outside of her father, to cause her to deviate from her normal behavior. This wasn’t something that she’d done simply on her own.
“Where was this taken?” I demanded.
“Outside of that restaurant. Chophouse,” Stubbs replied. “I couldn’t believe that I’d hit such pay dirt. Never pegged your woman for the type to make love in the great outdoors.”
“Make love?” I clenched my fists. “You think that’s what this is? They’re making love?”
He looked at the photo. “Honestly? Yeah. Everything about the interaction between these two lovers makes me think more ‘couple’ than ‘friends with benefits.’ They’re basically in a relationship.”
I wanted to slice through his honesty.
“And he hasn’t been seeing other women? Nothing to suggest that Alexandra’s an occasional lay?”
“I don’t think he could even if he tried,” Stubbs replied. “He took her to the Briggs-Allen assisted living facility where I’ve verified that he’s got a senile grandfather. Men don’t just take women to see their grandparents unless it’s serious. Parents is one thing, but grandparents is an even bigger deal.”
I shoved away the tablet, the images both repulsing and intriguing. There was a very small part of me that tried to justify that perhaps Alexandra deserved where she believed she’d found happiness, but if Alexandra and I were to break up now, it would completely ruin my campaign. Even worse, if it somehow became general knowledge that she’d left me for a physician who specialized in treating children with disabilities, grew up in one of the poorest areas in New Orleans, created an advisory board to give back to that community, and was still able to accomplish all he did, I would only come out looking like the Hyde to his Jekyll. I could already see people wondering about what was so inherently terrible about me that Alexandra had to leave me for a saint.
“So, I take it that her change in behavior was attributed to the good doctor, then?” I asked.
“Most likely.”
“And you weren’t able to find any anomalies in her day? Nothing that explains how this started in the first place?”
He closed the flap on the tablet case and pulled a notebook from his back pocket. Today, he was dressed in a pair of black slacks, sneakers whose wear suggested that he walked on the inside of his feet, and a newish looking polo.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. You said that she first started ignoring your calls around Christmas Eve. Well, with a bit of sweet talking and a whole lot of lying, I was able to get access to the security room at the center. It’s basic stuff, nothing high-end, so I got some surveillance footage and keycard swipes for their entries and exits. Until the night before your fundraising banquet, Alexandra would leave the office around five-fourteen unless she was working late. Dr. Stewart usually left the latest out of all the staff members. On that particular night, they both stayed until around eleven p.m. You can probably guess what they were doing.”
He jerked his brows up and down, and I got the sense that he wasn’t exactly on my side.
“And the surveillance tapes?” I asked.
“Mr. Hamilton, nothing—”
“Just tell me what you saw on the damn tapes, Stubbs.”
“What did you call me?”
“Nothing.” I cleared my throat. “What’d you see?”
“Like I said, nothing out of the ordinary. Her grandmother dropped by to see her and left a few minutes later.”
Evelyn Miller was hardly nothing. She probably hated my guts more than Gia did, but her Louisiana high society background didn’t permit Gia’s level of crassness. Alexandra had confided in me once that her grandmother believed in the concept of spiritual connectivity and that there were people who were so destined to be together, that if they did wind up in a relationship, they would be virtually guaranteed a life of unbridled passion and a bond that couldn’t be severed even with the sharpest of dissent. To put it simply, the old woman was insane and was beginning to identify too much with her West Indian roots.
But now, it didn’t seem like just patois-laden mumbo jumbo. Evelyn was the matriarch of the family. The voice of reason. Even the general bowed to her whim like a six-year old boy. If she’d been able to convince Alexandra that she and Ethan were, as she called it “rooted,” then I could easily see this relationship blossoming from there. Alexandra was a very beautiful woman, so it wasn’t a far cry to think that the doctor had always found her attractive.