And he did smell good. Really good.
I gulped because he also held the pizza delivery kid’s hat in his hand, which instantly made me worry he’d killed him, too.
Leaning forward, I asked, “Who are you? I mean, not the part about the guy who’s going to kill me. I get that. Your name. What’s your name?”
He lifted his square jaw and gave me the once over. “Why does it matter? You’re going to die tonight. Names aren’t important.”
“Well, gravy’s sake. Why do you suppose it matters? If I’m going to die, I’d at least like to know the name of my killer. It’s like a killer courtesy or something.”
He barked a laugh, a laugh that suspiciously sounded like Win’s…
Well, huh.
“It’s Salvatore. Salvatore Finch. Does that ease the stress of dying at the hands of a stranger, Stevie Cartwright?”
A.k.a Sal? The Sal of too much chrome and steel? Naw. How…? Oh boy. It was all coming together for me now.
Win cleared that right up for me. “It’s my cousin Sal, Stevie! I can’t believe I’d forgotten how much he loves fish and chips. It never occurred to me he’d come all the way here from Lancashire. I never made the connection. Especially since he had no idea he was named in the will to begin with.”
“Some kind of spy you are,” I muttered to Win.
Sal lifted his chin, his eyes narrowing. “Say again?”
The mention of spies made Sal take notice, and if I hoped to consider getting out of here alive, I decided to at least try to disorient him with some ghost talk.
So I sat up straight and enunciated my words. “I was talking to your cousin. I told him he was a crappy spy. He didn’t properly decipher a clue. A big one.” A really big one.
Sal rose in a swift movement, his eyes scanning the entire length of the basement. “He can’t be here. My only cousin is dead, you sod!”
I smiled as though I had a secret I wasn’t willing to share, fighting to keep myself calm. “But he is. In fact, he just told me you come from Lancashire. Is it nice there? I’ve always wanted to go to England, you know. I’m a little put out I’ll miss it because you’re going to kill me. Do you think you can see England from up there?”
Sal’s blue eyes went icy-hot when he raised his hand, fist balled, and clocked me in the eye, knocking me and the chair I sat in backward.
With no way to brace myself, I fell to the concrete floor, cracking my head against the hard surface.
But the good news was, the rope around my feet had loosened. I mean, good in that, maybe I could give him a swift kick in his taters before he annihilated me.
If I was going out, I at least wanted to do it kicking and screaming—literally—so I worked at untangling my feet. My head swam and I think my eyeballs crossed as the sharp sting of my head bouncing off the concrete floor swirled around my skull.
But that didn’t stop Win from chewing my ear off. “Stevie, listen to me!” Win barked his order, as usual.
“Win! Shh!” I said on a wince. “I’m trying to get to know your cousin, is it, Sal? Right, you’re Win’s cousin?”
“Stevie…” he warned.
Sal was suddenly eerily calm. He yanked my chair back up, bringing me with it, driving me back into the hard seat with rough hands without even noticing I’d managed to almost free myself from the rope. “You know what I think the bigger question is here, Stevie? How do you know who I am?”
Rolling my eyes even as my head swam in dizzy circles and my face throbbed, I stated the obvious. “Duh. I just told you—your cousin. Though, one quick question. How did you get past Sally at the B&B with that accent? She never mentioned it.”
Sal’s grin was sly, a total pat on his own back. “Lots and lots of American television as a child. Smart, right?” he asked in what was definitely a very good American accent.
“Was it you I saw going into Madam Z’s store in the Burberry trench coat?”
“Stevie! This isn’t show and tell time,” Win griped, his tone urgent.
Sal grinned, his gorgeous eyes shiny and bright. “You can never go wrong with a Burberry. Was it you poking around in her store the other day?”
“Well, seeing as we’re sharing confessions. Yeah. I managed to squeeze out of that tiny window in her bathroom. Imagine that, huh?”
Sal cocked an eyebrow. “Imagine that.”
“You planted Madam Z’s Senior Alert necklace here then tipped the cops off anonymously with that awesomely done American accent, didn’t you?”
“I did indeed.” And then he wiped the smile from his face. “Now, I repeat, how do you know who I am?”
“Because of Win.”