Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
“ H e wasn’t lying, that was brutal and intense,” Eli said. Tristan had been available to start right away, which meant he accompanied them back to the apartment complex to look around and interview Darby. Eli tagged along because he felt like he should, as if he were the emissary that brought the two sides together. Also there was the fact that Darby seemed so very alone and so very vulnerable. He wasn’t certain what to do with that vulnerability, if he was honest. She certainly hadn’t asked for his help. Should he continue to provide it?
Tristan had followed them back to the apartment complex and walked the perimeter in silence. Darby and Eli stood side by side, watching, both wondering what he saw as he made his detailed perusal. After the initial walk, he pulled his notebook from his pocket, wrote a few things, tucked it away, and said, “I need to see the apartment.”
“The police sealed it,” Darby said uncertainly.
“Landlord trumps police,” Tristan replied.
“Really?” Eli said.
“When I’m on this side of the law, sure,” Tristan said, shrugging a shoulder. He led the way to Asher’s apartment and stood aside while Darby unlocked it. They followed him inside but stopped in the entryway. Darby was tense, and Eli hovered, feeling oddly protective. Did he think she was capable of killing a man, of killing Asher? He knew absolutely nothing about her, except that she was above average attractive. His instinct told him she wasn’t a killer; it was that same instinct that told him she was in over her head and needed a friend right now. Which begged the question, where were her friends? Why was she so alone?
“It smells weird,” Darby noted, arms crossed tightly over her chest.
Eli took a delicate sniff and agreed. “Have you ever noticed that when someone says something smells bad, your instinct is to inhale? Why wouldn’t it be the opposite?”
“Automatic exhale? You’d have to have a ready supply of oxygen in your lungs. Most people don’t.”
“I’m going to make that my new goal: to always have enough oxygen to do the right thing.” He pressed his hand to his heart, like a pledge, and she smiled and relaxed the stiff set of her shoulders. He might not be suave and confident, but he could make people laugh, could set them at ease.
“Darby, come here,” Tristan called.
Darby raised her brows at Eli. “Do you think anyone ever defies him?”
“I can think of one person,” Eli said. When Josie was nearby, Tristan was putty. He tried to pretend he wasn’t, and that made it funnier somehow.
“What was the manner of death?” Tristan began as soon as they were in the bedroom. They joined him in staring at the bed, with its giant blood spot in the center. The mattress was saturated and already turning brown at the edges. Darby swallowed hard and crossed her arms again.
“Stabbing, I think? I heard them say something like that. And with all the blood…” she motioned halfheartedly to the bed.
“You don’t remember stabbing him,” Tristan said it as a statement as he noted her reaction, studying her keenly. Eli studied her, too, but he saw only fear and trepidation, no guilt or shock.
Darby shook her head. “No. The room.” She motioned again. “It looks familiar, the entire apartment. It’s like I can almost recall being here, almost catch snatches and glimmers of…something? But I don’t know what. Whatever it is, it doesn’t feel like it involves violence or anger.”
“Did you know the victim in your conscious memories? Had you ever talked, interacted?”
“No more than I do with any of them,” she said, and this time motioned to Eli, who winced.
Ouch. He had long suspected that Darby viewed all the tenants as an anomalous mass of admirers. To hear proof of it was both painful and validating. What was he doing here? Why didn’t he leave?
“Was there any blood in your apartment?” Tristan asked.
Eli looked down, noting the lack of bloody footprints. He knew nothing, but to him that seemed significant. With so much blood, one would expect it to get everywhere. How had the killer kept his footprints from the room?
“Um,” Darby said, and she had blanched a light shade of pale. Tristan waited her out, notching an eyebrow to prompt her to answer. “Well, there was some blood but, um, I don’t know where it came from, and I might be mixing up my days because, um, there’s maybe been some other blood there before?”
“In your apartment?” Tristan pressed. He was using the tone again, the one that purposely lacked all judgment. Impartial, that’s me, the tone seemed to say. You can trust me with your darkest secrets. Eli wondered if he honed that skill as a cop or since he became a private investigator.
“In my apartment and, um, in my bed.”
