“Do you have a tree?” she asked.
Charley laughed as she entered the room, carrying a couple of coffee mugs. “Do they have a tree. The main room in the club—it’s called the lodge room because it looks like one with tall ceilings, big beams, a huge fireplace—has an eighteen-foot tree. It’s over the top, but beautiful.”
Mantis took one of the mugs from Charley, then pulled her to his side. “We do. None of us are religious, but we like Christmas. A lot of us never had much of one growing up.” His gaze flitted to Monk. “Or if we did, it didn’t hold any real meaning since our lives were generally a violent chaos. So now we put up a big tree, draw names for gifts, and spend the day eating too much and playing games.” He paused, then chuckled. “It all sounds very Norman Rockwell, but we like it.”
“But doesn’t your family want you with them?” Kendall asked Charley.
“This is our first Christmas together, so we’ll have to figure that out. As of now, the plan is Christmas Eve dinner with my extended family—which ishuge—then Christmas Day and dinner with the club, followed by dessert with my immediate family.”
“Ah, Kendall, good, you’re back,” Leo said, walking into the room. Then turning to Mantis, he said, “Joey’s still in the caves with whoever else went out there, but she texted to ask if we need her to run to the store.”
“We’ll do an inventory and let her know,” Mantis said, motioning for Monk to follow him into the kitchen.
“Joey loves music, and I want to get a full sound system for the shop she and Charley own and could use your help. I’m betting you know more about that kind of thing than I do,” Leo said to Kendall, his voice fading as Monk and Mantis made their way to the kitchen.
Leaving tales of murder and drugs behind, they spent twenty minutes inventorying the kitchen then sending Joey the text. Feeding twenty people wasn’t a stretch for them, but it did take planning. With a massive grill at their disposal, they decided on fajitas for lunch since they had the meat and vegetables for that, but they’d throw a couple of roasts in the oven to slow-cook for dinner.
By the time they finished plotting meals and making more coffee, his phone dinged with an alert. Agent Perry waited at the gate in a government-issued SUV.
Monk’s first thought when he opened the door to her waspocket Venus. Books were thin on the ground while deployed, and he’d picked up a few romances in his time. The phrase seemed to apply only to stories set over two hundred years ago, so why the phrase popped into his mind as she stood on the stoop, he didn’t know. No, scratch that, he knew. At no more than five foot two, her long dark hair, with a tiny hint ofred, curled over her shoulders, resting on her more than ample cleavage. Her waist dipped in before flaring out to a full set of hips. Hips as full as her lips, relatively speaking, of course. A button nose, smooth, even skin, and bow lips gave her the look of a doll, but her big brown eyes, slightly tilted up at the edges, looked anything but innocent. They were eyes, what they looked like was a toss of the genetic dice, same with the rest of her physical attributes, so he didn’t read too much into what he saw on the surface. Even so, if he’d ever been asked to cast the role of temptress in a 1950s film, he would have picked her.
“Collin Wilde?” she asked, her eyes darting between him and Mantis.
“That’s me,” he said, holding his hand out. She shook it with a brisk nod.
“Noah Streak,” Mantis said, taking her hand next. “But you’ll hear people call me Mantis.”
Her gaze lingered, then turned to him in question. “Monk,” he said. “After everyone gets here, we’ll clarify as we talk.”
Agent Perry’s sharp eyes took everything in as they walked down the hall and entered the tasting room. Leo, Kendall, and Charley looked up from the laptop, the tree twinkling behind them, a fire burning in the hearth.
“I can honestly say I never expected a winery tasting room, in a castle no less, to be the center of an operation,” Agent Perry said, her eyes flickering from the bar to the view of the courtyard, to the tall ceilings, huge oak beams, tapestries, and ornate windows.
Mantis chuckled. “When needs must.”
For the first time since he stepped inside Bacco after Roger’s death, he saw the room as others might. Without the weight of his history, of his trauma, twisting inside him like something rotten. It would never be home, but Marley’s and Hawkeye’s comments about Amber cooking in the kitchen teased hismind. Unlike many of the other wineries of its size, Bacco had never been a restaurant or inn—thanks to the family’s financial prowess, they’d never needed to open it up that way. But what if it could be? What if itshouldbe?
A door opened at the back of the castle, followed by the sounds of feet treading on the thick floors and voices talking and laughing. His family’s return from the wine caves halted his thoughts about the future of Bacco, then they zeroed in completely on Helia as she, Dulcie, Lovell, and Einstein entered the building through the same entrance he’d used.
Helia came straight to his side, and wrapping an arm around her, he welcomed the feel of her body tucked against his. He hadn’t really been worried about her being gone, not with his brothers surrounding her, but he was glad to have her back.
It took a few minutes for Agent Perry to meet everyone, minus Joey, Juliana, and North, who’d headed to the grocery store. Another few minutes passed as Hawkeye insisted on making a pot of coffee. While everyone was getting settled, Monk pulled Agent Perry aside to explain Kendall’s presence. Having a twelve-year-old girl part of the debrief they were about to have wasn’t standard operating procedures, but he’d put a kibosh on the whole thing if Perry refused to include her.
After a few questions and more than a few dubious looks, she agreed. He didn’t blame her for doubting his decision. Hell, he’d questioned it many times in the past few days. But he knew it was the right thing.
Dulcie gestured Agent Perry to a high top. She nodded to him, then took a seat and pulled out her laptop. Once the room quieted, Scipio walked through everything they’d put together in the past few days. As he talked, Agent Perry watched him progress through the timeline, then the murder board, occasionally dropping her attention to her computer. She askeda few questions along the way, her head bobbed a few times, and more than once her eyes narrowed.
When Scipio wrapped up, he, too, grabbed a chair and took a seat. “What do you think, Agent Perry?”
Perry remained focused on her laptop for a few seconds, then her gaze swept the room. “We didn’t have Marcel Laurant in the picture,” she replied, obviously not happy about the miss. “And call me Grace.”
“No reason for you to,” Dulcie said. Grace’s attention swung to him. “You were focused on Pena, Haines, and Trish Peterson. Did you even know about Roger, Kelly, Flannery, and either Greg or Akin before you followed Peterson here?”
Her gaze lingered before pulling it back to the room. “We didn’t. Haines’s signature drug has shown up a few times in LA, which is how our team got pulled in. But compared to what’s cropping up in other spots, the amounts are minimal, so our involvement hasn’t been central to the case.” She studied the murder board. “Derek Weber isn’t involved,” she said, nodding to the other solo box floating on the edge of the board.
“He lives far outside his means,” Leo said.
“He won the lottery, literally, not figuratively, six months ago,” Grace replied. “He bought a ticket in a small convenience store in southern Jersey when he was visiting a sick uncle. Walked away with ten million. He had it transferred to an offshore account in a business name to keep his own name out of the press.”
