“Well, my friend, I can pay back the favor.” Eddie poured the champagne with a flourish, handing them each an elegant glass. “I told you I’d found some of my father’s notes.”
Yes, it had been one of the reasons he’d been so excited about coming. “You said the cleaning staff had found a bunch of notebooks up in the attic.”
Tessa clinked glasses with Eddie. “Sounds like something my David would get excited about.”
He liked the sound of my David. “I’ve always thought Ricardo had more work than what we’ve seen. He made notes on everything he ever wrote, but we’ve only seen a small percentage of them.”
“Why would you want to see his notes?” Tessa asked, taking a sip. “Isn’t it better to read the actual work itself?”
“Ah, but the notes often tell us what the writer was thinking.” Luis had refused the champagne, but that wasn’t surprising. He’d never seen his grad student drink. “Sometimes what gets left out tells us about the thought process and what the writer values. It can also tell us what he did or didn’t want the audience to know.”
“And sometimes my father liked to invent puzzles.” Eddie downed his entire glass and poured himself another. “My childhood was all about being tested. He would give me these stupid treasure hunts.”
“I always thought they sounded like fun,” David said.
Eddie finally sat down across from them. “I suppose they were. He liked to hide presents for me around the house, and I would have to decode the clues he would leave. I wasn’t good at it. I still wonder how many gifts are hiding in this place because my old man wouldn’t give in. I had to find the treasure or it couldn’t be mine. And that is another reason why I’m happy you’re here, my friend.”
He couldn’t wait to get his hands on those notes. “I’d love to study anything new you have.”
The door to the library came open, and a woman strode in with a big tray in her hands.
Eddie looked up and nodded. “Marta, thank you. Please bring it here.” He looked back to his guest. “I thought we would have an afternoon snack. We keep Argentine hours here, so dinner will be late. This is Marta, and she runs the kitchen.”
Marta set the big charcuterie board down on the table in the sitting area of the library. It was loaded with meats and cheeses, nuts and local fruits. He glanced over to see if any of it seemed tempting to Tessa, but she wasn’t looking at the food. She was watching Marta.
“Professor Hawthorne, welcome to Montez House,” Marta said with a nod. She was a stern-looking woman. She wore all black, with seemingly no allowances for the heat of the jungle. He would guess her age around fifty from the beginnings of lines around her eyes to the steel gray that streaked her dark hair. “Dinner will be served at precisely nine.”
“Like in PM?” Tessa asked, and suddenly she seemed more interested in the food on the table.
“That’s actually pretty early in this part of the world,” David replied. He hadn’t thought about this when it had been Kyle who was coming with him. Kyle started to whine around five thirty, and if there wasn’t a plate of food in front of him by seven he started looking like Hamilton on the hunt.
Tessa grabbed one of the small plates. “Well, then I thank you for the afternoon snack. This is all lovely, Marta.”
Marta nodded. “Mr. Montez, don’t forget that we have a staff meeting in an hour.”
Eddie blinked and then nodded. “Of course. Thank you for reminding me.”
Marta gave him a tight smile and nodded. “Let me know if you require anything else.”
“Staff meeting? With your actual staff? How many are there?” He was curious on several levels. He wanted to know how the house ran. He was also interested in how Eddie handled things since he’d thought Eddie wouldn’t handle anything at all. He was a hands-off kind of guy. But then it had been a few years since they’d gotten together in person, so perhaps he took things more seriously now.
Eddie watched Marta leave, a frown on his face that disappeared a moment later as he went back into charming-host mode. “We’ve had a few recent additions, and they need guidance. It’s important to keep this place up, you know. The jungle is always trying to take it back. But that’s nothing for you to worry about. I would like for you to take a look at this.” Eddie pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket. “I’d lost the actual card he’d given me. This was a puzzle he made for my fifteenth birthday.”
“You didn’t get birthday presents unless you could solve the puzzle?” Tessa sounded the tiniest bit outraged. She’d made a plate of cheese and crackers and fruit.
Eddie shook his head. “No. These weren’t for major items. He would have these big parties for me and he would give me gifts, but this was something private between us. The gifts were more personal. My father would never have told me there was a bike hidden in the house and then not give it to me. No, these were things like books he thought I would like, or trinkets he would bring home from his travels. My father was a complex man, but he was kind. I wish we’d had more time together.”
There was the Eddie he knew, the one that was buried under all his charm and bravado. “Did you find his notes on the puzzles he created?”
“Several notebooks’ worth, but I wanted you to look at this one.” He handed the paper over to David.
Oh, this was a treat he hadn’t expected. He tried to play it cool. Tessa was watching him, and he probably shouldn’t geek out over some code written by a guy who’d died years before.
“Go on,” Tessa said with a shake of her head. She stood up and glanced around the library again. “He’s going to be useless to me for hours now. I suppose all of these are in Spanish and none of them have murders in them.”
Luis huffed. “There are books in English, in many languages. Ricardo Montez spoke five, but he certainly didn’t read anything so inconsequential as murder mysteries.”
That got Eddie laughing. “Oh, he did, but they aren’t in this library. He loved thrillers, but he didn’t talk about them outside of a few close friends. He had a reputation to protect.”
Tessa’s eyes rolled. “Well, I don’t. And lucky for me I have an e-reader. I’m going to take this to our room and enjoy my champagne and snacks with a nice side of murder that will be solved by a badass chick who also gets the guy. I’ll be quiet about it because my guy here gets distracted by me.”
“I do not.” He totally did.
She winked his way. “Do too. I’ll see you later this afternoon. If you need me, I’ll be in our room reading or maybe taking a nap.”
He didn’t think she would do either of those things. Something was going on with his bodyguard, but he couldn’t ask her about it now. He had to trust that she knew what she was doing and that whatever she was doing was for the right reasons.
Oddly, that wasn’t a hard thing for him to do.
He caught her hand as she started to move past him. “You know I’m going to get caught up in all of this and I’ll likely forget to eat.”
“I’ll remind you,” she promised. “You do what you need to and I’ll see you at dinner, okay?”