“From what?” Lina added.
“Let’s walk through it all,” Lovell said, a man of few words. “Once we have the lay of the land, then you can go down rabbit holes.”
Kendall looked to Leo for direction. He nodded back. “Okay,” she said, her voice strong but a little wobbly with nerves. “The timeline starts with Marcel’s disappearance last fall. He left here in September, went to Vegas, then disappeared. There’s no record of him being anywhere after the middle of January.”
“He didn’t leave the country,” Leo added. “I checked.”
“Then we leap ahead to Justin Flannery showing up in Helia’s life again, a little over five months ago. Next is Roger’s death, here,” Kendall said, pointing to the spot on the timeline. “We don’t know when the poisoning started, though, only when he died. After Roger’s death, we have Flannery’s death, then Derek Weber showing up at Sundaram,” she continued, moving down the line.
“Who’s Weber?” Scipio asked.
“An ex of Helia’s,” Monk said darkly. Helia nudged him with her toe, and he slid his hand under the blanket, wrapping it around her foot.
“Not really an ex—that’s why it was so strange,” Helia said. “We went on two dates. There was only one kiss and a bad one at that.”
He felt more than saw all his brothers’ eyes travel to him at the mention of a kiss. To a one, the women snorted, chuckled, and even laughed. He didn’t begrudge Helia a past; hell, she was a lot more normal and healthy than he was. But, yeah, he didn’t like it.
“I’m not sure that helped, Helia,” Mantis said, trying to keep a straight face.
Helia rolled her eyes. “Whatever. He’s a nobody in the scheme of things.”
“Who he is is a restaurant manager who lives far outside his means,” Leo countered. “He’s not as high on our priority list as some of the others so we don’t know where the money comes from, but I’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
“Okay, what’s next, K?” Lovell asked.
Kendall blinked at the big man, then ducked her head, hiding a pleased smile at the nickname. “The afternoon after Weber showed up, the police questioned Helia about Flannery’s death,” she continued, pointing to a blue marker on the timeline. “Then we have Collin finding the drugs in Roger’s room, the two thieves, Trish Peterson moving back to town, the murder of Kurt Fisher, Helia’s house getting broken into, Kelly and Gretchen showing up at Bacco, Trish showing up to talk to Greg at Sundaram, then the attempted murder of Helia,” Kendall said, reaching the end of the line.
“Why are Gretchen and Kelly on the timeline?” Monk asked before giving the others a summary of who they were.
“It made sense for Gretchen to stop by,” Leo said. “She all but runs this place. She’d want to meet you, make sure things were staying in order during the hiatus Roger stipulated in those weird-ass employment agreements. But Kelly seemed?—”
“Weird,” Kendall said. “She’s a web designer and social media manager. They’re good jobs?—”
“Important ones for most businesses,” Helia interjected.
“But of all the people involved in the business—the winemaker, the vineyard crew, the accountant—why her? She’s not exactly critical to the day-to-day operations,” Kendall said.
“And it was a good thing she asked that question,” Leo said with a huge grin that told Monk not only had they found something, but that he probably wasn’t going to like it.
“We looked into her, did the usual searches, but then Kendall found her social media pages and clicked through a few of her posts.”
“And videos,” Kendall said, picking up the story. “She’s who I heard here the day Roger died. The one talking about the poison.”
Beside him, Helia gasped. His hand closed around her foot, steadying her, but the information shocked him, too. He hadn’t liked Kelly from the get-go, but he hadn’t expectedthatbomb. Neither had anyone else if the silence that followed meant anything.
A full minute ticked by before Helia spoke. “So Kelly and some unknown man murdered Roger? Are they tied to the other murders then?”
“How?” Lina asked. “How did they murder Roger? We know it was poison, but what kind and how did they administer it?”
“I’m a little more interested in the why,” Callie said.
Monk nodded. “Given the ties to folks in the import/export business, we already considered the possibility of a drug ring in Napa Valley tied to this. But I agree, why kill Roger? The ‘how’ isinteresting, but we may never know unless we get a confession. The standard blood work they do after a death showed nothing, and the body’s been cremated.”
Scipio walked to the board. He’d earned his handle as a nod to General Scipio of the Roman army, one of the greatest military strategists to ever live.
The room fell silent as he studied it, occasionally tracing an invisible line with his finger.
“Did Roger have any social media?” he asked.
