Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
“Since you’re supposed to be an ex-CIA agent/hacker, who I now pay one hell of a lot of money to do PI work, I’d think you’d know how to google ‘black widow’ and find the meaning. She’s never been married. She hasn’t killed her nonexistent husband or any lovers.”
“Unless she was fucking your father right along with her mother.”
My teeth clench. “Don’t push me, Beck. You might be in high demand, but I’m paying you a hell of a lot of money to do your job. And that job now includes protecting Faith, not attacking her.”
“Relax, man. I was just pushing your buttons. Faith isn’t a killer, but considering that note you found, she was clearly fucking with your father’s head. And I sent a gift to your inbox.”
“Which is what?”
“That attorney she hired to go after her mother had a file on her that included correspondence with your father.”
“How did you get that?”
“Don’t ask what you don’t want to deny later.”
My jaw clenches. “Save me time. Summarize the findings.”
“Validation of her story. She went after her mother. Your father nickel-and-dimed her into giving up. The interesting part of this to me is that your father was paying Meredith Winter while acting as her attorney. If he wasn’t fucking her, I’d swear she was blackmailing him.”
“I told you. My father wouldn’t tolerate blackmail. He’d act on his own behalf and viciously. He was after the winery.”
“Here’s the thing. There are no dots connecting. I can’t find Meredith’s money. I can’t find your father’s money. This tells me that someone as good as me made it go away. I need to put feelers out in my underground circles and find out who, but that means two things: We need to offer cash in exchange for information. And we risk spooking someone into doing something we might regret.”
“Do we have other options?”
“They’re running out.”
“Exhaust them,” I say. “I don’t want to spook the bank before I have time to steal the winery out from underneath them.”
“If you do that,” he says, “the net outcome could be the same as me going underground. You end up stealing someone’s thunder, and they come after you. Or Faith.”
“What the hell is it about the winery that would make someone want it badly enough to kill for it?”
“There is no record of anything that remotely sets off bells. I checked for oil. I checked for real estate developments. There is nothing. And I went back a hundred years.”
“It could be a business deal,” I say, thinking out loud. “Some kind of merger that has never been put on paper.”
“Or the same person who made Meredith Winter’s money trail disappear made a whole lot more disappear.”
“We just need to make sure they don’t make Faith disappear.”
“If the winery is at the core of all of this, and it seems that it is, make her put the winery up for sale. If it’s gone, she’s no longer a target.”
“You do have someone watching her, correct?”
“I have a man watching your place and two in Sonoma, watching her place and the winery.”
“Which brings me back to the purpose of this call,” I say. “I sent you a photo of a money clip. Faith found it in her yard Friday. Does that belong to one of your men?”
“I see it. And my guys working the Sonoma area don’t make stupid mistakes. And since Faith has no cameras on her property, I can’t see who is. We need to upgrade her, and I can do it without her knowing, but with her stamp of approval, we can get far better equipment installed.”
“We’re here until Thursday and there for the weekend. Schedule it for Friday.”
“We’re talking murder here. We need cameras at her house and at the winery, where we can watch her staff, now, not later.”
I’m immediately hit by the fact that he’s just stated: We’re dealing with murder. He’s no longer on the fence about how my father and Faith’s mother died. He now believes what I do. They were murdered. “I’ll get you in by tomorrow night,” I say. “And Faith is working here at the Allure Gallery all week. I need you to be sure that you have someone watching her at all times.”
“Done. And FYI, I hacked your father’s autopsy reports. Nothing yet.” He hangs up.
Fucker.
I set the phone down on the table and stare at that money clip with a bad feeling in my gut, my fingers thrumming on my knee. “What the hell were you up to, Father?”
I pick my phone back up and dial my assistant. “And here I thought that new woman of yours would make you get a life,” Rita says, bypassing a hello. In fact, I think she started bypassing hello with me seven years back. “Sundays are for church and reruns of Friends,” she adds.