“It fits you were there after he was murdered.”
Not before, good. Or maybe the detective was giving her an out to see if she’d let anything slip. If anyone had seen Ferdinand take Alicia into the condo after he’d knocked her out, wouldn’t they have reported it to the police? Maybe not, thinking she was dead drunk.
Hanover’s partner got a call and said into his phone, “This is Brumley. Yeah?” He looked up at Alicia. “All right. I’ll tell Hanover. Yeah, we’re still questioning her. Thanks.” He hung up his phone. “Want me to ask?” he questioned Hanover.
“Don’t tell me it’s about another shooting,” Hanover said dryly.
Brumley said, “Yeah, it is. Seems some hikers thought they’d heard a shot fired and then saw two men in suits coming off a hiking trail near Breckenridge, one with a bloodied trouser leg. The hikers said a woman was standing by a wreath of flowers near the trail.”
“For Missy Greiston,” Hanover guessed, looking directly at Alicia. “So who shot the man, Brumley?”
“My guess?” his partner asked.
“Take your best shot,” Hanover said, never taking his eyes off Alicia.
She remained ramrod stiff.
“Mario’s men came after her on the trail, and met up with Alicia Greiston when she was visiting the spot where her mother had died. Mario’s men threatened her. Miss Greiston defended herself. The men left but, in their usual fashion, didn’t report the gunshot wound. Because of that, there was no crime to report. No real witnessing of a crime. Only circumstantial evidence.”
“Gun casings? Bullet fragments?”
“None.”
“All right.” Detective Hanover slapped his hands on his thighs, rose from the chair, and said, “That about wraps it up. If you think you might have seen someone or something in connection with Ferdinand Massaro’s murder, you’ll let us know, won’t you, Miss Greiston?”
“Of course,” Alicia said softly.
Detective Hanover gave his head a little shake and followed Brumley out the door. Once it was locked, Alicia let out a shaky breath, then looked at Tom and Peter’s grave expressions.
“I didn’t witness any other shootings or killings. I swear it,” she said with a frown, her voice sharp.
They both chuckled darkly.
“Let’s go through my mother’s things, then we can pack up some of my stuff and go. I did want to keep my furniture, though.” She looked at the new couch and love seats she’d bought the previous year and that she’d saved hard-earned money to purchase. And she longed to sleep in her own bed, too.
“No problem. My grandparent’s place has old furniture that needs replacing. We’ll get a moving van and move your things there.” Jake said to Tom and Peter, “You can wait here and make sure no one comes that shouldn’t be here.”
“Want me to rent a moving van? Shouldn’t take anything very big to haul Alicia’s furniture and personal effects back to Silver Town,” Tom said.
Rising from the couch, Jake looked to Alicia for a decision. She nodded. She might as well get this over and done with. No sense in paying rent on a place when she wasn’t going to be living there. “I’ll have to give notice, and I’ll lose my deposit for not giving a month’s notice.”
“It won’t matter. I make enough money for the two of us.” He took her hand and helped her up from the couch.
She gave him an easy smile and looped her finger through one of his belt loops. “I should have asked that right away.”
“I didn’t realize that was the only thing holding you back from saying yes.”
She gave him an annoyed look and a tug on his belt loop as she headed for the stairs. “I don’t recall being asked anything that remotely required me to say yes.”
“Do you want me to call Darien and give him the heads-up concerning our progress?” Tom asked, cell phone in hand.
“Yeah, tell him we’re getting a moving van so it might take a little longer to return home. And you can let him know that we had the shooting incident here at her apartment and gave police statements again. Tell him there’s a little trouble about Alicia’s being sighted at the condo where Ferdinand Massaro died, in case we need to find a lawyer in Denver, and that we’re about ready to go through Alicia’s mother’s things.”
“Will do.”
A little trouble? Witnessing a murder was bound to get her into a whole lot more trouble. Why had she ever mentioned knowing Ferdinand Massaro?
When they reached the bedroom, Jake moved into the closet to pull out the boxes of stuff belonging to Alicia’s mother.
