A Death In Tuscany (Sarah Woods Mystery Book 13) Read online

  “Maybe you should go see if Brittany is still here and return the phone to her while I’m in the shower.”

  “Will do,” he said.

  A few minutes later, as I was getting dressed, Carter came back. “Too late. They already left for the airport.”

  “I guess we could mail it to her when we get back home. We don’t have Brittany’s address, do we?”

  “No, but it shouldn’t be hard to find her.”

  “The sisters probably have it,” I said.

  “Right.” He checked his watch and frowned. “Are you ready?”

  “Yep.” I grabbed my purse and jacket and followed him out the door.

  As soon as we piled into the Fiat, Carter went to turn the engine and nothing happened. He tried a few more times with the same result.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Is the battery dead?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll take a look.” He got out, went to the front of the car, and opened the hood. I followed him, wondering what the problem could be.

  After a few seconds, Carter sighed in disgust. “Somebody didn’t want us to drive anywhere today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pointed toward the engine. “The wire that connects the coil to the distributor is missing. Car won’t start without it.”

  “Missing?” I have little to no knowledge of cars and how they work, so I had no idea what Carter was saying. “You mean, someone actually took it?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Carter closed the hood and got on his cell phone. “I’m calling the rental company to have someone come out here and replace it.”

  “Why would anyone do this?” I asked. “Did someone need that wire for their own car, or were they trying to prevent us from leaving?”

  Carter was already speaking to an agent on his phone and according to his forced polite tone, I sensed his aggravation. When he ended the call, he said, “No one can get out here until this afternoon. Looks like we’re not going to Rome today.”

  I threw up my hands. “This makes no sense.”

  “One thing is for sure,” Carter said. “This was deliberate. I think it’s time we have a chat with Eduardo.”

  Chapter 18

  “I am so sorry,” Eduardo said to us after we explained the missing wire. “Do you have any idea when this might have happened?”

  “Not exactly,” Carter said. “We haven’t taken the car out since yesterday afternoon.”

  Eduardo nodded, his expression tight. “This is disturbing news, but I’m sure there must be an explanation. I will look into this right away.”

  “Are there any hidden security cameras in the parking lot?” Carter asked.

  “Not inside the parking lot, but there is one near the entrance to the parking lot.”

  “We need to watch that footage.”

  Eduardo pinched his chin as if thinking it over. “It would help to have a time frame.”

  “Sometime during the night,” Carter said. “That would be my best guess.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Eduardo signaled to us. “Okay. Follow me.”

  He led us into a small room behind the counter. He sat down at a desk and began typing on the keyboard. Moments later, two separate screens appeared on the monitor.

  “Normally, I wouldn’t allow guests back here but I trust you,” he said to us. “You are welcome to stay here and look through the footage, but I need to get back to work.”

  “No problem,” Carter said. “We’ll be out of your hair just as soon as we solve this. Then, I’ll deal with this person myself. No need to get the authorities involved.”

  “Thank you,” Eduardo said. “I’d appreciate that.”

  After Eduardo left the room, Carter directed his attention to the monitor. Efficient in all manners of surveillance, he had no problem navigating the controls. “Let’s rewind back to last night,” he said. “I’m thinking it happened after eleven when most people would be in bed.”

  The quality of the video wasn’t great but we could see two individuals entering the parking lot around eleven-thirty, one looked like it might be the waitress Maria and the other looked like the chef. They passed through the main parking lot, down to another parking lot, probably reserved for employees. They didn’t get anywhere near our Fiat.

  After another twenty minutes of no activity, Carter began fast forwarding through the footage. Finally, at 3:14am, another person could be seen entering the parking lot wearing a dark outfit and a dark cap. He or she had a flashlight in one hand and some kind of crow bar device in the other.

  “Can you see who that is?” I asked Carter. He was leaning forward, intently focused on the monitor. “It’s definitely a woman, though. I can tell by her walk.”

  “Can you zoom in?”

  Carter tapped some buttons but nothing happened. “This is a cheap surveillance system with limited options, apparently.”

  We watched silently as the dark silhouette approached our Fiat and proceeded to pry open the hood. In less than a minute, she had the wire in her hand.

  “I’ll be damned,” Carter said. “She knows exactly what she’s doing.”

  “Don’t forget,” I said. “You can go online and learn how to do anything these days.”

  Carter shook his head. “Do you remember what Lauren told us she did for work?”

  “She’s a mechanic at her father's shop,” I said with dismay. “But it can’t be her. She’s not limping in the slightest. Remember, she’s the one with the broken foot.”

  “Then maybe Lauren instructed Jamie on how to disengage the wire.”

  “Why would they want to prevent us from driving our car?”

  Carter leaned back in the chair and massaged his temples. “Hear me out, okay? What if the sisters killed Dick because he was abusive to Brittany?”

  I shook my head. “Come on. Why not just call the cops on him?”

  “Because they knew Brittany wouldn’t press charges against her own husband. It makes perfect sense. You saw how they were so protective of her. They barely let her out of their sight.”

