Triple Trouble (10 page)

Jessie, however, seemed to wholly approve of Nick’s selection. She kicked her feet and gave Charlene a toothless grin.

“You like that?” Charlene replaced the lid on the bottle and returned it to the refrigerator. Then she took a baby wipe from the container next to the sink and smoothed the cool, damp towelette over tearstained downy cheeks, closed eyes and brow. When she wiped Jessie’s mouth and chin, the little girl stuck out her tongue and left a faint pink streak across the baby wipe.

“Feel better?”

Jessie babbled a reply and Charlene nodded gravely. “Excellent. Let’s go see how Uncle Nick is doing with your sisters. And let’s ask him why he decided to have you all listen to rock ’n’ roll before dawn.”

She and Jessie reached the archway to the living room. Nick sat on the sofa, Jackie lying across his chest and Jenny sprawled on the soft leather cushion with her head on his thigh. Neither little girl was asleep but they’d stopped crying and appeared to be content. Rufus lay on the floor at Nick’s feet, his head on his outstretched paws. He looked up at Charlene and wagged his tail, but didn’t get up. Charlene crossed the room and dropped into the big armchair. Jessie laid her head on Charlene’s shoulder, popped her thumb in her mouth, and was blissfully quiet.

“What did you do to them?” Charlene said, just loud enough to be heard over the music. Bob Seger had finished and she was fairly certain the current song was Tom Cochrane’s “Life Is a Highway.”

“They love music,” Nick said simply. “I should have thought of this earlier.”

“But this isn’t exactly a lullaby,” she said. “Great song, I love it. But not what a year-old baby usually likes.”

“Not normal babies, maybe. But Stan and Amy loved music—all kinds of music. We never discussed it, but I’d be willing to bet the triplets have been listening to everything from Seger and Cochrane to Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald since the day they were born. Probably before they were born,” he added with a tired grin. Gently, he lifted Jenny and laid her facedown on her tummy on the sofa cushion beside him. She murmured, stirred, then went still.

“How did you figure it out?” Charlene lowered her voice to a whisper as the stateof-the-art sound system randomly selected tracks from CDs and segued smoothly from Cochrane to Ella Fitzgerald. The chanteuse’s mellow tones, smooth as butter, alternately crooned and belted out the lyrics of “A Tisket, A Tasket.”

“I remembered my mother telling me she used to sing us to sleep. When the girls woke up at the motel the other night, I sang to them—would have tried a lullaby but I didn’t know one, and the only song that came to mind was a Bob Seger favorite.”

He shrugged and glanced down at Jackie, whose eyes were closed. One tiny fist clutched her blanket while the other held fast to a handful of the cotton pajamas covering his thigh. “I don’t have the greatest voice, but it worked—so I thought I’d try the real thing.”

“I think you’ve discovered the magic bullet,” Charlene said, smiling at him. “They’re sound asleep.”

He smiled back, laugh lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes. His hair was rumpled from sleep, his jaw shadowed with beard stubble and his big body sprawled on the sofa with a baby asleep on each side of him. The warm light from the lamp on the end table illuminated half of his face, brushing the arch of his cheekbones and the line of nose and jaw with gold, and threw shadows across the other.

“Sugar,” he drawled, his eyes twinkling, “it’s a good thing something finally worked. Because after days of little to no sleep, if we were married and these were our kids, I’d seriously consider divorcing you and giving you custody—just so I could have eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.”

Charlene burst out laughing.

Jessie stirred, her eyelids lifting. Charlene immediately muffled her laughter, smoothing her palm in circles over the baby’s back, and she drifted asleep once more.

When Charlene looked up at Nick, he was watching her through half-closed eyes. Her heartbeat accelerated, her lungs seized as she stared at him. Then his features shifted, erasing whatever she thought she’d glimpsed on his face, and his big body shifted restlessly against the cushions. She could no longer read his expression—was no longer sure the moment had even happened, or if she’d imagined the sudden blaze of sexual awareness she’d felt between them.

“I think it’s safe to take them back to their cribs,” he said, stroking one big palm over Jackie’s back. The little girl didn’t stir.

“At least Jackie,” Charlene agreed. She glanced down at Jessie, who seemed as deeply asleep as her sister. “And Jessie. What about Jenny?”

