The Silent Hour

for no questions, and they have respected that. Those closest to me have, at least.”

I had so many questions myself, but it became clear that she had fewer answers, and after a time the conversation became stagnant and then disappeared altogether. I didn’t want to let her go. I also knew we couldn’t stay.

“I could hold you here,” I said, “and call the police. There are many of them who would like to talk to you.”

She didn’t answer. Just held my eyes in silence.

“I’m not sure I want to do that,” I said. “Maybe I will, soon, but not yet. I’m equally certain it would be a mistake to let you leave.”

“Give me your phone number,” she said. “I’ll call you in a day. I promise I will do that. Whatever you want from me, I’ll offer it.”

“Including coming forward?”

Again, the silence.

“Ah,” I said. “Whatever I want, except that.”

“Maybe that. I’m not sure. I’ve been gone for many years, and I have a new life that would be sacrificed. Surely you know that’s not a snap decision.”

“No decision that takes twelve years to make is—but I’m not sure it’s your decision to make, Alexandra.”

We sat and looked at each other for a while, and then I got to my feet. My legs felt foreign. We’d been sitting for a long time.

“I can accept all of this as the truth, and a week from now realize it was a lie and feel a fool for believing you,” I said.

“It isn’t a lie.”

“It may be,” I said. “If it is, you can know this—I’ll chase you. For as long as it takes me, and as far as it takes me, I’ll chase you.”

She stood as well, brushed off her jeans, and then stepped forward and offered her hand. I clasped it and held it and looked into her eyes as she said, “I’ll say this one more time—it isn’t a lie.”

She walked away from me then, walked to that short ridge of stone that marked the rear wall of the house and looked down at the pond. She stood there with her hands in the pockets of her jeans and her shoulders hunched, looking down. I gave her a few minutes before I followed.

“I wish you could have seen it,” she said when I was beside her.

“I can imagine what it looked like.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You can’t. When Parker was tending the grounds, when everything was at its best, it was beyond what you can imagine. In the spring, when it was all in bloom . . . no, you can’t imagine what that looked like.”

She took her hands from her pockets and turned away. “It was everything I’d dreamed of. We could have done so much here. We could have done so much.”

38

__________

I walked up the drive with her, and neither of us spoke. When she reached her rental car, she turned and faced me.

“I’ll call tomorrow,” she said, “and we’ll figure out how to move forward. You may not believe me, but it is the truth. If I don’t call, keep your word. Start the chase.”

“That might seem like a joke to you,” I said, “but it is not to me. I don’t care where you are, Alexandra, I’ll find you eventually. Anyone can be found.”

“Ken Merriman already taught me that.” She took my hand again, squeezed it once, and then turned and opened the driver’s door and climbed inside. I waited until she’d started the engine before I left and walked back up the road to my truck. I got inside, started it up, and drove to the highway. I stared at every vehicle that passed and thought, He said all they needed to do was pay attention to a car.

There was only one possibility coming to my mind, and Mike London had checked it out. The day Ken and I had lunch with him, he told us about a vehicle he’d seen near Bertoli’s murder scene that had belonged to a chop shop affiliated with Dominic Sanabria. What had the owner’s name been? Neloms. Darius Neloms. His alibi checked out solid, though, and the lead dried up. So what could Ken have possibly seen that Mike did not?

Unless it was a different car entirely. If that was the case, then I was as utterly clueless as I had been before talking to Alexandra.

I was halfway back to the city when my cell phone rang, and I saw the call was coming from the office. Joe.

“You’re out there again, aren’t you,” he said when I answered, and then, before I could respond, “LP, you’ve got to let it go. You’ve got to stop.”

“She came to the house this morning.”

For a moment I didn’t hear a thing.

“Tell me it is the truth,” he said, “and that I don’t need to begin searching for the proper institution for you.”

I told him what had happened. By the time I was done, I was a mile from the office, and he hadn’t spoken for a long time.

“I let her go,” I said, “and I know you’ll tell me what a terrible mistake that was, but I don’t care. I’ll find her again if I have to.”

“If you believe what she told you, that’s not the issue of the day,” he said, and something inside me sagged with relief. He agreed with me. Alexandra was no longer the focus.

“I believe it,” I said, “because I saw her lie today, and, Joseph, she is not good at it.”

“And the car?” he said. “Do you have any idea what that means?”

“Maybe. If I’m wrong, then I’ve got nothing. We’ll have to wait and see.”

I hung up with him, and five minutes later I was behind my desk. I told Joe what I remembered from Mike London’s investigation, then leaned back with my hands spread.

“That’s the best I’ve got. Darius Neloms was an associate of Sanabria, but he was far from the inner circle. The guy painted stolen cars and sent them back out the door. It’s not like he was Sanabria’s right-hand man. Even if he was, Ken apparently was questioning whether Sanabria had anything to do with the murder.”

“He said the car was important. So maybe he found out who else had access to it.”

“Maybe. If it doesn’t go back to that chop shop, though, then I have no idea what he was talking about. We talked to Mike the day before Ken was killed, so it would have been fresh in his mind, and if he was giving me credit for getting him to the solution, well, that’s the only thing I got him to. Only London mentioned a car.”

“Well,” Joe said, “I’d say now’s the time to call him.”

So I called him. Put him on speaker while Joe sat with his chin resting on steepled fingertips and listened. I had not spoken to Mike London since Ken was killed. He’d called after he heard the news, more curious then distressed, and I had never called back.

I’d already decided I didn’t want anyone but Joe to know that the new information had come from Alexandra, so I skirted that, told Mike only that Ken had evidently mentioned his belief that a car was the key to the case shortly before he was killed.

“The only car I ever heard mentioned,” I said, “was the one you told us about. It belonged to a guy named Darius Neloms, right?”

“Right.”

“Who had an alibi that was—”

“Airtight. Yes.”

“There’s no way you could have been wrong on that.”

Silence. Then, “Brother, you want to check up on me, by all means go ahead. Hell, we probably still have the