The walk along the back alley to Zane’s house—and her guesthouse—seemed to take forever in the Arizona heat. Savannah kept her pace fairly fast along the even cement in her new clunky shoes, while holding the kind of posture she had assumed along with the rest of her disguise. The wind had suddenly grown strong so the jacket she wore, and even her jeans, seemed to blow and flutter around her, making her feel even more uncomfortable. At least the cap on her head, which was part of her camouflage, along with her glasses, stayed on. Hopefully she looked different enough that even if she was seen, no one would associate her with Savannah Oliver.
Fortunately, no one else was around. But if someone did appear, if anyone saw her or talked to her, she could let them know that she was a maid by profession and Mr. Oliver’s family had asked her, Chloe Michaels, to do some housecleaning and to come in this way.
Zane had often had workers arrive through the side gate, after all, and when he knew they were coming he would leave it temporarily unlocked and without enabling the security alarm.
But who in his family now would ask for help that way? Good question. Big-time investment banker Zane had staff as well as executives at his company whom he must’ve trained well enough to keep the place going. When he’d discussed traveling with Savannah, long before their divorce, he had indicated he wanted that kind of professional support in place.
That had never happened. And now that he was “dead,” perhaps living in one of the far-off areas he’d thought they might visit someday, his allies were undoubtedly keeping the company successful for what they believed to be their own benefit, as well as Zane’s heirs.
Oh, he still had parents and a sister. They were most likely his official heirs now, as long as people believed him to be dead. Savannah certainly wasn’t one, and might not have been even if they were still married as a result of Zane’s ungenerous attitude. In fact, her allegedly wanting to get her hands on more of his assets, despite her own wealth, was one of the motives the authorities had ascribed to her for his murder, as well as revenge for his affairs. They’d never put an estate plan together, even though she’d suggested it, thanks to her father.
Arizona was a community property state, so she had been entitled to at least some of what Zane earned while they were together, but she’d gotten some money from him when they divorced that was supposed to satisfy the law. She assumed it still sat in the bank where she had deposited it.
Thoughts of her dad brought to mind why she had married Zane in the first place. It had largely been her father’s idea. He had advised Savannah to marry soon and marry well, and when Zane Oliver had shown some interest, her dad had jumped right on it, urging her to go out with him. A lot. And marry him? Oh yeah!
Oh, she had thought she loved Zane, but she hadn’t felt the kind of passion she’d anticipated having for the man she married and intended to spend the rest of her life with.
Grayson’s face suddenly popped into her mind.
Ridiculous. She was grateful to him. She enjoyed sex with him. And rightly or not, she trusted him.
But she didn’t love him. Couldn’t, either now or later. He didn’t seem to want a relationship, and she certainly didn’t want one on the heels of what had happened with her terrible marriage and afterward. She needed time and space...and trust, which would be really difficult for her now.
She turned the corner into the narrow outdoor passageway between Zane’s property and the one next door, both lined with fences. That was where she would open a gate and get inside. She knew where Zane put the key to that door, so even if he had changed locks, there should be no problem, assuming he hadn’t changed hiding places or the code for the security alarm.
She hoped.
She glanced toward the neighbors’ side and was glad to see the row of cacti still there. They apparently didn’t use their gate here, and hopefully didn’t stare at the plants along the fence.
And she wouldn’t even glance toward the guesthouse.
Fortunately Grayson had brought them both gloves to don to avoid leaving fingerprints. Savannah pulled hers on, then quickly searched for the key to the fence lock. There. It was where she’d anticipated, in a small box buried to the right of a fence post. This had been intended to be an emergency way to get on and off the property—and it worked right now.
The main house’s front door? It was much more likely that neighbors would see her there, even if they didn’t recognize her. Plus, she didn’t have the front door key any longer. And the house’s main security camera was aimed there.
As Savannah stepped inside the fence, in the shadow of the vast and lovely mansion she had called home for a couple of years, she saw Grayson approach from the direction of the main street. She waited for him. He, too, wore gloves.
“So far so good,” he said as he reached her side.
“Yes. And—well, I never told Zane, of course, but I kept a key to the side door of the main house hidden on the grounds, too. I didn’t think I’d have any need to use it, but it just—it made me feel a little better, a bit more in control. And I never disposed of it when we got divorced.”
As they talked, they approached the side of the house. A keypad was attached to the wall near the door, and Savannah pulled it open and pressed in some numbers—and waited.
“Good,” she said. “He mustn’t have changed the alarm code, either, or we’d hear a buzz to indicate we needed to try again.”
“Really? Then we wouldn’t have been able to get in the house, even if you know where the key is.” Grayson sounded unhappy.
“From what Zane told me when I moved in, that code hadn’t been changed in decades, so I wasn’t too worried.” There was a garden area off to the side, with a hopbush hedge nearly against the house. Savannah walked five steps with one foot in front of the other, then bent and dug a small hole in the sandy dirt. Sure enough, she found the key in a small box and stood up. Waving it toward Grayson, she said, “Let’s go inside.”
