Bed of Bones (A Sloane Monroe Novel, Book Five) (3 page)

“Are you with Madison right now?” he asked.

“Yeah, Maddie’s sitting right here.”

To my right, Maddie sat, legs crossed, donning a coral satin spaghetti-strapped top and matching shorts. She’d given her long, blond hair a reprieve for the night, taking it out of its usual pigtails, allowing her shoulder-length bangs to fall over her eyes. She took a sip of red wine, uncrossed her legs, and swapped the glass for an open bottle of glittery, pink nail polish on the nightstand. We made eye contact, and she mouthed something to me that at first sounded like, “Hut’s going long.” I deciphered it to mean, “What’s going on?” Since no actual words came out of her mouth, I couldn’t be sure, but there weren’t any huts in Las Vegas to my knowledge, and neither of us was going long tonight. When I mouthed back that the chief was on the phone, she set the polish down and reached her hand out, taking the phone from me.

“Babe, what’s happening?” she said into the phone.

This was followed by dead silence. “Babe” talked and Maddie listened, her face morphing into a series of different looks ranging from concerned to something she rarely expressed: genuine fear. Every few seconds, she’d glance my way and fake a smile, trying to convince me everything was okay. It didn’t work. It never worked. We’d been friends for over twenty years. At this point, I didn’t miss much. One more quick glance my way and Maddie said, “I understand.” Then she ended the call.

“What did you hang up?” I asked. “We weren’t finished talking.”

She reached over, placing a hand on top of mine. I yanked it back.

“Okay,” I said. “Now you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

“We need to go home.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“We just got here,” I said. “What’s happened?”

She paused, her eyes shifting to the ceiling fan swirling above us.

“Not you too, Maddie. I expect the silent treatment from him, but not from you.”

“There’s been an accident.”

“Where?”

“At home—at the film festival.”

Ever since the chief had started dating Maddie, he had, in my opinion, tried to make her services exclusive to the Summit County Police Department any time a coroner was required. Problem was, she was the favorite ME of many departments in the surrounding counties. This gave her more work than she could handle, and little free time. “There are other MEs he can call besides you. We’re on vacation.”

She tossed the phone back to me. “It’s not what you think.”

With my hands on my hips, I said, “It isn’t? He called my phone intentionally, and now I know why. He planned to sweet talk me into cutting this trip short, but when I answered, he felt guilty. And when he didn’t know what to say, he asked all these random questions about Giovanni. Am I right? Because if I am, he can—”

“Sloane,” she said, her voice raised. “Listen to me. There was an explosion at one of the theaters tonight.” She glanced at the time. “Well, last night. Two or three hours ago.”

“Which theater?”

“He didn’t say.”

“By explosion you mean…”

“They think someone planted a bomb or multiple bombs. Wade doesn’t have a lot of information yet. He said he’d call again when he knows more. We need to go home.”

I stood up and pressed my hands together, slowly raising them to my scorching-hot face. “Of course.” A bomb. In Park City. During the biggest event of the year. I didn’t want to believe it was true. “Why was he asking about Giovanni? Does he think Giovanni can help in some way? Even if we haven’t spoken much lately, I can still give him a call.”

“I don’t know how else to say this so I’m just going to say it,” she said. “He was in the theater when the explosion happened.”

“Who was?”

“Giovanni.”

I shook my head. “Impossible. Giovanni’s in New York. He doesn’t come back until—”

She rested a hand on my shoulder. “No, Sloane. He’s not.”

“I don’t believe it. He would have called me when he got back into town. We were supposed to talk.”

“It’s him. Wade verified he was at the theater.”

“With who?”

She frowned, then shrugged.

I attempted to lift my suitcase off the ground and rest it on the edge of the bed. It was empty, but felt like it had been weighted down with a ton of bricks.

“Here, let me help you,” Maddie said.

“How bad was the explosion? Any fatalities?”

“Two so far.”

I sat back down, my head swirling in sync with the ceiling fan above me. “Is he…umm…I mean…did the chief say whether Giovanni is…umm…”

Maddie sat next to me, slinging an arm around my neck. “I don’t know, sweetie. Let’s hope not.”

