I exhaled, thinking of Lee. His case versus the safety of a young woman who was putting all her trust in Spike and me. It didn’t take me that long to make a decision. After all, I’d already gotten Sky for him…“Right,” I said.
“Here you go, guys.” Blake walked in with a tray. On it were three cups of coffee, a pitcher of cream, and some packets of sugar. “Don’t mind me.”
Still trembling, Elspeth smiled at Blake as he set down the tray. He smiled back. “It’s really good coffee,” he said. “Nutmeg and cinnamon. That’s what does it.”
“I saw that on TikTok,” Elspeth said.
“Me too!” Blake said. “What are the odds of that?”
Elspeth laughed a little.
Blake did, too. He still looked rough, but it was good to see he was getting his people skills back. In better circumstances, he might have asked her for her number. She’d havegiven it to him, too. I could tell these things. It was kind of a sixth sense.
After Blake closed the door, Elspeth sipped her coffee. She closed her eyes. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
“You got this,” Spike said encouragingly.
“I know,” she said, opening her eyes again. “I know I do.” She put her cup down at the edge of my desk and took a few deep breaths. “So…first of all,” she said, “most of what I told the cops is right.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Meaning Iwasat the Loews at the office Christmas party. Ihadleft my Secret Santa present in my desk. Ididgo back to get it…And thatiswhen I found Sky.”
“All that’s true?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I just left one thing out.”
I looked at her, then at Spike, who was stirring cream into his coffee.
Elspeth cleared her throat. The eyelid twitched again. “What I left out was that I wastoldto leave my Secret Santa present in my desk,” she said. “I wastoldto go back and get it, as well as exactly what time I was supposed to go back.”
“Dylan gave you those instructions?” I said.
“Yes.”
“In an audio message?”
“No. On the phone. He called from a blocked number.”
“When?”
“This morning. Before everybody left for the party. He mademe go somewhere private to receive my ‘latest assignment,’ he called it. I went into the bathroom.”
Elspeth clutched her coffee mug with both hands, as though the gesture would keep them from shaking.
“I didn’t know Dylan was going to shoot Sky,” she said quickly. “I tried to ask him why he wanted me to go back to the office, but he wouldn’t answer. He just kept repeating the instructions. Then he hung up.”
Spike nodded. “He wanted you to find the body.”
“Yes,” she said. “You know, when I got that call, I felt like I always do when he contacts me. Like I was going to throw up. But I still had this little bit of hope. I mean…if you want to call it that.” She drew a frail, trembling breath. “I know this sounds kind of morbid,” she said. “But I was thinking,At least if something happens to me, there’s evidence of what he’s been doing on my phone. The texts, the audio messages.You know? If he killed me, all that stuff would point right to him.”
“But then,” I said, “your phone got stolen.”
“Yeah. It did. How did you know?”
“Lee Farrell told me,” I said.
Spike put his coffee cup down and looked at me. “You think Welch took it?”
