Does anyone know if Rob was dating anyone?
Who was he hanging out with at Daisy Gordon’s party? Does anyone have pictures?
I scroll down to see if anyone has posted pictures from Daisy’s party that show me with Rob. But the only other recent post is from someone named Julie who wants everyone to be really, really careful because she just spotted a fox in her backyard.
I shut the page. It feels like a tsunami of speculation and gossip threatening to overtake me. I make a note to myself to take a digital detox for a day or two until this whole thing subsides. I know intellectually that what happened to me at the party and Rob’s death are not related. But I’m pretty sure that police won’t see it that way. And I can imagine what the neighborhood gossip mill would make of it all. The accusations would be flying. I don’t want to put myself and my family through all that. I had wanted to pretend the whole thing at Daisy’s party never happened. And that was before Rob Avery was killed. The feeling is even stronger now. The last thing I want is to get sucked into a murder investigation.
Still, I have an itch in the back of my brain that begs to be scratched—why did Rob Avery call me Sexy Lexi? I go to bed trying to make peace with the fact that I may never know.
Monday morning starts off well when I find parking close to work. The Mike Chau Studio occupies the second floor of a building on H Street that houses an artisanal falafel shop. Our neighbors are a café that specializes in cold-pour coffee and a medical marijuana dispensary. When I come in, Mike is sitting at his desk tapping at his computer at a speed that would have wowed my ninth-grade typing teacher. He looks up and grins.
“Hey, Allie. Good weekend?” Mike is the same age, but unlike me, he’s almost aggressively hip. He has the black, shaggy hair of an indie rocker, and colorful full-sleeve tattoos, with more characters and story lines than Game of Thrones. But I realized early on that he’s not as laid-back as he pretends. He wouldn’t have been able to start his own successful photography studio before the age of thirty if he were.
“Weekend was great. You?” I don’t want Mike thinking there is anything in my personal life that would interfere with my job. I’m still on probation for the first ninety days of employment. Besides, work has always been a refuge for me, and the last thing I want to do is dwell on the weekend’s drama.
The studio takes up the whole second floor, with the back half divided into two enclosed rooms for shoots. The front room is a combination office and waiting area, replete with knockoff mid-century furniture and exposed pipes. What it lacks in privacy, Mike likes to joke, it makes up for in style.
I spend the morning editing and pop out to pick up lunch—a dry falafel from Yael’s Kebab House. I am back at my desk and wiping the crumbs off my face when Valerie Simmons’s assistant calls.
“Valerie loves your work—very natural and spontaneous. You really managed to capture Marcel’s warmth.” Congressman Parks had been an easy shoot. He had that politician’s gift of being able to light up from the inside on cue.
We talk for a few minutes about her boss’s desire to showcase a softer side for her upcoming memoir, while still maintaining gravitas. I assure her I know how to do this.
“This all sounds very promising,” she answers and says she’ll touch base with me later in the week to set up an appointment. After we hang up, I jump up and fist pump the air.
“Good news?” Mike asks from across the room.
“Looks like I may have the Valerie Simmons job. I’m talking details with her on Monday, but I think we’ve got it.”
Mike leans back, putting his hands behind his head to reveal matching orange snakes that wrap around the undersides of his well-formed biceps and disappear under his white T-shirt. “Nice. Very nice.”
A flicker of something crosses his face. Jealousy? Irritation? Technically, jobs funnel through Mike and he assigns them. I doubt that he is annoyed that I pursued Valerie Simmons on my own—it would be a feather in the studio’s cap to have someone of her caliber as a client. Maybe he suspects that I plan to build up a client base and leave.
I decide I’ll worry about that another day and just enjoy the win.
My high spirits last the rest of the day and all the way home despite miserable traffic. But they dissipate as I pull up to my house after work, when I find a dark sedan parked in front of our walkway.
One of the unspoken laws of suburbia is you don’t park right in front of someone else’s house, much less block their walkway. I learned this the hard way the first week after we moved in, when I parked in front of Heather’s house. I received a little note card with sunflowers on it and a message about parking etiquette.
As I pass by the car on my way to the front door, I peer inside. My stomach dips a little when I spot a radio.
It’s an unmarked police car.
13
“There she is,” Susan says as I rush through the back door into the mudroom. “I was just telling the detectives that you would be home any minute.”
“What detectives?” I turn to see a boyish-looking man in an ill-fitting suit behind me. How had I missed him when I first came in?
“Hi,” I say. “Can I help you?”
“Ma’am,” he says, handing me a business card. “Detective Brian Katz of the Montgomery County Police.” He doesn’t look old enough to drive, much less carry a gun and arrest people.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
