notes to confirm Marco Borelli’s address. Marco had been Kit’s chauffeur—the one man besides her husband who’d spent the most time with her. There’d been reports that the two had often talked quietly to each other, and some rumors suggested they had been having an affair. However, nothing was ever proven.
Tara wove down a collection of side streets into a poorer section of town. She parked in front of an apartment house that looked in need of renovation.
She got out of the car and climbed the stairs to the front door. Close up, she could see that the black paint was peeling and the threshold was rotting. Mortar between the bricks was chipped, and there was a strong smell of garbage. She tried the front door and discovered it was locked.
Frustrated, she glanced to the call buttons on the left side of the door. It was doubtful Borelli would let her in, so she pushed several at once, hoping one of the residents upstairs would buzz her in. In a clear voice, she said into the intercom, “Pizza.”
To her relief, the lock clicked open and she quickly entered the building.
Tara climbed the steps to the third floor. Her nose wrinkled at the blending smells of cabbage and trash. The hardwood floors on the steps were scarred and the banister was shaky enough to give way with the slightest amount of pressure. When she reached the third floor, she found apartment three-A and knocked.
No answer. She knocked again. “Mr. Borelli, are you home?”
Tara pressed her ear to the door and heard the faint sound of a TV game show. Someone was in there. She knocked again. “Mr. Borelli?”
Frustrated, she pulled a business card from her purse and wrote a quick note for him to call her. She tucked it in his doorjamb.
Tara was about to leave when Borelli’s door snapped open. Her card fluttered to the floor.
A man stood in the doorway, his wide, muscled shoulders filling the door. He had coal-black hair slicked back off his face, a wide jaw and a muscular build accentuated by a tight black T-shirt. Diamond studs adorned each earlobe and a gold chain hung around his neck.
In the pictures she had of Borelli, he was always in the background behind Kit, and was always conservatively dressed in a dark suit. He was part chauffeur and part bodyguard. “Mr. Borelli?” Tara asked.
He frowned. “Maybe. Who wants to know?”
“I’m Tara Mackey. I have a few questions for you about Kit Westgate.”
His scowl made his thick brow look heavier. “I don’t talk to cops.”
“I’m not a cop. I work for the Boston Globe. I’m a reporter.”
His expression darkened, and she suspected he liked cops better than reporters. “I’m done talking with reporters, too. You all are a bunch of bloodsuckers, if you ask me. You vultures just about hounded me to death a year ago.” He reached inside his apartment, grabbed a bag of garbage and then shouldered past her to the waste chute. His thick aftershave trailed after him.
“I am a fair reporter.”
He snorted. “Right. Between the cops and the reporters, my life was hell. I ain’t going back to that.”
She peered into his apartment. The small room was furnished with a sofa and a TV. Her gaze skimmed past a half-eaten pizza on the lone coffee table, and over the floor littered with empty beer cans.
Her nose wrinkled. “Did you have a party?”
Borelli muttered an oath. “None of your business.”
“Hey, I’m not here to cause you trouble. You were cleared by the cops of any wrongdoing in Kit’s disappearance. You were in New York the day the Landovers married and she vanished.”
He yanked the chute open and dumped the trash down. He released the door, and it banged against the wall. “That’s right. I was hundreds of miles away.”
“So it shouldn’t be a big deal for you to answer a couple of questions. Five minutes of your time is all I ask.”
He folded his arms over his chest. On his biceps there was a tattoo of a coiled snake holding a broken heart. “You’re gonna twist my words like those other reporters did.”
“I won’t. I just want to hear your side of the story.” And then, without waiting for a no answer, she said, “You used to live on the Landover estate, didn’t you?”
He glanced at his buffed nails. “Yeah, I had a guest cottage near the garage.”
“You must have had a sense of how Landover’s relationship was going with Kit. Do you think he could have killed her?”
Borelli’s face hardened. “Sure, he could have killed her. The guy had a temper, and I saw him slap Kit in the face once.”
“You tell the cops?”
“I sure did.” He leaned toward her, his tall frame towering over her. “Kit was afraid of Pierce. And I think she’d have backed out of the marriage if she could have. But she was afraid to.”
“She told you she was afraid?”
“Yeah. A couple of times.” He was a hard one to read.
“Why would Mr. Landover kill Kit on their wedding day? Especially with half the world watching.”
Borelli shrugged. “Who the hell knows? Rich people are different than the rest of us. All I know is that they fought often those last few weeks. Even on their wedding day they got into it. You hear a lot when you’re sitting in the front seat of a car.”
“What did they fight about?”
“Anything and everything. Mostly, he just didn’t like the way she flirted with other men. And she didn’t like being told what to do.”
This was a side of Kit she’d never heard about. “Did she flirt with anyone in particular?”
“Naw. She just liked men. And she really enjoyed wrapping them around her finger.” He frowned as if a memory jabbed at him. Abruptly, he moved around her to the threshold of his apartment. “I’ve said what I’m going to say. You’re making me miss Wheel of Fortune.”
Tara thought about the pictures she’d collected of Kit during her research. A sharp intelligence burned behind her sapphire eyes. “What about the missing gems? She was wearing fifteen million in ice when she vanished. Any theories on that?”
“How would I know? I’m guessing that whoever killed her must have taken them.” He leaned against the door frame, letting his gaze trail over her body. A smile played at the edge of his mouth.
When Kirkland’s gaze had glided over her this morning, she’d felt a thrill of desire. This guy gave her the creeps. “She was from California?”
“Yeah. Northern California. Wine country.”
“Did she ever keep up with anyone from her past?”
“Kit wasn’t the type that looked back.”
“If
