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Little did she know that my own heart was beating as wildly as a timpani being pounded by a frantic heavy metal drummer. My hands were clammy and adrenaline spurted crazily through my veins.
“Just…be careful.”
“I will,” I promised. I reached for the doorknob but stopped and faced my poor mother once more. “You know I have to do this. She killed Ian.”
“You can’t be certain.”
“I know she did it. I was there! I found him! In the garden—” I pointed frantically to the side of the house, the area I’d loved as a child with its dark foliage, creeping vines and gravel paths leading to secret, private hiding places where squirrels nested and owls roosted. I hated that place now. I fought the urge to break down completely. “I saw her in the window. Looking down. But she tried to blame me,” I said. “And you.”
Mom nodded slightly, unable to meet my eyes as the ancient grandfather clock near the door ticked off the remaining seconds of our lives.
“He was just a child,” I reminded her gently. “Your only grandson.”
Mom’s eyes closed. She swallowed back tears and rubbed the gold cross for all it was worth. “This isn’t the way. It’s not right.” Her lower lip quivered.
“An eye for an eye, Mom. It’s in the Bible.”
“Wait…” She was confused. “‘An eye for an eye’? But I thought you were just going to talk to her….”
Damn. “Just an expression.” Anger burned through my blood again, the same quiet rage that overtook me every time I thought of my baby’s senseless death. My outrage and pain hadn’t always been silent. I’d wailed and screamed, shouted oaths and sworn vengeance. When I’d found my son’s body, broken from a horrible push through his bedroom window, I’d come apart at the seams, had been forced into seclusion, drugged and analyzed and then, of course, accused of being out of my mind. I’d actually had to suffer accusations that I had shoved my son through the window to his death on the garden path below.
It made me sick to think about it. Even now I swallowed back the bile that rose in my throat and shuddered at the image scored in my memory. Ian’s tiny broken body lying upon the cold stones of the manor.
Black rage poured through my soul.
“I think…I think you—We should let it go,” Mom said, blinking to stave off tears. “It’s been five years.”
“And she got away with murder. Your grandson’s murder.”
“Oh, please, don’t do this.”
“Too late, Mom. I just want to talk to her. Let her know that I’m on to her. Give her a good jolt.”
“Why would she confide in you?”
“Because they always do. Murderers want to crow. To brag about their accomplishments, or…if it truly was an accident, I’ll see her guilt, her remorse. She won’t be able to hide her emotions.”
“You think.” Clearly Mom was skeptical. From the hallway near the den came Mom’s little dog, Peppy, a brown-and-white terrier-Chihuahua mix, toenails clicking on the polished marble. The beast gave me its usual response—a nasty little snarl. “Peppy, stop that!”
The dog jumped into Mom’s lap and continued to growl as it regarded me with dark, suspicious eyes.
Time to leave.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon!” I brushed a kiss over her brow, leaving a lipstick mark and rubbing it out before Peppy had the chance to lunge. Then I dashed out the door, my heels clicking on the brick walkway that curved to the front gates. Ferns and rhododendron shivered in the breath of wind and rising mist.
Mom really pissed me off. I love her to death, but she has never been one to take action. Ever. While Dad was alive she let him push her around, just so she could live in this grandiose house. Perched high on the hill, the “Old Dickens Estate” with its four floors, brick facade and glittering beveled glass windows had an incredible view of San Francisco Bay, the angular rooftops of Victorian mansions and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Nice house. But was it worth the verbal and physical abuse she’d had to endure until Dad finally decided to end it all by hanging himself in his private den?
I didn’t think so.
In the garage I found my old, nearly forgotten BMW and climbed behind the wheel, then saw her Mercedes, barely used, parked in another bay. Wouldn’t the Benz be a better choice? Arrive in a shiny luxury car and have it valet parked, rather than screeching up in the old three series with the dent in one side? Of course it would. Mom kept her keys in a crystal dish on a small Louis XVI table near the front door.
And the gun.
The damned pistol.
I’d forgotten to pack it in my purse. It was up in my bedroom where I’d left it earlier, but I’d have to make some excuse to run back upstairs. Luckily Mom couldn’t get that decrepit old elevator to move fast enough to chase me down, even if she wanted to.
I checked my watch.
No doubt I’d be late.
Even with the valet parking.
But so be it.
I hurried back inside, bolstering myself to go one more round with Lorna and her insipid dog.
Security detail.
What a laugh.
Lucas Parker walked through a two-hundred-year-old breeze-way that was part of this aging monastery. The monks were long gone, the archdiocese having sold off the stucco and stone buildings and rolling acres to Ernesto D’Amato over a century before. Nowadays the vines they’d so carefully cultivated produced some of the best grapes for Syrah in the country, making D’Amato Winery world-renowned. Thus Silvio D’Amato Junior was currently the “King of Syrah,” if you believed his overblown press.
Parker didn’t.
In fact, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about any kind of wine.
Not that it mattered. He was just the hired help tonight. An ex-cop from the local police force here to ensure that the snobs and wa
And why wouldn’t they be? Located in the hills surrounding the quaint tourist town of Sonoma in the Valley of the Moon, D’Amato Monastery Estates had never, to date, had a break-in. Not one bottle of their prize-wi
Parker thought hiring security was overkill.
Yet, here he was, wearing a tux with a collar that was far too tight, his shoulder-holster properly hidden, feeling useless. He’d retired from the force a couple of years back. Early retirement, thanks to a stakeout gone wrong and a stray bullet that had lodged in the lumbar region of his spine.
The bullet had been surgically removed and Parker had learned to walk again, but active duty was out. His partner, Noah Kent, still felt like shit that he wasn’t able to stop the bullet that had nearly severed Parker’s spine. Like so many cops, Kent thought he was Superman. “Your name isn’t Clark Kent,” Parker still told him. Kent was still on the job and Parker was a P.I., one with a very slight limp and sometimes a lot of pain.
And he’d known he should never have taken this job.
Unfortunately he’d been chosen for this detail by Silvio D’Amato Junior himself. Silvio just happened to be Parker’s brother-in-law. Well, technically ex-brother-in-law, as Resa, a few years back, had decided that living with a cop just wasn’t her style.
Trouble was, Parker had known it wouldn’t work a long time before she’d come to terms with the truth. They’d married over Silvio Senior’s objections, then divorced over his shame. No one in Silvio D’Amato’s lineage had ever been divorced. Parker could still hear the old man ranting, that fake Italian accent rumbling as he called Theresa, “Resa, my bambina Resa. How could she do this to me? I am blessed with six children and my youngest brings shame to the family. It breaks my heart.”
There was plenty of that going around, Parker thought as he shot a look toward Silvio Senior, who had passed the family business to the hands of his namesake a couple years ago. Silvio Senior’s dark eyes were huge behind his spectacles as he pressed a plump, manicured hand onto Junior’s shoulder, whispering, always whispering in his ear.