head hung low as he examined the rug beneath his feet.
"Hey," I said in a soothing tone. "It's not your fault you can't remember. I'll keep at it." He lifted his head and looked at me. "How did it go outside?" I nodded toward the back garden. "You were examining the grass pretty intently."
He flopped back in his chair, mimicking my pose. "I dunno. With so many people traipsing to and from the crime scene, it's been totally flattened."
"I'm sorry." I could see how frustrating it was to follow a lead to a dead end. I'd only just started this new career and I was already thinking in terms of leads and clues and dead ends.
"You had to have known, when you took the photos of Steven, that the woman involved was Sophie Drake." I leaned my head back and gazed up at the ceiling.
"Yeah."
"What would you do? Like, now? Knowing what we know, that it is Sophie Steven is having an affair with. What would your next steps be?"
"I'd go talk to them," he said. Which is exactly what I thought he'd do. "While it's technically none of my business what they do, it wouldn't hurt to give them a little shakeup that a PI is sniffing around, and to have some home truths how their actions are hurting others."
"That's what I thought," I murmured. "That's why you didn't close out the cases. You were tying up your own loose ends. And the Firefly Bay Hotel connection was coincidental after all." I was deflated over that particular fact. I'd felt so sure there was something going on at the hotel that involved all three of Ben's cases. Which reminded me. Pulling out my phone, I squinted at the photos I'd taken of Brett's wall, but the cracks in my screen didn't allow for easy viewing. Instead, I emailed them to Ben's business address, then headed into his office to view them on the monitor.
"These don't make any sense." I sighed. Brett had pinned his work rosters on the wall, highlighted a different staff member’s name on each roster, then pinned a red string from it to a black silhouette of a woman in the middle. On the other side were random people's names scribbled on scraps of paper and given the same treatment. Everything led to the silhouette of the woman, but there was no clue who the woman was. "Maybe she's not a woman but a representation of something," I said out loud.
"It's very odd. And it's also puzzling that Brett didn't invite you to see this for yourself. If it's part of his research." Ben stood behind me, peering over my shoulder.
"The first journal Brett showed me had snippets of conversations he'd overheard while at work. Yet so far, the other journals don't have anything like that in them. Most of it is judging people’s fashion choices and bitching about his colleagues."
"So something changed. Something triggered this latest obsession."
"Latest obsession? Why would you say that?" I craned my neck to look at him.
He blinked at me in surprise. "I don't know," he admitted.
I pounced. "You remembered something!"
"That Brett Baxter is obsessive is hardly a breakthrough," he drawled.
"But you said ‘the latest obsession.’ Meaning you knew he'd had previous obsessions. So you must have known something about him that isn't in his file."
"The question is what? And is it relevant?" He frowned at the computer screen. "And are we wasting our time here?"
I had a thunderbolt of a thought. "What if you turned Brett down, said you wouldn't take his case, and he lost it and killed you? I know he's not the same build as you, but he's male and probably strong enough to drag you into the woods."
Ben shrugged. "It could have been him, I suppose. But then whoever killed me may not be related to my cases at all," he pointed out.
"Yes, but whoever it was, you trusted enough to let them into your house. And you were in your kitchen when you were attacked. Maybe offering them a drink or something?"
"There's a lot of maybes."
He was right. I was guessing. The buzz of my phone interrupted us.
"Audrey Fitzgerald," I answered, not recognizing the number.
"Good afternoon, Audrey, this is the Firefly Bay Helping Hand Facility."
"Oh. Hi." The facility that cared for Ben's dad.
"I'm so sorry to hear about Bill Delaney's son, Ben," the woman continued, "We'd like to pass on our sincere condolences."
"Thank you."
"Also, we did receive word from McConnell's that you now have power