Fall into Me (Heart of Stone #2)(35)
Author: K.M. Scott

Daryl raised his eyebrows at the joking insult. "You didn’t let me finish. He used to make good money at the firm he worked at before this one, but he was fired under a cloud of suspicion that he’d stolen from the company. As far as I can tell, he didn’t steal money but was sleeping with the boss’s wife. He hasn’t been able to get a decent job since. This one at Peak International appears to be a favor from one of his college profs."

So Cal was a philandering dick. I wasn’t surprised. From what Nina had told me about him, I hadn’t expected much better.

"Does he have a girlfriend now?"

"None that I can find, but he’s left a long line of girls behind him. Did you know one of them is the daughter of the man whose murder you have me investigating, Nina Edwards?"

"Yes," I answered, adding, "Nina is my fiancée."

"Ah, I get it. Well, from what I can tell, she’s not with him now. I can watch him to see if they still speak, assuming you don’t think they do."

"I know they’ve met once recently. I don’t think they’ll be meeting again."

Daryl grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, but it’s not a big deal to watch him for a little while."

I thought about it and even though I knew I shouldn’t, I nodded my silent agreement to watching Cal Johnson.

"Okay, onto bigger fish than our boy Cal. This Edwards thing is going to get ugly, Tristan. I just want to warn you. The daughter’s your intended and what I’m finding out is bad. I don’t know if you’re ready for this."

I leaned forward and planted my elbows on the desktop. "If you’re going to tell me you know who murdered Nina’s father, let me save you the effort. My father had Joseph Edwards killed. I just don’t know why."

Daryl twisted his face into a scowl. "You could’ve told me that when you set me on this. Christ, I thought I was going to have to tell you that your own father was responsible for the guy’s death."

"I know all too well what Victor Stone was capable of, Daryl. Joseph Edwards wasn’t the first person he had disposed of, and he might not even have been the last. My father was every bit the monster you’re going to tell me he was."

Shaking his head, he frowned. "I don’t have all the details yet. All I know is that he was behind it. I haven’t found out exactly why yet, but I do have one piece of information I’m planning on acting on."

"And that is?"

"There’s a storage facility in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania that Joseph Edwards stored things in a week before his death. It’s in his wife’s name, though. Seems she’s been dead for years and he had her belongings stored there, but it’s interesting that he’d visit it right before he died. I think there might be something useful there."

"Has anyone opened the storage unit since then?"

"No," Daryl said, shaking his head. "The guy at the storage facility said that their records show it wasn’t opened for years and then one day Edwards came and opened it just once. That was a week before he was murdered. Since then, it hasn’t been opened even one time. My guess is that your fiancée doesn’t know it’s there."

Or she didn’t remember it was there, even if she had known about it. I doubted she had since it was simply a place her father had kept her mother’s things after her death. There would be no reason to tell her about it since she was so young when she died. But did her sister know about it, I wondered.

"When are you planning to go out there? I want to know what you find."

"I can go anytime you want. I was planning to wait until after the holidays, but if you like, I can go sooner."

"I don’t want to wait, Daryl. Get out there tomorrow and find out what’s in there."

"Okay, tomorrow I can do. I’ll take a nice drive out of the city and do my best Storage Wars impression. Christ, I have to admit I’m never a fan of digging around these storage units. I think it’s ever since that scene in Silence of the Lambs. I’m always afraid I’m going to find some head in a jar. Remember that scene?"

"Yeah," I answered absentmindedly as I thought about what he might find in Joseph Edwards’ storage unit. Daryl continued to ramble on about dismembered bodies and other grotesque oddities he’d heard about being found in storage facilities, but I wasn’t paying attention. He had a tendency to go off on tangents like that, so I’d learned to just wait until he was finished. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t give someone that much leeway, but Daryl was a decent guy, even if he was a little weird.

I stood from my desk and held out my hand to shake his, a not-so-subtle sign I was ready for him to leave. Daryl took the hint and stood to go, still mumbling about the things he could imagine uncovering the next day.

"Call me as soon as you get in. I want to know everything you find," I said as I escorted him out toward Michelle.

"You got it. Talk to you then."

Dinner was ready at five when I got home, but Nina was nowhere to be found. I quickly hunted down Jensen, but he hadn’t driven her anywhere all day. West reported that she hadn’t left, but he did think he’d seen her on the grounds within the hour. The snow that had been falling all day had tapered off, but it was getting colder now that the sun had gone down. I called her cell phone three times, but it went directly to voicemail. Frustrated, I stuffed my phone back in my pocket and set off to find her without even grabbing my coat, scared something might have happened to her.

The doctors had warned me that she may act abnormally at times because of her head injury, so immediately I was concerned about her walking the grounds since she’d never spent any time outside, as far as I knew. I hurriedly walked around the house and then headed out toward the gardens, finally catching a glimpse of her as I rounded the first stand of hedges.

"Nina! Wait up!"

She turned and waved at me, giving me the sense that she wasn’t out there for any dangerous reason. I jogged over to her and saw she was dressed for the cold weather, so at least she wasn’t wandering around half-clothed unsure of where she was or what her name was.

"It’s freezing out here, Tristan. Where’s your coat?" she asked in a worried voice.

"I’m looking for you. Why are you out here?"

"I was feeling cabin fever inside after working all day. I was going to go into the city to see Jordan, but I decided not to. When it stopped snowing, I figured I’d take a stroll around and see what the rest of the place looks like. It’s nice out here."

She seemed okay and was making sense, so I guessed she wasn’t having some episode from her injury like the doctors had described. "It’s cold out here. Let’s go inside."