by Nora Roberts
He didn’t notice the car slide in behind him.
Since the day was relatively mild, Abra opened doors and windows to let the air wash through. She stripped Eli’s bed, spread on fresh sheets, fluffed the duvet. And after a few minutes’ thought, fashioned a fish from a hand towel. After digging through what she thought of as her emergency bag of silliness she came up with a little green plastic pipe for its mouth.
Once the bedroom met her standards, the first load of laundry chugged in the washer, she turned her attention to the office.
She’d have loved to fuss around the desk—in case he’d left any notes or clues about his work in progress. But a deal was a deal. Instead she dusted, vacuumed, restocked his bottled water and Mountain Dew. Wrote the next message Hester had dictated on a Post-it, stuck it to a bottle. After wiping down the leather desk chair, she stood awhile studying his view.
A good one, she thought. Wind and sun had all but vanished the snow. Today the sea spread in a good, strong blue, and the sea grass swayed in the breeze. She watched a fishing boat—dull red against deep blue—lumber over the water.
Did he think of it as home now? she wondered. That view, that air, the sounds and scents? How long had it taken her to feel at home?
She couldn’t recall, not specifically. Maybe the first time Maureen knocked on her door holding a plate of brownies and a bottle of wine. Or maybe the first time she walked that beach and felt truly quiet in her mind.
Like Eli, she’d escaped here. But she’d had a choice, and Whiskey Beach had been a deliberate one.
The right one, she thought now.
Absently, she traced a finger along her left ribs, and the thin scar that rode them. She rarely thought of it now, rarely thought of what she’d escaped from.
But Eli reminded her, and perhaps that was just one of the reasons she felt compelled to help him.
She had plenty of others. And, she thought, she could add a new one to the mix. The smile she’d watched bloom over his face when he recognized Maureen.
New goal, she determined. Giving Eli Landon reasons to smile more often.
But right now, she needed to put his underwear in the dryer.
Eli had barely settled in Neal Simpson’s waiting area, declined the offer of coffee, water or anything else made by one of the three receptionists, when Neal himself strode out to greet him.
“Eli.” Neal, fit in his excellent suit, shot out a hand, took Eli’s in a firm grip. “It’s good to see you. Let’s go on back to my office.”
He moved athletically through the slickly decorated maze of the Gardner, Kopek, Wright and Simpson offices. A confident man, an exceptional attorney who at thirty-nine had grabbed full partner and put his name on the letterhead of one of the top firms in the city.
Eli trusted him, had to. Though they’d worked in different firms, often competing for the same clients, they’d moved in similar circles, had mutual friends.
Or had, Eli thought, as most of his had slipped away under the constant media battering.
In his office with its wide, wintry view of the Commons, Neal ignored his impressive desk and gestured Eli to a set of leather chairs.
“Let’s take a minute first,” Neal began as his attractive assistant brought in a tray with two oversize mugs filled with frothy cappuccino. “Thanks, Rosalie.”
“No problem. Can I get you anything else?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Neal sat back, studying Eli as his assistant stepped out, shut the door. “You look better.”
“So I’m told.”
“How’s the book going?”
“Some days better than others. Altogether not bad.”
“And your grandmother? She’s recovering from her accident?”
“She is. I’m going by to see her later. You don’t have to do this, Neal.”
Brown eyes shrewd, Neal picked up his mug, settled back with it. “Do what?”
“The small talk, the relax-the-client routine.”
Neal sampled the coffee. “We were friendly before you hired me, but you didn’t hire me because we were friendly. Or that wasn’t at the top of the list. When I asked you why you’d come to me, specifically, you had several good reasons. Among them was you believed the two of us approached the law and our work along similar lines. We represent the whole client. I want to know your state of mind, Eli. It helps me decide what actions or non-actions to recommend to you. And how much I’ll have to persuade you to take a recommendation you might not feel ready for.”
“My state of mind changes like the goddamn tide. Right now it’s . . . not optimistic but more aggressive. I’m tired, Neal, of dragging this chain behind me. I’m tired of regretting I can’t have what I had, even not knowing if I want it anymore. I’m tired of being stuck in neutral. It may be better than sliding off a cliff in reverse, the way it felt a few months ago, but it sure as hell isn’t moving forward.”
“Okay.”
“There’s nothing I can do to change how Lindsay’s parents—or anyone else—thinks or feels about me. Not until Lindsay’s killer is found, arrested, tried, convicted. And even then, some will think I somehow slipped through the fingers of justice. So screw that.”
Neal sipped again, nodded. “All right.”
