“You don’t have to go to the trouble. You have a class.”
“I’ve got time, especially if I can come back for my massage equipment when I bring the groceries and do the house.”
“It feels—I feel—a little weird having you take care of the house, and cook, and everything when we’re sleeping together.”
She opened the refrigerator, began taking out what she wanted. “Are you firing me?”
“No! I just think it feels like taking advantage.”
She got a cutting board, a knife. “Who initiated sex?”
“Technically you did, but only because you beat me to it.”
“That’s nice to hear.” After washing the asparagus and mushrooms, she brought them to the board to slice. “I like working here. I love the house. I love cooking, and I get a lot of satisfaction seeing my cooking work for you. You’ve put on a little healthy weight since you’ve been eating it. I like sex with you. Why don’t we say if any of those things change, I’ll let you know, and we’ll deal with it. If you decide you don’t like how I take care of the house, or cook, or don’t want to have sex with me, you let me know, and we’ll deal with it. Fair enough?”
“More than.”
“Good.” She got out a frying pan, olive oil. Smiled. “How about that coffee?”
Fourteen
HE COULDN’T CALL TIME WITH ABRA A ROUTINE, BUT HE supposed they developed a kind of pattern over the next few days.
She cooked, either at Bluff House or her cottage. They walked the beach, and he, too, began to smell spring.
He grew accustomed to having food put in front of him, to having a house filled with flowers, candles, her scent, her voice.
Her.
His work progressed to the point where he began to think he actually had something other than an escape from his own head.
He read, he worked, he dragged himself into his grandmother’s gym. And for a few precious days even the idea of murder seemed to belong to another world.
Then Detective Corbett came to his door, with a team of cops and a search warrant.
“We have a warrant to search the premises, any outbuildings and vehicles.”
Stomach knotted, Eli took the warrant, skimmed it. “Then I guess you’d better get started. It’s a big house.”
He stepped back, spotted Wolfe. Saying nothing, Eli walked out, grabbed the kitchen phone and took it out to the terrace to call his lawyer. Better safe—he’d learned that the hard way—than sorry.
Yeah, he could smell spring, he thought when he’d finished the call. But spring brought storms just like winter. He’d just have to ride this one out like the rest.
Corbett came out. “That’s quite a collection of guns upstairs.”
“It is. And unloaded, unfired, as far as I know, for at least a generation.”
“I’d appreciate the keys to the cases.”
“All right.” Eli went inside, wound through to the library and the drawer in his grandfather’s desk. “You know damn well none of those guns fired the shot that killed Duncan.”
“Then you don’t have a problem.”
“I’ve got a problem as long as Wolfe ignores evidence, timelines, witness statements and everything else but me.” Eli handed over the keys.
Corbett’s face remained impassive. “I appreciate the cooperation.”
“Detective,” Eli said as Corbett turned to go. “When you finish with this, find nothing? If you come back without real evidence, real motive, actual probable cause, I’m going to file suit against your department and the BPD for harassment.”
Now Corbett’s eyes flicked just a touch of heat. “That sounds like a threat.”
“You know it’s not. What it is, it’s enough. It’s way past enough.”
“I’m doing my job, Mr. Landon. If you’ve got nothing to hide, the more thoroughly I do it, the sooner you’re in the clear.”
“Tell that to someone who hasn’t been hounded for more than a year.”
Eli walked out, got a jacket. He knew he shouldn’t leave the house, but he couldn’t stomach watching them go through Bluff House, through his things, through his family’s things. Not again.
Instead he went to the beach, watched the water, the birds, the kids he realized must be on spring break.
His mother wanted him to come home for Easter dinner. He’d intended to go, to ask Abra to come with him. He’d been ready for it, primed for it—the family event, with Abra in it, the big ham Alice would bake and his mother would insist on glazing herself. The baskets, the candy, the colored eggs.
The tradition of it. And the comfort of it.