He sat back on his heels and surveyed the area. He’d lunged at Devon when he saw the movement at the window. Maybe the book flew out of his hand.
Judging the trajectory, he checked a wider range of the floor, lifting dust covers from the furniture and crawling under tables. Nothing. No red diary.
He rose to his feet, brushed his hands together and sneezed. It had been a whim anyway, but why would someone take a diary?
He exited the house the same way he had entered and jogged back to the car. His heart stuttered when he saw a man leaning toward the driver’s side window. He felt for his weapon until the man stepped back and Kieran recognized him as the gardening neighbor-Mr. Vincent. He was supposed to know him.
He inhaled a lungful of salty sea air and slowed his steps to the car.
“Hey, Kieran. It’s great to have you home. Your parents must be ecstatic.”
Kieran extended his hand. “Mr. Vincent. Good to see you again.”
Vincent smacked the roof of the car. “I’ll let you folks get going, and I’m RSVPing for the welcome home party right now.”
Wouldn’t be much of a party without the honoree.
“We’ll keep you posted.” Kieran dropped onto the passenger seat and exhaled. “I wish I could remember all of these people at first look.”
“You’ll get there.” Devon glanced at his empty hands. “Where’s the diary?”
“Gone.”
“You can’t find it?”
“I mean it’s gone. I looked. It’s not there.”
Devon tilted her head and the sun glimmered along strands of her golden hair. “That’s weird. It must’ve slipped behind something, or maybe one of the cops took it.”
“I searched the library thoroughly, and why would one of the cops take it?”
“I don’t know.” She shifted into Drive and made a
U-turn on the street. “The same reason we wanted to have a look.”
“He’ll probably be as disappointed as you to find out it’s from ten years ago instead of a hundred.” Kieran buzzed down the window and gulped in the air, trying to clear the dust and the residue of the old house from his lungs.
“Well, it doesn’t belong to any of us, but I wonder if Mia would be interested. Ten years ago was about the time her sister disappeared. She might want to be privy to her twin’s thought processes at the time.”
“Disappeared? I thought you said she ran off with Mia’s boyfriend?”
“She did, and they disappeared together. Marissa St. Regis hasn’t been back since.”
“I gather Mia St. Regis hasn’t been back, either.”
“No, but she might want to know about the diary. I still have her email address from a few get-togethers the locals arranged. I’ll send her a message.”
“But we don’t have the diary.”
“Mia might be able to find it if she ever goes through the house.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Are you saying I did a lousy job of searching? I know my vision isn’t the best…”
She slugged his arm at the first joke he’d ever made about his eye. “That’s not what I meant. Besides, it doesn’t much matter now. Michael is sound asleep and he’ll sleep through Detective Marquette’s visit.”
After Kieran had carried Michael to his bed, they didn’t have to wait too long for that visit.
Devon invited the detective into the house and introduced him to Kieran.
After shaking his hand with a strong, sure grip, Detective Marquette shrugged out of his suit jacket. “Hope you don’t mind, Ms. Reese. It’s a lot warmer down here than in the city.”
“No surprise there. I’ll hang it up for you.”
Noting the man’s erect posture and crisp movements, Kieran asked, “What branch of the military?”
Marquette’s brown face split into a smile. “Marines.”
“Green Berets.”
“I know. I heard about you, Roarke. Heard about your mission.”
“Helluva long mission.”
Devon returned to the room, bearing a tray of glasses filled with iced tea. The ice tinkled as she set the tray on the coffee table. Had she just interrupted something between Kieran and Marquette? “Iced tea, Detective?”
“Thanks, I can use it. The local chief is not very hospitable.”
Devon grabbed a glass and settled into an armchair, curling her legs beneath her. “Chief Evans is leaving for another department and not too thrilled that I’ve apparently brought a killer to Coral Cove with me.”
Marquette took a sip from his glass and pulled out a well-worn notepad. “Let’s talk about that. Someone broke into your car, stole your purse, slashed your tires, threw a Molotov cocktail into a bathroom and then took a couple of potshots at you? Did I miss anything?”
“That about sums it up. I’m a nurse, not an international spy. The only thing out of the ordinary in my life recently has been discovering Mrs. Del Vecchio’s body.”
Detective Marquette tapped his notepad with a stubby pencil. “What about your brother, Dylan?”
Kieran hunched forward, elbows on his knees. “What about him?”
Devon narrowed her eyes. “He fell off the face of the earth and then resurfaced recently to tell me he’s resigning from the San Jose P.D. and going for the top job here.”
“You don’t know why he fell off the face of the earth?”
“No, but apparently you do. Spill it.”
Marquette lifted an end-tackle-sized shoulder. “Your brother, Ms. Reese, had been working undercover in the gang unit. He almost single-handedly brought down the Fifteenth Street Lords, and then they retaliated by killing a journalist your brother had been working with.”
Devon covered her mouth with both hands. Guilt galloped up one side of her body and down the other. She should’ve known Dylan would have never abandoned her and Michael. “I had no idea.”
“I’m sure he didn’t want you to know, but it’s something to think about. Maybe a few of those gangbangers are looking for another way to strike back at him.”
She picked up her sweating glass with a shaky hand and took a gulp. “Who knew my life was so complicated? Do you really think someone could be after me because of Dylan’s work?”
“I’m just throwing it out there. Things aren’t always as straightforward as they might seem, which brings us back to Mrs. Del Vecchio.”
“I didn’t see anything that day, Detective Marquette. You guys didn’t put out the word that you had a witness or anything, did you?”
“We wouldn’t do that, Ms. Reese. One news story specifically stated that we had no witnesses. If Mrs. Del
Vecchio’s killer is after you, he believes for some reason he has something to fear from you.”
She snorted. “That’s a good one. He’s the one with the Molotov cocktails and guns.”
She flicked a gaze toward Kieran.
“You mentioned something about Mrs. Del Vecchio on the phone. Is that what you meant by things not being as simple as they appeared?”
“Yeah, are you ready for this?”
Devon swung her legs out from under her and planted her feet on the floor. “Yep.”
“Mrs. Del Vecchio’s husband, Johnny, was a criminal and a bank robber. They called him Johnny Del. He died in prison and rumor has it he left a bundle of cash in hiding with his widow.”
Chapter Ten
