“Okay.” He held up his hands. “PMS, much?”
Mara put her hands on her hips. “Really?”
Sheri Jean said, “Your job’s on the line, mister.”
Kellen stepped up to him, nose to nose. “Get. Out.”
He marched away, trailing tatters of offended dignity. But he didn’t get sympathy, and he didn’t put down his drink.
Kellen hoped she hadn’t made a mistake. Nils Brooks wanted to keep his suspects close. But while the events of the past several days had convinced her Nils Brooks told her the truth about the Yearning Sands Resort smuggling depot, and probably the truth about the Librarian, she still wasn’t convinced that Nils Brooks was telling the truth about himself. And that increased her apprehension and her suspicions…about everyone.
Or maybe she was simply sleep deprived.
Frances smiled after Chad Griffin’s retreating figure. “You know, Kellen, I didn’t know if I liked you before, but you’re getting to be almost human.”
Murders. Smuggling. Obnoxious men. Handsome men. Missing law enforcement. A fussy generator. A quirky communications system. Sure. The whole equation added up to a much more likable Kellen Adams. “Thanks,” Kellen said.
“What’s in the package?” Sheri Jean asked.
Kellen poked at the artistically arranged mounds of tangerines, gold-foil-wrapped pears and apples and plums. “It’s cold.”
“They refrigerated the fruit,” Sheri Jean answered.
“You’re not supposed to refrigerate bananas.” Kellen pulled them off the top and started taking the array of fruit apart, searching for the card. “Are you sure it’s for me?”
“The delivery woman specifically said it was for Kellen Adams,” Frances said. “That is you, isn’t it?”
Mostly. “I can’t eat it all.” Kellen didn’t want to eat any of it. A mystery gift made her remember that disembodied head floating outside Nils’s window, made her think about the Librarian and the people who died in agony, their hands cut from their bodies, their pleas for help unheard. In this place, at this time, she had to wonder if someone with less than honorable intentions had sent this.
“Let’s put it out for the guests!” Sheri Jean found a tray of dried chocolate-dipped apricots and a tin of chocolate-covered cherries and made a nummy sound.
Kellen looked up at the gathering crowd: Sheri Jean and her receptionists, Mara and her spa workers, the newlyweds and the Shivering Sherlocks. She could hardly say she feared poison or some other mischief. Unless she wanted to explain herself, and she did not, that could be construed as paranoia. In fact, it might be paranoia. “Help yourselves,” she said and stepped back.
Frances slid the foil off a ripe pear and took a bite, and her eyes slid closed in unadulterated pleasure.
Mara took the tray of chocolate-dipped glazed apricots and danced around to the employees and guests, offering and teasing.
Carson Lennex arrived and watched from the outskirts, arms crossed over his manly chest and a slight, charming smile lifting his lips.
Chad Griffin hid in the lobby bar and sulked.
As the staff and guests passed the chocolate-covered fruits, the tight knot of worry inside Kellen relaxed. This was the kind of treat the troops had loved receiving overseas, luxurious tidbits that reminded them of home and holidays—and so far, no one had dropped dead.
Frances ran her finger around the edge of the bowl. “I wonder if this is really a Japanese Awaji piece. If it is, you’ve got a secret admirer with expensive taste.”
The whole secret admirer thing gave Kellen the willies. “I hate that crackle glaze.” The decorative bowls at the Greenleaf mansion had sparkled with that glaze, and Erin and Gregory had both adored them. Looking back, Kellen thought it was because they enjoyed the idea of something that was prebroken. Like them. “You take it,” she told Frances.
“Really? Okay, I will. Thank you!”
Kellen went back to work unpacking the fruit. Tiny tangerines with their zipper skin smelled like sunshine, summer and citrus. The prickly skin of a fresh pineapple gave off the scent of faraway tropical plantations. Only people who lived where the continual rain bleached the world gray could understand. Kellen lifted one of the last tangerines to her nose, took a long sniff—and something long and slim and alive and colorful slithered out of the bowl.
Guests squeaked and screamed and scattered.
By some trick of levitation, Kellen found herself ten feet back from where she’d been.
The snake, ten inches long, with black, gray and red stripes running the length of its body, slid off the table and onto the floor. It moved rapidly across the cool marble toward the front door.
Sheri Jean moved with intelligence and speed. She dumped the last of the fruit out of the bowl and inverted it over the snake, stopping its escape and the burgeoning panic. “It’s nothing more than a garter snake,” she announced in a loud, firm voice. Then more quietly she said, “Although I’ve never seen one like that.”
“I have,” Debbie said faintly. “In our garden in Maine.”
Maine. Kellen stared at the familiar-looking bowl. She thought about the snake writhing underneath, trying to find a way out. Maine. Her concerns about smuggling, murder and the Librarian changed, and for one moment she reverted to Cecilia, afraid of cruelty, broken bones and violence committed to satisfy a petty despot. She dropped the tangerine and pressed that hand against a marble column. She closed her eyes and breathed in, and banished the memories… They were not Kellen’s memories…
She felt a man’s arm around her waist. Chad Griffin… Or Gregory Lykke?
No! Her eyes snapped open. She turned and…it wasn’t either one of them. Not even close.
A tall man in a dark business suit bent over her in concern. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She recognized him from her research the day before. “You must be Maximilian Di Luca.”
MAXIMILIAN DI LUCA:
MALE, 30S, 6’5”, 220 LBS., ITALIAN AMERICAN. FORMER FOOTBALL PLAYER. CURRENTLY WORKS FOR DI LUCA WINES. STERN FACE, HANDSOME, TANNED SKIN, BLACK SHADOW OF A BEARD, CURLY BLACK HAIR CROPPED INTO A BUSINESSMAN’S LENGTH, A LITTLE LONG AND DISHEVELED. BROWN EYES WITH LONG BLACK LASHES. GOOD CHEST. RUMBLY VOICE. EYES, VOICE FAMILIAR?
He smiled, a slow signal of delight. “You know me?”
Too much delight. Too much anticipation. She briskly freed herself and stepped away. “You look like your uncle.” Or like Leo had looked fifty years before.
“Of course. You’re right. I do.” He said, “You turned white when you saw that snake. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I don’t like snakes. But who does?” A quick glance around the lobby showed all the guests and all the staff standing close to the wall, staring at that bowl as if the snake could somehow escape. “I’m fine. Really, fine.”
Sheri Jean was glaring at her, head tilted, wanting her to snap out of it.
Kellen did. One didn’t refuse Sheri Jean’s demands, spoken or otherwise. In a loud, firm voice, she said, “Let’s all go into the lounge, shall we? We’ll send the fruit to the kitchen to be well washed and our unwelcome visitor can be taken elsewhere. As fast as he was moving toward the door, he must have been late for an appointment.”
A little ripple of laughter.
But no one moved.
“Come on, we’ll pour some refreshments and give ourselves a chance to relax again.” Kellen made a surreptitious shooing gesture to Mara Philippi and did the head-tilt glare at Frances.
Mara walked to Max Di Luca, took his arm and smiled into his face. “And you are…?”
Frances walked toward the lounge, calling, “This calls for a giant bottle of champagne and some fresh-squeezed orange juice. Any excuse for mimosas, I say!”