Then she carried the laptop downstairs to the kitchen where she could keep an eye on the twins as they settled into their movie. Where was Dante and what was he doing now?

  The kitchen was chilly, so she fixed hot chocolate for the children, then threw together dough because she needed to pound something after reading all that crap Evie had sent.

  As if led by his nose, Dante arrived, appearing underfed. In her anger at being deceived yesterday, she’d heated up Emma’s frozen pizza for the twins and the plumbers, leaving her host to his own devices. No telling what he’d fixed for lunch yesterday. This morning, he’d had to fix his own breakfast. It was nearly noon. A healthy hunk required large amounts of sustenance.

  He poured himself a mug of thick coffee and rummaged in the refrigerator. At least he’d received the message that she was furious. “Do you have a grocery list?” he asked. “I could send in a delivery order.”

  Silly question. She always kept lists. If nothing else, the plumbers had to be paid with food. She pointed at the notepad in the corner where Emma kept her cookbooks.

  He picked up the list and settled at the table with the twins and his phone. Sipping his dreadful coffee, he called in the order. Score one for the man.

  Pris lived for silence, but the one building between them now felt uncomfortable. Why?

  “I talked to Benvolio, Leo’s foreman,” he said once the order had been called in.

  Ahh, that must be it. She needed him to help instead of hinder. She was obviously more worried than she’d realized if she expected him to care about her predicament instead of his. She’d learned to ask for help when her mother had gone gaga over a conman a few months back, but she didn’t like it.

  Grudgingly, before she covered herself in flour, she produced cheese and crackers for snacking. She left them on the table for him to munch and dole out to the twins as needed and returned to her dough. That was all the encouragement she’d offer.

  He seemed to accept this as approval and talked as he sliced cheese. “Ben was there five years ago, on the day Lucia and company arrived. I’m not good at dragging information out of people, but he said Lucia seemed to be happy. He doesn’t remember the names of everyone with her.”

  Pris had no idea what this had to do with anything, but she listened as she pounded the dough into submission.

  “The interesting part is that an older man spoke sharply to Lucia and the second woman. Ben doesn’t speak much English. He just had the impression that this man was running the show, not the women, even though Lucia owned the farm and the other woman argued with him.”

  “KK and her father?” Pris suggested.

  “That’s my guess from his description. Ben said Lucia was showing everyone around, explaining operations, greeting employees the way she always did. Leo was working on a machine and stayed out of it. Ben heard sharp words more than once, but he had his own work to do.”

  Pris slapped the dough into a ball with impatience. “You’re saying this is the last time Leo saw Lucia, but they barely even talked?”

  He looked a little startled at that assessment but nodded. “He had no way of knowing it was her last visit. I imagine there was a little bit of tension over being left on his own for months while Lucia was with her mother in London. When Ben left to go into town for parts, the visitors were all in the gazebo, sampling the oil and drinking wine. Ben thought Lucia had finally returned where she belonged and maybe they were celebrating.”

  “Lucia must have had the twins with her, right?” She covered the dough and set it in the oven to rise, then turned to the refrigerator to decide on lunch.

  “Ben hadn’t realized the twins were hers. They had a nanny caring for them.” Dante’s voice contained a hint of bitterness as he chomped his cheese. “Our housekeeper at the time said the woman who brought the twins to the door had brown hair with streaks of gray. I assume that was the nanny.”

  “Wait a minute—Lucia didn’t even bring the twins to the door herself? That’s cowardice on a grand scale!”

  “Not telling me about my own children was cowardice. Not letting us know she was coming was just par for the course. She knows I travel, and my mother isn’t tied to the house.” He whacked the cheese a little harder than necessary and caught it before it flew off the table.

  “Our housekeeper said a blond woman unpacked the trunk with all the baby supplies,” he continued. “But she didn’t come to the house. The nanny didn’t speak Italian and our housekeeper’s English was poor. She was so shocked, that when we finally came home, she was still shouting and gesticulating more than making sense.”

