I kept my laugh soft so it didn’t carry through the phone if anyone was standing nearby. “I actually do need your help, so at least it’s not a complete lie. I’m at Skin Canvas.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
We disconnected.
I shook out my hands, trying to loosen them up. It didn’t work. My fingers still felt like sausages on the ends of my palms, my engagement ring tight.
But I had to pull myself together for Ahanti. I could do that.
I ducked back inside.
Ahanti stood with her hands on her hips in front of the teenager who’d passed me on her way in. “It doesn’t matter how many times you come in. I don’t give sleeves to anyone under twenty-five. Trust me, you wouldn’t thank me later if I did.”
I was rusty on the terminology, but I thought a sleeve was a tattoo that went from shoulder to wrist—a big commitment to want to make when you weren’t even old enough to legally drink.
Ahanti pointed toward the door, and the girl left without an argument.
I stepped out of her path for a second time. “That sounds like a conversation you’ve had before.”
“Too many times.” Ahanti swore. “She was here that day, hanging around. I should have asked her if she saw anyone going into the back room before I shut her down.”
“You didn’t ask Eddie, either,” Terrance piped up from behind the catalogue of gadgets he was flipping through. The front showed a red drone that looked a bit like a race car with propellers.
“Eddie wasn’t here that day,” Ahanti said. “Which is just my luck, since he has an excellent memory for details. He could have told us right away if Cary was here and what he did.”
I would have shot Terrance a you’re-not-helping glare, but he never lowered the catalogue. I squeezed Ahanti’s arm. “Don’t worry. Make the list, and we’ll work on it methodically when I get back.” I backed toward the door. “Right now, I have to go save Mark from my dad.”
Thankfully, Ahanti seemed to believe my excuse. It probably helped that Mark had sounded like he needed an out. Ahanti was one of the few people who could catch me in a lie if I were truly trying to get away with it, but she knew what my dad could be like.
I called Geoff’s office again and arranged to meet him for lunch. I didn’t tell him why. He’d assume it was about Ahanti, and that was true enough.
Even though I’d be meeting him in a public place, I did not want to follow the pattern of so many heroines in the mystery novels I liked to read who did things that made them too stupid to live. If Geoff turned out to be the stalker, he could very well wait for me in the parking lot or slash the tires of my rental car so that I ended up on the side of the road somewhere.
No thank you. I was going to hope for the best and plan for the worst this time.
Since Geoff had never met Mark, we decided to gamble that he wouldn’t know what Mark looked like. Men didn’t ogle pictures of their friends the way women did. We’d failed trying to pull the trick of Mark as an innocent bystander on Ahanti, but we might get away with it on Geoff. Mark had wanted to come along upfront, but I had to have complete control over the situation to read Geoff. I couldn’t mess this one up. Ahanti’s future happiness—and safety—depended on it.
I picked a table with another empty one next to it and waited for Geoff. Mark took a seat at the nearby table, placing himself so that when Geoff sat, Mark would be behind him. It’d make eavesdropping easier for Mark and make Geoff less likely to notice and recognize him on the off chance he had seen a picture.
Geoff showed up almost on time. Whenever I’d had a late-morning appointment with him, he’d always been running behind. My brain logged the unusualness of it the same as it had inconsistencies in witness statements back when I’d been actively working as a lawyer.
Rearranging his schedule to arrive on time meant he wanted to be sure I didn’t read in to his lateness. Poor guy didn’t realize I’d also read into his promptness.
We ordered and settled in at the table.
He didn’t touch his food. “How’s Ahanti? She hasn’t called me again since letting me know she has a stalker.”
“She’s managing.”
I took a bite of my bacon, brie, and apricot grilled cheese. Someone really needed to open a gourmet grilled cheese place in Fair Haven. I’d go there every day.
Geoff followed my lead, though it was clear by the how-can-you-eat-at-a-time-like-this look he gave me that he was waiting for my answer and didn’t want to wait long.
Based on what I knew of Geoff, he’d always seemed like a bad liar. He’d barely been able to string two coherent sentences together the week before he proposed to Ahanti. Same when he’d wanted to surprise her with the trip to the Dominican. All of that could be an act if he were her stalker. Or it could mean that the stalking somehow fit into the delusion he’d built and so it didn’t rattle him the way trying to hide a happy surprise from Ahanti did.
I wouldn’t know until I pressed it. “We do have a lead on Ahanti’s situation. That’s why I asked you here.”
He set his sandwich down and leaned forward.
I took my phone from my purse, queued up the photo of him, and handed it across the table. One of the best ways to assess someone’s guilt or innocence, according to my parents, was to catch them off guard. Geoff wouldn’t be expecting to see himself on my phone.
His hand twitched against his plate, pushing it away slightly. “How did you get this?”
No denying it was him. No trying to pretend it must have been taken at a different time. That was enough of an admission of some sort of guilt that I had no intention of telling him about the private investigator I’d hired. Or any other piece of information about Ahanti’s safety.
“What were you doing staking out her apartment?”
He put my phone on the table, face down. He didn’t want to look at it anymore, but he also wasn’t reacting aggressively by shoving it back across the table to me. That spoke to shame.
Not the emotion I’d expect from her stalker. Stalkers didn’t tend to exhibit shame, even when they were caught. They saw nothing wrong with their actions to be ashamed of.
“It’s not what it looks like. I’m not her stalker. Or a new stalker.” He took a swig of coffee that I knew must have burned all the way down—mine was still too hot to even tentatively sip.
“Has Ahanti seen these?” His words came out in a gasp, betraying him on how hot that coffee had been.
I wasn’t as certain as I needed to be yet that he was innocent, but it was important that he think I believed in him. “Ahanti doesn’t know about it yet. I figured there had to be some explanation, so I came to you first.”