She used the key in a side door, and soon walked into the kitchen—an appropriate entrance for the help, the way she wanted to appear at the moment, she thought.
This was a swanky kitchen, with ornate and imported tile on the floor, and ebony wooden cabinets surrounding the most expensive major appliances, all in gleaming metal.
“We’re in,” she said, knowing her grin was huge. Grayson smiled back, then grew serious again.
“Okay, now that we’re in here, what are we looking for that might have evidence of Zane’s collusion with Schuyler Wells and even Ian Wright?”
Savannah felt her face drop. “Well, I have a couple of ideas, but—Look, here are the possibilities I thought of.” She proceeded to tell him about Zane’s security camera, which was always aimed at the front door, as well as his proclivity for recording all phone calls—or so he’d told her. He’d never let her listen to any. But he did maintain a landline in his home office, so it was worth looking for it and grabbing anything that could have recorded calls. “He probably recorded some or all of his cell calls, too, but I’ve no idea where that phone is. I assume the police have it—or he still does.”
Grayson looked at her. “So first thing, we need to go check out what’s recorded on the security camera at the front door.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But we need to be really careful. The way it’s hanging high up on the wall, I don’t know if we can get to it without having our photos taken, too.”
“Not good. Well, if we do, we’ll just have to bring the whole thing with us so no one else will see us.”
She nodded, though she said, “I’m not sure that’s possible. Getting to it, even with a ladder, isn’t easy. Besides, I think that the recordings of landline calls will be the most likely to include any conversations he had here with Schuyler and Ian. They might not have come to the house at all.”
“Got it. Now, where’s the front door?”
Savannah led Grayson out of the kitchen and through the wide hallway decorated on both sides with modern artwork. They soon were near the front of the house, but she stopped before taking him into the large, open entry area. She pointed toward the wall to indicate where the camera was mounted, though they couldn’t see the device from here.
He got it. “Do you have any ladders?”
“Yes, in the basement. Let’s just go up the back stairway to Zane’s office for now. Maybe we can find what we’re looking for there.”
She thought that was a better idea, especially since past conversations she’d had with Zane were now tiptoeing into her head—where he talked about phone calls he’d had with friends or business associates while he was working here in his office. He’d laughed and said he figured they’d all feel screwed if they knew, because he got them talking about things they would never admit if they thought anyone else had the possibility of hearing them.
In other words, he’d recorded them. But he hadn’t mentioned how, or where he kept the audio files.
Still, when they got up the stairway and Savannah led Grayson to the closed, ornate wooden door into Zane’s home office, she said, “I assume you’re more techie than I am. I’m not sure what to look for, but we can check to see if there’s any kind of recording device.” She hesitated. “Although—well, Zane never seemed to trust anyone.”
She was glad when Grayson preceded her into the office and began looking everywhere, starting around where the phone sat on Zane’s huge but far from ornate wooden desk. Nothing there, nor inside the drawers. Or on any of the shelves behind the desk, or under the comfortable-looking desk chair or any of the other furniture in the room.
Grayson sat at Zane’s desk, pulling some of the drawers out beside him. He extracted files and laid them on top of the desk, going through them and checking out the now empty drawers.
Then Grayson looked toward Savannah. “I gather you’re not sure Zane had any kind of recorder here, though he implied it.” As Savannah nodded, Grayson shrugged and shook his head. “Unfortunately, I don’t see anything here that would do what you hoped for.”
He somehow looked cute in his frustration Cute? Why was she even thinking in that way?
To pull herself out of this situation, out of here? Out of her own frustration at not finding what they needed—something to clear her, right away?
That was ridiculous.
“We should probably look other places, though, just in case,” Grayson continued. “If he was trying to hide something, his office would probably be too obvious, after all. Where else did he spend time?”
“He liked to watch the big-screen TV in the den,” Savannah said after realizing that Grayson was right and pondering an answer to his question. “We were kind of separated for a while inside the house, both emotionally and physically, even before we got divorced. He had his own bedroom then, before I moved into the guesthouse, so that’s another possibility.”
“A potentially good one,” Grayson said. “Let’s start there and check it out, okay?”
“Sure.” Savannah felt a bit embarrassed taking Grayson to her ex-husband’s bedroom, although she hadn’t been there for ages, and the last time she was there was probably well before Zane and she unofficially split up.
But that might make it a perfect place for him to hide something, right? Not that it would have mattered after she moved out. He could even have hidden the recorder in the room she had last used inside this house, the master bedroom.
She showed Grayson where Zane had slept while staying far away from her at night. They went up the wide wooden stairway, turned left at the end of the upstairs hallway and walked along the hall that was covered with imported Persian carpets laid end to end.
