My heart contracted. Trey was so young, baby-faced. His smile was hesitant. He didn’t like the spotlight, even then. I started to close the folder, but the other guy’s name caught my attention. John McDonald. I knew that name, but I couldn’t place how. He didn’t look familiar, but then, the photo was fifteen years old.
“Why aren’t you asking Trey these questions?” Eric said.
I typed the name John McDonald into the search box. As expected, it returned almost a hundred hits in the metro area. Even narrowing the search down by age still gave me several dozen names.
I cursed under my breath. “We have a bet that I can’t find out on my own.”
“And?”
“I’m losing.”
Eric laughed. “I suspected it was something like that. How is he doing?”
I hesitated. Should I tell him we were off chasing wild geese and perhaps a killer? My brother could be as lecture-y as Trey at times. Still, he was an expert on all things cognitive, especially the particular workings of Trey’s mind.
I tapped my pen on the counter. “Do you remember the Jessica Talbot murder?”
“Of course. It was front-page news.”
“Did you and Trey talk about his OPS investigation?”
“Some, yes. No charges filed. Trey was cleared. It all went on that other officer, what was his name?”
“Joe Macklin.”
“Yes. Him. God, that was a big deal around here. My neighborhood got hit, did you know that? This couple returned from vacation and all the silver was gone. Old pieces too, Paul Revere stuff. Twenty thousand dollars’ worth. The husband was angry about not being there at first, but after the murder, he thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t home.”
“You think Jessica’s death was a robbery gone bad?”
“Makes sense. The break-ins stopped after that.”
I remembered Garrity and Trey both saying that there was still a LINX alert for that crime, but that none of the hits had panned out. The Buckhead Burglar had either moved on to less patrolled pastures, given up stealing, or died.
“How did Trey seem when he talked about that case?” I said. “I mean, in your professional opinion?”
“The same way he seemed about everything at the time, utterly complacent.”
“You didn’t sense any obsessive angst?”
“No. Why? What’s happened?”
Eric’s voice was smooth, inviting. So I took a deep breath and told him the story—all I knew of it, anyway. Eric listened. He could listen like the desert soaking up rain.
“And how is all of this affecting you? Especially considering the other matter.”
Eric knew about the DNA test, even if he didn’t know the results were in my cash register. My brother looked like the man who’d raised me, who’d taught me to love the salt marshes, taught me how silence could be nurturing and how silence could cut like a rusty knife. Eric had hazel eyes, like most of the Randolphs. I had eyes that were mossy gray, eyes I’d always called hazel because there was no other word for that silver-boned green.
Not Bennett Randolph’s eyes. Beauregard Forrest Boone’s.
My hands started shaking. “That’s a harder question.”
Eric didn’t reply. It was a psychologist’s trick, I knew, as canny as any interrogator. Leave the space and people will talk to fill it. But I had no idea what could fill the space between us. How to even begin? He was a decade older than me, wiser in many ways. I’d grown up in his shadow, nursed our mother through her death in that same shadow, supported by his money but not his presence. And now, with that envelope in the drawer…
I started to say something, but at that moment, a sleek black sedan pulled to my door, taking up two of the empty spaces. I could see the driver, but the backseat occupant remained a mystery, hidden behind tinted glass. The driver looked in my direction, assessing.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Okay. But listen, you know I’m here—”
“I know, I know. Gotta run. Thanks for your help.”
I slid my phone into my back pocket as the driver came into the shop. He pushed open the door, bells jangling in his wake. Black slacks, white shirt, tiny earpiece with the lines snaking down inside his collar. He didn’t take off his sunglasses, and he entered the shop the way Trey did—assessing, wary, noting blind spots and exits.
“Can I help you?” I said.
He didn’t answer. He returned to the car and opened the back door. And Portia Ray unfolded herself from the backseat.
Chapter Thirty-three
She was far less Luna than she’d been at the photo shoot. Instead of bootlegger clothes, she wore yoga pants and a fitted running jacket, and instead of a machine gun, she carried a bright blue designer bag. With a baseball cap covering her ice-blond hair and sunglasses shielding her eyes, she looked exactly like an incognito celebrity. The driver opened the shop door for her, then posted himself outside, hands folded low across his groin, feet slightly splayed.
Once Portia was safely in the shop, she took off the cap and shook out her hair. She glowed even under fluorescent lights, her skin so perfect she seemed airbrushed.
She pulled off her sunglasses and smiled. “Tai Randolph.”
I cursed inwardly, but returned the smile. “That’s me. What can I do for you?”
“You came to see Nicky yesterday at the studio. And you were at the base camp on Monday. I saw your name on the security logs. Your name was also on the supplier contacts, so when I saw it again on the list for the press party, I decided you were a woman I needed to meet.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew you could help me with this.”
She rummaged in her bag and pulled out an antique revolver. I recognized it immediately—there was no mistaking that delicately spurred trigger guard and double barrels, the top a .42 caliber, the underbarrel a smoothbore sixteen-gauge. Notoriously inaccurate but deadly at close range, the LeMat was dear to
