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He sat up and yawned, stretching his arms over his head. “Sure. What question was that?”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “You lied to me. Why?”
“I didn’t lie. I—”
“You told me you were passed out after Lyon. But look at this.” She thrust the photograph she’d sent to her own phone, in front of him.
He tilted his head. “All right. Fine. I thought I’d passed out. But I guess I had some juice left. I don’t remember any of this.” He shoved the phone back to her.
“You don’t remember where you were? You’re right by the blender used to make the drink that killed Tate.”
He frowned. “So are the flight attendants. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you were awake when he was killed. What else did you lie about?”
He shrugged. “Nothing. I didn’t lie. I forgot. There is a difference.”
“Did you forget about how Tate was responsible for making your company go bankrupt?”
His mouth opened, the shock everywhere on his face. But he didn’t say a word.
“Tate was used to robbing one person to pay another one. Wasn’t he? He took money from you, and he never gave it back. And your company went under because of it. You’d loaned money to him that wasn’t strictly yours, right? And when you asked him to give it back to you, he told you he couldn’t.”
Matteo’s eyes narrowed. “All the success I had, it was because of him. I had to loan him that money. I couldn’t say no. But then . . .” He dragged his hands down his face. “I told him I needed the money. He said he couldn’t give it to me. He’d gambled it all away. Millions of dollars. That birthday party? It was a load of crap. It wasn’t a happy birthday to me. It was a,sorry kid, you’re screwed, so you might as well enjoy your last few days as a free man.”
“This scandal would get you prison time?” Daisy asked.
“Ten years, at least, says my attorney. And that’s if I’m lucky,” he said, breathing out heavily through his teeth. “I thought I could fight him in court. It was going to be ugly business, but I had to do it, to keep my good name.”
He seemed to have grown smaller and smaller, right before her eyes. He was no longer that egotistical wonder kid entrepreneur that everyone heaped praise upon. He looked like a frightened little kid. “I’m sorry that that happened to you.”
He stared at the ground, and his voice was soft. “The thing was, Tate never told me he was sorry. Even when we went on the trip, he kept trying to tell me he was going to get the money back. That he knew some way out of it, and everything would be okay.”
Daisy stared at him, now feeling sorry for the man. “You didn’t believe that.”
“No. Frankie was under delusions. He always talks a good game. Promises you the world on a silver platter. And sometimes he delivers. But sometimes . . . no.” He hung his head.
“So, you decided to do away with him.”
Matteo’s head snapped up. “No. No, that wasn’t me. Yes, I had a reason to kill him, but I did not do it. I was going to fight him in court. I didn’t want to, but I was going to. By the time that picture was taken, the drink was already made. I came in and saw the dirty blender. I didn’t do it.”
She raised her eyes to the horizon, where a motorboat was drawing near. Too small to be a ferry, she knew at once what it was, and so did Matteo, from the shocked look on his face.
“You are kidding me,” he said, rising to his feet for the first time since she’d met him.
When they’d landed, she’d called the Venice police and presented her findings to them. Apparently, it was enough to make an arrest.
Matteo tried to move away, but stumbled drunkenly over some of the discarded beer bottles as the boat docked at the pier. A couple of police officers in blue shirts and shorts boarded the island. “Matteo Frenzi?” they demanded.
He nodded and put his hands up in surrender. “I didn’t do it,” he murmured, but he sounded like he didn’t even believe himself. He simply slumped back down to the chair, as if all the fight had been knocked out of him, and allowed the officers to cuff him.
As Daisy watched them load Matteo Frenzi in handcuffs onto the boat, Arlo came up behind her. “Very nice work,” he said to her. “And to think, my phone provided the key clue.”
She followed the police onto the dock. She wasn’t staying on this island overnight, not when she could get a nice meal and a hotel room with her black card somewhere in the beautiful downtown of Venice.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
“That’s wonderful, just wonderful.”
