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This trip was a real roller-coaster ride, and I wasn’t yet sure whether to puke, scream, or wave my arms in the air. Thibault knew Beatrix?
“You two were friends?”
“‘Acquaintances’ would be a better word, but now we are friends. I met Ellen in a diner one night, and she looked as though she needed to talk. I’m a good listener. It’s how I make a living, but I don’t print every story on the internet. Ellen’s was one that needed to stay private.”
“You’re still in touch with her?”
Thibault nodded. “She needed a fresh start, so I bought her a bus ticket to New Hampshire.”
“A kind gesture.”
“Rich men, poor men, when we die, we’re all the same. We can’t take our money with us, so I prefer to spend mine on doing good in this lifetime. Ellen just needed enough to get away from Virginia and find a place to stay. She insisted on repaying me later. Called it a loan, even though it was meant as a gift. But going back to your original question, she didn’t mention seeing anything untoward that night. I would have remembered.”
“Could we speak with her?” I asked. “She was awake later than you, and sometimes people see things without realising they’re important. Is she still in New Hampshire?”
Until then, Thibault had been open and friendly, but when his expression shuttered, I realised I’d pushed a button I shouldn’t have. It was the second reminder in as many minutes that I was still relatively inexperienced when it came to investigations. Dan said I had good instincts, but Collier had spent years honing his.
“We don’t mean Ellen any harm,” he said. “I understand how this must look, us showing up out of the blue, but we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t vitally important. A young woman who has already spent years going through hell at the hands of an abusive husband is sitting in Oregon, handcuffed to a hospital bed, and unless we can prove her innocence, her next stop is jail.”
“I don’t even know who you people are.”
Collier produced a business card from one of the many pockets in his cargo pants. “We both work for Blackwood Security. The young woman is named Kaylin La Rocca, and a friend of hers hired us to get to the bottom of this mystery. If you want to look up the details online, much of the case is public knowledge. We have a satellite phone with access to the web.”
“I have my own.” Thibault grimaced. “My agent says it’s a necessity. Can you spell the name for me?”
Collier did so, and when Thibault disappeared along the path to his hut, I sagged against a tree.
“I messed that up.”
“We work as a team, Hallie. And we found two of our missing witnesses, so let’s take that as a win.”
“Thibault was asleep. We’ve still got zip.”
“Don’t write Beatrix off before we’ve spoken with her.”
Beatrix. Beatrice. Ellen. Possibly not a lady of the night as the receptionist had thought, but rather a woman fleeing a bad situation, just as Kaylin herself had done. Thibault had been her Nico.
Finally, he returned, and this time, he was holding a phone. “She’ll speak with you, but you’ll have to be quick because the vehicle leaves in ten minutes. And you should find your bug spray before we go.”
Thank goodness. Not about the bugs—because yikes—but that Ellen hadn’t blown us off. One way or another, we’d be able to close down another avenue of investigation today. Thibault took a seat at a makeshift table, a big tree stump surrounded by logs with colourful cloths draped over them, and put the phone between us.
“They’re here,” he told Ellen. And to us, “Ask your questions.”
Collier nudged me with a foot. He wanted me to speak.
“Uh, thank you for agreeing to talk to us. Has Alain explained what this is about?”
“A little.” Her voice was soft and high-pitched, friendly but cautious. “He said there was a car accident the last night we stayed at the Bluebird Inn?”
“There was. Do you remember that night?”
“I’ll never forget it. I was so freaking scared that Wyatt would find me before I managed to leave that I barely slept.”
“Did you go there often?”
“Only when he was really drunk. To give him time to cool off, you know? Whenever he got hungover, his temper came from the devil himself. Oh, he still got mad when I came back, but it was fists rather than feet.”
Thibault looked angry, but not at us this time. His blog painted a picture of a pacifist, but I had a feeling that if he were alone in a room with Wyatt, Ellen’s ex might lose a few teeth.
