Page 71 of The Rainbow Recipe
“If we can stop the artifacts from being sold, send me the file.” Ignoring her concerns, Dante didn’t look up from his eggs or the book the twins were perusing. He had them reading the letters aloud.
Pris sighed at the unmistakable ding of an incoming message.
Dante slipped his phone from his pocket and apparently clicked the link they’d sent. When he began rubbing his head, as if he had a headache, Pris sent the children to the sink to wash their hands. Staying busy was better than fretting over what he was reading about his friend.
“There’s a lot of technical detail about the farm and the caves under it,” Dante finally said. “I’ll summarize for brevity.”
He glanced at Lucia’s children in concern—this was about their mother.
Pris shook her head. “They don’t care enough to understand. Give me a second to set them up with a game. Don’t say anything until I’m back.”
Now that the dining table had been cleared off, she sat them where she could keep watch. Then she dug a couple of old handheld games out of storage boxes stacked on the wall. They could figure the games out on their own.
Back in the kitchen, she boldly slid into the booth beside Dante. He didn’t push her away. If these were her last days with him, she’d take all the proximity she could steal. She didn’t generally like intimacy, but Indiana Jones had plucked a previously untouched chord. She told herself she simply wanted to learn about this opposites-attract thing, since Evie and Jax seemed to make it work.
“Understand that Leo is a farmer, nothing more. He knows his crops, knows their worth, knows how to sell them. He’s been keeping that farm alive where Lucia barely scraped by. Thepoliziadid not find his fingerprints or any evidence that he knew of anything beyond his storage tanks, which he feared my digging might disrupt. He’s afraid of change.” Dante looked up, apparently wanting their agreement.
R&R slid in across from them and waited expectantly.
Dante returned to translating the material on his screen. “I am gathering from this that when thepoliziacame to interview him and told him Vincent and Matthew were under arrest for murder, Leo told them all he knew—all the things he concealed from me.”
Dante looked up to be certain they paid attention. “For background: when we were all young, and I wanted to explore the caves, Lucia told us her father had blocked the tunnels in the storage area.” He tapped the file on the phone. “Leo didnottell me that when Lucia took over after her father’s death, she wanted to expand and opened them again.”
Dante scrolled through the Italian text, looking for exact words. “Leo says that after she opened the tunnels, workers discovered ancient tombs with bones. For fear I would bring in experts who would prevent using the storage caves—which I would have done, so he was not incorrect—he wanted her to close them back up.”
Pris picked up enough of his troubled vibrations to squeeze his arm. “Lucia refused to close them because shewantedyou to see them. She didn’t care about profit but you.”
He nodded. “So Leo says anyway. But I didn’t come home, and Lucia’s mother in London became ill, and she went away. Rather than spend money or argue with Lucia, Leo set storage shelves with those massive barrels in front of the opening. He really didn’t want me disrupting his operations.”
Evie returned to the kitchen without Loretta. At seeing their solemn faces, she filled the tea kettle and settled on a counter stool to listen. Jax came downstairs, freshly shaved and ready for the office despite little sleep. Raising his eyebrows, he poured coffee and settled on another stool.
Dante continued translating. “Leo says when Lucia returned with her Gladwell relations, she showed them the storage area and had workmen moving the shelves away from the tunnel. They argued, he gave up, and went back to work in the orchard. When he returned that evening, only Vincent and Matt were there. They’d only partially pushed the shelves back. He was told that Lucia and Katherine had taken the babies and the nanny and left.”
He skimmed to find the details. “Leo claims Lucia left a contract behind for the oil that was better than anything he’d been able to obtain on his own. He thought she’d found some way of cheating her rich London relations, so he signed it. Vincent and Matthew left after that, and he never saw Lucia again.”
“Have the police gone into the tunnel yet?” Jax asked, smearing a cold biscuit with jam.
Dante nodded. Pris wanted to hug him but didn’t dare. He took the matter in his own hands, circled her shoulders, and squeezed. More than lust heated her, but she wasn’t about to examine that. She thought he might need the connection as much as she did. This was his girlfriend and the mother of his children they were talking about.
She liked it a little too well that, in this moment, he took his strength from her. Having a partner to shore her up when she was down...She’d never thought possible. Dante made it seem so.
After taking a breath to regain his formidable control, he continued. “I’ve texted one of my colleagues to hie himself over there or the police will be trampling centuries of history. They are waiting on a forensics team, but they’re fairly certain the bones wearing silk at the bottom of an old well are not Etruscan. They’ve seen evidence of recent digging.”
A pall of sorrow hung over the room. Hard evidence at last—Lucia was undoubtedly dead, as KK had said.
Breaking the silence, his voice only a little rough, Dante spoke to R&R. “You might want to sift through your files and look for dates of those deposits in the shell company accounts, compare them to Vincent’s visits to the farm and shipments to the US. Leo may not know, but my suspicion is that those annual visits to the tunnel produced artifacts that Matt and Vincent hid in Leo’s oil shipments to their UK warehouse. Once the European market got too hot, they may have opened the US boutiques so they could ship the stolen goods here. My contacts have reported recent unauthorized sales of artifacts on the American market. They’ve set Interpol to investigate.”
Pris could read his fear. “You think with all the attention you recently applied to the black market, Vincent realized his lucrative business might crash on his head.That’swhy he came after the children. He wanted you to call off the police?”
Dante shook his head. “Can’t say. But I think we can assume that Lucia would have been the driving force behind Bella. Once she was gone, KK didn’t have the smarts. Vincent and Matt seized the opportunity Lucia had inadvertently shown them, stole artifacts, and used the company to launder the money.”
Evie looked sad. “KK thought she was selling elegant beauty products that would make her famous. Since she complained of fraud, she must have eventually discovered the substitutes of cheap ingredients.”
“And told them she’d reveal what she knew about Lucia unless they straightened up?” Jax suggested.
“And got killed for her efforts to do what was right for a change.” Pris shuddered.
“Did you ask about the reward for catching KK’s killer?” Reuben asked, scooting out of the booth.
