"The furnace died. No heat, and the house was going cold fast. Nicole called in a heating guy and apparently something had been removed from the furnace. Pierina explained it, but--" Marguerite shrugged. "I can't recall what it was. However, it was preventing the pilot light from relighting. Well, remembering the doors being blocked shut, Pierina got suspicious and asked if that piece being missing could have caused a buildup of gas in the house and a possible explosion. The man assured her that, no, it couldn't . . . not anymore. He also added that older furnaces didn't have the automatic shutoff and it might have been a problem on one of those, but this furnace was newer and had an automatic shutoff that would have prevented it. Still, he was bewildered that someone had removed the piece. He said it had to have been physically removed. It couldn't just fall out, and, even had that been possible, the piece had been taken away. It wasn't lying there anywhere as if it had fallen out."
Jake was silent for a moment, and then said, "I don't see--"
"Someone removed that piece," Marguerite pointed out. "Why? Apparently the furnace in Rodolfo's home back in Europe was old and probably wouldn't have had that new automatic shutoff. An explosion would have been more than possible with his furnace back in Europe had the same thing happened there and Pierina suspects he thought this would act the same way . . . And the doors were blocked," she reminded him. "Nicole would have been trapped in the house had it exploded."
"Surely there are other doors in the house though," Jake said with a frown. "They aren't all sliding glass doors. Her front door for instance--"
"It's a keyed entrance. There are three proper doors on the ground floor and all three are keyed entrances. There is no way to unlock them on the outside or the inside without a key. If the house had blown up in the middle of the night and Nicole had survived that, she wouldn't have crawled out of bed with her keys in hand. She would have stumbled downstairs through the smoke, only to find she couldn't open the doors without keys and then tried the sliding doors to find those were blocked. Then she would have had to find her way back upstairs in the smoke and find her keys, and then make her way back down to use a door."
"I see," Jake murmured, and he did. In that situation, chances were the smoke would have overcome Nicole before she got out. "And the other two near misses?"
"There's an indoor gas grill in the kitchen. Nicole planned to make grilled steak for dinner on the second day of Pierina's visit, but when she turned it on, instead of the grill lighting up, flames exploded out of the base by the dials and shot right up into her face. It took her eyebrows off. Fortunately, she was quick to shut it off, and that was all that happened.
"They called in the gas guy to see what was wrong and he is the one who started asking questions. Apparently there was a layer of foil between where the flames come out and the grill on top that you lay food on. He asked why it was there. Nicole shrugged. She hadn't put it there. When she saw it, she'd thought her ex had done it to catch any drippings so he didn't have to clean the base of the grill. She hadn't thought anything of it."
"But the flames wouldn't have been able to get to the food through the foil," Jake said with a frown.
"Exactly," Marguerite said grimly. "That didn't occur to her though until he pointed it out. Apparently, Rodolfo had always put foil in the oven under the elements, and she hadn't really noticed that the foil would hamper the flames."
Jake nodded. He supposed if she'd been distracted, chatting with Pierina, that wouldn't have occurred to her.
Marguerite took a sip of tea, and then continued, "The gasman removed the foil and right away saw the problem. The gas tubing had been pulled out of its housing, the gas was coming out of the pipe itself, lit up by the pilot and shooting straight up through the dials. He said they were lucky. It could have been much worse than her losing her eyebrows. Pierina says he also then asked Nicole if there was anyone who didn't like her. Pierina told him Nicole was in the middle of a divorce. He apparently nodded slowly, and then said, this was a two minute fix, just put the tubing back where it belonged, but he thought he should check anything else gas in the house."
"And he found something else," Jake said quietly, beginning to agree that Rodolfo wanted his wife dead. He didn't know if the guy was inept, or Nicole was just lucky, but this was two "accidents" that could have been deadly.
"The gas fireplace in the master bedroom," Marguerite said on a sigh. "Pierina didn't know what the issue there was, but he took one look, muttered under his breath, and then started telling Nicole she needed to get a state of the art security system with cameras. He said people went a little crazy in divorce and she needed cameras, lots of security, maybe a couple of guard dogs too, etc., and the whole time he was taking her fireplace apart and then putting it back together so Pierina thinks there was something wrong with it."
"Nicole didn't ask what it was?" Jake asked with a frown.