It felt so odd to Savannah to be here, seeing some of the things she still loved about this place. Her emotions roiled, but she ignored them. She was here to think, not to feel.
The white wooden door was closed but not locked. Inside, the place looked as Savannah remembered it, with a king-size bed beneath a woven, imported coverlet embroidered in gold and silver threads. Zane had a very tall and wide chest of drawers on one side and an ornate, full-length mirror beside it. He always liked to admire how he looked.
The place still smelled like him—not that “dead” Zane was likely to have visited recently. But he had used an aftershave with a lime citrus scent, and that aroma remained in the air.
The large dresser had two sides, each with separate drawers, with a bottom cabinet area with two separate doors. Savannah began searching through the drawers on the right side. Not that she appreciated thumbing through Zane’s expensive underwear, but she had to find that recorder—unless Grayson did.
Nothing in the first drawer, and as she turned she noticed that Grayson was on his side on the floor, looking under the bed. Then he rose a little and began prodding the area between the mattress and the box spring.
Savannah turned back and closed the top right drawer, opening the next one—and almost gagged. It contained mostly socks of different styles and colors, no big deal there. But it also held a moderate-sized box with a colorful exterior that was labeled with a manufacturer’s name and the word “Condoms” written decoratively in the middle.
She knew full well how much Zane engaged in sex with other women, and this suggested he had continued to have a lot of fun in that way before his “death.” Before their divorce? She’d known he had but never found a good way to prove it.
She started slamming the drawer shut, too—but before she could, Grayson’s arm reached out to stop her, startling Savannah. “Just a sec,” he said.
Why? Did he want to take some of those condoms along with him? Even having him see them in Zane’s drawer embarrassed Savannah. She had wanted out of that horrible relationship, but this could give the impression not only that her ex was a sex fiend, but that Savannah hadn’t satisfied him in that department.
Sure enough, Grayson pulled that box out of the drawer. Feeling mortified, justifiably or not, Savannah started to walk away. But then Grayson opened the box and crowed, “Here we are! I figured that might be a place to hide something without nosy people getting into it—except for us.”
He pulled a black technological gadget out of the box. It was not very large but had a screen in front with buttons below and auxiliary ports. It was maybe an inch thick at the widest spot but tapered toward the bottom. With it were a couple of long wires with plugs at both ends.
“What is it?” Savannah asked in a hushed voice.
“Not my area of expertise, but I’d guess it’s a landline phone call recorder. I just hope the memory card has lots of helpful recordings on it. Now we can continue looking for something else, too, but—”
A loud noise sounded from downstairs. “Police!” yelled a loud voice. “Is anyone here?” Savannah noticed what looked like some bright lights through the door from that direction. It was late morning, but even so maybe the cops were using inside searchlights before barging inside.
“Damn!” Grayson muttered softly. “Could the alarm have gone off after all?”
“Zane might have modified it,” Savannah said nervously. He had talked about hiring a security company to improve the system someday, but he hadn’t done that while she was living here.
“Anywhere we can hide?” Grayson whispered.
She felt her face light up, if only a little. “Yes. Zane was always secretive.” She, too, kept her voice low. Raising a finger, she beckoned Grayson to follow her. She hurried as quietly as she could back to the same dresser, where she pulled open the wooden door on the bottom left. The open area there was surprisingly vast and even extended into the wall. Savannah had wondered what Zane planned to hide there someday. Cash stolen from his job? She wouldn’t have been surprised—but if he had, he’d fortunately taken the money with him. That left an area large enough to hide both Grayson and her.
They both got down on the floor and crawled inside, and Grayson, holding the recorder, pulled the door closed behind them.
They waited. Savannah felt terrified, but it helped that Grayson snuggled against her as they both sat on the base of the cabinet and bent forward at the waist. He even put an arm around her. He was warm and comforting—and Savannah hoped that the cops didn’t find them here and now.
It apparently took a while for the police to conduct their search of the place, and eventually Savannah heard footsteps in the hallway, then voices as the cops came inside Zane’s bedroom. She glanced at Grayson, who was hardly visible in the darkness of the cabinet. He hugged her slightly harder as if in reassurance, then eased up. And stared at the cabinet door as if ready to leap out and attack the intruders.
But it didn’t sound as if they would remain there long. They seemed to be grumbling about being there, talking about how the damned wind might have blown a door open and set off the alarm at the security company, which had notified the police station. From what Savannah could tell, they just walked through Zane’s bedroom, circling it for maybe a minute as they talked, then started out again—or so she hoped.
Savannah was a bit startled when Grayson pushed the door open just a little and looked out.
And appeared a bit startled, too. He closed it quietly and quickly, then held Savannah’s arm to keep her motionless for a short while that felt like forever.
He seemed to be listening. Concentrating.
And in a while he whispered to her, “Let’s go.”