AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Perfect,” she said. “I’ll head there on my way back to town. Can you tell me when the next ferry should arrive?”
He shrugged. “Sorry. That I don’t know.”
“It’s all right. You’ve been more than helpful.”
She turned and headed down the path, toward the dock, hoping that Matteo Frenzi, Franklin Tate’s protégé, could shed some more light on what had happened that fateful evening.
CHAPTER SEVEN
As Daisy walked toward the pier, she pulled out her phone. She’d gotten an international calling plan just for this purpose, but there were no bars. She’d have to wait to call the service that supplied the flight attendants.
And she’d have to wait on reporting to Goldie, too. Probably a good thing, considering she didn’t have much to tell her. She felt like she was making progress, getting through her interview list, and yet, the fact that there’d been so many people aboard the plane on the night of his death was a setback. It would make it very difficult to narrow down the list of suspects.
She walked on, still glancing at her phone, waiting for the bars to appear. As she came around a bend to a clearing overlooking the dock, they appeared.
She made a quick phone call to the service, got the flight attendants’ home phone numbers, and dialed.
No answer from either of them.
Frustrated, she left a message for each of them.
I’ll call Goldie after I talk to Matteo,she thought, pocketing her phone.He was there. His account will no doubt be eye-opening.
Daisy walked to her suitcase, finding it right where she’d left it. She thought she’d probably misjudged the structure at the water’s edge on her first arrival on the island. Maybe it wasn’t a little shack. After all, why would Tate relegate his protégé to a storage shed when he had a sprawling, cliffside mansion?
But as Daisy drew closer to the place, it actually lookedworsethan she remembered. It was probably a single room, the paint was peeling on the sides, and there was a hole in the roof. She couldn’t imagine anyone living in such a thing.
The windows of the structure were wide open, and pale blue curtains billowed within. An old bicycle was propped near a farmhouse door with its top half open. She was sure it hadn’t been so open when she’d arrived at first.
As she reached the door, she saw a man lying on a lounge chair. He was shirtless, deeply tanned, wearing only jeans, cuffed at the ankles, and sunglasses. He had one arm propped behind his head and a beer bottle between his legs. “Buongiorno,” he said lazily, flashing a bright white smile.
“Oh, hello. Are you Matteo?”
“Yep. And you are the lovely American detective. I saw you come up before. The morning ferry’s horn always wakes me.”
Daisy cringed at her lack of self-awareness. She’d been so busy thinking about navigating those steps that she hadn’t seen him. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Eh.” He waved the thought away. “Probably a good thing. Otherwise I’d sleep the day away.”
He sat up on the lounge chair, but then fell back down again and rubbed his temple. “I have a bad hangover.” He held up his beer. “Hair of the dog, you know?”
“Is that working for you?” Daisy asked, a little annoyed.
He laughed. “Never does. But I am drunk, now, so it doesn’t bother me as much.” He patted the spot on the chair next to him and smiled wolfishly. “Care to sit?”
She rolled her eyes. So not only was he drunk as a skunk and liable to give her a rambling, nonsensical witness statement, but he was also going to hit on her? She scanned the coastline where the buildings of Venice rose in the distance. How much longer until Kiki Tate came back? “I think I’ll stand.”
“Suit yourself.” He took a swig of his beer and jutted his chin toward the dock. “She won’t be back anytime soon.”
Her eyes met his. “Who?”
“Kiki. That’s who you really want to talk to, right?”
That was a surprisingly astute observation. Had he read her mind? So maybe he wasn’t as incoherent as Daisy had thought. “I do want to talk to her. I was told she went shopping. Do you know when she’ll be back?”
He hitched a tan shoulder. “Hard to say. I mean, the girl’s a marathon shopper. When she goes shopping—which is pretty much every day—it’s an hours-long affair. She loves spending Frankie’s money. Almost as much as he loved spending it on her. But I don’t think that’s where she is. No one shopsthatmuch, not even Kiki.”
That description seemed to fit with Goldie’s, who’d called her a gold-digger. “What do you mean?”