“She’s out like a light.” Nick gently picked up Jackie and stood. “If you’ll keep an eye on Jenny, I’ll take Jackie up and come back.”

Charlene nodded and he headed for the stairs, Jackie cradled in his arms. She turned to watch him go just as Ella reached the end of her song. A heartbeat later, the opening lyrics of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” thumped from the speakers and filled the room.

“I’ve got to stop watching Nick walk away from me,” she muttered to herself. We have a professional relationship, employer-employee, and ogling the boss’s very fine backside is probably taboo. Not to mention embarrassing should he turn around and catch me staring.

Rufus’s tail thumped against the wood floor. Charlene looked down at him and found him eyeing her, pink tongue lolling, ears alert.

She could swear he was laughing.

The following morning, Charlene wanted nothing more than to hit her alarm clock’s Snooze button and roll over for another hour of sleep. But she knew if she didn’t shower and have her coffee before the triplets awoke, she wasn’t likely to do so until their afternoon nap.

She barely had time to pour a cup of coffee and say good-morning to Nick when he entered the kitchen to fill his travel mug before Melissa arrived. Nick left for the office moments later and the purr of the Porsche’s engine had barely trailed away to silence outside when LouAnn knocked on the back door. The triplets awakened soon after, and the day’s chaos began. When the babies napped after lunch, Charlene fell into bed and slept dreamlessly.

Just about the time that Charlene was catching her much-needed nap, Ross Fortune arrived in Nick’s office for their meeting.

“Ross. Good to see you.” Nick shoved his chair back and stood, leaning across the desk to shake his cousin’s hand. He hadn’t seen Ross since the New Year’s Eve party at Red Restaurant. His brown hair was longer, brushing his shoulders. On a less rugged man it might have looked effeminate. On Ross, the long hair had the opposite effect. “Have a seat.”

Ross sat in one of the two chrome-and-leather chairs facing Nick’s desk and took a small notebook and pen from the inner pocket of his jacket. “I appreciate your cooperation in agreeing to see me today. I know it was short notice.”

“No problem.” Nick dropped back into his chair, leaning back and linking his fingers across his midriff. “I’m happy to do anything that might help you find out what’s going on with the family.”

“Good.” Ross’s brown eyes were shrewd, his gaze direct. “Give me the highlights.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Someone slipped a note into Patrick’s pocket at Red Restaurant during the New Year’s party. He called us all together at the Double Crown last month to tell us about it.”

“What did the note say?”

“‘One of the Fortunes is not who you think,’” Nick quoted, shaking his head. “Makes no sense, at least as far as I can tell. We all thought it was the first contact in a blackmail attempt, but everyone at the meeting insisted they had no idea what it could mean, nor who the blackmailer might be.”

“Hmm.” Ross glanced at his notes, flipped a couple of pages, and looked back at Nick. “And there have been three more notes?”

Nick nodded. “My dad received one—so did Cindy. That’s when your mom suggested we contact you and begin an official investigation.” Nick saw Ross’s eyes shutter, his face unreadable. He knew Ross and his mother had problems—in fact, as the eldest of Cindy’s four children, Ross had pretty much taken over the role of caretaker for his younger siblings. It looked like there were issues between the two that went deeper than a mother-son disagreement. “All three of the original notes said exactly the same thing,” he continued. He didn’t know Ross well enough to comment or question him about what, if anything, his response to Nick’s naming his mother meant. “But then Aunt Lily received a fourth that was more threatening.”

“And what did it say?”

“‘This one wasn’t an accident either,’” Nick quoted, his voice deepening as anger rose. “She got that after the second fire—the one at the Double Crown.”

“The first was the restaurant that burned down?”

“Yeah.” Nick said grimly. “Darr’s fiancée, Bethany, could have easily died in the restaurant fire. And Darr could have died when the barn burned at the Double Crown.” He leaned forward, his forearms resting on his desk, and pinned Ross with a level stare. “Whoever the hell is doing this has to be stopped before someone gets hurt.”

Ross nodded, his keen gaze fixed on Nick. “There haven’t been any other accidents or threats to anyone in the family?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Nick confirmed.

Ross tapped his pen against his notebook, a faint frown veeing his brows downward.

“And no one in the family has any idea who might have sent the notes?”

“None.”

