“Yes, sir. Would you like me to check whether you made reservations with us?”
Gotcha. “That’d be great. The name is Dean Lewis.”
“Hold on, please. July of last year, correct?”
“That’s right.” I shift a few more slides of the cube.
“I’m sorry, sir. You said Lewis? Nothing under that name.”
“What about Martin? Travis Martin?”
The line goes quiet. “Yes, sir. Reservation for July sixteenth. Seven o’clock, quiet table for two.”
Jackpot. “All right, thank you, Lisa, you’ve been so helpful.”
“Would you like to make another reservation for your wife at this time?”
“No, thank you,” I say as Patel strides through the door. “Have a great day.”
Yanking at his tie, Patel heads straight for the coffee machine and fills the largest mug we have. “Michael Harris is on his way. Should be here any minute.”
“You called him in?”
“No, this was on him.” He reaches for the sugar. “He says he has something to tell us.”
“What time is the autopsy?”
“Four.” He checks the time on his phone. “I put a rush on the toxicology, too. Should be ready shortly after. I’ll let you know as soon as we have the results. What’ve you been working on?”
“Well,” I say, clutching the half-finished cube in one hand as I give my arms a stretch. “Although Joanna’s final text was to her husband, her final phone call was to Gary Danko’s, to confirm a dinner reservation that Travis made sometime earlier for July sixteenth.”
“Wow—Travis texted her the night before, too.” Patel slouches into the seat across from me and slurps his coffee. “Those two really couldn’t get enough of each other—on her wedding anniversary, no less.”
I tell him about my conversation with the hostess, and then we review the phone records, the matching dates and times of the texts, and Joanna’s short, coded answers.
“I know you’ve got your heart set on Michael Harris,” I say, chewing on my pen cap. “It’s a convenient conclusion to draw since the police were called to Ravenwood on a domestic violence call the evening of July fifteenth. But if Joanna and Travis went to Gary Danko’s the following night, he had to have been the last one to see her alive.”
Patel shakes his head in disagreement. “I gave the Travis angle some thought yesterday, but the answer’s been in front of us the whole time. It’s Harris, Shaw. The thing that was holding you up before about the prescriptions being in Mandy’s name doesn’t matter anymore. Those pills belonged to Joanna, and Harris had access to them. Once toxicology comes back and proves large amounts were in her bloodstream, we’ll have a slam-dunk case. Won’t get clearer than that.”
“But Joanna could’ve taken those pills herself. Maybe she was still recovering from the procedure and—”
“If she was taking the pills on a regular schedule, why would there be so many left in the bottles? Why would she tuck them away in a place that’s hard to access?”
“But if what you’re saying is true, that means Michael Harris had to have known those pills were there, in the back of that cabinet.”
“Harris is a control freak. Of course he knew.”
“And you don’t think he questioned why those pills were in someone else’s name?”
At that, Patel scowls. “He might’ve, but it doesn’t matter. We’ll have enough. Big picture, Shaw, remember?”
“It’s not about that,” I argue. “It’s about making sure all the pieces add up.”
“That’s where you’re confused,” Patel says, hitching his chin at the cube in my hand. “This case isn’t like that toy you’re messing with. It doesn’t need to be finished, with every single thing lining up. That’s practically impossible for a case like this. As long as we have the outer edges done, the frame of it,