Entering through the back door, she found her cousin in the kennel training the mayor’s greyhounds. “Do you still have the German shepherd?”

  “Trixie? Yes, she’s a sweetie.” With her long black hair and sharp features, Iddy looked more like a classic witch than any of them. She glanced up in curiosity. “You need a guard dog?”

  “No, a smart one.” Evie removed the list of suspicious Italian bank deposits from her tote and enclosed it an envelope from Iddy’s desk. She scribbled Rhonda’s name on it. “I need this delivered to La Bella Gente.”

  “This won’t get Trixie poisoned?” Iddy asked warily, accepting the envelope.

  “Rewarded, more likely. I just want a messenger who can’t be questioned. You’ve established a connection with Trixie, haven’t you?”

  Iddy read animal minds, and sometimes, they read hers. Evie didn’t know how it worked, but Iddy’s animal clients were the best trained in the state. Possibly the world but that was hard to prove.

  “Having her deliver an envelope to a specific address is a challenge, but if you walk her past the shop. . . ”

  Evie shook her head. “I can’t enter her doggie mind. The target knows me, and it’s best if they make no connection to our family. I’ll man the desk here while you walk Trixie over and set her loose out of sight. Let Trix enter when someone opens the shop door.”

  It took a little more persuasion but Iddy finally caved. While her cousin was gone, Evie used the burner app Reuben had installed on her phone to text Jane the Lawless Blogger Bigot.

  ask donna tart about anonymous deposits in la bella accounts. did kk uncover stepbrothers unsavory sex life?

  Mean, Evie, very, very mean. But someone knew about those deposits. She had no way of reaching out to Nick Gladwell—the man who had carried the limoncello bottle. Vincent wasn’t in the country. That left Matt and Rhonda. Well, the male models maybe, but who knew where they were. Security guards didn’t access bank accounts anyway.

  Setting Rhonda—an ambitious stockholder and Vincent’s lover—against Vincent’s son, ought to roil a few waters. Evie hoped a clue or two might bubble to the top.

  Twenty: Pris

  Italy

  * * *

  Pris put together sub sandwiches with freshly made baguettes for the plumber, whose feet stuck out from under the kitchen sink. His partner was upstairs replacing ancient fixtures.

  Dante was reading a bedtime story to the twins in the library. After she tucked them in upstairs, it would still be early. If she had a flashlight. . .

  But dammit, she really needed Dante in that cave. He could find out more touching old stones than she could reading Leo’s murky mind. Well, maybe it took both of them.

  She hated this. She simply wanted to cook. She didn’t want to deal with troubled farmers and overbearing archeologists. She didn’t want responsibility for kids.

  She did, however, want to find out who killed KK.

  Evie’s text about the anonymous bank account burned in her pocket. She should tell Dante. In a way, this was his battle too.

  And Evie’s text about the Italian shell company provided a stronger link between Lucia’s farm and La Bella Gente and thus to KK’s killer. Sort of. Maybe. She was no sleuth. She’d never even read a Nancy Drew.

  With shiny new faucets, working commodes and showers, and a warning to clean out the septic tank, the plumbing duo packed up the bag of dinners she and Emma had prepared. She didn’t want them underfoot if the job was done.

  She tucked the twins into bed, turned on the baby monitor, and hurried back to the library.

  Dante was deep in a video conference. Dang.

  Fine then, she’d risk arrest and drive over to this address Evie had sent to see if it was a dirt lot or an actual business. If she used the house wi-fi for directions, she wouldn’t need GPS. She was an excellent driver. Reading road signs might be tricky. . .

  It felt good to do something instead of sitting around, helpless. She ran up to her room and worked out that the address for the shell company was only ten miles away—shades of fraud, Batman! If Leo was behind this, he didn’t go far out of his way to set up a front.

  She downloaded the directions to her phone, made sure it was charged, and headed downstairs. Investigate had been what she’d come over to do, after all. Dante owed her nothing.