“Are you aware of any skeletons that might be rattling in someone’s closet? Any gossip about a family member having an affair? Anybody gambling? Anyone with a drug or alcohol habit?”

“No.” Nick shook his head. “But I’ve lived in Red Rock for less than two months. Before that I was in L.A. and off the grid on up-to-date family gossip—you might want to ask Aunt Lily. She seems to have her finger on the pulse of what’s happening with the Fortunes.”

Ross nodded and jotted a note on his pad. “What about the Foundation?” he asked when he finished and looked up at Nick. “Any controversial deals or activity?”

“Not that I know of, although I’ve only been working here for about six weeks, give or take.”

“I understand the Red Restaurant is owned by the Mendozas, and they have a longstanding connection to the Fortunes. Do you have any reason to believe the notes and the fire at the Double Crown might be connected in some way to the Mendozas rather than the Fortunes?”

Nick shook his head. “I’m the wrong person to ask, I’m afraid. My dad might have better information, or Uncle Patrick, or the Mendozas themselves.”

Ross nodded and made another note. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said when he looked back at Nick. “It’s time to call in the cops. This has gone beyond possible blackmail. Lives have been endangered and that last note seems to threaten the family with more arson fires.”

“I agree,” Nick said, nodding abruptly. “But Aunt Lily is dead set against calling in the police. She’s adamant about keeping this inside the family.”

“The cops can spread a wider net, use forensics on the notes…” Ross stopped, glancing down at his pad before continuing. “If the fire department is investigating the two fires for possible arson, they’ll eventually turn their report over to the police.”

“I sure as hell hope so,” Nick said with feeling. “Nobody in the family wants to upset Lily. It would be good news if the fire chief suspected arson and the department investigators could tie the two fires together, then refer both cases to the police.”

“In the meantime, I’ll keep digging.” Ross stood and so did Nick. “Thanks for your cooperation, Nick.”

Nick shook Ross’s outstretched hand and walked him to the door. “Anything I can do to help, just ask. I know Darr feels the same.”

“Good. I need to talk to him too.” Ross took a business card from his pocket. “Would you ask him to give me a call? On my cell phone, not my office number.”

“Be glad to.”

After Ross disappeared down the hall, Nick placed a call to Darr but got his answering machine. After leaving a brief message to phone him, Nick hung up and walked down the hall to the coffee machine before returning to his desk and the cost analysis file he’d been working on earlier.

It occurred to him that he had more than the Fortunes to worry about now. Charlene and the triplets were living in his house, under his protection. The possibility that their proximity to him and the rest of the Fortunes might have placed them in danger sent a surge of fierce anger through him. Ross better solve this mystery—and fast.

But why didn’t Lily want the cops brought in? Not for the first time, Nick wondered if she was trying to protect someone.

Could she be afraid of what the police might uncover?

Much as he cared for Lily, he thought grimly, Charlene and the babies had to be protected. If Ross didn’t find answers, and soon, he’d go to the cops himself. Chapter Five

L ater that evening, with dinner over and the little girls tucked into their cribs for the night, Charlene made a pot of decaf coffee and carried a tray with the carafe, two mugs and a plate of Melissa’s chocolate-chip cookies into the living room. She set the tray on the coffee table just as Nick’s boots sounded on the stairs.

“Here’s the first box,” he said as he entered the room and dropped the carton on the floor in front of the sofa.

“The first one?” Charlene said dubiously, eyeing the box. She wasn’t great at estimating size, but the cardboard box looked at least twelve inches deep and two feet square.

“There’s another one just like it upstairs.” Nick glanced at her, half-smiled and shrugged. “You don’t have to do this, Charlene. Much as I appreciate your help, it’s going to be boring. I’m sure the official nanny job description doesn’t include shuffling through the boss’s old photographs.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” Charlene said dryly. “But I promised to help and I will.” She dropped onto the leather sofa cushion and took a stack of photos from the box.

“I brought down this picture of Stan’s family,” Nick said, handing her a five-byeleven photo. A wedding party was frozen in time, smiling and happy. “This is Lana.”

He tapped the photo with his forefinger.

Charlene studied the young bridesmaid’s facial features, noting the dark hair and athletic build until she was sure she’d recognize the triplets’ aunt. Then she gathered a handful of photos and began to skim them.