  “But why would they risk everything like that? I mean, they were complete strangers to Brittany before three days ago and it still doesn’t explain why they disabled our car.”

  “Maybe Britt told them that we had offered to take her to the airport. They didn’t want us to be alone with her.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Because the sisters know what we do for work. They were afraid that we’d start to figure it out,” Carter said.

  I didn’t want to believe this. I really liked Lauren and Jamie but Carter had a good point. “If you’re right about this, do you think Brittany suspects they were involved in her husband's death?”

  “I don’t think so, but it’s hard to say. I’m not so sure the sisters could trust her to keep the secret.” Carter ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Maybe they decided to get on that plane with Britt. With Hope Dillard sniffing around and creating drama, I could see why they’d want to split.”

  My knees were shaking so bad I had to I stand up and stretch them out. “I’m going to ask Eduardo if Lauren and Jamie checked out early this morning before they left with Brittany to the airport.”

  After Eduardo confirmed that the sisters had not checked out, Carter and I were still not convinced they hadn’t left for good.

  “Is there any way you can get inside their villa and check to see if their stuff is gone?” I asked. “We have reason to believe that Jamie is the one who disabled our car.”

  Eduardo stood perfectly still as if he couldn’t believe what I’d just said. “Do you have any idea why she would do that?”

  Carter and I decided not to tell Eduardo about our theory. We had no real proof anyway. We couldn’t even confirm that the person on the surveillance was indeed Jamie. “Is there any way you can have the housekeeper check?” I asked.

  He consulted his watch. “The housekeeper doesn’t show up until eleven. Can
we wait until then?”

  Carter nodded. “Sure. We understand.”

  As we headed back to our villa, we made a detour across the courtyard and found ourselves knocking on Lauren and Jamie’s door. We waited a minute or so, and when nobody answered, Carter seemed to have an idea.

  He hunched over, interlacing his fingers. “I’m going to hoist you up so can get a look inside the window, okay?”

  I stepped on his hands while keeping my palms flat on the wall for support. Once I was high enough, I got a glimpse inside. “Doesn’t look like they’ve left. Clothes all over the place.”

  Carter lowered me to the ground.

  I glanced around the courtyard, wondering if anyone had witnessed us spying. “Let’s go back to our place and make coffee. Then we can decide what to do next.”

  Chapter 19

  After two cups of strong espresso, I sat at the dining room table with Dick’s cell phone in my hand.

  “If you had to take a wild guess, what kind of four digit security code would Dick have?”

  Carter gave it some thought. “Well, what do we know about him? He was a self-important, arrogant, bully who wore a Rolex and married a beautiful trophy wife. Basically, he wanted everyone to think he was the man.”

  “Okay. So his password would reflect something about himself. His birthday perhaps?”

  “Too easy.” Carter tapped his chin. “How about G-O-L-D. It would be fitting since he died trying to find it.”

  I typed in the letters, not expecting anything. It didn’t work. “Any other suggestions?”

  “How about his wife’s name, Britt.”

  I tried that, it didn’t work. We both knew there was no chance that we’d miraculously discover his password. I tossed the phone on the table, discouraged

  “So you’re giving up?” Carter seemed to be enjoying this little game.

  “Well, do you have any other suggestions?”

  He smiled. “Try D-I-C-K.”

  I laughed. “Come on. He wouldn’t use his own name as a password.” But then, the more I thought about it, it’s exactly the kind of password an egocentric person would use.

  And it worked.

  “You’re a genius,” I said to Carter. “I can’t believe it.”

  He didn’t gloat too much. “So, what exactly are you hoping to find?”

  I scanned through his call log. “Nothing in particular. I’m just curious, I guess.”

  Carter poured himself another espresso as I scanned through Dick’s incoming calls over the past few days. An interesting fact presented itself. “Hey, remember that night Dick never came to dinner, Brittany told us she had called his cell phone numerous times and left messages.”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Well, According to his call history, nobody called this phone between the hours of 3:00pm and 5:45am on November 23rd.”

  Carter sat up straight. “Are you sure?”

  “Look for yourself.”

  “I trust you,” he said. “But why would she have lied to us about that?”

  “Only one reason I can think of. Because she knew he was already dead.”

  He sat back, arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t know, Sarah. That seems very far-fetched.”

  A new idea emerged. “Maybe Britt and Dick had another fight down at the hot springs. Maybe he smacked her around again. She left him there and went back to her villa. The sisters saw how upset she was and decided to take matters into their own hands. Since Lauren can’t walk, Jamie went down to the hot springs and tried to have a conversation with Dick. The discussion became heated and ultimately turned violent. Jamie came back to the villa and confessed to her sister what happened. Instead of calling the cops, the three of them concoct a story to protect Jamie from getting in trouble.”

  “Okay, it’s plausible,” Carter said. “How do we prove it?”

  “Maybe we can’t. If someone had seen Jamie walking back from the hot springs that night, he or she would have come forward already.”

