Rossi stride in with a pizza box and a six-pack of Coke.
I sighed.
“You don’t like my cooking?” he asked, lowering the pizza and the soda to the coffee table.
“I’m grateful for all you’re doing, and I mean that, but in a word, no.”
He waggled a finger at me. He liked doing that. “The rest of the stuff’s in the car.”
“The rest?”
“Yeah, the girl food. Be right back.” He returned in a few seconds with two bags full of groceries. “Salad greens,” he announced. “Strawberries. Grilled chicken tenders. Thin-sliced bread. Danish butter. Something called tea cookies.” He cocked an eyebrow. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re a genius.”
“Correct. Let me stash this stuff. Give me a sec.” The refrigerator opened and closed a few times before he reappeared and handed me a Coke. Then he sank onto a club chair across from the couch where I lay stretched out like a pampered invalid.
He smiled across at me. “You look nice sitting there, Deva, like Cleopatra on her barge or something.”
I sipped the Coke. He had put ice in the glass just the way I liked it. “That was positively poetic, Rossi.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a gift for words.” His eyes narrowed. “The problem is what I’m doing is stop gap. You need somebody staying here with you.” He cocked an eyebrow. “You know, somebody to cook. And help you shower and stuff.”
My turn to cock an eyebrow.
He ignored it. “Somebody to get you to your doctor’s appointments. Go for pizzas. You can’t drive yet with your feet like that.” He cleared his throat. “In case you haven’t guessed, I’m volunteering for the job.”
“I guessed, Rossi, and I thank you, but no thanks. Besides, the stitches should come out next week, and if everything’s healed, I can ditch the crutches. Probably walk a little. At least long enough to stand up and do a few chores. Maybe even go into the shop part of the day. And Lee stops by, too. So no need to worry about me. I’m fine, really.”
He shrugged a little. “About staying here…I was shooting in the dark, but thought it was worth a try.”
“I have my Irish grandmother to worry about.”
“I thought she had passed.”
“Well she has, but you never know.”
“That’s logical,” he said, but he laughed, and to my relief changed the subject. “The next few weeks are going to be difficult. So I hope you’re right and that you’ll be up to the challenge physically. When the trial starts, you’ll have to testify. There’ll be cross examinations, attempts to twist your testimony, shake your story. None of that’s going to be easy. And of course, Jones is claiming he’s innocent. That you’re lying about what you heard. His testimony won’t stand up under scrutiny, but it will make for a tense trial.”
“How’s Morgan doing these days?”
“He’s well enough to stand trial. The force of that blow knocked his heart out of rhythm for a while, but he’s pretty well recovered. Though I hear his whole chest is bruised black.”
My relief that Morgan had survived was far greater than anyone knew. During the past week, Rossi had spent a lot of time telling me I had only done what I had to do. My God-given instinct for self-preservation had gone to battle for me. And had helped stop a killer. Still I grieved for all the lost and destroyed lives-most of all for Maria and Jesus and George. But for poor, misguided Ilona, and Trevor, too. He must be hurting. For ill-fated Morgan and for Jessica who was standing by him despite what he’d done. She’d even stopped her divorce proceedings, at least until the trial ended.
The Bonita police had believed me after all and had sent a search and rescue team into the woods, where they found Morgan wandering about, dazed and disoriented.
I guess he had never been a Girl Scout either.
“Any further news about Ilona?” I asked Rossi.
“She’s out on bail and singing like she’s on
“What’s that mean? Right along?”
“Since the Monet was stolen. Her polygraph was inconclusive.”
“You never let on. You held out on me, Rossi.”
“Had to. That’s my job.”
“Well, she knew where the painting was, and she knew who had killed Maria. No wonder she flunked the test.”
“Well, flunk is strong. Let’s say the results were cloudy. The technician thinks she did something to skew her answers.”
“What could she do? I thought the answers were involuntary?”
“They are. But when you answer the baseline questions, if you bite your lip or your tongue, or step on a tack in your shoe, the pain can change your response.”
“So it’s harder to spot a lie on the graph.”
“Exactly.”
“I was at the house the day Ilona took the polygraph exam. Afterwards, when Trevor kissed her, he had a trace of blood on his lips.”
Rossi nodded. “That could be the answer. Chances are the blood came from Ilona. Trevor passed the poly with flying colors.”
“So you were on to Ilona from the get go?”
“Pretty much. The feds followed her to Hungary after Christmas. She called on an art dealer in Budapest with known ties to the Russian art world.”
“A fence?”
Rossi shrugged. “Probably. We couldn’t do a thing without proof. You supplied that when you figured out where they hid the Monet. Good detective work, Deva.”
“But I was dead wrong about George Farragut. He was innocent all along.”
“Told ya.”
“Okay, you can gloat.” I was too ashamed to mention I had also harbored suspicions about another innocent guy, Simon Yaeger.
But before I could beat up on myself anymore, Rossi said, “Not all leads are good, not all suspicions are correct. The thing to remember is that some are right on the money. You lose a few, you win a few. And Deva, you won the lottery-you found the painting and you found the killer. Those are A pluses in anybody’s book.”
What do you know? For the first time in my life, I was on the A list.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Like a neatly tied package, the affaire Alexander was all wrapped up with no dangling loose ends. Except for one.
Lee had never mentioned Paulo’s painting of Ilona. The fact that I knew about it but she apparently did not weighed on me. Though Paulo had nothing to do with the murders or the theft, why hadn’t he spoken about such an important commission? What did he have to hide?
Even with the notoriety swirling around the Alexander name-or perhaps because of it-the publicity could only enhance Paulo’s career. That and a subject like Ilona, who was so very beautiful. A mystery for sure, and one I worried about for Lee’s sake. Yet every time I was tempted to ask her if she knew about the portrait, I couldn’t bring myself to pose the question. It was none of my business. Besides, Paulo would have many commissions over a lifetime. Lee wouldn’t know of each and every one. Still…why the secrecy?
I expected them to drop by tonight. With their wedding just two weeks away, they wanted to meet with Chip and discuss the wedding dinner menu. My feet propped up on an ottoman, I sat in a club chair and waited for them, telling myself not to worry, everything would be all right. On the plus side, my right foot had completely healed, and
