“Don’t plan any trips out of town anytime soon. If it looks like your fiancé did it, we’re going to have more questions for you.” He held the door open like he expected us to leave. “And if you want to look less guilty, you might want to choose a different law firm.”
The detective’s foot was close enough I could have stomped it on my way by and pretended it was an accident. Ahanti was innocent, and I wasn’t my parents. Instead I gave him my sweetest smile as if he’d paid me a compliment.
Know where you’re weak, my dad used to tell me, and where they might be able to hurt you. Then turn it around and use it as a weapon against them.
I paused outside the door and looked back at the detective over my shoulder. “Our firm does handle cases for clients who aren’t innocent, but that means we’re the perfect choice for someone who is. Defending an innocent person will be easy by comparison.”
Ahanti looked like she wanted to high-five me. I decided not to tell her what I’d said wasn’t exactly true. Sometimes defending an innocent person could be as hard as defending a guilty one.
We headed straight for the parking lot, and I walked with Ahanti to her car.
She hit her clicker to unlock it, but paused with her hand on the door handle. All the confidence and bravado was gone from her face. For a breath, I was afraid she was going to ask me if I thought Geoff had something to do with it after all, and I would have had to admit that I wasn’t sure. If Geoff was the one actually stalking her, Cary would be a perfect scapegoat for his anger at being separated from Ahanti. Plus, he’d have had every reason to believe that, if Cary—her perceived stalker—died, things with Ahanti would return to the way they had been.
“I was never good at math,” Ahanti said. “It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of pre-med. But the odds seem obvious here even to me. It’s not likely Cary’s death was random, is it?”
I shook my head.
She fingered her keys and gave a sharp nod. “I was hoping I was wrong and there was some explanation where he was my stalker after all.”
Not unless he was also stalking someone else and that person, or someone connected to them, killed him. The likelihood of him being her stalker now seemed impossibly slim, especially given that the original note from her stalker had already made me think Cary wasn’t the one. “Probably not.”
Ahanti swore. And not softly, either. “Could you ride back to my apartment with me? Eddie hasn’t had a chance to check my security system and locks yet.”
I understood what she didn’t say. We’d been looking at the wrong person, and she didn’t feel safe going back to an empty apartment alone in case the real stalker found a way in and was waiting for her. “I’ll came and stay with you until my mom’s done here.”
I texted my mom and Mark to let them know what I was doing.
Going back with her would also give us an opportunity to brainstorm other possibilities for her stalker. Hopefully Ahanti could come up with better suggestions than the ones that were swimming around in my mind. The only two potential suspects I had at present were Geoff and Terrance.
I climbed in and buckled up. We’d already looked at the content of the messages. There didn’t seem to be much more we could get from them about the stalker’s identity. We’d have to come at this from a different direction.
When we’d thought it was Cary, we’d planned to ask anyone who was in Skin Canvas the day the picture of Geoff was dropped off if they’d seen him. Now the list Ahanti was supposed to make would have added meaning. The people on it were either potential witnesses or our stalker.
11
The list Ahanti dropped into my lap as I sat on her couch was much longer than expected. I’d thought she’d have five, maybe six, people on the list. I hadn’t counted the names, but it looked to be at least twenty. “How many hours did you work that day?”
Ahanti shrugged. “We didn’t close until close to midnight. Terrance and I both stayed the whole time.”
Well, twenty was still better than the times I’d basically had an entire town full of suspects. The only name I recognized was Terrance’s. “You’re going to have to run down this list and tell me who all these people are.”
Not everyone on the list was a client. Three quarters of them were, between Ahanti and Terrance. Apparently, that Wednesday, Ahanti had booked a lot of design consults rather than actually tattooing, which meant she’d seen more people than usual. She’d also included the name of the mailman who dropped off their mail—“Because I can’t be sure he didn’t leave the picture in an unmarked envelope along with the actual mail”—a supplier who was trying to get her to switch to a new brand of ink—“But I don’t think it was him because that’s the first time he’d been in”—and the girl who kept coming back even though Ahanti refused to tattoo her. I was personally pretty sure that refusing to give someone a tattoo wasn’t grounds for stalking. Besides, Ahanti said she’d only been hanging around the last few weeks.
I drew a line through the supplier’s name. Since Ahanti hadn’t ever seen him before, he wasn’t our guy, and he also wouldn’t be much help in figuring out who might have gone into the back room.
Through the back of the paper, under the names written on it, I could see the preliminary sketches Ahanti must have done back during the design process for her engagement ring. Geoff knew she’d never be happy with something someone else created, so they’d waited for her to create her own and have it custom made. It seemed almost sacrilege to even consider that same man would be her stalker. His name wasn’t on the list.
But my parents had trained me that we couldn’t allow how we felt about a witness to change our questions or make us let them off easy. Doing so could destroy our client’s case. In this situation, it could cost Ahanti her life. “Did Geoff come by that day?”
I kept my gaze focused on the list and tried to keep my tone light. Ahanti and I had never had a fight over a guy, though she hadn’t liked Peter when I’d been dating him. I didn’t want to start a fight now. Her instinct was to defend Geoff.
“Why?” she asked, equally as casually.
So casually, in fact, that I couldn’t tell if she suspected anything. Even if she did, the fact that she didn’t want to let on to me said she didn’t take my possible suspicion of Geoff seriously. I’d already asked her if he might have killed Cary. She must realize that, as a lawyer, I had to ask some questions whether I wanted to or not.
Still, I wasn’t ready to even hint that Geoff might be somehow involved with this whole situation. “Everyone who was there is a witness.”
Ahanti dropped onto the couch next to me. “He brought me supper that night. He knew I’d be working late.”
That might actually clear him, depending on when Ahanti discovered the photo. “And when did you check the mail and other stuff on your desk.”
Her eyebrows lowered slightly. “Why does that matter?”
Be careful, Nikki. “If you’d already found the picture by then, we don’t need to bother Geoff by asking him a lot of questions. He probably has enough on his mind after the police interrogation.”
My mom hadn’t texted or called yet, which meant the police hadn’t released Geoff. They were certainly spending more time on him than on Ahanti.
“I didn’t notice it until right before I closed the studio.” Her fingers drew lines on her thighs as if itching to pick up a pencil and draw to relieve some stress. “Do you think Cary’s murder is linked to my stalker somehow?”
Mark’s favorite phrase of possible but not probable came to mind. Though how much more likely was it that Cary would be killed at the same time as Ahanti was being stalked? It wasn’t like they were part of a gang where multiple people who knew each other could be hurt in unrelated events. It might actually be probable as well as possible.
My heart beat a few slow, sickening thuds. If the two cases were related, then either Geoff had killed Cary to protect Ahanti or her stalker had somehow felt eliminating Cary was in his best interest. The two might even intersect if Geoff was her stalker.
If he wasn’t, then the real stalker was now systematically targeting people close to Ahanti. First they’d threatened Geoff, her fiancé. Now they’d killed Cary, her former boss and boyfriend.
Her separation from Geoff might have actually saved his life, but everyone else she was close to was in danger—including me. Mark was going to love that.
Ahanti’s hands clenched over her knees. “That was too long a pause. You do think the two things are connected.”