  Before I had a chance to consider his question, there came a sharp knock on the door. “It might be Hope Dillard, back for more drama.”

  When I opened the door, however, it was Lauren and Jamie who stood before me. I could tell something was wrong.

  “Did you just get back from the airport?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Jamie said. “Look, can we come in and talk?”

  “Sure. Is everything okay?”

  “It has to do with Brittany.”

  I figured this was the moment when Jamie and Lauren finally yearned to confess about what really happened to Dick. Perhaps their guilty conscience had finally gotten the better of them. “Sure, come on in. Want some coffee?”

  “No thanks,” Lauren said.

  Once the sisters had made themselves comfortable at the table, Carter and I waited for one of them to speak. They both didn’t seem in a hurry to spill their guts.

  “So what’s up?” Carter prodded. “Seems like there’s something you need to get off your chest.”

  “Actually,” Lauren said, placing a small garbage bag on the table. “There’s something we’d like to show you guys.”

  I pointed to it. “You brought us some trash?”

  “It’s not our trash,” Jamie said. “When we pulled up to Brittany’s terminal at the airport, I got out of the car to help her with her suitcases. She had so much luggage, I had to call a skycap for assistance. Anyway, I noticed she was carrying this bag and I asked her why she had it. She told me it was just garbage and she planned to throw it away as soon as she got inside the terminal. I offered to throw it away for her since she already had her hands full with luggage. At first, she kind of gave me this strange look as if she couldn’t trust me to throw her garbage away. Then she gave it to me and thanked me for everything, big hugs, tears, the whole shebang. After she disappeared into the airport with the skycap, I got a bad feeling but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

  “You looked inside the bag, didn’t you?” I said.

  Jamie paused, as if uncertain how to explain. Finally she swallowed hard. “I don’t make a habit out of rifling through people’s trash but I opened the garbage bag anyway. I don’t know why, but I did.” She signaled to Carter. “Go ahead and open it.”

  Carter began untwisting the tie and opened it up to peer inside. His eyes popped. “This is interesting.” And then he pulled out a wire, about a foot in length, with connector boots on each end.

  Lauren said, “I assume you know what that is?”

  He nodded. “It’s the reason we couldn’t start our car this morning.”

  Lauren looked at her sister. “I knew it must have come from somebody’s car engine.”

  Jamie shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why would Britt do that?”

  Carter pursed his lips. “I don’t know. Last night, Sarah and I offered to take her to the airport this morning. We were planning to spend the day in Rome anyway and we figured it would save you guys a trip.”

  “But, she wanted us to take her?” Jamie said. “Why?”

  “Maybe she thought that Carter and I were beginning to see through her charade and she panicked.” I picked up Dick’s cell phone and showed it to them. “Early this morning I went down to the hot springs during my run. Ever since Dick’s drowning, I’ve wondered what happened to his cell phone. I went exploring. I found it about a hundred yards downstream, submerged, half wedged under a rock. I brought it back and Carter charged it up. As I was looking through his call history, I discovered that Brittany never called or left frantic messages on his voice mail the night he drowned.”

  The sisters stared at each other in complete shock.

  “Brittany knew that her husband was already dead,” I said, giving them a hard stare.

  Jamie gasped. “Wait. You’re not suggesting that we knew anything about that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You guys were awfully protective of her. I figured maybe one of you got a taste for vigilante justice.”


  “What?” Lauren’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. “You really think one of us killed him? How could we have? We’ve never even been to the hot springs.”

  I hate to admit it, but I was beginning to think Calvin was right about his sister in law. But was she really a cold-blooded killer?

  “I don’t know what to think. Every single thing Brittany has said in the past few days now seems calculated. Right down to stealing the wire from our engine. That takes planning. It’s not the way an innocent person acts.” I checked the time. “When did Britt’s flight leave?”

  Lauren shrugged. “Eight o’clock.”

  “Too late. Not that we’d be able to stop her.” I looked at Carter. “What should we do?”

  Carter stood up, grabbing the wire from the table. “Calvin is spending the day in Rome before he goes back to the states tomorrow. Let’s drive to his hotel, give him Dick’s cell phone and tell him he might’ve been right about Brittany. It will be his decision to pursue justice for his brother or not but at least he’ll have something to work with. Sarah, can you go online and find a phone number for Calvin Thompson?”

  “I’ll try.” I have a program on my laptop that allows me to access certain information on the general public, but cell phone numbers aren’t always available. I was, however, able to find a home address and phone number. Maybe Calvin has a wife or girlfriend and she would be able to grant me his cell phone number. Then I realized it was the middle of the night back in the states. I found another phone number for Calvin’s work. A place called Groupon International, LLC. I dialed the number to see what would happen.

  A woman’s voice greeted me. “Groupon International, this is Barbara, how can I assist you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m wondering if you could help me out. I believe Calvin Thompson works at your company and I really to need to get his personal cell phone number. It’s an emergency.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to give out that information. To whom am I speaking?”