Chapter 309 A Pattern
ADRIANA
We got home when the moon was already high.
I checked my phone as I got out of the car. I had several messages from Leo, which I would respond to shortly, and nothing at all from Elijah, which either meant he had been completely occupied all day or he had decided that no news from me was acceptable news and had chosen not to pursue it. Given that it was Elijah, it was probably the second one, and given that it was me, he was probably right.
Hazel touched my arm before I reached the door. “I’ll get Tim’s information about where Lucy worked. Come find me in the morning.”
I went inside.
The bedroom was lit and I could hear Elijah’s voice before I opened the door, the low tone he used with Lana.
I pushed the door open.
He was in front of the mirror, dressed in a suit that I didn’t recognize, holding Lana who was in a small dress I also didn’t recognize. He was showing her the reflection and making the serious case that he did not think he looked good in the suit.
Lana appeared to be weighing the evidence.
“She has very strong opinions for someone who can’t talk yet,” I said.
He turned around and the expression on his face moved through several things, relief that I was back, the particular controlled version of concern he wore when he had been worried about something and was now choosing not to make an issue of it, and then just warmth.
“When did you get here?” he said. “Where have you been all day?”
I took Lana from him and she reached for my face with both hands, which was her current preferred form of greeting.
“Out saving someone else’s marriage from beyond the grave,” I said. “More details over food. I’m hungry. The tea at the house we visited did not pass Hazel’s quality assessment and I haven’t eaten since this morning.”
He looked at me with the expression he wore when he had further questions and was choosing when to deploy them.
“Go shower,” he said. “I’ll have food sent up.”
“Elijah.”
“Go shower, Adriana. You have a two-day-old wound on your head and you’ve been in a car for most of the afternoon and you haven’t eaten. Now, shower, food, then you can tell me about the marriage beyond the grave.”
He took Lana back and I went and showered and when I came out the food was on the table and he was sitting across from it with Lana in his lap showing her something on his phone that she was finding very compelling.
I sat down and ate and talked and told him everything — Alisha, the photograph, the red crown tattoo on the wrist of a man called Tobby who had been seeing Lucy in the months before her death, the fear Alisha had described in Lucy’s voice at the end, the deliberate choice of the honeymoon cabin as a location.
Elijah listened without interrupting. The more I told him the more still he became, the particular stillness that in him meant things were connecting rather than simply landing.
“It’s him.” he said when I finished.
“The tattoo, the profile, the methodology, all of it. Lucy found out something about him. Something significant enough that he killed her to prevent it from coming out.” I looked at him. “And Tim has been in my cells for months paying for it.”
Elijah was quiet.
“How was your day?” I said. “You were strange last night and you went somewhere today that you didn’t tell me about.”
He looked at Lana in his lap. She was pulling at his jacket lapel with the focused interest of someone who had identified something interesting and intended to investigate it fully.
“It’s fine,” he said.
“Elijah.”
He looked at me. “When I’m ready,” he said. The same thing he had said the night before, which meant there was something real there that he hadn’t landed on fully yet and was still working through.
I held his gaze for a moment. He didn’t look away and he didn’t add to what he’d said and I understood that pressing wasn’t going to help.
“When you’re ready,” I said.
I looked back at my plate and noticed that the chicken was gone.
I looked at Elijah. He was feeding pieces of it to Lana, who was accepting them with royal condescension, as though the offering was acceptable but perhaps not exceptional.
“She doesn’t eat real food yet,” I said.
“She’s tasting,” he said. “Which is good for development.”
In the morning I woke up and he was already gone, which was becoming a pattern I hadn’t yet decided how to address. The bed was empty and the room was quiet and Lana was in her cot still sleeping.
Hazel came before I had finished dressing.
“Tim says Lucy worked at a law firm,” she said from the doorway. “Sands and Associates. I’ve called ahead. Her former secretary is there and expecting us.”
Lucy was a lawyer. I turned that over. A lawyer with a husband running a construction company and a secret that had gotten her killed. The picture was gaining shape.
“What did Tim work as?” I said.
“Construction. His own company. Tim said they were in debt — a bad deal that went wrong and left them significantly exposed. Lucy was the primary earner.” She paused. “He said she was trying to pay off the debt and support them both at the same time.”
I thought about what Alisha had said. About the phone call Tim had heard. He can’t find out. I had been assuming she was frightened of Tobby discovering that she was going to expose him. But what if it was more specific than that? What if she had found out something about Tobby that connected directly to the financial situation she and Tim were in?
“Let’s go,” I said.