Tristan pondered that a few beats, mulling as he stared at the bed. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“No,” Darby said quickly.
“Not even casually, for hookups?” He darted her another of those studying glances. Eli wasn’t certain if he was trying to see if she was lying or merely curious to read her expression.
“No,” she replied, more vehement, with a head shake for good measure. “No one, absolutely no one. I don’t date.”
Now Eli and Tristan traded glances. What was that about? Because she sounded awfully fervent for a pretty woman in her twenties. Eli found himself softening toward her even more. Clearly something was going on with her and she was in need of understanding, of a friend. He suspected that the new information made Tristan more suspicious.
“A lot of people don’t date,” he felt compelled to add.
Tristan’s cheek ticked, apparently amused by Eli’s defense. “True,” he said, nodding. He scanned the room again, made a few more notations in his notebook, and led the way outside. The three of them paused on the front stoop, and that was when the interrogation began.
“Have you ever been treated for mental health issues?” Tristan asked Darby, as soon as the door closed.
She was caught off guard, which was probably the point. “N-no.”
“Do you take medication? For migraines, for anxiety, for anything?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been arrested? Is there currently a warrant for your arrest? Have you ever been stalked, harassed, followed? Have you noticed anything unusual in your surroundings lately?”
On and on and on the questions went, until even Eli was exhausted and drained, and he wasn’t the one answering. By the time Tristan left, Darby was visibly listing, leaning against the bricks of the apartment, as if for support. Eli had at first resisted the impulse to help, to care, to herd. He didn’t want to come off as a weirdo or creeper. But she looked so gutted, so totally defenseless and lost, that he put an arm around her and shepherded her to his apartment. And it wasn’t his imagination that she looked relieved by that and even leaned into him as they walked.
Now they sat at his kitchen table, eating the sandwiches he’d assembled for them, along with fruit and yogurt. The silence was heavy but companionable. Finally, after Darby scraped her yogurt container and took the last bite, she set it aside and spoke.
“Thank you.”
“No problem,” Eli said.
“I’ve never known a guy who could cook,” she noted.
“Technically I assembled. I’m fairly certain if Gordon Ramsey were here to observe, he would find a way to call me an idiot for my near incompetence. Probably put bread on my ears and call me an idiot sandwich.”
She snickered a laugh that ended with a delicate snort. Her cheeks flushed, embarrassed, but Eli smiled. The more he got to know her, the realer she seemed. Less like an untouchable beauty queen, and more like one of the women he’d been friends with for ages. She picked up the yogurt container and stared into its depths, unblinking.
“What’s it telling you?” he asked.
She jumped to attention and flushed again. “Nothing. I don’t actually hear yogurt speak, so I’ve got that going for me.”
“You’re almost lucid enough to be a senator,” Eli said.
“I just…” She stared into the yogurt again. “It would never in a million years have occurred to my husband to eat yogurt. Or fruit, for that matter.”
Eli felt like his tongue swelled four sizes and lodged in his throat. “You’re married?”
“Widowed,” she said, with a sad little smile, and then peered closer at him. “You didn’t know? I thought it was the talk of the complex.”
“I tend to tune out the other tenants, a lesson I learned the hard way after one too many conversations that started with, ‘Bro, I bet you…’ and then ended with someone jumping something motorized over a lot of stacked things. By the way, did you know that the guy in unit thirteen can jump a moped over thirty stacked bowling balls?”
Darby whistled. “Bro,” she said, and Eli laughed so unexpectedly that he had to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from spewing his water.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked when he had himself back under control.
“No, yes, maybe, I don’t know.” She sighed. “I don’t really interact with other humans much, sorry. I guess that was pretty obvious when I came to you, a stranger, for help.”
Eli twisted the cap on his water bottle, thinking. Did Darby ever go out? She might, during the day when he was at work, but he’d never seen her come or go in the evenings, had never noticed any other cars in her parking spot. Did she not have any family or friends? Was she really so alone? Suddenly he felt guilty for castigating her as one of the pretty people. In high school those girls had traveled in packs for safety and strength. No one so alone could be part of that group.
“You can talk to me,” he said. “I promise I’ll keep it secret.”
