Eli circled Justin Suskind’s name before continuing his notes.
Eden stood as her cheating husband’s alibi for the night of Lindsay’s murder. He’d hardly had a motive in any case. All evidence pointed to his plans to take her on a romantic getaway in Maine at what had proven to be a favorite hotel.
His wife certainly had no reason to lie for him, and had been humiliated and devastated when the affair came to light.
Eli’s investigator had pursued the possibility of an ex-lover or a second one, one who’d confronted Lindsay and killed her in a fit of temper and passion. But that seed hadn’t borne fruit.
Yet, Eli reminded himself.
She’d let someone into the house that night. No forced entry, no signs of struggle. Her phone and e-mail records—home and work—had shown no communications with anyone who hadn’t been cleared. Then again, Wolfe had been focused on him, and his investigator could have missed something. Someone.
Dutifully, Eli wrote down all the names he remembered, right down to her hairdresser.
At the end of two hours, he’d filled several pages of the tablet, had cross-references, unanswered questions, two assaults, if he counted his grandmother’s fall, and a second murder.
He’d take a walk, he decided, let it simmer.
He felt good, he realized. Despite—maybe even because of—the muscle aches, he felt damn good. Because he knew as he walked out of the library he’d never let himself be railroaded a second time.
Kirby Duncan’s killer had done him a horrible kind of favor.
Twelve
ABRA RANG THE BELL FIRST AS MUCH FOR MANNERS AS THE need for a little assistance. When no one answered, she dug out her house key, unlocked the door, then maneuvered her massage table inside. An automatic glance at the alarm panel and its blinking light had her muttering the new code as she punched it in.
“Eli! Are you up there? I could use a little help here.”
After silence, she huffed out a breath, used her table to prop the door open before heading back to her car for the market bags.
She carted them inside, dumped them, muscled her table and tote into the big parlor. Went back for more market bags, carried them into the kitchen.
After she’d put away the fresh groceries, pinned the market receipt to the little bulletin board, she unpacked the container of potato and ham soup she’d made that afternoon, the beer bread she’d baked and, since he apparently had a taste for them, the rest of her chocolate chip cookies.
Rather than hunt him down, she walked back, set up her table, arranged the candles she’d chosen, stirred up the fire, then added a log. Maybe he intended to make an excuse about not wanting or needing his scheduled massage, but he’d have a hard time with that since she had everything in place.
Satisfied with that, she wandered upstairs on the off chance he was too engrossed in his work to hear her, taking a serious nap, in the shower, in the gym.
She didn’t find him, but did find his method of making the bed was hauling up the duvet. She fluffed it, and the pillows—a tidy bed was a restful bed to her way of thinking—folded the sweater he’d dropped on a chair, tossed the socks on the floor beside it in the hamper.
Wandering out, she tried the gym, and took the yoga mat stretched out on the floor as a positive sign. Curious, she poked through his wing of the second floor, then went down again to look around the first. She spotted the legal pad, the empty plate and beer bottle (at least he’d used a coaster) on the fabulous old desk.
“What are you up to, Eli?” She picked up the dish, the bottle as she read the first page of his notes. “Now this is interesting.”
She didn’t know all the names, but followed the lines connecting them, the arrows, the scribbled notes. A few clever sketches scattered through the notes. He had his grandmother’s hand, she realized, recognizing one of Detective Wolfe with devil horns and a sharp-toothed snarl.
As she paged through—he’d obviously spent some time on this, she mused—she found her own name, its connection to Hester, to him, to Vinnie and to Duncan Kirby.
And a sketch of her, too, delighting her. He’d drawn her lounging on the sand at water’s edge, a mermaid’s tail a serpentine curl from her waist.
She trailed her fingertip along the tail before reading on.
He’d done a timeline of the night of Duncan’s death, one that seemed pretty accurate to her own memory of events. And he’d listed the death as between midnight and five a.m.
So the police had talked to him, as they had to her.
That couldn’t have been pleasant. Since his car was out front, he’d be on foot. She’d made soup, baked bread, done a short yoga practice to calm herself down after the police visit. She suspected Eli had vented his tension into the notes. And was likely walking off the rest.