  “I can imagine,” Pris said dryly, remembering how the twins had been dumped on her the first day here. “How long did it take you and Emma to come home?”

  Dante covered his face with his hand. “I was in Crete. My mother was in Scotland. The housekeeper quit the minute I returned. She’d had them for a day and night.”

  Ouch. Pris winced. “Infants, baby formula, diapers—yeah, if I were her, I’d do the same. Mothers just don’t do that.” Pris struck a salami with a small cleaver. And then her mental block parted and she stared at Dante. “Did you touch any of those baby things when you got home?”

  He looked at her blankly, then at his hands, grasping what she was asking. “It’s not what I normally do.”

  She got that too. She blocked mental vibrations. He had learned to block any psychometric disturbances. She waited, slicing more salami and starting on a tomato.

  “I don’t think it would do much good to handle them now. The toys are in tatters, the clothes given away, the carriers well-used. . . and in the attic.” Where he couldn’t reach them on a crutch. “I can’t fathom learning much.”

  “I’d just really like to know how Lucia felt giving up her children. I simply cannot get past that. I’m not in the least maternal, but even I. . . ” Pris looked at the two adorable five-year-olds glued to a laptop screen and singing mermaids or whatever. “Even in utter exhaustion and facing starvation, I don’t think I could abandon them.”

  She set out a loaf of crusty bread and an assortment of vegetables and salami, but her heart wasn’t in the food. She must be coming down with something.

  “I can tell you how to find the carriers,” Dante said hesitantly. “I don’t think it will do any good though. It’s not something I do well and after all this time. . .”

  “Do you get images from ancient artifacts?” she asked, removing her apron.

  “Sometimes. There is never a guarantee. The image has to be strong and usually emotional.” He looked dubious.

  “I can’t think of anything more emotional than giving up children. Tell me where to find the carriers.”

  “Give me the sandwich makings, and I’ll start on those,” he offered, amazingly. “It will take a while to climb up there and dig around under all the covers my mother uses.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t do this the first time around.” She transferred the ingredients to the table.

  “I wasn’t exactly in a receptive humor, if you can imagine,” he said with crisp accents and none of his occasionally lazy Scots burr.

  She memorized the directions and left him to lunch while she set out to explore the ancient villa. She was used to hundred-year-old houses. Afterthought was full of them, and her cousin Evie lived in one they all used for storage.

  The villa, though, was gorgeous, filled with marvelous antiques and art, elegant plaster ceilings and beautiful wallpapers. She gawked in awe and thought this must be what a museum was like, not that she’d ever been in one unless a trip to see dinosaur bones during school counted.

  Even the attic was orderly, as attics go. Evie’s was a hodge-podge of boxes and furniture their family had shoved anywhere they could find room. This one was so huge and well curated that Pris could tell each piece had been brought here with the intent to be reused. If she ever learned Italian, she could decorate a restaurant. . .

  As if Italy needed another restaurant.

  The carriers were found neatly stored in a box in a corner that almost screamed Infant Department. The box was light but awkward as she eased it down the attic steps. Still, she didn’t want her impressions anywhere on the plastic handles. The realization that Dante might get nosy and try to read her thoughts on anything she touched made her cringe.

  As her mind reading probably made him cringe. Swell.

  She carried the box into the kitchen and set it down beside Dante’s chair. The twins glanced up in curiosity but returned to watching their movie while chomping sandwiches cut into fist-sized bits. She raised her eyebrows in surprise at his thoughtfulness but said nothing, as always.

  While she slapped together ingredients for her own lunch, Dante glared at the box with distaste and reluctance. Pris got that. She didn’t like looking into the messy contents of brains either. The unpleasantness of contact had trained her to avoid reaching out.

  Dante extended his hand and clutched a handle. His first reaction was a wince. “My mother had a bad day. Maybe a lot of them.” Then he lifted the carrier into his lap and ran his hands all over, to places people didn’t normally touch.

  When he grazed the bottom of the seat, his expression turned to alarm. Pris froze in mid-bite, waiting.