  Except the wretched man heard her coming. He limped to the library door before she could reach the foyer. His conference was going on without him in the background.

  “Where are you going at this hour? Are the twins asleep?” When he was tired, he rolled his r’s more.

  She didn’t have an ear for accents. It was hard to tell whether that was Scots or Italian.

  “They’re asleep. The monitor is hooked up to that device on your desk so you can hear them. I’m going for a short drive. You do remember I can drive?” They’d had a memorable one a few months back where he’d hung on for dear life and cursed her in three or four languages. She understood his wariness of her abilities, but the lack of respect burned.

  “It’s dark. These roads have no lights. And you can’t read the road signs, when there are road signs, which there often aren’t. Why can’t whatever you’re up to wait until morning?” There were pain wrinkles around his eyes.

  She wanted to sympathize, but she wasn’t that kind of girl. “Go back to your meeting. I’ll tell you later. I don’t think I can miss an entire town.”

  “Well, yes, you can. If you’re not talking about the village, but any of half a dozen nearby towns, they’re not all accessible by vehicle. Again, why can’t it wait until morning?”

  Not accessible by vehicle? How did one go there, on mule back? She’d figure it out. “You want me to take the twins on my fishing expedition?” she asked in annoyance. “They’re asleep now and relatively safe. Tomorrow, they’ll run circles around you if I leave them with you. Have you found a nanny yet?”

  “Actually, I think I have. Stay. Let me finish this up.” He waited for her agreement, then returned to his computer.

  Pris gnashed at the bit, but the knowledge that she couldn’t just drive into town and look for an address daunted her eagerness just a little bit. She should have known it wasn’t easy. She needed to take lessons in Italian. Her Spanish was rusty but she could see a lot of similarities.

  He shut down and gestured for her to join him in the amazing library. He was a busy man with an aristocratic lineage and a mansion. She was a caterer with a lineage of witches and frauds. She felt as if she ought to be entering with a tray of drinks and nibbles or at the very least, potions.

  Hiding a grimace, she perched on the edge of a worn leather chair. She preferred the kitchen, where she reigned supreme.

  “One of my students is looking for work. She has many younger siblings and knows how to deal with little ones. She can come on weekends and Tuesdays and Thursdays. That’s a start, isn’t it?” He opened a bar built into his bookcase and held up a whiskey glass in her direction.

  Pris shook her head at the offer of a drink and waited until he’d poured his and settled into his easy chair before she formed a response. “It’s a start, yes, if she has references. Once I leave, what will you do the other days of the week? I understand you travel extensively.”

  He winced as he set his leg up on a stool. “I won’t be traveling much like this. Maybe I can find another student by then.”

  “Have you heard from your mother? Do you know how long she’ll be gone?” Pris gave up and sat back, admitting she wasn’t going anywhere this evening.

  “Her sister needs care after surgery. I can’t ask her to return. As much as I hate to admit it, you’re right. I’ve been behaving like a pampered prince and expecting others to handle everything. The twins are mine, and they deserve my attention. I’m just not sure how to adjust my life to accommodate their needs. A dig isn’t any place for children.” He frowned into his whiskey.

  Or maybe it was Scotch malt. She wasn’t much into hard liquor.

  “Well, at least you have a good excuse for staying home until you figure it out. But my job here is to find out who killed Katherine Gladwell so I can go back to my business.” She handed over her phone with Evie’s text. “The connections between her death and Lucia’s farm are growing stronger.”

  He scanned the message. “Did she send the information about the deposits? We can drive over tomorrow and look for this shell company address, but the bank where the deposits are being made is a national one. There are branches all over.”

  “You’re not really getting it, are you? Evie is saying that these deposits stopped when you and your students took over Leo’s cave. We really have to go back there. And we can’t take the twins, not with what you felt on those carriers.” Pris didn’t mind being reckless for herself, but not when innocents entered the picture.

