Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rage rolled through Monk’s body at the insinuation that Helia was involved in anyone’s death, let alone that of a man she clearly hadn’t wanted anything to do with.
Helia opened her mouth to answer, but he slid a hand over her knee, gave it a gentle squeeze, then spoke over her. “Between what hours?” he asked, his voice clipped.
Carter and Jess might think themselves clever in shocking her, but he’d been around the block a time or two. He knew their tactics.
The two detectives shared another look before Carter answered, conveying his displeasure at Monk’s interference with his narrowed eyes. “Between four and ten p.m.”
Monk brushed his thumb over Helia’s knee. “Between four and ten on Wednesday, what were you doing?” he asked, hoping she’d understand that she was not obligated to—and shouldn’t—answer any more than the specific question.
Her hazel eyes, now more brown than green, held his. A beat passed before she nodded and turned to Carter.
“We had a phone meeting with the bride,” she started, nodding in the general direction of the hall where said bride was currently becoming a wife.
“It started at four thirty. I was in my office before that, and my parents joined me at four fifteen. We took the call from there. It was scheduled for an hour, but it went over, wrapping up around five forty-five. My parents stayed for another fifteen minutes or so while we worked out the final plans, then I took another fifteen minutes to print the schedules for everyone on staff, then dropped them into the staff mailboxes.”
Carter scribbled in his notebook, and Jess nodded. Helia set her hand on his. Without pausing to think, Monk flipped his palm and intertwined their fingers.
“After that, I popped out to the Roadhouse to grab some takeaway. I arrived there at six twenty-nine. Those were the first three digits of one of our phone numbers when I was a kid, and it was a little thing I remember noting.” She paused and took a breath.
“Marielle was working. She took my order, and I sat at the bar with a Pellegrino while it was being prepped. I don’t know how long that took, maybe twenty minutes?
” Her brow furrowed. “I also saw Miles as I was leaving, Officer Hooper. He and my brother were in the same high school class, so I know him. We waved to each other as I pulled out of the parking lot and he pulled in. From there, I drove home and, well, ate and went to sleep.”
Her words trailed off as she finished, as if realizing she had no alibi from about seven fifteen when she left the Roadhouse to ten. He squeezed her hand.
“You keep the gate closed at night, don’t you?” he asked.
She nodded. “Unless there’s an event, it closes at five and doesn’t open until eight the next morning. Not without the code.”
He nodded, then turned to Carter. “There are CCTV cameras all over the facility,” he said.
They were discreet, but he’d noticed them while helping earlier.
“You’ll be able to check the gate logs for when Helia returned from the Roadhouse and the cameras will show that she didn’t leave again.
” He didn’t know that for certain; he and Helia hadn’t talked about it.
But he knew her. Knew her in a way he didn’t really understand other than to be certain that if she’d gone out again, she would have said.
Carter studied them, then glanced at Jess, who nodded. “Thank you, Helia. Can you show us the rest of the knives?”
She grimaced but nodded. “I can, but the kitchen is getting ready for a hundred-person brunch/lunch buffet. They work like a well-oiled machine, and if we set foot in there and disrupt the mechanism, it throws things off.” Carter opened his mouth to speak, but she talked over him, making Monk smile.
“I’m not saying we can’t go in, but would it be possible if I took only one of you with me? ”
Surprisingly, the detectives didn’t pause to share another look. Jess pushed off the wall and grabbed her backpack. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
Helia rose, dropping his hand. “The ceremony is underway, but we’ll take the back paths in case one of the photographers is taking pictures of the grounds,” she said, leading them through her door and onto the walkway.
“One of the photographers?” Carter asked, falling into step beside Helia ahead of him. Jess came up alongside him in yet another predictable move—as if separating him from Helia would stop him from protecting her.
“There are seven for this wedding. And three videographers,” Helia answered. As Jess asked him, “You grew up here?”
He nodded.
“What was that like?”
Internally, he sighed. As a general rule, he didn’t talk about his life with people he didn’t know. Unfortunately, if he dodged too much, he’d give them more of a reason to focus on Helia.