Eli pushed to his feet. “I need to know for me,” he said, pacing the office. “She was my wife. It doesn’t matter that we’d stopped loving each other, if we ever did. It doesn’t matter that she cheated on me. It doesn’t matter that I wanted the marriage over, and her out of my life. She was my wife, and I need to know who came in our home and killed her.”
“We can put Carlson back on.”
Eli shook his head. “No, he played it out. I want someone fresh, someone who comes into this fresh, starts at the beginning. That’s not a dig at Carlson. His job was to find evidence to support reasonable doubt. I want new blood, not looking for evidence to prove I didn’t do it, but to find who did.”
On his legal pad, Neal made a lazy, looping note. “To go into it without automatically eliminating you?”
“Exactly. Whoever we hire should look at me, and hard. I want a woman.”
Neal smiled. “Who doesn’t?”
With a half laugh Eli sat again. “That would be me for the past eighteen months.”
“No wonder you look like shit.”
“I thought I looked better.”
“You do, which only shows how bad it got. You specifically want a female investigator.”
“I want a smart, experienced, thorough female investigator. One Lindsay’s friends would be more apt to talk to, to open up with than they were with Carlson. We agreed with the police determination that Lindsay either let her killer into the house, or the killer had a key. No forced entry, and after she got home at four-thirty, coded in, the next coding in was my own at about six-thirty. She was attacked from behind, meaning she turned her back on her killer. She wasn’t afraid of him. There wasn’t a fight, a struggle, a botched burglary. She knew and didn’t fear her killer. Suskind’s alibied, but what if he wasn’t her only lover? Just the latest?”
“We went down that avenue,” Neal reminded him.
“So we go down it again, slower, taking a detour if it looks promising. The cops can keep the case open, can keep scraping away at me. It doesn’t matter, Neal. I didn’t kill her, and they’ve exhausted every angle trying to prove I did. It’s not about making that stop, not anymore. It’s about knowing, and being able to put it away.”
“Okay. I’ll make some calls.”
“Thanks. And while we’re on PI’s—Kirby Duncan.”
“I already made calls there.” He rose, went to his desk and brought back a file. “Your copy. Basically? He runs his own bare-bones firm. He does have a reputation for slipping around the edges, but he hasn’t been formally cited. He was a cop for eight years, BPD, and still has plenty of contacts there.”
As Neal spoke, Eli opened the file, read the report.
“I figured Linds
ay’s family hired him, but he seems too low-key, too basic for them.” Frowning over the details, he searched for another angle, other possibilities. “I’d think they’d go for the flash, the fancier firm, higher tech and profile.”
“I agree, but people can make decisions like this based on a lot of factors. They might’ve gotten a recommendation from a friend, an associate, another family member.”
“Well, if they didn’t hire him, I can’t think who would.”
“Their attorney neither confirms nor denies,” Neal told him. “At this point, she’s under no obligation to disclose the information. Duncan was a cop. It’s possible he and Wolfe know each other, and Wolfe decided to make an investment. He’s not going to tell me, if that’s the case.”
“Doesn’t seem like his method either, but . . . There’s nothing we can do about Duncan asking questions around Whiskey Beach, whoever his client is. No law against it.”
“Just as you’re under no obligation to speak with him. That doesn’t mean our own investigator can’t ask questions about him, gather information about him. And it doesn’t mean we can’t let it leak that we’ve hired someone to do just that.”
“Yeah,” Eli agreed. “It’s time to stir the pot.”
“The Piedmonts are, at this point, just making noise, trying to gin up doubt about your innocence, keep their daughter’s case in the media storm, which has ebbed, and in the public eye. The side benefit of that is making your life as uncomfortable as possible. So this latest push with a PI might’ve come from them.”
“They’re screwing with me.”
“Bluntly, yeah.”
“Let them. It can’t be any worse than it was when this was a twenty-four/seven circus. I got through that, I’ll get through this.” He believed that now. He wouldn’t simply exist through it, but get through it. “I’m not going to just stand there while they take shots at me, not this time. They lost their daughter, and I’m sorry, but trying to fuck me over isn’t going to work.”
“Then when their lawyer floats the idea of a settlement, which I expect she will at some point, that’s a firm no.”
“That’s a firm fuck you.”
“You are better.”
“I spent most of the last year in a fog—shock, guilt, fear. Every time the wind changed, blew in a little clear, all I could see in it was another trap. I’m not out of the fog yet, and Jesus, I’m afraid it may roll back in and choke me, but right now, today, I’m willing to risk one of those traps to get the hell out and breathe fresh air again.”
