“Do you think Ms. Balan is beautiful?” he piped up again, and I turned to look at him.
“Why are you both still here?” I asked them. “It’s obviously not me, I’m sorry to disappoint, and even if your own gut can’t tell you that, she’s in the room with me. She called me to tell me you were going to make contact, and she knows it’s not me.” Standing, I walked to the boardroom door. “If you want anything else, ask my lawyer, and no, I’m not lawyering up, I’m no longer wasting my morning on this.”
They rattled off a few more rhetorical sentences, and then they left. When I turned back to the conference table, Angel wasgetting to her feet. “Oh no, not you, we need to talk.” I watched as she sat back down again with obvious reluctance. “Flowers?”
“Dead roses.”
“Hmm, hardly innovative.” I sat down, pouring myself some more coffee. I didn’t bother asking her; she never drank coffee. “And the card said what again?”
“‘Everything beautiful dies.’” Tiredly, she tipped her head back and stared at the ceiling.
I had never seen her like this. I wasn’t sure I liked it. “Show me.”
“Can’t.”
“Explain.”
“He took it.”
“The cop?”
“Nope, the sender of the flowers.”
“Angel, instead of twenty questions, why don’t you tell me what I want to know?”
She gave a loud sigh, and then she tipped her head forward and met my stare. The usual contempt she had for me was missing; instead, she was . . . vulnerable. Fragile. I wasn’t a fan of this version of her.
“I received dead flowers the other night when you saw me in my car and blasted your horn at me.” Her voice was dry with disdain — she wasn’t completely out of the game yet. Good. “The card said what it said. I asked my clients if they sent me flowers.” She tilted her head as she smiled in amusement. “You know how awkward that is? To have that conversation?” When I said nothing, she shrugged. “So I forgot about it. We had stuff happening—”
“Youforgotyou received a potential death threat?” I asked her as she dropped her elbow on the table and her palm ran across her forehead.
“Yes, I pushed it to the back of my mind. A few days later, there were some dead petals or leaves or something around my car, but when I left the parking lot, I saw a trash bag was torn open.” She waited for me to comment, and I merely gestured for her to continue. “What happened next?” she asked herself tiredly. The fact that there was anextpissed me off. “Then my tires got slashed.” Angel stood, and leaning over, she poured herself a coffee. She drank it in three gulps and then exhaled loudly. “I may regret that,” she mused. “That night, when I went home, someone had been in my home. They left . . .” She swallowed as she avoided eye contact. “They left lingerie on my bed.”
“Why are you only telling me now?” Hot fury raced through my veins.
“I called the police, I told them everything, and they implied you had the most motive.” Her eyes flicked to mine and away again. “I don’t agree.”
“That’s why you called me that morning. You knew they were going to question me, for more than tires.”
“Yes.”
“But you decided to keep details to yourself,” I sneered.
“I know it’s not you, Onyx!” Angel cried out. “I don’t know who the fuck it is, but I know it’s notyou.”
I said nothing. Anything I may have said would not have been productive and may have only made matters worse. “How did they get into your house?”
“I had a key missing from my keyring.”
“You’ve changed the locks?”
“Yes, the next day. I also have deadbolts on both doors now.” She looked at her hands. “And someone threw red paint over my car as I was leaving here the other day.”
“And they want to question me over the fact I was in the same area as you when you discovered your car had been vandalized,” I scoffed. “The police know everything?”
“Yes,” she said tiredly. “I don’t have much hope for anything more.”
Sitting in silence, I watched her as she closed her eyes, and then she pushed her chair back, ready to leave. “You know what I can do,” I said quietly. “You’ve seen it before.”
