His cell rang in his hand and he gazed at it with a certain amount of trepidation. The number was familiar, but it took him a moment. Helena. She’d made the colossal mistake of attempting to kidnap Emily. Just what he’d told her not to do under any circumstances. But no, Helena had driven with her to Los Angeles, ostensibly to save her from being taken by Carlos back to Colombia. But it had turned out that Carlos was just part of the picture. There was another man in LA Helena had taken up with. He was a Hollywood producer—uh-huh, tell me another one—who was on the verge of putting together a blockbuster film, and it seemed Helena had dreams of being an actress.
But Carlos had learned where his wife was and had dutifully gone down there and picked up both Emily and Helena. He’d brought his wife back, kicking and screaming, apparently. Luke had learned of the fiasco from Carlos himself, who’d come into Luke’s office and calmly asked Luke if he was having an affair with his wife. Luke had told him no, that he was in a business arrangement with Helena. Carlos had put two and two together and said quietly, “So, she is sleeping with someone else again,” and left Luke mildly alarmed. He’d phoned Helena and told her Carlos had been to see him, but she wasn’t interested in talking to him. She believed he’d been the one to sic Carlos on her and the producer, though Luke had had nothing to do with it, and wasn’t interested in listening to reason. She’d snapped, “I’m not paying you,” before she ended the call, just in case he’d had ideas about going after her for the two hundred dollars she still owed him. Luke had let her off the hook. Sometimes it was in everyone’s best interest to just walk away. So, now she was phoning him . . . ?
“Luke Denton,” he answered.
“You bastard! You told him where I was again!” Helena shrieked.
Called a bastard twice in the space of a few minutes. Luke generally considered himself an affable kind of guy and was immediately annoyed. “Told who? Carlos? I had no idea where you went.”
“He hired you. He told me he went to see you. And now he’s pressing charges, you fucking asshole. I’ll have your license for this!”
“One: He didn’t hire me. Two: If he had, he would have been afforded the same confidentiality I gave you, so if I had known where—”
“He had me arrested. He was just waiting for a reason to get me out of the picture and you gave it to him!”
“Nope.”
“What am I going to do?” she wailed. “You’ve got to help me. You owe it to me!”
“Take a breath, Helena. And put your listening ears on. Carlos did not hire me. He asked me if I was your lover and I said no. He’d already brought you back from LA. That whole idea that Carlos was going to kidnap your daughter? That was a story you gave me. You tried to use me to prove you had a reason to take her first.”
“How do you know this? It’s not true!”
“I know people in law enforcement and the DA’s office. You wanted a credible ally. That’s why you hired me in the first place.”
Silence. He could hear her rapid breathing. She was quick to anger, quick to blame, quick to fight. Iris was cut from the same cloth, which said something about him that he wasn’t sure he liked. Maybe that was why Andi had affected him so much. She was calm. She was an observer. She had yet to blame him for something beyond his control, and that in itself was worth its weight in gold.
“I’ll find a way to make you pay,” she threatened.
“Helena, Carlos is a good guy. You can’t make him out to be a Colombian gangster and expect everyone to believe you just because you say it’s true.”
“You’re all the same!” she spat, and then she clicked off as well. This time he feared the finality he hoped for was a distant dream.
He was back at his laptop, writing up the final report for Helena even if he never gave it to her, when his cell phone rang again. This time he recognized the number immediately because he’d been calling it every week for the past six weeks. “Luke Denton,” he answered.
“Mr. Denton, it’s Peg Bellows.”
Her voice held a modicum of reluctance, something he often encountered when people knew they were returning the call of a private investigator.
“Hello, Mrs. Bellows. Thank you for calling me back.” He kept his voice neutral. Now that he finally had her on the phone he didn’t want to scare her by sounding too eager.
“I’ve been unavailable.”
“Sorry about all the messages. I’m in the middle of an investigation and am trying to interview people who’ve had dealings with the Carrera brothers.”
“You don’t have to be shy about it, Detective,” she said dryly. “I know who you are. You want to put the Carreras away.”
Remembering Bolchoy’s warning that she’d been attracted to the brothers in the beginning, he said carefully, “I know you talked to my partner, Roy Bolchoy, after your husband’s death.”
“Do I think Brian Carrera killed him? You bet. Is there something I want to do about it? No. I just want to be left alone. I don’t want any further involvement.”
“I understand, but—”
“Do you? Understand? I doubt it. I put my trust in them and Ted died because of it. Sometimes I can’t even . . . speak . . .” she said, her voice tightening. “The enormity of it all, and it’s my fault.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely true,” Luke said softly.