“I don’t think Ahanti should go into work tomorrow. Or at all, until the police figure out who’s doing this. It’s not safe.”
“I can’t live like a bird in a cage,” Ahanti said in the background. “I can’t afford to keep cancelling appointments. I’ve worked too hard to flush away my business. Nikki even said I’m not the one who’s done anything wrong.”
The hysterical note in her voice sounded like it might be helped along by a couple glasses of alcohol. Geoff had probably brought champaign, thinking this was all behind them at last.
“Do you hear that?” Geoff asked me. “Reason with her. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”
Muffled noises like they were passing the phone back and forth, Geoff insisting she talk to me again, and Ahanti refusing to accept it from him. They’d definitely both had a couple of glasses of something. Neither of them were heavy drinkers, and they both tended to get a little goofy when they did drink.
“I’m going into work tomorrow,” Ahanti finally said into the phone. “I think the reason I had that panic attack was because I was focusing so hard on guarding my every move. It’s too stressful for me to live a half-life like that.”
Couples had broken up over smaller trials than this. I didn’t want that for them. They really were good for each other. And one of their strengths as a couple was compromising. I just had to get them to remember that.
Surely the attack on Terrance had given the police more evidence they could use to figure out who was really behind this. They’d have to believe Terrance’s story that he sent only the one message, trying to break up Ahanti and Geoff. What we needed to do was find a way to keep Ahanti safe until the police analyzed the new evidence, but we had to do it in a way that made her not feel so trapped.
“Put me on speaker, okay?”
“I think that worked,” Ahanti said, her voice sounding farther away.
I put my end on speaker as well so Mark could hear. “How many clients do you have booked for tomorrow?”
“Two. A design consult for a new client and then Eddie’s back in. I’m starting his tattoo tomorrow.”
That wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. For tomorrow at least, it’d be easy enough to keep Ahanti safe at work, especially if I could get Lucas to sit out front again. “You want to work, and Geoff wants to keep you safe. After your consult leaves and Eddie arrives, could you lock the door and turn your sign to closed? That way no one unexpected can walk in on you.”
“Without Terrance there, that’d be best anyway. I can’t stop what I’m doing whenever someone comes in.”
“What about with the new client?” Geoff said. “That could be her stalker.”
With how her stalker had escalated and the content of his messages, I doubted it. They’d talked about Ahanti’s touch. A new client wouldn’t have even sat down to talk with her yet.
Geoff wouldn’t see it that way, though.
I glanced at Mark. I hadn’t spent much time with him this trip, not the way we’d planned, at least.
He moved in behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. “We’ll make sure she’s not there alone with the new client.”
By the time we finished the call to Ahanti and Geoff, it was almost midnight. I went back to my room, but instead of crawling into bed like any sane person would do, I pulled Detective DeGoey’s card from my wallet.
I turned it end over end. He shouldn’t have given it to me if he didn’t intend for me to call. But it was late, and the intent behind it had been for me to call if I had any more information about the case, not for me to call because I wanted information about the case.
Manners won out, and I set the card on my nightstand. Ahanti was safe in her apartment with Geoff, and nothing the detective said could make a difference tonight anyway.
19
I slept fitfully, waking up from nightmares I couldn’t remember. I ended up out of bed and showered before my alarm was even set to go off. That gave me the vague sensation that I was doing vacationing wrong. Then again, there’d been nothing else normal about this trip.
Mark and I planned to stay with Ahanti until her consult client left and Eddie arrived, and then we’d made an appointment with a realtor to find out about house prices within an easy commute of where Mark might end up working. He’d been right when he said one of my major concerns was apartment living with two big dogs. If we couldn’t afford a house with even a modest yard within a close enough distance that Mark wouldn’t give himself high blood pressure thanks to the traffic, that would be a major black mark against moving back to DC. Most people likely would have waited until they’d decided to move before pricing homes, but I wasn’t most people. I liked having a plan, and I hated surprises.
Ahanti opened late on Wednesdays, so I waited until Mark and I had breakfast together before calling Detective DeGoey. By the time I woke up this morning, I’d realized that the grumpier he was, the less likely I was to get any information from him. Waking him up accidentally seemed like a great way to increase the grumpy factor.
DeGoey answered on the second ring.
“This is Nicole Fitzhenry-Dawes, Ahanti Tenali’s lawyer.”
“I remember you.” His voice had a dry edge to it, but I couldn’t tell if amusement or annoyance put it there. Police officers had enough training in controlling their tells that they were harder to read even in person, let alone on the phone.
Which left me with no direction as to how to forge ahead. “We learned about Terrance Moore and—”
“I can’t talk to you about an ongoing investigation.”
That was vague enough to make me want to shake him. Was he referring to the investigation into who had attacked Terrance? Or was he trying to tell me without telling me that they were reopening the investigation into Cary’s murder?
I’d assume it was a hint if I was back in Fair Haven where even I-never-jaywalk Erik fudged things a little to give me information. But we weren’t in Fair Haven anymore, Toto.
Unfortunately, that also meant I couldn’t be Fair Haven Nicole. Here I had to be Big City Nicole. I hadn’t had much success at that before. If you asked my parents, succeeding here required a drive and hardness that I didn’t have. And didn’t want to have.
But now was as good a time as any to see if I could get what I wanted and needed here without sacrificing who I was.
“I appreciate that, Detective. I don’t want to impede your investigation in any way or jeopardize a conviction when you find the right suspect. All I’ve ever wanted was to make sure whoever is behind this is caught so my client can be safe.”
I made sure to keep any snark or snootiness out of my voice. I didn’t want to imply that he didn’t care about justice or about Ahanti’s safety. It seemed to me like he did care.
The silence on his end of the line stretched like I’d caught him off guard. He’d probably expected some moral blackmail like I hope you can appreciate that we can’t trust you to keep people safe and to find the right perpetrator. In the background, I heard the low drone of a room full of people talking, but none of them close enough to hear distinct words.
I forged ahead. “I’m calling because we’d like to know if the attack on Terrance yielded any more evidence that might point you to who’s really behind this. We need to know how extreme we need to get in making sure my client stays safe. I figured that if I tried to work with you instead of against you, there’d be a better chance of achieving that.”
The noise in the background faded as if DeGoey were moving away from a group of people. “Take whatever precautions you can. I’m doing what I’m able to on my end, but my opinion of what’s going on isn’t the popular one anymore. Recent events might end up being treated as an unrelated crime.”