CHAPTER 3

My mind was wandering again. With Maddie behind the wheel, it wasn’t hard to drift off. She’d said little since we’d left Las Vegas, and usually I couldn’t get her to
stop
talking. The last time I’d seen Giovanni, we argued, something I regretted now. The two of us had been out to dinner together, and I had prodded him, in a gentle way, for information about his sister. He’d remained tight-lipped, and did what he always did when I said something he didn’t like—he changed the subject. I’d let it slide in the past, but not this time.

Giovanni’s sister, Daniela, had been kidnapped a few months earlier, and yet somehow, he’d managed to find, rescue, and return her home within a week—
without
involving the police. As a private investigator, I knew damn well the average person never had much success finding a missing person on his own—that’s why they came to me, or the police, or in some cases, both. But Giovanni wasn’t anything like the average person.

At the time of Daniela’s kidnapping, a handful of Giovanni’s men went on the rescue mission, but not all of them came back. Yet another topic he wouldn’t discuss. And I’d grown tired of all the secrecy.

I’d gotten up and tossed my napkin on the table, attempting to storm out in true diva fashion. I thought I would make it to the door unscathed, my point proven, but it was always moments like this when I made the stupidest mistake of all. As I sauntered away from him, nose held high, the heel of my strappy, black shoe caught in between two tiles on the floor where the grout had chipped away, and my heel broke off in the crack. This only furthered my embarrassment. Not only was
he
looking at me, everyone else was too. One less-than-gracious woman even giggled behind a napkin she’d masked in front of the lower half of her face. I ditched the heel and did exactly what my anxiety suggested: I kicked the other heel off my foot, grabbed the remaining three quarters of my other shoe, and ran, leaving the heel behind. I wasn’t proud of myself for putting on such a ridiculous charade, but I couldn’t keep giving up so much of myself and getting so little in return, no matter how wonderful he treated me.

For us to work, I needed him to let me in, and even if by some miracle he did, could I really look the other way while he lived a shady lifestyle just because he was good to me? I’d looked the other way when I suspected him of murdering his sister’s former lover. I’d looked the other way when he shot two bullets into Sam Reids’ skull while I was in the next room. In both cases, I allowed myself to believe the deaths were justified. Daniela’s lover had beaten her on more than one occasion and threatened her life. Serial killer Sam Reids had kidnapped and murdered a handful of women, my sister included.

They both got what they deserved in the end.

Hadn’t they?

Maddie looked at me and winked. “I was going to say ‘penny for your thoughts,’” she said. “But for yours, I’d offer at least a quarter. Maybe even two.”

“Trust me; you’re better off not knowing.”

“Do you want to make a quick pit stop? Use the ladies room or grab a donut…use the ladies room
and
grab a donut?”

I glanced at her.

“Didn’t think so,” she said. “It’s not much longer anyway.”

Since we left, I’d tried calling Giovanni’s right-hand man, Lucio, every fifteen minutes. Four hours and sixteen calls later, he still hadn’t answered, and my OCD had officially gone into overdrive.

I pulled the visor down and flipped open the mirror. Strands of my long, usually lustrous, straight, black hair, were stuck to the side of my face, like they’d been hair sprayed in place. I picked them off, using my fingers to comb them to the side. My mascara was gone, but even without it I could always count on my sparkly, brown eyes to brighten things up, especially when the rest of me was falling apart. “What reason would a person have to bomb a theater in Park City?”

Maddie looked over. “You know as well as I do this type of thing can happen anywhere at any time. There are a lot of crazy people out there.”

“Yeah, but Park City seems so low risk.”

“Think about it. Columbine, Oklahoma City, Newtown. Most of these places never make national news otherwise.”

“I was just thinking…”

“That’s your first mistake.”

“What—trying to figure things out?” I asked.

“I was leaning toward your lack of patience. There’s nothing
to
figure out. We don’t have all the details yet.”

I slumped back in the seat. Maybe she was right. If only there was a kill switch, something to put my brain on hold a little longer.