  Fear and horror were powerful emotions. What had driven Lucia and whoever held those carriers to drop the children here and run? Ghosts? Who or what had made them fear for the life of the children?

  “I’m not letting you go over to Leo’s on your own, especially if he’s hiding something. I need to oversee what’s been done on the tunnel. If we both go, we can take turns with the twins in the car. I’ll talk to the students. Then we’ll drive up and you can talk to Leo.”

  “Take the twins to Lucia’s farm where bad guys might hang out? And here I thought you were the cautious one.” Pris shoved out of her chair.

  “Leo isn’t a bad guy,” he said with a dismissive gesture. “He’s just overworked and fretting.”

  Pris kept her opinion to herself. Just because Dante looked like lord of all he surveyed, didn’t mean he was people smart. She would do well to remember that. “When can your nanny start?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Next week, sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. You’re the one stuck here.” She really needed to go home, she decided as she aimed for the door. She was getting too damned comfortable with this man. Manipulating Dante’s mind was like pounding her head against a brick wall, so she’d quit trying, but she still understood his pain and frustration. “How long before you can go up those stairs or drive yourself?”

  “When I’m not eating pain pills?” He studied his glass as if the answer were there. “I promise I’ll do everything within my power to help you with your search for a connection with Katherine’s killer, if you’ll stay until the nanny arrives. I’ll manage after that.”

  “Yeah, right. I’d better start on tomorrow’s meals if we’ll be jaunting about the countryside.” Besides, she had a powerful lot of energy she needed to work off before she could sleep.

  Dante might be a self-centered prick, but he was a damned good looking one. And every so often, when he actually tried to behave like a concerned father. . . He set off her bells and whistles.

  Telling herself it was because she’d never really had a father, she returned to the kitchen and mixing dough. Old-fashioned biscuits, she decided, comfort food. No ground sausage for gravy, but she’d improvise.

  Then she’d go to her room and look for tickets home.

  Late the next morning, Dante fastened Alex into one side of the back seat while his enigmatic companion settled Nan into the other. The kids were practically bouncing in excitement, making it hard to check that their booster seats were fastened properly.

  Guilt ate at him. He never took them anywhere. He should be taking them to carnivals or whatever it was parents did with children. A zoo. He could take them to a zoo. Sometime.

  He’d have to give up his travels and settle down at the local university and teach. He resented the hell out of Lucia for leaving him with all the burden. Maybe what he needed to do was go to London and hunt her down again. This time, she wouldn’t be expecting him and wouldn’t have time to hide.

  He couldn’t even go to London until he hired a nanny and his mother returned to hold down the fort.

  He was bad company as they drove to the farm, but his guest wasn’t much better. Priscilla had informed him this morning that she’d found a good return fare out of Rome for the day after next, but she’d keep looking for next week if the nanny couldn’t come sooner. He’d given her his credit card so she could buy a refundable ticket instead and wouldn’t have to hunt economy fares. It was the least he could do.

  The car bumped down the rocky lane toward the cave, and the twins giggled and laughed at the rough ride.

  “Something’s wrong,” Pris suddenly murmured, jarring him from his thoughts.

  Instead of hitting the brake, she stomped the gas pedal and pushed the little Fiat until they practically bounced off the roof.

  The damned woman was a speed demon, but his pulse accelerated. He strained to see what she did, but all he saw was the olive orchard. He’d sent one of his more experienced foremen over to make certain the tunnel was safe for further exploration. He didn’t want anyone else hurt by falling rocks—although his students had more sense than Leo. They wouldn’t ram hard hats into cracked ceilings.

  Dust poured from the entrance as they pulled up. Shit, shit, shit. Dante bit off his curses and threw open his door before Pris had the ignition off. “Leave the twins buckled,” he ordered.

  He pried himself out of the rolling tin can with his crutch, not waiting to see how she took his commands. He could see more hard hats emerging from the narrow entrance, tugging someone or something behind.

