You Really Got Me (18 page)

“Is this a murder investigation, Chief?”

He sighed. “I don’t know, ma’am.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, call me Carmela. I told you before.”

He grimaced. To her credit, Mayor Olvero didn’t interfere in police business. In fact, he was pretty sure this was the first time she’d ever called him about a case. Not that they had that many cases like this in Las Colinas. “Carmela. We have no evidence that there’s been a murder right now. I’ve called in the FBI to help us. We didn’t have enough resources to deal with the investigation.”

“I heard that,” she said. “I think that’s a good thing. We need to get this solved. The Vioget family is a very prominent Las Colinas family. And the entire community is spooked by this. The national media is starting to pick up on it, and this isn’t the kind of attention we want here in Las Colinas.”

“I know. As I said, we’re working flat out.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that. Keep me posted.”

“I will.”

He hung up the phone and slid his hand over the back of his neck. Jesus. Just what he needed was more attention on the fact that they had fucking nothing!

Chapter Thirteen

Kendall dressed in boots and jeans and a hoodie, in anticipation of the cool morning air. Outside, a light mist was lifting over the vineyard. She hoped this meant the weather was going to cool off a little.
Please, please let it cool off a little.

She and Garcia trudged through the vineyard.

“We have to bring it in,” he said, surveying the grapes. They’d found some starting to desiccate. “If the Brix gets any higher, the wine will have unacceptably high alcohol levels.”

Kendall sighed. “There’s more to it than just a number.”

“I know.” He lowered his chin. “You’ve tasted them too. I know you like to rely on that.”

“Both are important. The numbers and the taste. But you’re right. These ones have to come in.”

“We could let them hang longer,” Garcia noted. “Those jammy, high alcohol wines are popular now.”

“No.” She’d thought about it, how it would buy them a bit more time. But she couldn’t do it. Their quality reputation was for clean, balanced wines. She tasted the skin of another grape, searching out the tannins, the acidity, the sweetness with her mouth, then nodded.

“If the alcohol content does end up too high, we could add water.”

“No!” Her brows drew sharply down. “No, I refuse to do that.”

He smiled. “I know.”

She sighed and looked down at her dew-soaked boots.

“It’s supposed to go up to ninety-five again today,” Garcia said.

“Shit…I was hoping it would cool off.”

“Not according to the forecast.”

Panic flared inside her. The weight of responsibility lay heavily on her shoulders as she mulled it over in her mind. “Great. Just effing great. This is really crappy timing.”

“Kendall, we can manage without you. I know you have a lot going on, but we have a great team. If we have to bring in the pickers sooner than usual, we’ll do it. It will get done.”

As if she didn’t have enough problems. But one thing at a time. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get started.”

“I’ll call Cliff. I gave him the heads up last week that we might be ready to harvest early. He’ll get his crew together and hopefully they’ll be here tomorrow. We can start here today.”

Cliff would bring a large harvesting machine that would shake the grapes from the vines and auger them into bins for transport to the winery, as well as an experienced crew to hand pick. Some of the aisles were wide enough to accommodate the big machinery, but others were not and had to be handpicked. Hand picking was more precise and did less damage to the skins, which protected the grape’s juice from oxidation, but was clearly much more labor-intensive. Since these grapes had to be picked by hand, there was no reason not to get started. She fingered a golden grape leaf. The dark purple grapes hung in fat, heavy clusters.

“I’ll call all the cellar staff and get them out here,” Garcia said. “I’ll get started on the picking schedule. These Pinot grapes are ready right now, tomorrow will be fine for the Cabernet Franc. And I think the Sauvignon have another couple of days to go.”

She nodded. “Okay. Thank you, Garcia.”

“Hey, Chief.” One of the officers leaned in Jason’s office door. “We just got a call from a lady in Santa Barbara. She says she saw Kevin Vioget there Saturday night. With a girl.”

Jason’s spine snapped straight and his head lifted from his computer. “Jesus. Who is she?”

“She works at a 7-Eleven store in Santa Barbara. She says he came in, bought beer, looked like he was pretty drunk already. She watched him leave, wondering if she should call the cops. He got into a car and there was a girl sitting in the front passenger seat. Dark hair. She didn’t get a good enough look at her to say for sure it was Natalia Debarros, but it sounds like it might have been.”

“Description of the car?”

“Red sports car. That’s all she knows.”

Jason looked at Larry. “Get someone down there to get a statement from her. See if they have security tapes.”

“On it.” Larry bolted from the room.

“And we need a search warrant for Kevin Vioget’s car,” Jason called after him.

“Yup. On that too.”

They’d put some pressure on Kevin Vioget yesterday about the polygraph test, trying to convince him to tell them the truth about what he’d been doing that weekend. Instead, he’d clammed up, said nothing. Fear had darkened his eyes and tightened his mouth. He was hiding something and by God, if he’d killed Natalia Debarros or harmed her in any way, he was going to pay.

Rage surged inside Jason. This kind of shit should never happen. How could a guy hurt the woman he supposedly loved? And then the irony of his thoughts stabbed his brain. He slammed a palm down on his desk, gritted his teeth and shoved back his chair.

This wasn’t about him. He had a fucking job to do.

At least now they had something, one single goddamn lead to follow. He strode out of his office to find Agent Barden and see what else had transpired. Today they should be able to put together a detailed record of the movements of everybody who’d been in that lab on Saturday.

He found her in the office they’d set up for her and her team. She looked up and a sweet smile spread across her round face. She made him want to roll his eyes, because he knew she was anything but sweet.