After a few minutes passed, Maddie began gnawing on the inside of her mouth.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“It’s something. You’re biting your lip.”

She sighed. “Out of curiosity, what
were
you thinking?”

“I imagine there are a lot of people out there who want Giovanni dead.”

CHAPTER 4

The statement was true. You don’t get to the top of the mafia food chain without making a significant number of enemies. Daniela wasn’t snatched for no reason. Whoever took her wanted to send a message. It made me wonder what kind of message the theater bomber was sending, and to whom.

We arrived back in Park City a little after nine in the morning. As we neared the theater, two patrol cars became five, and then seven. The traffic headed out of town stretched as far as the eye could see. Cars ahead of us were being rerouted through a side street that weaved through a neighborhood in Prospector before spilling out a good distance away from the theater. Everyone was curious, and those who weren’t were packing their bags, returning from whence they came.

When it was our turn, we weren’t steered in another direction; we were stopped by the last person I wanted to see, Detective Drake Cooper, a man who, in his fifty-seven years of life, had spent half his time mulling over all the ways he’d been screwed over by everyone from the police chief to the checker at the local supermarket, and the other half doing something he actually excelled at: fighting crime. When he spotted my Audi, he flattened his hand in front of him like he was prepared to stop my car with it. He then circled his pointer finger in the air.

Maddie lowered the car window, but kept her eyes on the road.

Coop bent his six-foot-five frame down, poking his enlarged head inside. “Good morning to you too.”

He wasn’t smiling, per his usual.

“Let us pass, Coop,” I said.

“Can’t do that, sweetheart.”

His tone dripped with sarcasm.

“What’s wrong this time?”

“Only police personnel can be admitted to the scene. We’re keeping things under wraps—you know the protocol.”

“What
things
?”

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be under wraps now, would it?”

“The chief called me personally,” I said.

He rested a hand on his hip, mocking me. “What do you know—he called
me
personally today too.”

“Maddie has clearance,” I said.

“Not on this one, she doesn’t.”

Without the presence of the chief, we were gridlocked, a fact Coop relished. He thumped on the hood of the car with his fist. “If the chief wants to grant you two access to the scene, it’s on his watch, not mine. Until then, back this thing up.”

“Can you at least tell me where the chief is?”

“I’m not your errand boy. Call him yourself.” Just as Maddie placed her finger on the button to put the window up, Coop added, “What are you doing here anyway, Sloane? Shouldn’t you be at the hospital?”

Maddie smiled. “At least we know where Giovanni is now. Thanks, Coop.”

He rolled his eyes. She jammed the car into reverse, spun around, and punched the gas, making a spectacle of herself as she peeled out. For a girl like Maddie, there wasn’t any other way.

“You know,” she began, “Coop’s the type of guy that could turn a sane, rational person into a cold-blooded killer after a single conversation. And yet he saved your life awhile back.” She swayed her head back and forth. “I’ll never understand.”

I did. It was his job. Nothing personal.

The chief’s secretary, Mary, called Maddie on her cell phone. Mary said he’d been tied up all day. He asked Mary to arrange a meeting with us at the station later today. Maddie pressed her for more information and learned the joint terrorism task force was assembling a team. Soon they’d be on their way to Park City.

I tried Lucio again. Still no answer. But now I knew where Giovanni was, and I hoped, alive.

CHAPTER 5

Daniela was the first person I spotted after stepping through the revolving door of the Summit Medical Center in Heber. She rose from a chair, embraced me. I said, “How is he? What happened? Why was he even at the…” And then I stopped. One look at her tear-stained face, and I knew she was in no condition to answer my questions.

A knot jolted my stomach. The look on her face was one of loss. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. I wanted to grab her, shake her. Scream.

Please let him be alive!

Instead, I held her and whispered, “Are you okay?”

She shook her head.

“What can I do to help?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She picked a hair band out of her back pocket and whipped her long, dark locks into a loose bun. “How could this happen—to him of all people?”

Did she mean it? Surely, she had some indication of the kind of danger the family business put him in.