“Just dump the contents on the floor, and we’ll sort through them that way,” she said, her heart in her throat. She’d thrown everything in the boxes without really going through any of it, so she hadn’t a clue if any of it needed to be discarded or not. But smelling her mother’s perfume on her personal effects and seeing the jewelry and trinkets she’d collected since her mother had been a young woman was still hard for Alicia to deal with.
After searching through two of the boxes of knickknacks that Alicia decided she couldn’t part with, while she randomly wiped away her errant tears, Jake paused and asked, “Where do you keep your tissues?”
“Bedside table.”
He returned to her side with the box, crouched in front of her, and wiped away her tears himself. “Alicia, if this is too difficult for you…”
She shook her head. “I might see something that would mean something to me but that wouldn’t to you.” She smiled through her tears at him and swept her hand down his arm until she was holding his strong but gentle hand, and she squeezed lightly in thanks. “Thanks, Jake. Have I told you I love you?”
He gave her a quirky smile. “Not in so many words, but I knew it anyway.”
She gave him a watery smile, and he tilted her chin up and kissed her lips. But he quickly broke off the kiss, gave her a light hug, and then went back to searching through a sheaf of papers. She knew he wanted to get this over with, the sooner the better, and be on their way. She wished she could look through everything as clinically as he could.
She was leaning forward to move aside more papers when her hand brushed against something oddly familiar—a small, sturdy red envelope that was big enough only for a key. She recognized the bank key at once, and her heart began beating faster. She lifted the envelope, shook out the key, and held it up to show Jake. “My mother’s safe-deposit-box key.”
Jake paused from reading through various papers he’d found and looked up at her. “Where is the box?”
“A bank in Breckenridge. She… didn’t want to keep it in Dillon.”
“Why?” His dark brows were slightly furrowed.
“I don’t know. I never asked, and she never said.” Alicia had never given it much thought, but as intensely as Jake was looking at her, she suspected he thought the key could be vital to discovering clues.
“Do you know what it contains?” he asked.
“Personal papers, I guess. She had me sign the signature card so I could have access if I ever needed to. I never did, and I have no idea what she kept in it. I always thought it was kind of odd that she’d have it there instead of where she lived permanently. After her death, I didn’t give it any thought. She never had anything of real value. Just fake jewels that she kept with her at home. So I figured she kept her birth certificate, Grandmother’s death certificate, her social security card, stuff like that in there.”
Alicia tried not to sound as anxious as he was making her feel, but she wanted to check out the bank vault that day. She knew they wouldn’t have time. Not when they had to move all the furniture and her other household goods to Silver Town. The bank would be closed by the time they got to Breckenridge.
“We’ll have to check it out first thing tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes, of course.” She’d known that the minute she discovered the key in her mother’s possessions. She tucked the key into her jeans pocket and then spied another key. This one looked like a house key, she thought. She sniffed it and frowned. “This wasn’t my mother’s. It smells faintly of cologne. The same smell I got a whiff of in Ferdinand’s apartment when one of Mario’s henchmen came looking for me. Danny Massaro.”
“You’re sure?” Jake asked, taking the key from her. He gave it a good whiff, memorizing the smell of it.
“Yes. Would a wolf’s nose lie?”
He squeezed her hand. “No. So it’s Danny’s key. Why would your mother have it?”
“I don’t know. What if Tony had stolen it and given it to Mom to keep hidden in her stuff? Maybe it’s Danny’s house key, and Tony was trying to get some goods on the guy or something.”
“Hmm,” Jake said noncommittally, still looking through more of the stuff on the floor. “I don’t see anything in these boxes.” He looked up at her. “Do you?”
She shook her head.
“All right. Well, I’ll put everything away if you want to take your clothes out of the drawers and pack up your items in the bathroom.”
“Okay,” she said, and looked around at her apartment. She had truly thought she’d return to it someday. She never had expected to be a werewolf mated to another and leaving her apartment to live with him in another town.
She was still sitting on the floor when she noticed Jake wasn’t putting things back into the boxes any longer. She turned to see what he was doing. He was watching her. “Are you all right, Alicia?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’ll need some boxes for my clothes, though.”
Before she could stand, he pulled her to her feet, and then he gave her a warm hug. “I plan to settle into my grandfather’s house tonight. Darien might say no, but if we can get a bodyguard detail together, that’s where I’d like to be with you tonight. In our own place.”