“I left at eighteen, if that tells you anything.”
“You’re back now.”
“Carter mentioned my father dying yesterday, so I know you know why I’m back.”
“When’d you get here?”
“Yesterday.”
“He died over a week ago.”
“We weren’t close.”
“Where do you live now?”
She knew the answers to these questions. If she thought he’d give her some great insight, she was in for a disappointing chat. “Mystery Lake.”
“Not far, but you never came back.”
“Nope.”
“You and Helia seem close.”
His jaw clenched. He didn’t want anyone prying into his and Helia’s past. “Our properties abut. We grew up together.”
“But you hadn’t seen each other in years before yesterday,” Jess said. An assumption on her part. She might have found out he hadn’t been back since he left, but the world was a big place. He and Helia could have met up anywhere. They hadn’t, but that wasn’t the point.
“Some friendships stand the test of time,” he responded as they approached the back entrance to the kitchen.
“Who’s going with me?” Helia asked.
“I will,” Jess answered. Which would give her time with Helia and Carter a chance to talk with him. Monk nearly rolled his eyes at the orchestration. Again, he didn’t begrudge them their job. He hoped they found whoever killed Justin Flannery. But they were wasting their time with Helia.
The two women slipped through the door, the sound of pans clattering, raised voices, and ovens running filtering out before the door shut, sending him and Carter back into silence.
“You going to stick around and run Bacco?” Carter asked, leaning against the dark wood of the building.
Monk crossed his arms and let his gaze rest on the vast vineyard stretching north. “Haven’t decided.”
“You don’t seem especially cut up about your father’s death.”
He sliced the detective a look. “As I told your colleague, we weren’t close.”
“Justin did some work with your dad.”
Monk shrugged. “Bacco has a tasting room. I understand Flannery and his mother ran a wine accessories business. It doesn’t surprise me they did business together.”
“But you never met him?”
Monk shook his head.
“Helia never talked about him to you?”
“Not until yesterday.”
“They were together two years, and she never mentioned him?”
Monk shrugged. “Like I said, never heard the name until yesterday.”
Carter’s gaze stayed fixed on him; he could feel it. He didn’t mind. The detective could look all he wanted. Monk wasn’t easy to intimidate.
“What’d you do when you left the valley?”
“Joined the army.”
“You out now?” He nodded. “How long?”
At least the tedious conversation passed the time while they waited. “Seven years.”
“And you live up in the mountains?”
He nodded. “Run a few businesses with a couple of guys I served with. Was the knife the murder weapon?”
With his eyes still on the vineyard, he felt more than saw Carter’s focus. “Who says he was murdered?”
“I’d prefer not to play this game, Detective. If you don’t want to tell me whether the knife was the murder weapon, then say so. But no need to pretend this isn’t a homicide investigation.”
Carter grumbled a short string of words Monk didn’t catch before answering. “The knife was found at the scene. The ME is still deciding if the wounds were self-inflicted.”
He locked eyes with Carter. Monk had once sat on a rock on the side of a mountain looking through the scope of his rifle for fourteen hours without moving. The detective wasn’t about to win this staring contest.
Three minutes passed before Carter shifted his gaze on a huff. “That’s a fucked-up skill to have,” he muttered.
Monk fought a grin. “Jealous?”
Carter wagged his head, then crossed his arms. “Maybe a little. You learn that in the army?”
“It’s not a course they teach, but yeah. I don’t use it that often, though.”
Carter chuckled. “But for Helia, you will?”
“She’s not involved in this at all. You know it. Jess knows it. I know it,” he said. “I get that you have a job to do. And it’s cliché for me to point out that time you spend focused on her is time you’re wasting not focused on the killer. So what do you need to clear her and move on?”
“The letter is an issue. It implies they had a conflict.”
“Or,” Monk said, “it’s the ramblings of a desperate man unwilling to accept a woman doesn’t want him. Of the two scenarios, mine seems more plausible.”
“Justin Flannery showed no evidence of desperation in any other part of his life.”
