Chapter 12 #2
“Enemies?” The disbelief made her voice high. “What are you talking about?”
Jem shifted in his seat again. He turned his hands up, and he didn’t seem to realize until then that they were curled into fists. With what must have taken an effort, he straightened his fingers.
“When I examined Gerald’s body,” Tean said, “his injuries didn’t appear to be consistent with a fall. Or at least, not with an accidental fall.”
“What does that mean?” Brigitte’s fingers tightened around the tissues. To Jem, she said, “What does he mean, ‘not accidental’?”
“He means somebody killed him,” Jem said. “That’s why I’m asking you who would have wanted to hurt him.”
She still had the wadded-up tissues pressed to her cheek, and she sounded confused more than disbelieving when she said, “Nobody.”
Jem threw Tean a look, and Tean was surprised to read desperation in it.
“It might be hard to believe that someone could want to hurt Gerald,” Tean said.
“But do you remember anything unusual happening recently? It might be from the last few days, or it might have been weeks or even months ago. Financial problems. A disagreement. Even something as simple as Gerald being inexplicably upset.”
Brigitte shook her head as Tean spoke, but now she stopped. Her hand dropped to her lap. “He was upset. He was in a terrible mood.”
“When?” Jem asked.
“Yesterday. I thought—” She glanced at Jem and then away again. “I thought I knew why he was in such a bad mood, so I didn’t really think anything of it.”
“Did anything else happen?” Tean asked. “Anything from yesterday that stood out to you?”
“No. It was a normal day, except we were going to have dinner with you. I was excited to have dinner with you.”
She leaned forward, one hand moving like she wanted to take Jem’s. Either Jem didn’t see, or—Tean suspected—pretended not to see. After a moment, Brigitte sat back.
“Can you walk us through yesterday?” Tean asked. “If something happened, maybe you noticed it but didn’t realize you noticed it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. How could I notice it and not notice it?”
“Just tell him about yesterday,” Jem said. “Tean’s the smartest person I know.”
“We woke up. We had breakfast. The children were being absolutely atrocious, so I sent them to watch a movie—”
“In their room?” Tean asked.
Brigitte only gestured vaguely toward the lodge. “There’s a theater. Gerald had to work, so I did some shopping—”
“When you say Gerald had to work,” Tean interrupted again, “what does that mean?”
“They had their morning devotional. Then a group session. After that, he met one on one with the members of the group. They had a break for lunch.” She stopped, and her slightly raised eyebrows suggested annoyance. “How is this helping?”
“We don’t know what’s important yet,” Jem said.
“I don’t know everything about the schedule,” she said to Tean. “You can ask Stephen for the details.”
“Did you see Gerald at lunch?”
“Briefly. I stopped to ask if he wanted to eat together. We almost always eat lunch together. He says it’s restorative, being with me.
It’s a break from being a tower of spiritual strength for the others.
” The words didn’t have any irony or sarcasm behind them, which was maybe more remarkable than if they had.
She continued, “But he said no, he had work to do. He wouldn’t even look up from his phone.
” She worked her fingers along the seam of her dark jeans.
Finally, she said, “He did seem upset, now that I think about it.”
“What about that afternoon?”
“He was busy with the group. I came back here. I read. I took a nap. I got dressed for dinner.”
“Where were the kids?” Jem asked. The question came out of nowhere, and the intensity of it took Tean by surprise. To judge by the startled ripple across Brigitte’s face, it took her by surprise too.
Brigitte didn’t exactly say, Who knows?, but the next silence suggested a struggle to recall. “They were at the movie. And then there’s a pool,” she finally said. “And an arcade. Gerald and I have always believed in teaching the children to be independent.”
“Independent,” Tean said, unable to control the snarl in his voice.
Silence dragged on, and color rose in Brigitte’s cheeks.
“When you saw Gerald at dinner,” Tean finally made himself ask, “was he still upset?”
“No, he was fine. The same as always.”
“But you thought he was upset about the dinner with—” Tean couldn’t bring himself to say Jem, so he said, “—us.”
“I knew he wanted to talk to you about—about helping you.” A trace of something sharp entered her voice. “And about the money. But he wasn’t upset.” Then she frowned, and she said more slowly, “He seemed better, actually. I thought he had simply…gotten used to the idea.”
“So,” Jem said, “something happened yesterday morning that upset him. But by that evening, he was in a better mood.”
Brigitte gave a delicate shrug. “It all sounds so dramatic when you say it like that. I don’t know; it was just a normal day.”
“Anything else?” Tean asked.
“Nothing. He got ready for dinner—” But she broke off again. “He went into his bedroom to print something. I was annoyed because we were going to be late, but then he came out and told me he was ready, and we left.”
“He printed something in his bedroom?”
“He always brings a printer,” Brigitte explained.
“He likes to give them General Conference talks to read, spiritual thoughts, that kind of thing. Most of these places have a business center, but you’d be surprised how often the printer is out of service, or someone else is using it, or they ask you not to print more than one copy. ”
“What did he print?” Jem asked.
Brigitte stared at him with the nonverbal equivalent of I have no idea.
Tean was out of his seat only a moment behind Jem. The blond man strode to the door, opened it, and—
And there was Stephen. For a moment, the perfect smile flickered, and then he held up his hands and laughed. “You scared me. I was coming to check—”
“Move,” Jem said and pushed past him toward the next bedroom.
“You need to go back to the main room,” Tean said as he followed Jem. Stephen didn’t retreat, though, so Tean planted himself in the hall, arms folded, and stared.
After a moment, Stephen gave a crooked smile, held up his hands again—this time in surrender—and beat it back down the hall.
Brigitte watched him go, shaking her head, before following Jem into the bedroom.
Tean stayed where he was, keeping an eye on the hall, but with a view into the bedroom where Jem and Brigitte now stood.
It looked like the other bedrooms at the lodge: the heavy wood furniture, the copper touches, Old West meets luxury living.
A sliding glass door showed a snowy stretch of ground and then darkness; the storm was still raging.
Unlike Brigitte’s bed, this one was neatly made but had clearly been slept in at some point.
Jem was inspecting a printer on the desk. He glanced over at Tean and shook his head. He tugged open a drawer. And then he stopped.
“I thought I saw—” Brigitte began.
Jem put up a hand.
Brigitte froze.
“Tean,” Jem said, the name sharp.
Tean slipped past Brigitte. Jem was pointing at the carpet.
Water beaded on the thick pile. It only took Tean a moment to trace the outline of a shoe.
“They came in through the slider,” Jem said in a low voice, and he pointed. “I could get that thing open with a butter knife, and anyway, there’s water in the tracks.”
“But what—” Brigitte said. And then she stopped. “It’s gone.”
“What?” Jem asked. “What’s gone?”
“His briefcase.”