Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
“ S o, Elyse can be all the way in Maine and send you this information?” Josie confirmed. She sat on Tristan’s lap as he surveyed the files on his computer, cutting bubble wrap into precise squares. “Sensory counting activity,” she informed his inquisitive expression.
“Yup,” he answered her earlier question. “Basically she can work from anywhere.”
“Huh. Why didn’t you go into that line of work?”
“Because I have an equal chance of hacking computers and joining the Russian ballet. Also, I don’t want to be anywhere else.” He gave her a little squeeze.
She paused cutting to stare at his profile. “Swooney swoon,” she muttered, and he had to press back a laugh. “For the record, you could totally hack computers. I believe in you.”
That earned a look. “But not the ballet?”
“Probably yes, but I don’t want other women staring at you in tights.”
“I’ll take it,” he said, giving her another squeeze as he returned his attention to the screen. Elyse had managed to tap all the cameras in the area. Washington DC was the fourth highest surveilled city in the nation, a fact most people failed to realize. Like it or not, the city’s inhabitants were almost always on camera. There was no direct line onto the apartment complex, but a program Elyse wrote combined all the cameras in the area and filtered everything down to likely or suspicious candidates for him to review, funneling what would have been days of work into a few minutes of clicking. The human element—Tristan—used his cop instinct to distill it further, writing down a few license plates to research, memorizing a few faces to track. There was one car, a blue sedan, parked too close to the complex for too long, but it was after Asher’s murder. Suspicious, but not relevant. Tomorrow he would begin to hunt them down and either rule them out or add them to his suspect list. For now…
“How would you feel about mingling with the neighbors?”
He barely got the words out before Josie tossed aside her work and reached for her shoes. “Bam, I’m ready.”
“You are so not,” he said, kneeling to fix her shoes, which she’d shoved on the wrong feet. It was perpetually awe-inspiring to him that the things that made them so different failed to annoy him. Rather, he was thankful that Josie was so wholeheartedly ready to leave the apartment and embrace humanity, while he preferred to stay inside and shun it.
They went back to the courtyard and sat by the pool again. As before, it didn’t take long for one of the other residents to find them. This time two of them arrived, Anthony and Dex. Despite the cool temperature, Anthony wore only a speedo. As someone who ran hot, Tristan could have believed Anthony didn’t mind the cold, except the fact that he couldn’t stop shivering. And since his physique was comparatively lacking, the attire didn’t seem to be for the sake of showing his muscles, presenting Tristan with a mystery. Was he self-deluded enough to believe the speedo made him seem macho? Did he not realize the tiny garment instead made him look like a chihuahua on ice?
“’Sup,” Anthony said, giving them a nod that lingered a bit too long and with too much interest on Josie. Tristan shifted. If his biceps rippled menacingly, it was an unconscious gesture. Mostly. In any case it worked to rip Anthony’s attention off Josie and onto him.
“The new guy,” Dex said, adding his own nod. The two men sat in the adjoining lounges. “And his sister?”
“Girlfriend,” Josie corrected, easing slightly closer to Tristan’s hovering presence. There was something a little uncomfortable about one or both of the men. Tristan couldn’t pinpoint what it was, nor which of them gave it off.
“You took Asher’s place,” Anthony said. “Dude.”
“We heard he died,” Tristan said, deciding to skip the small talk and get right to it.
“Not died. Murdered,” Dex said.
Tristan dipped his head in acknowledgement, while Josie shivered. Though whether that was in response to Dex’s pronouncement or the chill in the air, he couldn’t say. Maybe both things. Whatever the reason, it prompted him to give up the pretense of space between them. He shifted Josie easily onto his chair and anchored his arm around her. She nestled gratefully in response, giving one last tiny shiver.
“What do you guys think happened?” Josie said. “Nobody we’ve talked to so far has any insight.” The way she tipped her head artlessly made it appear that these two yokels might have deep insight, despite the fact that one of them wore a tiny neon diaper.
“Asher, man,” Anthony said. “Asher.”
“Dude,” Dex agreed in the same tone.
Tristan and Josie waited to see if that would lead to more. It did not. The two men stared into space, two different directions. “Yes, Asher,” Josie prompted. “Did you know him?”
