Chapter 7 - The Man in the Silver Sedan
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Before heading down to the boathouse, Dominic walked Marin down the garden path to the orchard cottage so she could hold her son. Standing under the dripping cedar eaves outside the cottage window, Dominic watched for thirty seconds as Marin dropped to her knees on the braided kitchen rug, wrapping her arms around Eli while the nine-year-old laughed and complained that she was getting rain on his shirt.
Something fierce and unfamiliar tightened behind Dominic’s ribs. For five years since his father’s murder and his mother’s stroke, Bellavista had felt like a museum of grief and guarded corridors. Watching Marin kiss the top of her son’s head made him realize how cold his life had actually become—and how close he had come to letting a viper turn his home into a tomb.
"Four men on the cottage perimeter around the clock," Dominic told the team leader stationed at the porch steps. "Nobody enters without my personal biometric clearance. Not even me, unless Carlo is beside me."
Ten minutes later, Dominic stepped into the concrete boathouse built into the base of the sea cliffs below the estate. The only sounds were the hollow boom of ocean swells striking the sea doors and the drip of seawater from a steel hull hoist.
Tied to a bolted oak chair under a single halogen work lamp sat Nolan Pike, his waterproof windbreaker soaked with sweat despite the fifty-degree chill. Carlo stood beside a steel workbench where Pike’s laptop was plugged into a diagnostic decryptor.
"Mr. Pike has been very helpful, Boss," Carlo said, turning the laptop screen toward Dominic. "He’s a licensed private contractor out of Boston, which is why he was smart enough to keep copies of his wire transfers in case his clients ever tried to hang him out to dry."
Dominic stopped in front of the chair, unbuttoning his dark wool cuffs with slow, methodical precision.
"Look at me, Mr. Pike," Dominic said.
Pike swallowed and raised his eyes. He had dealt with corporate lawyers and crooked bail bondsmen in Boston, never a man whose eyes looked like deep water over jagged rock.
"I didn't know why she wanted the school schedule, Mr. Varelli, I swear on my life," Pike stammered rapidly. "Vivien Morrow contacted me three weeks ago. She told me she suspected her fiancé’s live-in nurse was stealing jewelry from the estate and hiding the money in a trust for her kid. She paid me ten thousand dollars to photograph the boy’s school, his backpack, and his medical routine."
"And the wire transfer didn't come from Vivien’s personal bank account at Newport First, did it?" Dominic asked, glancing at the routing numbers on Carlo’s screen.
"No, sir," Pike admitted, nodding frantically toward the laptop. "The money came from an LLC registered in Delaware called Crestline Harbor Holdings."
Dominic and Carlo exchanged a sharp, silent look. Crestline Harbor Holdings was not controlled by Vivien’s father, Senator Morrow. It was a front company used by Julian Cross—the head of the New York docks syndicate who had spent the last four years trying to force a buyout of the Varelli deep-water shipping terminals in Rhode Island.
"Did she ask you to follow anyone else?" Dominic asked softly.
"Just one delivery," Pike whispered. "Last Friday, she paid me five grand in cash to pick up a package from a veterinary compounding pharmacist in New Haven and leave it in the glovebox of her Mercedes."
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Dominic turned to Carlo.
"Call Dr. Mercer to the house with a portable toxicology kit," Dominic ordered. "And keep Mr. Pike comfortable in the guest quarters above the garage until the federal prosecutor arrives tomorrow night. He just became our star witness."