Marguerite shook her head. "Pierina was the one who was suspicious, but even she was so shocked she didn't ask. Nicole was just dead silent, a troubled look on her face. Besides, Pierina said he was really lecturing the whole time. But Pierina knew he was serious was when he refused to charge Nicole for the visit after being there all day. I mean who does that?" she asked, eyebrows raised. "And she says he kept giving Nicole these worried, pitying looks, and repeating she should get security right away. He actually hugged Nicole on the way out and repeated his warning to get security cameras. Pierina said it was like he thought it would be the last time he saw her alive."
"So the fireplace was probably rigged somehow and was the third narrow escape," Jake murmured thoughtfully.
Marguerite nodded unhappily. "But Nicole laughed it off. She's sure it's all just coincidence or accidents, and the closest she'll come to admitting that Rodolfo might prefer inheriting everything to getting just a little in the divorce, is to say that if he did do any of those things, then he was terribly inept and she isn't worried."
"Major denial," Jake said dryly.
Marguerite grimaced and then sighed and said, "I supposed it's hard enough to have to admit that you made a mistake in your marriage. But it would be positively humiliating to have to acknowledge that not only was your husband not the man you thought, but he's just a gold digging bastard who cares so little he'd kill you for the money he was really after all along."
She was silent for a moment and then added sadly, "But those thoughts are there under the surface in her thoughts. That he never loved her. That's she's so worthless that her only value is money. That he is willing to kill her to get it. But she won't admit it consciously. She can't. Her self-esteem was almost completely demolished by his actions during the marriage. Admitting this now would undo all the work the counselor has done and destroy her."
"And hiring protection would be admitting all of that, which she can't do," Jake said with understanding.
"Exactly," Marguerite nodded firmly. "So, I can't hire a company and send them over there. She'd just send them away, saying she didn't need it."
Jake nodded, but asked, "So what do you expect me to do? She'll do the same with me."
"Not if you didn't tell her you were a bodyguard," she pointed out.
Jake sat back and frowned. "If her husband is trying to kill her, and I will agree that it sounds like he is--"
"I'm sure he is," Marguerite said firmly. "And now that the accidents he set up have failed, he'll have to try something else."
"Then she need
s around the clock protection until the divorce is finalized. Once it's done, there should be no reason for him to continue to go after her," Jake pointed out.
"The divorce will be final in two weeks," Marguerite said at once.
"Two weeks, huh?" he muttered, but frowned and shook his head. "Still, if she won't accept a bodyguard, what do you expect me to do?"
"She won't accept a bodyguard, but she does need a cook/housekeeper and yard guy . . . well, snow guy this time of year," she added wryly, and then said, "And I told her I knew just the guy who could do all three jobs for the price of one."
Jake's jaw dropped. He took a moment to absorb that stunning news and then closed his mouth, shook his head and said, "Cook/housekeeper?"
"Your mother brags about you Steph--Jake. I know you're a very good cook."
"I'm her son. My mother is biased," he said dryly. "I can make spaghetti, that's it, and that's just frying up some hamburger, throwing in a can of sauce and boiling noodles. To her that's amazing. But it isn't a cook."
"You're smart, you can read a cookbook, you can wing it, at least enough to get by for two weeks," Marguerite said determinedly and then added, "I'd never forgive myself for interfering if Rodolfo killed her, Jake. She's a very sweet, genuinely nice person. There are few enough of those in the world. And it's only two weeks."
Jake slumped back in his seat again, knowing he'd already lost this argument. Finally, he sighed and said, "I suppose I could take a couple weeks off. They owe me about five weeks' vacation now anyway and have been nagging at me to take it."
"I'll pay you what a company would demand for your time," she said firmly and then added brightly, "It will be a working vacation. You can putter around the kitchen, try new recipes--"
"Shovel snow, clean house and watch out for murder attempts," he added dryly.
"I really appreciate this," Marguerite said solemnly, digging through her purse on the table and retrieving her checkbook.
Jake rolled his eyes and put his hand on hers to stop her. "You don't have to pay me, Marguerite," he said dryly. "I got a hell of a severance package from Vincent when I left, and that's on top of making a lot of money there for a lot of years that I invested successfully. I don't need money. I really don't even need to work anymore, but it's better than staying home and twiddling my thumbs."