Page 105 of Three Steps Behind

George averted his attention.

“Why that maneuver?”

“Not everything is as it seems.” He stood. “I’m done talking without a lawyer.”

“You’re not under arrest.” Deck stood beside him.

“Nevertheless, I’m done.”

Deck and Harper saw themselves out.

“Who do you think he’s so afraid of?” Harper asked as they climbed back into the car.

“It’s got to be Hank or Randolph.”

“Hank seems the more likely of the two, given how Randolph’s wife wasn’t murdered.”

“Agreed, but we might as well pay Randolph a visit while we’re in Chicago.”

Harper scrolled through her phone. “Okay. We have his home address and his office at Northwestern.”

“Start at the house?”

“Sure.”

Harper kept scrolling. “Wanna guess what he’s a professor of?”

“Forensic botany?”

“No.” She smiled, but it faded fast. “Chemistry.”

“I wonder if the good professor has a lab.”

“Time to find out.”

Forty-Three

FORTY MINUTES LATER, Deck pulled into Randolph’s empty driveway.

He and Harper hopped out of the car and headed up the brick steps leading to the front door.

“He ain’t home,” a woman across the street said. She wore a floral morning coat and fuzzy slippers and had her hair in curlers.

“Is he at work?” Deck asked.

“Who wants to know?” she asked.

“We’re private investigators. Well, I am. Harper here is a forensic botanist with the FBI.”

“What do you want with Randolph?”

“We have a few questions for him.”

She strode across the street. “About Sophie’s supposed accident?”

“I’m guessing Sophie was his wife?”

“And my daughter.”