Chapter 308 The Tattoo
ADRIANA
The house was farther out than I expected.
We had driven past the point where the coastal road was maintained and into the stretch where the tarmac gave way to packed gravel and the trees pressed in on either side, and I was starting to wonder whether Clara had given us a wrong address when the GPS announced we had arrived and the house appeared at the end of a short drive — small, well-kept, with a garden that someone had put genuine thought into.
Hazel got out first and knocked.
No answer.
She knocked again.
“She knew we were coming,” I said.
“She’s home. I can smell something cooking.” Hazel raised her hand for a third knock and the door opened before she made contact.
The woman standing in the doorway was short with black hair cut to her shoulders and a scar that ran from the middle of her forehead through her eyebrow and down her cheek. It was old and well-healed and it gave her face a quality that was striking rather than diminishing. She looked at me and at Hazel and stepped back immediately.
“My Queen. Beta. Please come in. I’m so sorry for the wait, I had something on the stove and I didn’t hear you.” She stepped back. “Please sit down. I made food when I knew you were coming.”
The house smelled like ginger and something spiced underneath it. Everything inside was tidy and considered.
She came back from the kitchen with a tray and set it between us. Two cups of tea, a small plate of ginger biscuits, the steam still rising.
“I make it specially,” she said. “Please, let me know what you think.”
Hazel picked up her cup and brought it to her lips and I watched her face. She set it down and turned the handle away from me.
It was a small thing, an old signal between us that meant the food was not what it claimed to be.
“The Queen can’t have anything not prepared by the royal kitchen,” Hazel said pleasantly. “I hope you understand. Nothing personal.”
The woman’s face fell briefly. “Of course. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Please don’t apologize.” I leaned forward slightly. “Your name?”
She looked up. “Alisha.”
“Alisha,” I said. “We’re here about Lucy.”
Something moved through her face immediately, like she was disturbed by the mention of a name. She pressed her lips together for a moment before she spoke.
“I knew that’s why you’d come,” she said. “When the Beta called and said the Queen wanted to see me, I knew.”
“Tim is in my custody,” I said. “He hasn’t had a proper hearing. I’m conducting one now and I’m trying to get to the truth of what happened.” I held her gaze. “You were her closest friend. You knew her. And you told Tim about the cabin. Which means you knew she was there and with whom.”
Alisha stood up from her seat, not in anger but in the restless movement of someone who couldn’t hold still with a difficult thing. She crossed to the window and looked out at the garden.
“I told him because I couldn’t keep lying to him anymore,” she said. “I kept watching him, this man who loved her completely, who was working himself into the ground to support them both and she was lying to him. I told her over and over to stop. To tell him the truth or end it, one or the other. She couldn’t make herself do either.” She turned back. “I told him because I thought it would force the conversation. I thought he would confront her and they would either fix it or end it and either way everyone would stop pretending.” Her voice broke slightly on the last word. “I didn’t think he would kill her.”
“He says he didn’t,” I said.
“I know what he says.”
“Do you believe him?”
She was quiet for a long moment. “I don’t know. I’ve been going back and forth about it since it happened and I never land anywhere certain.” She sat back down. “He loved her. But love makes people do things.”
“The lover,” I said. “Do you know who he was?”
She was hesitant. I could see the loyalty pulling at her, loyalty to Lucy even now, which was the kind of thing that didn’t always make logical sense but was real nonetheless.
“She mentioned his name once,” she said finally. “Tobby. That’s what she called him. I don’t know if that was his real name.”
“Did you ever see him? A photograph, anything?”
She stood again and went to a small safe built into the bottom of the bookshelf, the kind people kept important documents in, and she opened it and produced a photograph.
She held it out to me.
I took it.
The image was slightly out of focus, like it was taken at a distance, probably without the subject’s knowledge, the kind of photograph you took when you were documenting something rather than capturing a moment. A man at a table in what looked like a restaurant. His face was partially turned away.
But the hand resting on the table was visible. And on the wrist, small and precise, the mark I had been looking for since all of this began.
A red crown.
I kept my face neutral. “She gave you this to keep?”
“She said her husband was getting suspicious and she didn’t want it found at home.” Alisha looked at me. “I should have told the guards when it all happened. I know that. I was frightened.” She paused. “He scared me. The one time I met him, she introduced us briefly and I could tell there was something wrong about him. The way he looked at her. Like she was his.” She shook her head. “I didn’t want to end up like her.”
I stood up and Hazel stood with me.
“We’re going to need this photograph,” I said. “And we’re going to need you to give a formal statement. Everything you’ve told me today, in writing.” I looked at her steadily. “You will be protected. I am making that commitment to you directly.”
She walked us to the door.
“Do you think Tim did it?” she said as we stepped outside.
I looked at her. “I think the truth is more complicated than what the guards concluded when they walked in and found him there.” I mustered a smile. “We’ll be in touch, Alisha.”
In the car, Hazel drove for a significant distance before she pulled off the road and stopped.
“Why are we stopping?” I said.
“Because you’re about to say something and I want to hear it without driving.” She turned to look at me. “The tattoo.”
“It’s the same person.” I looked at the photograph in my hands. “Lucy found out something about him. She was frightened at the end, Alisha said it, Tim heard it in her voice on the phone. And she ended up dead in a cabin that meant something personal to her and Tim, which means the killer chose that location deliberately.” I looked at Hazel. “Someone chose it to make Tim look guilty.”
“Which worked,” Hazel said.
“For months.” I looked back at the photograph. “We need to find Tobby. Which means we need to find out where Lucy’s life intersected with someone who had the resources and the profile to be the person behind everything else.” I paused. “Where did she work?”
“I’ll find out from Tim tonight,” Hazel said, and started the engine.