“I don’t think anyone really knew Asher,” Anthony said.
“I went to a game with him once,” Dex added, surprising everyone.
“Really?” Anthony said, and did he sound a little envious?
“Yeah, it was weird,” Dex said.
Josie tossed Tristan a helpless look. Now that the conversation had turned to sports, she was over her head. “Weird how?” Tristan asked.
“We’d barely spoken two words before, then one night he knocks on my door, says he scored tickets to a game, and did I want to go. I thought maybe he was having some kind of latent loneliness, wanting a bonding experience, also free tickets, you know? I said sure. Obviously I figured they were the cheap seats and maybe I would score a couple of hot dogs, have a budget night. But we get there, and it was some of the most exclusive seats in the park. I’m talking we were within breathing distance of the team’s owner.”
“How did he get the tickets?” Tristan asked.
“No idea,” Dex said. “I joked with him about having a secret connection, but he never spoke a word to another human in that place, me included. Just watched that game with a spooky sort of intensity.”
“He watched the game in silence?” Tristan confirmed.
Dex nodded. “At first the game was a skunk. I mean, we were losing bad. The Nationals’ year had been hit or miss, but I felt bad that the game he chose was one where they were losing so bad. So I made some comment, bad game or something. But Asher.” He paused and frowned. “He stared at the field and said, ‘They’re going to win this one.’”
“And did they?” Josie asked.
“Yeah,” Dex said, wonder in his tone. “They came back. It made the news, their comeback was so miraculous. They won huge.”
“What was Asher’s response?” Tristan asked.
“I thought he’d be pumped, or maybe even smug. But nope. Not a word. We stood up and left and never spoke again. I’m not into all that mysticism stuff, but I swear it was like he manifested that win by the power of his will. It was only baseball, but it was one of the weirdest nights of my life.”
“That gels with my image of Asher,” Anthony agreed. “At first he came across as casual and friendly, but once you got past that, he was pretty intense.”
“Intense with sports or other stuff?” Josie asked. To her it seemed impossible to be intense about something as inconsequential as sports, but others disagreed on that point.
“Just stuff,” Anthony said, shrugging. “Sometimes he’d be sort of friendly and chatty, but it could switch like that.” He snapped his fingers. “You’d be talking and comment on something stupid, like the weather, and he’d all of a sudden get serious and say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ like it was life and death or something. He was hard to figure.”
“He must have been rich, though. A car like that,” Tristan prodded.
“Yeah,” Anthony agreed, nodding. “But…” His face worked into a puzzled frown. “Also no. He wasn’t flashy, didn’t dress great, his apartment was nothing special, didn’t travel.”
“Then what made him seem rich? Maybe the car was a gift or something,” Tristan tried.
“I don’t know. I used to work as a caddy at a country club and you learn a lot about people who are actually rich, versus people who are trying to be rich. Asher acted a whole lot like the first kind. He had a sort of confidence that has to be earned. I don’t know how else to describe it, but he also didn’t seem rich. It was weird.”
“Yeah, weird,” Dex agreed. “I wouldn’t be shocked if it turned out he was in the mob or witness protection or something like that.”
“Did you ever see anyone you thought might be dangerous lurking around here, before the murder?” Tristan asked.
“Why? Are you afraid someone’s going to come to your apartment and finish you off?” Anthony asked, grinning stupidly.
“It never hurts to be prepared,” Tristan said. He tried to sound meek, something harder to accomplish when he was probably bigger than both of them put together.
Anthony laughed, as if the prospect of Tristan’s fear amused him. “So many people come and go from here. It’s hard to say who’s shady these days.”
“I heard Asher and our landlord had a thing,” Tristan tried, and that particular rumor caught the two men by surprise, if their shocked expressions were any indication.
“The ice lady? Go Asher,” Anthony said.
“Maybe she killed him,” Dex said.
“Why would you say that?” Josie asked.
“It’s always the quiet ones who keep to themselves,” Dex said. He eyed Josie. “Are you quiet, Josie? Do you keep to yourself?”
Tristan didn’t like his tone, nor the way he eyed Josie. “Josie keeps to me,” he said, easing his arm around her a little tighter.