“And Helia shows homicidal tendencies?” Monk countered. Helia’s voice filtered through the din as she and Jess headed their way. “Get the CCTV, clear her, and move on.”
“You the detective now?”
“I get it, I irritate you. But it’s obvious the Shaw family respects you, which means you have integrity and intelligence. I want you to clear her because the hairs on my neck are standing on end, and I think there’s more going on here than just Flannery’s death.”
Carter straightened. “The hell? What do you know?”
Jess called out a hello to someone, her voice close.
“I don’t know anything. But I don’t like that two men Helia dated have both been sniffing around her again and now one is dead.”
“Two?” Carter asked, but Monk didn’t have a chance to answer before Helia and Jess exited the kitchen.
“The rest of the set,” Jess said, holding up a sealed box she must have unfolded from her backpack. “There are six total, five here.”
“You sure the set isn’t larger?” Carter asked.
“They’re stored in a leather carrier that has six individual pouches. One is empty, the other five are in here,” Jess replied. Monk gave her credit for keeping her tone even as Carter questioned her skill.
“Can we download the CCTV footage?” Carter asked Helia with a nod to the main building.
Helia didn’t look thrilled but nodded. “If it would be helpful.”
“I know it seems intrusive, but yes,” Carter replied.
Rather than allow the detectives to separate him from Helia, he stepped to her side, set a hand on her lower back, and nudged her forward.
He remained by her side, walking in a silence occasionally punctuated by sounds of chanting coming from the wedding ceremony.
If anyone else noted the odd juxtaposition of two people happily starting a life together on one end of the property and four people focused on the brutal end of life on the other, no one said.
Again, they entered through the door farthest from the ceremony, following Helia to the second floor and into an office. She took a seat while he stood to the side, arms crossed, feet apart.
“You were Delta Force,” Carter said, finally acknowledging, as subtle as it was, that they’d investigated him.
He nodded. Helia’s eyes flickered up but she said nothing, returning to her task.
“How many tours?”
“Delta doesn’t have tours,” he responded. “We deployed.”
“You traveled a lot?”
Monk studied the man. He didn’t want to assume the questions had nothing to do with the investigation, and he doubted Carter was making casual conversation. He couldn’t figure out how they were related, though.
He inclined his head in response.
Carter grinned. “Is it anything like the movies?”
“Is police work?” he countered.
“No,” he replied without hesitation. “But I don’t mind. I like investigating. What did you like about Delta?”
“I emailed you the footage from the night you requested,” Helia said, the sharpness of her voice punctuated by the scrape of her chair across the floor as she rose. “Six hours total.”
Carter’s gaze lingered on him, then slid to Helia. “Thanks, we appreciate it.”
Helia nodded. “Is there anything else? I need to get back to work.”
Carter and Jess shook their heads. “Thanks, but this should do it for now. We can show ourselves out,” Jess said.
Helia smiled, not a friendly one. “Sorry, it’s against our policy to have unescorted guests on the property unless they are part of an event. We’ll walk you down.”
Monk fought the twitch of his lips. He had no idea if that was true, but he liked the steely sweetness of her response. No one could say she was being rude, but no one would be dumb enough to argue with her either.
Sensing the shift, the detectives nodded and moved into the hall. Once Helia shut and locked the door, he took his place beside her again. A few minutes later, they watched the white SUV cruise down the driveway.
He turned to his childhood friend. His childhood…everything. A breeze caught her hair, lifting the ends, displaying the delicate line of her jaw and her elegant neck.
“Well, that was interesting,” Helia said, her hazel eyes meeting his. “I’ve never been accused of murder before.”
“Not accused, investigated. Big difference.”
One dark eyebrow went up. “Didn’t feel different.”
“Says the woman who has never been accused of murder.”
As he’d hoped, her expression lightened, and her eyes took on a sparkle that was distinctly Helia.
“Come on, He-man,” she said, looping an arm through his.
“Let’s see if the staff needs help getting food from the kitchen to the dining room.
” She squeezed his biceps. “If you’re going to keep these guns in top shape, lugging chairs isn’t going to cut it. ”