Fate Actually (Moonstone Cove #2) - Elizabeth Hunter Page 0,31
spread his hands. “I didn’t say anything.”
“The last time you came here, you asked me for my read on a guy that ended up being a murder victim, and now you’re trying to pin his death on my cousin.”
“Please.” Drew straightened the front of his button-down shirt. “I’m not trying to ‘pin it’ on anyone.” He rolled up his sleeves and leaned on the car. “So what are you doing here?”
“After I replaced the alternator, I discovered the ignition system needed some cleaning up, so I did that last week and now I’m tuning it.” She glanced at him. “You know cars?”
“Absolutely not.” He looked intently at the engine. “But I feel like I should.”
“You know how to change a tire?”
He nodded. “I do know that.”
“You know how to change your oil?”
“I do, though I will admit that I take it to the drive-through fifteen-minute place over on State Street instead of doing it myself.”
“If you know how to change oil and a tire, you know more about cars than about ninety percent of the population.” She stood up straight and placed her torque wrench on her work cart with a small sigh of regret. Goodbye, beautiful, distracting engine. “Let’s go in my office. I don’t need you putting Everett on edge.”
Everett, her German car mechanic, had known a few too many cops in his past life to ever be comfortable around them. He was a magician with classic German engines and a nervous wreck around cops.
Toni led Drew into her office and reached into her mini fridge for a ginger ale. “Drink?”
“Any kind of cola you have.”
Toni tossed him a Pepsi and sat down. “So what’s up?”
“The coroner narrowed down the time of death based on decomposition and evidence at the scene.”
“And?”
Drew frowned. “Nico doesn’t have an alibi. Said he was sleeping at home, alone in his room. Which has a door that leads outside, so he could have snuck out without the kids even hearing him.”
Toni groaned. “Or he’s just a normal father of two who was home exactly where he said he was on the night Fairfield bit it.”
Drew raised his hands. “I agree. It’s far more likely that’s the case. Unfortunately, I can’t eliminate him. I was hoping he’d have an alibi once we had a time of death.”
Toni took a long drink of her soda to settle her stomach. She was going on nine weeks pregnant and so far, the morning sickness had been more of a problem at night. She was hoping it stayed that way. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hide the pregnancy from her guys forever, but she didn’t want to deal with their questions quite this early.
“So why are you here?” she asked. “You want me to help you get more insight into the guy who made Nico miserable? How’s that going to help my cousin?”
“I’m more curious why you were questioning Marissa Dusi yesterday at the country club. She mentioned it when I talked to her today.”
Toni crossed her arms over her chest. “Did she?”
“She said you were, and I quote, ‘intimidating her.’”
She snorted. “Marissa would find a stiff breeze intimidating. I was giving her shit about her dead boyfriend because she annoys me and I’m a horrible person. It was nothing.”
Drew wasn’t buying it. She could feel the doubt rolling off him in waves.
“What exactly did she say I did? I’m surprised that the Moonstone Cove Police Department is that interested in country-club gossip.”
“When that gossip involves the woman a murder victim was known to be sleeping with, we get interested.”
Toni cocked her head. “The woman he was sleeping with? Not his girlfriend?”
“According to friends in San Jose and his secretary there, Whit Fairfield is engaged to a woman named Angela Calvo. In fact, they’re considered a ‘power couple.’ She works in finance, is the daughter of a city council member, and has a business degree from Wharton.”
“Huh.” So Whit Fairfield had a country girlfriend to keep him busy when he was slumming it in Moonstone Cove. Toni wasn’t surprised. Did Marissa know? Did she have delusions that she was going to get Whit to leave his fancy, well-connected girlfriend in the Bay Area and make things with her permanent?
“So Marissa wasn’t nearly as important to him as she thinks she was,” Toni said. “I’m petty enough to be happy about that, but what does it mean for the investigation?”
“It’s possible that this all stemmed from old-fashioned ‘other woman’ problems and had nothing to do with wine.”