said, “he won’t let me go.”
“On that you can sure as hell defeat him.” Cap’s mouth was flat and grim and determined. She smiled at him.
“All I need to do is pull the trigger.”
“So to speak.”
“You’ll be there for him.” She whispered the words, sounding desperate she knew, but she was desperate. He was with Angelique that moment. He’d felt no compunction about seducing the young woman. And for what?
Because she’d said it was okay?
Cap sighed. They both knew it would be a hard thing all the way around.
“Then that’s my decision, isn’t it?” she paused and let the searing sweep of pain settle in her chest. She took a few breaths to make sure she still could with the constriction so tight. “I wonder if we could still work—”
“Don’t even think about it,” Cap said. “If you decide to leave Dane, you go with your ma and brothers and get as far away from here as possible.”
She was about to tell him she had no intentions of going back to Sydney, when his phone rang.
He leaned over his desk and answered it.
She took more deep breaths and squeezed her eyes shut.
Everything in her screamed at the thought of leaving Dane, rebelling in waves of bile in her gut as if the notion were poisonous.
Had she decided to leave Dane?
How much of their relationship’s dysfunction was her own fault?
Why hadn’t she told him what she really felt about him seducing Angelique—or rather allowing her to seduce him?
Why hadn’t she screamed don’t you dare or I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill her—because that’s what her insides had screamed at her?
She turned to the door. Every nerve in her wanted to run through it and find him and shake him to make him understand. But first she had to come to an understanding with herself.
Cap said, “That was one of my men over at State Beach. We have a lead—want to come?”
She cleared her head as best she could. Returning to business mode, she turned to Cap.
He smiled at her and she felt her spirits buoyed by his easygoing manner.
The complete lack of stress or conflict between them refreshed her, calmed her jittering insides enough for her to function.
She felt her mind easing back to the rational world.
To the case and their client and the fee.
“What do you have? Did you find the accomplice—Bellarine?”
“Yes.”
They talked and walked toward the front door of the building that had become like a second home to her.
“Did he have the jewels? Is he going to give up Angelique Dubois?” She hoped to hell the answer was yes to that. She’d love to hang a grand larceny conviction around Angelique’s delicate little neck.
“Not exactly.” Cap stopped when they stepped outside the building and into the sauna of late day heat and heavy still air. If her relationship with Dane weren’t already killing her with the hot and cold antics between them, this heat wave would surely do it.
“What?” she sighed and fanned her face.
“Let’s get in the air-conditioned cruiser and on our way I’ll fill you in.”
She didn’t argue with that, but she did realize that Cap was stalling. That wasn’t a good sign. “Dane’s—”
“Fine,” he said as he opened her door. Cap was polite to a fault. She slid in and he followed and fired up the AC. After a minute they were on their way to State Beach and she couldn’t stand his silence. She prompted.
“What the hell is this about, Cap?”
“Bellarine—Angelique’s accomplice is dead.”
Boom. Her hand went to her chest as if she could stop her heart from jumping through, or stop it from stopping altogether.
“What—”
“It’s murder.”
And what about Dane? Was he in danger after all? She took a breath.
“What about Dane—does he know?” Her heart sped up more now and no amount of AC could keep her from sweating.
“Dane? He reported in that Bellarine was missing, possibly dead. He doesn’t know we found the body. We’ll go to check out the body and the scene—make sure it’s Bellarine—and then call him.” She didn’t ask where he was or how he knew, why he couldn’t meet them there to check out the scene with them.
He was her partner, damn it. He shouldn’t be with Angelique. The thought pinched her mind shut and she forced herself to stay in the moment.
They got to the scene and two staties with a handful of local police had the area surrounded, along with a horde of flies. No buzzards overhead—yet. The body was fresh.
One of the state police officers greeted them and filled them in.
“No identification. No wallet. But he does have a gun that had recently been fired. Looks like it was fired by him. There was a struggle of some kind. He has bruises. But I’d bet the cause of death was the stab to his chest.”
They stepped closer and Shana shut her mouth tight and tried not to breathe. She smelled the blood and decay hastened by the steamy weather. The body didn’t look as bad as some she’d seen during her time on the beat in Sydney.
“Is this the man you spotted at the party last night?”
She examined his face. It was him. The Portuguese-speaking man. She noted that the stab was expertly placed. Then she looked closer at his face—there was something odd about him.
“Yes—but when the medical examiner gets here, do me a favor and have him check inside his mouth. Look at his left cheek—it’s unnaturally large, like he has a walnut in his mouth.” Or something. She had an idea of what.
The medical examiner arrived a minute later and they had their answer.
“I’ll be damned—congratulations, Shana. Your client will be thrilled,” Cap said.
She checked the small pile of jewels held on a tray by the ME and accounted for what looked like the jewelry that had been in the Gables’ safe.
“It’s too easy, Cap. We’re missing something.”
He nodded. “Looks that way—like what about the jewels from the other three parties?”
“And what about Angelique? What’s going on with her? If she was in a fight with this guy, why and how did the jewels end up in his mouth?”
“We’ll need to figure out who he is—who Baylor Bellarine really is.”
Cap took out his phone and placed a call.
She knew he was calling Dane and couldn’t help the tightening of every muscle in her body in anticipation of him, of even hearing his voice from Cap’s phone, and especially the anticipation of seeing him again later.
It was damn unhealthy. To be so compelled and repelled by a man at the same time couldn’t be good.
But how much of that was Dane—and how much of it was her—and her own fear?
Cap said into the phone, “Meet us at my office.”
*****
Dane drove from Bellarine’s room at the Sea Breeze Inn to Cap’s office at State Police Headquarters in fifteen minutes.
He hoped to hell Shana wasn’t there. She hadn’t come home to sleep with him, to rest, and he didn’t want to know why, couldn’t stand the possibilities.
He needed time to steel himself. Cap hadn’t mentioned her one way or another.
He only said they’d found the body and that Bellarine had been murdered. With a knife.
Dane took a deep breath and refused to speculate. Not now. He needed all the information. They were in the process of confirming the body’s identity and finding out who exactly Bellarine was.
Pulling up to the door, Dane saw the Jeep.
He jumped from the Jag and landed like a rock.
He’d need to steel himself as best he could in the next thirty seconds for Shana.
And to find out whether Angelique was a murderer.
No wonder his shoulders and back felt like they’d been invaded by a boa constrictor.