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Noof course. Nothing about their recent conversations fit in with an easyof courseresponse. “Why?”
He scoffed. “Are you serious?”
She’d never been more serious.
“You knew her name,” he said. “She answered to it when I called out to her. She turned around, then did you see her face?”
“Sort of.” She’d been too busy running to catch up to Harris’s long strides and hunting for the right thing to say to the woman.
A car passed by them, Then another. It looked like they were circling for spaces in the busy lot, so when Harris guided her to a grassy island in the middle of all the concrete, she went willingly.
“She had that ‘shot out of a cannon’ look, like she had to hurry up and lie,” Harris said.
Elisa picked up on the rough edge to his voice and the scowl that had tension lines pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Okay.”
“Her eyes got huge and she looked hunted. Like she’d been tracked down and found out.” Harris glanced in the direction her car had driven. “Unbelievable.”
“And that convinced you?” Elisa continued to be careful. The wrong word could send this whole talk spinning against her.
“I somehow doubt you randomly selected her name out ofa phone directory then we happened to see her, or that you’re stalking her. And you have a photo. Why would you lie about that?”
Solid common sense arguments. Just like she’d expect from Harris, though she would have preferred a simpleit’s her because you said so,but that level of trust might be asking for too much right now.
“Here.” She finally found the photo and showed it to him.
He glanced at it and nodded. “There. More proof.” Some of the tension drained from his face. “And I talked with people at the school, remember? They called to ask about a woman who looked exactly like Meredith, or whatever name she’s using.”
Pretending. The thought sparked in Elisa’s mind. Maybe Meredith was really someone else or knew Abby. She could be one of Josh’s girlfriends, but why would he start dating Rachel if he already had a girlfriend he was seeing behind Abby’s back?
She needed a scorecard to keep up with the names of the women Josh had screwed over.
“That was her. She told me her name—Meredith Grange—and told me she dated Josh while he was with Abby, and maybe even Rachel. I couldn’t get a handle on the amount of overlap,” she said, eager to explain the pieces she did know to Harris.
He sighed.
That response could mean anything, and her defenses were up. “You need to tell me what you’re thinking,” she said.
“I’m guessing Josh screwed up.”
Agreed. A hundred percent agreed.“How exactly?”
Harris folded his arms across his chest. “He was cheating and I’m thinking the woman he was cheating with—”
“Meredith?”
“Yeah. I think he dumped her and she got pissed, or she wanted more and is now upset he’s with Rachel.” He shook his head. “Either way, I think Josh acted like a shit and now his former... girlfriend, I guess, is running around trying to catch a glimpse of him.”
Elisa followed the whole line of thinking right until that last part. The part that absolved Josh to some degree and made Meredith out to be a crazed stalker. Nothing about her affect struck Elisa that way. She saw cool and detached. A woman on a mission.
That mission might be to destroy Josh, and Elisa could appreciate that, in part, but she wouldn’t let that happen. He would get what he deserved, but not by someone sneaking up on him in a parking lot.
“There’s one more thing. Her smell.” And this was the part that scared the crap out of Elisa. Even broaching this subject sent panic running through her because she had no idea what it meant.
“What?”
“The scent in the kitchen that night. With the open door.” She saw the light go on and his expression change. “The scent was a lot softer today, probably because we’re outside, but that’s the same out-of-place smell from the kitchen.”
Harris froze. “Her perfume?”
