“What else is she going to do?”he asked.“Drop the dead dad’s treasured possessions off in the mailroom to get shipped back?”
Yes.
Javi narrowed his eyes as he considered the word that had popped into his head.
That’sexactlywhat Joel would have done.She wasn’t unsympathetic; she was regimented.Javi had known that before Sean confirmed it.Joel scheduled her work day in five-minute increments.There wasn’t room for an impulsive, compassionate trip to deliver a dead man’s effects to his child.Especially when the effects, which Javi assumed included the half-empty bottle of drawer whiskey he’d inherited when Saul died, weren’t anything particularly sentimental.
If she’d gone to see Lara, it was because she’d had a reason beyond cleaning out a dusty drawer.
“If you’re thinking they were hooking up,” Sean interrupted Javi’s train of thought.“They weren’t.”
It hadn’t been what Javi was thinking.If Joel had been going to cheat with anyone, it would have been Kincaid, but that had never been what kept her on his hook.Nevertheless, he wanted to know Sean’s reasons.
“Are you sure?”
Sean folded the well-chewed straw between his fingers.“Pretty sure,” he said.“Hartley had her kids there when they talked, not exactly Tinder one-night stand etiquette.Plus…Joel knew I was there.She made me early on.”
Javi raised an eyebrow.
Sean shrugged.“She didn’t buttonhole me in the Whole Foods parking lot or anything,” he said.“But you know what it’s like, the mark makes eye contact through the windshield?You see them looking for something, and it turns out to be your car?They know, and you know they know.But you’ve still got to pay this month’s rent on the office, so… Anyhow, if she was hooking up with Hartley, I don’t think she’d have been doing it while I was outside with a telephoto lens.”
That made Javi glower at him.Between what he owed to Saul and the family’s independent status as victims of a violent crime, he couldn’t help the flicker of protectiveness.Sean leaned back in reaction and held both hands up.
“I didn’t,” he said.“But I could have.Why would she risk it?”
Javi snorted his opinion of that.“And I don’t suppose you have any idea where she’d have gone at four a.m.in her husband’s car yesterday?”he asked.
Sean looked apologetic as he shook his head.“Limehouse ended our contract last week,” he said.“She—”
He broke off as a car pulled into the front of the motel.It parked outside the reception, and a man got out with a plastic bag of takeout in one hand and his phone in the other.Sean grabbed his camera and lifted it, thumbing the button to zoom in.As the focus closed in around the delivery man, Sean absently finished his explanation.
“Shewasusually up at that time,” he said.“But that’s about all I have for you.If that’s all, that looks like my skip-trace’s carne asada is on the way up.”
Javi stood up.He adjusted his cuffs, ready to go, and then thought of one last question.
“Was Limehouse projecting?”he asked.
Sean glanced away from the viewscreen for a moment as he considered that question.“I didn’t get that vibe,” he finally said.“He wasn’t looking for an out, but he probably did in his last relationship.”
“Bit of a leap.”
“Ah, people like to get their money’s worth from a PI.They talk.Limehouse said that something was bothering her, but in his frame of reference, that meant cheating.This time he wasn’t, so that left her.”
“Except she wasn’t.”
“Yeah,” Sean agreed.“That stumped him.”
It did Javi as well.He was a little annoyed to find himself in that company.
On the second floor of the motel, the delivery guy rapped on a door.A scrawny guy with a beard and legs like straws opened it and held out cash to trade for his sweaty plastic bag.Javi left Sean to get his evidence and headed back to his car.
Thecallwenttovoicemail for the second time.
Busy woman or blocked?
It was a hard call to make.Javi might have saved her son, but he’d briefly suspected her older son of murdering his little brother.That was the sort of dissonance that was hard to navigate.He didn’t leave a message this time, just hung up and flicked through his phone to his messages.
He’d not missed any.
