He plucked the phone off the nightstand, extricating himself from Mystery, and sat up, staring at the device.
Seeing the name on the display, he pressed the button to accept the call instantly. “Stone. What do you have for me?”
“Oh, you finally answer the phone, Sleeping Beauty?”
Axel didn’t ask what Stone meant. He’d bet that if he looked through the record of his missed calls, he’d find more than a few. “It was a really late night getting here and making sure we were secure enough to turn in. Did you sort through the footage leading up to Mystery’s hotel room?”
“Yep. I got nothing usable for you. Whoever did it knew they were being filmed. They wore a hat with a wide brim and a trench coat, along with sunglasses, a wig . . . the works. The only thing I can tell you is that whoever left the picture is female. She entered through a service door at the back of the hotel and exited the same way, walking out of the courtyard, onto the street. No vehicle or license plate to trace. I can’t tell under the layers of shit how old the woman is or discern any of her facial features. She’s got her hands in her pockets, so I can’t see any identifying marks or jewelry. The camera angle hid her shoes. I’m guessing she’s a hotel employee or an actress looking for a few extra bucks, but no way of knowing for sure.”
“Sounds like a dead fucking end.”
“It’s looking that way, too. Since I had a little extra time this morning, I called the hotel manager. He’s spoken with the staff on duty then. No one remembers seeing her. So she either blended in or timed it well.”
“Fuck,” Axel muttered, not wanting to wake Mystery. “Any idea whose key card the woman used to access the hotel room?”
“The housekeeping manager—a man—reported his master card missing from his desk about two hours before anyone let themselves into Mystery’s room. He left about forty-five minutes before that photo appeared in her room. There’s footage of him driving out of the employee lot and everything.”
“So . . . nothing.”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“Thanks for trying, man.”
“No worries.” Stone hesitated, and Axel knew exactly where this conversation was headed. “I’d like to talk to you about Misty.”
“She told me last night that you wanted to talk. I’m not opposed, and technically she’s no longer my submissive, but if you’re serious, I’d really appreciate it if you’d have a chat with Thorpe about your intentions. I’ll be back in a few days, then we can sit down and work everything out.”
Stone heaved an impatient sigh. Obviously, he didn’t like it but he didn’t have much choice. “Sure.”
“It’s for her benefit. She’s skittish.”
“I know. It’s the only reason I didn’t tell you to blow it out your ass. Because if you wanted to stand between me and Misty, well . . . the twenty-two months I spent in prison for my fun white-collar crime taught me two things: That Uncle Sam has no sense of humor, and how to kill a man with my bare hands.”
Axel rolled his eyes. He did not have time for Stone’s posturing now. If the dude wanted to impress upon him how much he wanted Sweet Pea, message received.
“I’ll call you when I’m back at Dominion.” And before Stone could answer, Axel hung up.
Then he placed a call to Callie. The woman answered on the first ring. “Hey, Axel. All okay? How’s Mystery?”
“Sleeping,” he murmured. “Do you happen to know if she left her phone behind?”
“Actually, I found it on the floor of Thorpe’s old bedroom last night. I stashed it in his office. Do you want me to send it somewhere?”
Axel didn’t think they could afford to stay at this remote house for more than twenty-four hours before the bad guys—whoever they were—closed in. Even if Callie overnighted the device, he doubted they’d be spending that much time on this farm. “No. Just tuck it away. I’ll take care of everything else.”
“Will do.”
“You all right? You don’t sound like your usual chipper self this morning,” he asked with concern. “Morning sickness still bothering you?”
“More like morning, noon, and night sickness. Ugh. I’ll be so glad to get past my first trimester. I’m praying it gets better.”
“I hope so, but I’m sure Thorpe and Sean are spoiling you silly.”
“Completely.”
Axel heard the sigh in her voice and smiled. Callie deserved happiness. So did Thorpe, for that matter. And Sean seemed like a good guy, so if those two made her happy, then he was thrilled for them.
“Good deal. Talk to you later.”
“Bye!”
They rang off, and Axel eased from the bed and shoved on his jeans. He hit the head down the hall and brushed his teeth, then jogged down the stairs for some coffee.
In the kitchen, he spotted Heath sitting alone at the table with an iPad and a cup of brew he’d probably pushed aside some time ago.
“Morning,” he said, banging around the cabinets for a cup.
“Your four a.m. rendezvous was only slightly quieter than last night at Dominion. Can’t you two keep it down?” He sounded somewhere between sour and pissed off.
“We tried.” Axel shrugged. “Protecting your delicate ears wasn’t my number one priority. Where’s Mystery’s aunt?”
“She ran to pick up her dry cleaning and hit the post office to mail off some bills before her big mission trip.”
“Makes sense. You working on something?”
Heath sent him a noisy huff, then glanced down at the tablet’s screen. “Because I dislike loose ends, I reached out to see if I could get a record of everyone who requested a parking pass in Angeles National Forest the day Julia Mullins died. The typical request takes six weeks to process. They’ll ‘rush’ it and give me an answer within two.”
“That’s useless,” Axel quipped. “Like the security footage from the hotel.”
He filled Heath in on Stone’s findings, sipping coffee and trying to figure out how the hell to solve this long-unsolved murder.
“So we’ve got nothing,” he summarized, sending the former MI5 agent a speculative glance. “If you were playing amateur sleuth, who’s your best suspect?”
“Well, until you showed me that snapshot on your phone, I would have suspected some slighted paramour of Mr. Mullins. Certainly, some starlet or another would have liked to cast herself in the role of wife to the famous widower.”
“Good point. I guess the man on the mountain with Mystery’s mother could be hired muscle. But if that’s the case, why is he wearing a perfectly pressed business suit to commit murder?”
“It wouldn’t be my first choice of wardrobe for the occasion.” Heath shook his head. “That white shirt would show every speck of blood. Black is much better for concealing nasty stains.”
“Yep.” Axel had no doubt they both knew that from experience. “So the police report isn’t going to give us anything new. All the follow-ups we have are dead ends. Mystery has told us everything we know. Have you ever asked Mullins about his wife’s murder?”
“I tried once. He made it clear that anything to do with her death was a very closed subject.”
A grieving man wanting to lick his wounds in private? Or something more? Yes, the famous director had been ruled out as a suspect, and he apparently hadn’t hired the Asian Mafia enforcer he’d known to commit the murder. That wasn’t to say, however, that he hadn’t found another capable assassin.
“Have you tried to follow any sort of money trail from Mullins’s accounts around the time of the murder?”
“No. I don’t have any notion if he’s the sort of fellow who would want his wife dead, but I can’t imagine he’d want any harm to come to his daughter. He loves her.”
“That’s my sense, too,” Axel agreed. “I think we’re going to have to talk to Mullins, his daughter, and her aunt today.”
“I’m not hopeful we’ll figure out much, but I’m afraid we’ve got nothing else.” Heath kicked back in his chair, set the tablet aside, and chugged his coffee. “But for pity’s sake, could you put a shirt on first?”