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“I don’t think he said.” She turned to her husband to verify; he shook his head. “Is it important? We can call him and ask.”
“Oh, there’s no need.” Jo scrambled to downplay the visit. “We have a couple of loose ends we wanted to check on and figured we’d try here since we were in the neighborhood.” She made a quick decision. “It seems like you and your husband have a good relationship with Chris. That must be very helpful right now.”
Cecile’s smile quivered. “Chris has always been a sweet boy. He made Naomie happy.” She choked, and tears welled in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry.” Jo backed off. “We hope to have news for you soon. We’ll be back in touch as soon as we know more.”
“Naomie’s parents like him,” Jo said when they were back at the car. “And I didn’t pick anything up from him. Am I jumping the gun?”
“Psychopaths can be very charismatic.” Arnett shook his head. “I remember they said something about Helms’ Brothers mortuary during the memorial. Should we swing by there?”
“Let’s do it.”
Jo and Arnett had met Richard and Robert Helms multiple times in the course of their investigations, but it never ceased to amaze Jo how perfectly funerary the twins were. Both were excessively tall, slender, and had shocks of gray hair closely cropped into traditional 1950s businessman haircuts. Their demeanors were unfailingly sedate, and they’d both mastered the standard mortician tone, the one meant to soothe, but that usually disconcerted. She tried—and failed—to push away an image of Lurch fromThe Addams Familyas she explained what they needed.
“He was here earlier, but just to deal with some quick paperwork. He left over an hour ago,” either Richard or Robert Helms told them. “Is there any way we can be of help?”
After assuring them there wasn’t, Jo and Arnett hurried out to the car again.
“That’s plenty of time for him to have made it back home when we checked,” Arnett said. “Maybe he’s out running errands?”
Jo’s teeth raked her lower lip. “Possibly. Since we have no idea where else to look, our best bet is to go back there. But if he doesn’t come home within the next hour, I say we put an APB out on him.”
CHAPTERFIFTY-ONE
Julia made it through her client consultation by sheer force of will, and a large, highly sweetened triple espresso. Normally, despite not having much patience with most human beings, she had almost infinite patience with expectant mothers because she understood the fears that came along with pregnancy, and wanted to ease them for others the way nobody had been there to ease hers. But today she caught herself snapping when her client asked questions she’d already answered several times during previous sessions.
Dropping her medical kit by the side of the door, she slid onto her couch still wearing her coat and her trainers. She’d never been a napper—once she began the day inertia took over—but she’d never experienced anything like the last week, and never in her entire life had she needed sleep more. Not just sleep, but the escape a few hours of unconsciousness would give her from it all. She pulled a pillow under her head and tugged her coat tightly around her.
But sleep wouldn’t come. Maybe it was the caffeine; she’d had more today than she normally drank in a week. Maybe it was the hellish limbo that took over with sleep deprivation, when your body flooded with cortisol to deal with stress and ended up suspending you in a strange, zombie-like state. Whatever it was, she was in it now, and her thoughts dipped and circled like vultures attacking roadkill. Taunting her with how stupid she’d been to take the risk with the grant money, how the police were certain she was a killer, how the actual killer was still out there possibly coming for her or Chelsea next.
But most of all, her thoughts kept returning to Naomie.
Naomie, who she’d loved since Naomie was a child. Naomie, who’d come into Julia’s life just as Julia’s mother died, allowing Julia to channel her own need to be mothered into mothering someone else. Naomie, who she’d betrayed, justifying that betrayal to herself as being an unimportant throwaway thing when she knew full well Naomie’s heart would be broken by it, and how her own selfish needs allowed her to justify it all. And now Naomie was gone and Julia would change every decision she made along the way if it meant she could have Naomie back. At least there was some solace in the fact she’d never discovered Julia’s betrayal before she died.
The tears came again, even stronger than they had when the detectives were there, wracking her violently, like her body was trying to expel some toxin through the saline of her tears and phlegm and even the vibrations of her larynx.
When, finally, the tears subsided, leaving her head throbbing and her heart empty, she slipped into the still darkness of sleep.
Until someone pounded on her front door.
CHAPTERFIFTY-TWO
As Jo and Arnett waited, hidden behind a set of towering bushes down the road from Chris Alexander’s house, they continued what investigation they could do from the car.
“Paperwork for a warrant to search the Alexander house has been submitted,” Arnett said.
“I’ve done some more digging on Chris. I still can’t find any sort of trouble in his past. He and Naomie were definitely living paycheck to paycheck, however. All of their credit cards are running heavy balances, and their savings is non-existent. And, there’s an insurance policy on Naomie.”
Arnett’s head popped up. “How much?”
“Pretty standard: fifty thousand, and he’s insured for the same should he have died first. Not nearly enough to pay off all their debt.”
“But it’d go a long way, that’s for sure—”
Jo’s phone buzzed, and she checked the number. “Lopez.” She tapped, and answered. “Christine. What’s up?”
“Jo. The judge signed off on a warrant for Julia’s records. Not surprising given the overwhelming evidence of embezzlement.”