  “Terror,” he murmured, obviously restraining himself for the sake of the twins. “Fear. Grief. Fury. Hysterical panic. And a fleeting image of the cave.”

  Pris swallowed hard. “Lucia was terrified?”

  “Not the Lucia I knew. I don’t know this person.”

  Nineteen: Evie

  Afterthought, South Carolina

  * * *

  Evie settled on the cottage floor with Ariel’s new pet, a black-and-white kitten that deigned to allow her to scratch his head occasionally. Looking around at the dimly lit front room where Ariel and Roark worked their computer magic, she screwed up her nose in distaste. She’d much rather be outside in the sunshine despite the nippy November wind.

  “Pris is convinced there’s something wrong at Lucia’s farm, but she’s saddled with the babies, everyone speaks Italian, and she can’t do her mental mojo. I need a good excuse to poke around the Beautiful People shop and learn more about olive oil. It’s the only place where KK talks.” Other than muttering and complaining, anyway. The ghost was a serious downer.

  “Don’t go unless one of us with you, bébé,” Roark warned, not looking up from his screen. “One of dem’s a killer. And looks like dey’re all crooks.”

  If she had to tell Jax, she’d never get back in.

  “How can selling lotions and creams be crooked? Other than claiming grease in fancy jars can beautify you. That’s more like fraud, and we’d need chemical analysis to prove that.” The kitten leapt up to chase shadows under the desks. KK had cried fraud. Maybe she was onto something.

  “Rube got that done.” Roark pointed at his screen. “It needs more work but looks like La Bella’s products aren’t so bella. Cheapest ingredients on the market and no olive oil.”

  “That’s why KK keeps complaining and knocking over jars!” Evie glanced around for the ghost, but KK didn’t like the cottage. She’d disappeared.

  Ariel scooped up her pet, rubbed him against her cheek, and dropped him in a box on her desk. “Stolen artifacts,” she added. She printed out a list and dropped it near Evie, apparently not into airplane creation like Roark. Evie appreciated that they did paper for her. She didn’t tell them she didn’t read paper any more than computer screens, not if she could ask questions.

  “Artifacts? What do they have to do with lotions? I haven’t seen any sign of anything old enough to be an artifact, including the shop staff.” Evie studied the list of banks and cash flow and went cross-eyed. “Explanations, please.”

  “Speculation,” Roark contradicted. “We have nothing except Pris’s reports.”

  “And money,” Ariel argued.

  Evie found the prickly relationship between non-communicative Ariel and boisterous Roark fascinating. She tried to compare it to calm, logical Jax and her instinctive fits and starts, and she had to wonder how anyone ever lasted a lifetime together.

  She’d kind of like to have a forever relationship, but she recognized her faults too well. A professional dog walker and ghostbuster had nothing to offer a respectable, soon-to-be wealthy lawyer like Jax.

  “What money?” Money, she understood, sort of. She’d never had enough for it to be complicated.

  “La Bella Gente pays their most pressing debts from an Italian bank account that isn’t on the corporate books,” Roark explained. “Our resident bank hacker here has been tracing the money trail.”

  “Lucia’s siphoning the farm funds?” Evie studied the page she’d been given but she was lousy at homework.

  “Not the farm. The account owner is an Italian shell company with officers listed from a British shell company. As far as we can determine, the physical address is a plot of dirt in some obscure Umbrian village. We’d need someone to verify that better than Google Earth.” Roark’s accent disappeared when he was deep into the research.

  “Criminal behavior, got it, but that’s not enough.” Evie watched KK’s aura appear, emanating colors of boredom. Given KK’s natural aura, she’d have been a better party animal and worse CEO than Evie.

  Which meant someone else was probably running the show. KK had been a figurehead. Did that mean elusive Lucia was a criminal mastermind? She’d know about Italian banks and Umbrian dirt lots.

  “We don’t have much,” Roark repeated. “Like I said, speculation. But Dante mentioned finding an Etruscan gold cuff in Lucia’s caves which he thought was stolen. The curious thing here is that deposits to the anonymous account halted after Dante put his work crew in there.”