  “Fred’s still in there,” one of his students shouted as Dante approached. “The whole ceiling collapsed and a large slab landed on his legs.”

  Given the type of rock in there, slabs didn’t make a bit of sense, but he wouldn’t argue with the assessment. “Have you called an ambulance? Did you construct the supports as you went? Where’s the creeper? Can I fit back in there?”

  He shouted questions as he approached the entrance. Red dust poured out, obscuring his vision. He grabbed a hat with a light that someone handed him.

  “Dante! You can’t go in there with that leg,” his foreman argued. “We’ll need to jack up the slab so we can pull him out.”

  “He could lose the leg if we leave him too long.” Dante had first-hand knowledge of how bad that could be for an archeological career. “Bring me a jack from the truck and some lumber.”

  He didn’t make promises. He hadn’t seen the situation. He simply knew he had twice the experience and more muscle than college kids and a forty-five-year-old desk jockey. His foreman knew what to do. He physically couldn’t do it.

  Of course, Dante wasn’t fit to crawl either, but he could work around that. The rolling flatbed meant for working under cars helped in tight spaces like this one, even more so with his bad leg. The cart was a piece of junk cast out by some service station, but it held his weight. Lying on his back, kicking with his one good foot, he went in head first, illuminating the ceiling and unable to see ahead. This first part of the tunnel was just as he remembered, perfectly sound bedrock.

  He’d assumed it eventually connected with the storage areas above, providing an exit or entrance for the original builders. Those areas had withstood thousands of years of use without a single crack. Why would this one cave-in so easily?

  “Federico?” he called. “Can you hear me?”

  “Si, signor,” the student called with an exasperated sigh. “I cannot turn over to lift the slab.”

  The tunnel had widened at this section. Dante cautiously rolled over on his stomach so he could see ahead. Odd, the slab that had fallen looked more like concrete than volcanic tuff. He spoke reassuringly in Italian. Fortunately, the student had been on the way out and faced Dante.

  “I have a jack,” he told the kid. “If I can lift this corner and push the lumber under it, I should be able to lift the whole. I don’t know if it’s enough. Do you think you can move?”

  The edge of the slab appeared to be resting on the student’s thigh. If he could pry that edge up. . .

  “Si. I am well padded. It is the angle trapping me.”

  Hampered by his injured leg and the narrow space, it took Dante forever to situate the lumber, the jack, and exert enough pressure to lift the stone even an inch. Federico worked with him, pushing and lifting where he could, sliding the trapped limb slowly as the weight rose off him.

  They both gasped in relief as he finally wriggled free.

  “Do you think you can push the cart back without using that leg? It needs to be x-rayed.” Dante crawled to one side to help his student to the wheels.

  He ignored Federico’s protests, sending him off so he could examine the fallen ceiling.

  No Etruscan had created this space. A more modern entity had widened the original narrow exit with metal tools and attempted to reinforce it with concrete.

  Then someone else had deliberately weakened the reinforcement. A rubble of chiseled concrete blocked the rest of the tunnel.

  The twins wriggled and protested their captivity, keeping Pris occupied with their antics. She’d made a lunch basket and produced sandwich squares to settle them down. She needed to be monitoring Dante, his student, and all the worried people crowding the tunnel entrance, but she had only so much mental space. All she managed was to send messages to the heavens.

  Finally, after two eternities, she heard the crowd yell in relief. She instantly sought Dante’s distinctive mind, but his thoughts were an impenetrable maze. She could tell he was very not happy, but he didn’t seem to be in too much pain. He was safe, at least.

  Act now or regret it forevermore.

  Once the ambulance arrived, Pris signaled one of the students. “Look, I need to let the kids out to run about, but it’s too dangerous here. I’ll take them around to the farmhouse. Can someone run Dante up there when he’s ready to leave?”

  If the damned man had hurt himself pretending to be Hercules, there were medics on hand. She couldn’t help him.