“Come on in, Chief,” she said. Blue eyes sparkled. “We’re putting together a picture of what went on in that lab that afternoon. It’s kinda interesting.”

“How so?” He pulled up a chair.

“Kevin Vioget and Natalia Debarros went into the lab at one o’clock. 1:03 to be exact. She swiped her card. We know he was with her from security video.”

“Yeah.”

“They went straight to the lab Natalia works in, she swiped her card into the elevator lobby at 1:04, and then into the lab at 1:05.”

“Okay.”

“Security camera shows Kevin Vioget leaving at 1:22. Natalia never left that lab until 4:42.”

“Based on the video.”

“Yes. She didn’t have to swipe her card to leave either her lab or the building.”

“So what’s so interesting? We basically knew that already.”

“Well.” Her eyes glinted. “Krayton said he overheard them fighting and glass breaking at about 1:20.”

“Yeah.”

“But Vioget left at 1:22. That didn’t give him much time to sweep up the lab, which we believe happened based on those fragments of glass we found. And if he’d done something to her then, there wasn’t much time for that either.”

“Krayton said
around
1:20. He wasn’t sure of the exact time.”

“True. So there
may
have been time for Vioget to do something.”

“But we
know
he didn’t do anything to her then. Krayton talked to her later.”

“So he says.”

“Why would he lie to cover up for Vioget?”

She gave him a significant look. “I don’t know why he would lie about that. But this is what’s interesting. Krayton swiped his card to go into Natalia’s lab at 2:05. Swiped his card to go back into his own office at 2:32. Back to Natalia’s lab at 2:35. Back to his lab at 2:59. Back to her lab at 3:03. Then he went down to the basement at 3:07. Back up at 3:22. He left the building entirely at 4:10. Came back in at 4:15.”

Jason frowned.

“Natalia left at 4:42. Krayton then left at 5:06.”

Jason slowly moved his head from side to side. “Ooookay. Who else was in the lab that day?”

They went over the other records. A few other people had been in the lab that day, working on other areas of the building. Nobody else had seen or talked to Natalia according to everyone they’d interviewed, and this seemed borne out by the security records. Nobody else had been in or out of her lab that afternoon.

Jason met Nicki Barden’s eyes. He lifted his eyebrows and heaved a sigh. “We’re no further ahead. This still doesn’t make sense.”

“I know.” She sighed too.

“If Natalia was with Kevin Vioget that night in Santa Barbara, where did they meet up after she left the lab?”

“Maybe he picked her up. Maybe he was waiting outside.”

“If he was, it was down the street. The front of the building is covered by cameras. If he’d parked there, we’d have seen him, seen her getting in his car.”

“Why would he wait down the street?”

“If he didn’t want to be seen.”

“Yeah.”

He held her gaze meaningfully. “So maybe she wasn’t expecting him to pick her up. Especially if they’d had an argument earlier. He waits down the street, she gets in the car and…they go to Santa Barbara where he proceeds to get drunk.”

“That’s all we know.”

“Yeah.” Jason blew out a breath.

“Why wouldn’t he tell us that? If that’s what happened?”

Once again their eyes met.

“You think he did it, don’t you?”

He scowled. “Who?”

“Vioget.”

His lips tightened.

“You don’t want to get fixated on Kevin Vioget when we don’t even have a body.”

“I’m not fixated on him!” He raked a hand through his short hair. “Listen. They had a fight while they were at the lab, only hours before she disappeared. Natalia’s roommate told us about an incident a week ago when Natalia tried to stop Kevin from driving because he’d been drinking. He got mad, shoved her around a bit, she started crying, big ugly scene.” He paused. “I’m getting a picture here and you know as well as I do the likelihood it was him.”

Nicki Barden didn’t disagree with him.

Kendall opened the door to see Jason, and her heart gave a little lurch at the sight of him, but when she noticed the three other men with him, her heart thudded into a hard, painful rhythm. Jason’s eyes were somber, his mouth grim. “Kendall.”

“Hi.”

His eyes flickered, the corners of his mouth lifted slightly and his hand moved at his side—then dropped.

“We need to see Kevin.”

She closed her eyes, used the door to support herself. “Is it bad? It is bad news?”

He said nothing and she gave a jerky nod, managed to straighten and turn from the door. “Come in.”

She showed them into the dining room where Maria and Juan sat at the table drinking coffee, and their eyes widened when they saw the police. “Have a seat,” she said, her voice determinedly firm. “I’ll go find Kevin.”

She walked steadily down the hall, up the wide staircase to the second floor, her feet in flip flops making soft noises on the polished hardwood floor as she approached the door of Kevin’s bedroom. She knocked softly.

She rested her forehead on the door, focusing on breathing as she waited. The polygraph test. That must be what this was about. No big surprise to her; she knew Kevin had not been telling her the truth.

Nothing. She rapped again, harder this time, and then the door yanked open, startling her heart into a brief arrhythmia.

“What?” Kevin stared at her, eyes red-rimmed, hair standing on end.

“Th-the police are here again. To see you.”

He closed his eyes, opened them again, dark brown irises blazing at her. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not good.”

“Fuck.”

“I know.” She reached out and squeezed his arm. “Kevin. Did you lie to them? For the polygraph test…?”

“I…I…”

She closed her eyes. “I wish you’d tell me where you were. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I don’t need your help,” he snapped. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Okay.”
Breathe.
“It’ll be okay. We have to be strong. We can handle this.”

“Yeah.” He looked at the floor, took a breath, and followed her back to the dining room.

“We have a search warrant for your car,” Jason told Kevin. Kendall swallowed her gasp and covered her mouth with her hand, watching. “Where is it?”