“Okay.” Neal balanced a silver Montblanc pen over his legal pad. “Let’s talk strategy.”
When he finally left Neal’s office, Eli walked across to the Commons. He asked himself how he felt being back in Boston, even for a day. He couldn’t quite find the answer. Everything here remained familiar, and there was comfort in that. There was hope and appreciation for the first green spears pushing up out of winter ground toward spring sun.
People braved the wind—not too much bluster in it today—to eat their lunch on benches, to take a walk as he did or just to cut through on their way to somewhere else.
He’d loved living there, he remembered that. That sense of familiarity again, the sense of place and purpose. He could walk from there if he wanted a good, strong hike, to the offices where he’d once entertained and strategized with clients as Neal had done with him.
He knew where to get his favorite coffee, where to grab a quick lunch or to have a long, lingering one. He had his favorite bars, his tailor, the jeweler where he’d most often bought Lindsay’s gifts.
None of those were his anymore. And as he stood there, studying the hearty green of daffodils waiting to erupt, he realized he didn’t regret it. Or not as keenly as he once had.
So he’d find a new place to get not really a haircut, and buy tulips for his grandmother. And before he went back to Whiskey Beach, he’d pack up the rest of his clothes, his workout gear. He’d get serious about reclaiming the parts of his life that were still there to be taken, and start really letting go of the rest.
By the time he parked in front of the beautiful old redbrick home on Beacon Hill clouds had rolled in over the sun. He thought the oversize bouquet of purple tulips might offset that. He balanced them in one arm while he maneuvered the big bowl of forced hyacinths—one of his mother’s favorites—out of the car.
He could admit the drive, the meeting, the walking, had left him more tired physically than he liked. But he wasn’t going to let his family see it. Maybe the day had gone gloomy, but he clung to that hope he’d pulled to him in the Commons.
Even as he crossed to the door, it opened.
“Mr. Eli! Welcome home, Mr. Eli.”
“Carmel.” He would have hugged their longtime housekeeper if his arms had been free. Instead he bent down to her five feet of sturdy joy to kiss her cheek.
“You’re too skinny.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to have Alice fix you a sandwich. You’re going to eat it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Look at those pretty flowers!”
Eli managed to pull a tulip from the bunch. “For you.”
“You’re my sweetheart. Come in, come in. Your mother will be home very soon, and your father promised to be home by five-thirty so he wouldn’t miss you if you don’t stay. But you’re going to stay, have dinner. Alice is making Yankee pot roast, and vanilla bean crème brûlée for dessert.”
“I’d better save her a tulip.”
Carmel’s wide face warmed with a smile, an instant before her eyes filled.
“Don’t.” Here was the pain, the distress he’d seen on the faces of people he loved every day since Lindsay’s murder. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“It will. Of course it will. Here, let me take that bowl.”
“They’re for Mom.”
“You’re a good boy. You’ve always been a good boy, even when you weren’t. Your sister’s coming to dinner, too.”
“I should’ve bought more flowers.”
“Hah.” She’d blinked away the tears and now gave the air a brush with her hand to send him on his way. “You take those to your grandmother. She’s up in her sitting room, probably on that computer. You can’t keep her off it, all hours of the day and night. I’ll bring you the sandwich, and a vase for those tulips.”
“Thanks.” He started toward the wide and graceful staircase. “How is she?”
“Better every day. Upset still she can’t remember what happened, but better. She’ll be happy to see you.”
Eli walked up, turned at the top of the steps to the east wing.
As Carmel predicted, his grandmother sat at the desk, tapping away at her laptop.
Back and shoulders ruler-straight, he noted, under her tidy green cardigan. Her silver-streaked dark hair stylishly coiffed.
No walker, he noted with a shake of his head, but her cane with its silver tip in the shape of a lion leaned against the desk.
“Rabble-rousing again?”
He came up behind her, pressed his lips to the top of her head. She just reached up, took his hand. “I’ve been rousing the rabble all my life. Why stop now? Let me look at you.”
She nudged him back while she swiveled in the chair. Those nut-brown eyes studied him without mercy. Then her lips curved, just a little.
“Whiskey Beach is good for you. Still too thin, but not so pale, not so sad. You brought me some springtime.”
“Abra gets the credit. She told me to get them.”
“You were smart enough to listen to her.”
“She’s the type who rarely if ever takes no for an answer. I figure that’s why you like her.”
“Among other reasons.” Her hand reached out, gripped his for a moment. “You are better.”
“Today.”
“Today’s what we’ve got. Sit down. You’re so damn tall you’re giving me a crick in my neck. Sit, and tell me what you’ve been up to.”
