Juliana sniffled again, then cleared her throat. Setting the game pieces on the board, she let out a dramatic exhale. “Okay, people, are we going to play?”
Kendall took in the group of women, a tendril ofsomethingtaking root. She’d always miss her mother, always. But Cindy Jacobs was never coming back. If Kendall had to create a new life, maybe one with these women in it would be a good start.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
By the time they finished searching the castle, it was well past dark. Being in the building, in the home that held so many bad memories for him, hadn’t been as hard with his brothers at his side. No doubt their intention when they showed up en masse. They’d found a small bag of white powder in one of the third-floor rooms, but nothing else too incriminating. Although the stash of sex devices Philly found in one of the suits of armor raised a few eyebrows—both the content and the location.
Mantis and Dulcie wore matching grim expressions when they emerged from the dungeon, but all they’d said was that they hadn’t found any drugs or weapons. Although they’d pulled Scipio aside shortly after, and Monk heard them strategizing about how best to clear out the space. He appreciated being insulated from the process. Too much depravity and pain had seeped into the walls for him to ever be comfortable down there.
Before meeting his brothers in the kitchen to start dinner, he peeked into the tasting room. The world felt right when he saw Sherman curled in front of the fire, Helia dozing comfortably on the couch, Kendall perched beside Leo reading something on his laptop, and his sisters-in-law quietly playing a game. The world wasn’t right. They had a murderer on the loose, Helia was in thecrosshairs, Kendall’s mom was dead, and he was taking on the raising of an orphaned girl. But in that moment, it felt that way.
“Amber would love this stove,” Marley said when he walked into the kitchen, the scent of chili and corn bread filling the room. Amber was a woman they’d extracted from a shitty situation months ago. They’d brought her to their clubhouse to heal, and she’d stayed. All the people they helped were welcome to stay as long as they needed. Most only used it as a way station before heading to family or friends who helped them establish a new life. Others stayed, fell in love with Mystery Lake, and ended up finding their own lives in the mountain town. And a few, like Amber, took a little longer. Every day she came out of her shell a little more, though. But where she felt most free was in the kitchen. She loved to cook and was damn good at it. She’d been helping Dottie, their house mom/house manager, for months.
“She could do a lot in here,” Stein added. The kitchen at the clubhouse was no slouch, but Stein wasn’t wrong. In the years since he’d left, Roger had renovated this more private kitchen into a commercial space. Bacco had never hosted events, though, and it didn’t make sense to Monk, but he’d stopped trying to understand his father a long time ago.
“This place would make a sic hotel or inn or whatever they call fancy spots people stay in down here,” Philly said.
“Get Amber in here to cook for them and they’d come in droves,” Hawkeye added.
“Guys.” Callie’s voice had all their heads turning. “Leo has something. Can you step away for a few minutes?”
The corn bread had four minutes left on the timer, so Monk simply turned the oven off and left it in there. Marley turned the burner down to low under the chili, leaving it to simmer.
They filed past Callie as she waited for Philly. When he came through the door, he slid his arm around his wife’s waist andkissed her temple before taking her hand in his and trailing after everyone.
Monk’s eyes went to Helia when he entered the room. Now sitting upright, with her chin resting in her palm and her attention focused on the end of the room, she’d tucked the blanket around her curled-up legs.
The group rustled up chairs and seats were taken—his right at Helia’s feet. When everyone settled in, he turned to Leo. “Where’s Kendall?”
“Here,” she said, popping out from behind a whiteboard on wheels they’d dug up from somewhere, Sherman at her side. Shadows of grief flickered in her eyes, as they would for a while. But judging by the pen in her hand and the way she put her head together with Leo’s, consulted his computer, then returned to behind the whiteboard, she’d found a distraction.
“Ready?” Leo asked.
A pause. “Ready,” Kendall called back.
“Okay,” Leo said as Kendall rotated the whiteboard. On it was a timeline with names and dates in different colors. “Kendall and I created this. We think it will help pull the picture together of what we believe is happening. The names and dates in black are the murders or potential murders. The names in red are those folks who have come back into Helia’s life recently.”
“And the blue are the weird events,” Kendall stepped in, shooting a shy look at the large group.
He hid a smile as his brothers each responded with serious nods. Turning to the board, he scanned it, taking in the information. He reached the end, then bounced back to the beginning. “Hold up, why is Marcel Laurant on the board? In black?”
“Who’s Marcel Laurant?” Stein asked.
“He was a sous-chef who worked at Sundaram two summers ago,” Helia said. “He gifted a set of knives to Akin, our chef,when he left. It was one of those knives that was used to kill Justin Flannery.”
Again, his brothers nodded.
“The thing is, Marcel never made it home,” Leo said.
Helia startled at that. Truth be told, so did he.
“What?” Helia demanded.
“Kendall and I wanted to know more about the knife used on Flannery, so we started looking into him. He left here, traveled to Vegas where he worked for four months as a dishwasher, then disappeared.”
“Why would he work as a dishwasher if he was a sous-chef?” Charley asked, leaning onto Mantis’s thigh as he sat on the arm of the chair she’d claimed.
“Because he was hiding,” Callie replied.