“I’ve never had a friend who was a man,” Darby said.
She swallowed hard. Another tendril of her lustrous hair burst free and cradled her perfect face, cupping it pleasantly. She was so very pretty that it would be easy to fall into the temptation of fixating on her beauty, of making that the sum of her entire personality. How she herself hadn’t fallen into that trap was a mystery. Whatever the reason, Eli’s concern for her worked to tamp down any normal reaction to her. Instead of seeing her as a beautiful woman who was out of his league, he saw her as the literal girl next door, desperately in need of help and support. That, more than anything, threw a bucket of cold water on any desire.
Their phones chimed with a text at the same time. “It’s Tristan,” Darby said, staring at hers. “He must have texted us both.”
Eli read his silently. Here is the name of a company that cleans biohazards from apartments. Call them as soon as the police clear the room and let me know when it’s done. I’m moving in.
“Oh,” Darby gasped. “Can he do that?”
“It’s your building,” Eli replied.
“Don’t you think it will bother him to live where someone was killed?”
Eli sputtered a laugh. “No. I don’t think it would bother him, even if he was the person who killed him. Tristan only has feelings about one thing, and her name is Josie.”
“What about you?” Darby asked.
Eli felt called out and on the spot and froze accordingly. “I mean, I did have feelings for Josie, briefly, but I realized pretty quickly it wasn’t going to work. It didn’t affect our friendship, and I like Tristan for her. They’re good together.”
Darby’s lips twisted with wry amusement. “Good to know. What I meant, though, was whether or not it bothers you to continue to live here. In close proximity to a man who was murdered, to have coffee with the woman who might have killed him.” All traces of amusement slipped from her face and she shuddered.
“Hey, I don’t believe you killed him, not for a minute.”
“No?” she said, brows raised with such a hopefully vulnerable smile that he gave her a soft smile in return.
“No, it’s not possible. And I don’t think Tristan thinks that, either. He’s being thorough and the best way to do that is to be close by, to immerse himself in your life. Clearly something is going on with you that is troubling.”
“As long as I didn’t hurt anyone, I don’t care,” Darby exclaimed.
Eli studied her, not certain how to break it to her and burst her bubble. “Darby, it’s possible you were there and didn’t kill him. It’s also possible you saw who did.”
She stared at him, her mouth a little pucker of surprise. “Are you saying I might be in danger?”
“I’m saying I don’t know, but it’s a good idea for all of us to be wary. And it’s a really good idea for Tristan to be here.”
“Oh.” Her hands shook. She sat on them and glanced away, toward his cabinets.
Eli’s heart wrenched for her, so alone and helpless. “Hey,” he said, placing his palm on the table between them. “This is a lot. Tristan is good at the investigating and protecting, but he’s not so much on the talking it out and emotional healing stuff. I’m pretty good at that, if I do say so myself. I know,” he paused and made a swirling motion with his hand, encompassing her face. “Guys probably tend to hit on you, and it’s probably an annoying problem to have. But I promise you that’s not what this is, and I don’t have any interest in making it that. I’m offering to be a friend, that’s all. No strings, no creepy intentions. My door is open, if you need anything.”
Darby swallowed hard, thinking. She looked petrified, but also determined. “Thank you. I hear you, and I appreciate what you’re saying. I’m not normally one of those women who needs a lot of people, or any people. I tend to keep things to myself and deal. But it might be nice to have a sounding board for some things.” She peeped a shy glance at him and he gave her an encouraging nod. Darby felt like a wild mouse he was attempting to tame with sunflower seeds. Too much and she would skitter back to her hiding place.
She let out a little breath and eased the tense set of her shoulders slightly. “I should get home. Thanks for this, for everything. I’m sorry it’s been so much.”
He didn’t want to say it was nothing, because to her it was. But it made him sad that she seemed to inhabit a world where seeking help for something as monumental as murder still seemed like too much of an ask. So he deferred to his old friend, humor. “You saved me from a full day of balancing my checkbook.”
“It takes you a day to do that?” she said.
“I’m very slow, Darby. Don’t make fun.”
She shook her head, smiling, looking slightly less tense as she let herself out of his apartment.