The Romance Revival(88)

“I left around two,” I tell her. “Got home around four-thirty.”

She opens the notebook and sits on the couch next to me. “Okay, at 3:13 Crispin and another truck came over.” She moves her finger down the paper. “They both had Luca’s logo on the side, but the second truck had a dent on the front fender.” My eyes go wide. Betty really does log everything.

“That’d be Tony,” Crash offers. “He’s an idiot. Pardon my language, Betty.”

“Thank you, Crispin.” She lifts her chin, saying, “Annie, dear, can you scroll through to find that timestamp on the camera marked number four?”

Annie clicks on the laptop’s mouse pad and fast-forwards the security footage to 3:13 p.m. Sure enough, Crash pulls into the driveway in Luca’s work truck and disappears into the garage. Right behind him, another truck parks at the end of the driveway and waits. A few minutes later, Crash goes out the front door and hops into the waiting truck, which drives away.

Annie fast-forwards fifteen minutes… a half hour… and then stops when Luca’s truck appears again, this time backing out. Luca is visible behind the wheel for a split second before it’s gone, too.

“So, we’ve confirmed he left in his truck, but where did he go?” Annie asks.

I stare at the screen, asking myself the same question. A thought occurs to me. “Betty, did you see anything on your cameras after we came over and asked about Honey the other day? Maybe someone bringing her back?”

“I didn’t log anything, but let’s look.” Sitting between us, Betty goes to the footage for July twenty-fourth and scrolls through the different timestamps with a practiced ease. “Here you two are.”

In a view of Betty’s porch, you can see me and Luca standing, talking to her. On the small screen, Luca puts his arm around me. My breath catches in my throat.

“If a camera detects movement, it starts recording,” she tells us, pointing to another view. “This is the sidewalk in front of your house.” It’s not a great view; only a small section is visible near Betty’s edge of the yard. While we’re on one camera, another one captures a man moving down the sidewalk across the street, walking his dog. But he doesn’t pass my house; he slows in front of the driveway before cutting across and going to our side gate. “That’s Honey,” I say.

Betty leans forward. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. We got back to the house, and she was just there, in the backyard. He’s bringing her back when we are literally next door.” I huff out an irate laugh. Betty missed it and we missed it, too, because we were all arguing. “We wondered if somehow she’d been in the yard the whole time.” I can’t see the guy’s face, though, because of his hat. “Betty, do you have any other views of this guy?”

“I’d imagine I do,” she tells us.

Annie, who’s been clicking between different cameras, blurts, “I’ve got it.” It’s the view from the very edge of Betty’s garage.

“Can you zoom in?” I ask. Annie enlarges the image just as the man turns his head. I can’t be seeing this right. He has a ponytail tucked into the collar of his shirt.

“Holy shit,” Annie says. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Sure is.” I am almost positive that the man I’m looking at is Vincent Barker.

Betty leans forward. “Maybe this is the man in the white car.”

I swing my gaze to hers. “The one Luca said he talked to before the cops came to our house?”

She nods.

“He said the driver was considering buying in the area,” I say, thinking aloud.

“And I told him that there aren’t any houses for sale in Rancho Amaro. Which he should have remembered,” she says pointedly. “Frankly, I think that man was just snooping around.”

“Annie, what kind of car does Vince drive?”

“A Tesla. It’s white.” She looks over at me. “I need you to say it out loud: Are we thinking the same thing?”

“You mean that Vince has been skulking around my neighborhood? That he took Honey?”

“And brought her back?” Annie asks. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

My mind is racing. “Honey was missing a small chunk of hair on her front leg. It looked like she’d had blood drawn. But why would he do that?”

“Possibly to draw blood and run a sample through mass spec,” she says. “To get the chemical makeup of Compound Y.”

“That wouldn’t work, would it? It’s been weeks since she was injected. I’m sure any chemical traces were metabolized a long time ago. And because of her weight, her dosage was relatively small. But Luca…”

“Don’t worry, I have no idea what they’re saying, either,” Crash says to Betty.

“Are you thinking—” Annie starts.

“That Vince had something to do with Luca’s accident? That he’s responsible for his death? I have no idea how, but yes,” I say. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

“Luca’s death?” Betty looks between us and then to Crash. When nobody answers, she reaches for her phone. “Okay, friends. Are you going to tell me what’s really going on, or am I calling my old friends at the San Diego Sheriff’s Department again?”