  “Oh.” Evie sat up straight. “KK, are you listening? Did Lucia have a treasure cave?”

  “Pffft.” Papers all over the room rustled as KK flitted about. “Not worth dying for.”

  After speaking more words than she’d ever managed, the spirit vanished again.

  Not worth dying for? Did KK mean herself?

  “You may be on to something.” Evie texted Pris with what little they knew. It was evening over there. Presumably, her cousin would be done with dinner and not out trudging caves in the dark.

  With the text sent, she dragged herself from the floor “All right, y’all, I guess we’d better start researching any new supply of artifacts hitting the Italian market. If KK knew something, Lucia probably knows more. It’s time we figure out where our secretive CEO is hiding. Will she go to KK’s funeral?”

  “I’ve got a guy over there waiting for word of time and date,” Roark admitted. “Otherwise, all we know is that Lucia and KK share their mother’s house, but Vincent owns it.”

  “Then we need to start shaking a few trees. How about this—I give our clueless blogger a list of deposits on the anonymous account. I’ll tell her. . . Heck, is she still hating on Larraine and Pris? Anyone else come under her radar?”

  “Why are you asking?” Roark asked in suspicion.

  Even Ariel turned to stare.

  “Meanness.” Evie shrugged. “I’ll tell Jane the Lawless that her Target of Today’s Bigotry is receiving payments from your mysterious Italian account, and we think it has to do with KK’s death. Let her do some real investigative reporting.”

  “Foolish and not safe,” Ariel said, frowning.

  “Unless you think Lawless poisoned the almonds, why not try?” Evie checked around for KK but she’d gone to whatever dimension ghosts inhabited. Maybe this time she’d stay there.

  “Lawson is meaner than you are, bébé. Feed the info to someone else and let them go to our narrow-minded blogger.” Roark typed on his phone. “Or have Jax do it.”

  “I’ll hex your phone if you just told Jax that. But using a go-between ties in with another of my tasks. That might work. See you later.” With the list of deposits tucked in her tote, Evie took off before they could question.

  Ariel’s cottage was only a mile or so from home, but with the November weather turning cool, Evie had driven over. She was also learning that responsibility for a kid required being adult enough to reach the school quickly, with adequate transport of said child, if only for doctor appointments.

  Checking the time, she drove straight to the school instead of stopping at home. Loretta usually walked or biked, but Evie wanted her safely installed with Mavis before she set out on her vengeance campaign.

  “People are saying nasty things about Larraine,” Loretta said, climbing into the back. “I want to start a blog. If we had a video camera—”

  Evie held up her hand in a stop gesture. “Cameras, not my circus. And putting your face out there is an invitation to trouble. I think Larraine can handle herself, but if you want to practice writing. . . ”

  “As if I need practice,” scoffed the eleven-year-old who had written her own legally-correct guardianship papers. “But she ought to know she has supporters. I’ll make the blog anonymous so I can say what I like.”

  Evie stifled a groan. “Said every half-wit on the internet. You will be respectful. The world already has enough uncivilized behavior. Lead by example.”

  “Boring.” But Loretta wasn’t sulking as she jumped out at Mavis’s Psychic Solutions shop.

  Life had been so much simpler before computers. Except Evie really did like her cell phone. She used it to call La Bella Gente and ask for Rhonda Tart, Victor Gladwell’s supposed mistress. No point in going further if her victim wasn’t present.

  “Speaking,” said a clipped British voice.

  She’d really rather see Rhonda’s aura as she spoke, but life was seldom simple.

  “Miss Tart, you won’t remember me, but we’ve met. I’d like to see your shop prosper. I have some information that might help. It would probably be better if we’re not seen together, however. If you’ll be there a while longer, I’ll send a messenger.”

  Rhonda wasn’t swift on the uptake. By the time her What’s and Who’s sputtered a complete question, Evie hung up. With a happy smile, she drove over to Iddy’s vet clinic. If Roark thought she should be careful, she could really get into cloak and dagger.