Chapter Thirty-Nine
“I’m coming over,” Lulu said over the phone.
“No.” I groaned. “Don’t.” The last thing I wanted was for my sister to show up at my house. One look at my face and she’d know something was very wrong.
“You’re not yourself,” Lulu continued. “You haven’t left the house in what? Three days now?”
“I think I’m getting sick.”
Sick to my stomach. The truth about Ali kept me in a constant state of nausea.
The throbbing headache pounding behind my left eye didn’t help.
And I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in the two days since I’d learned the truth.
When I did manage to fall asleep, it was in short, jagged, restless spurts.
I wanted to dream of Ali. To see him again, to comfort him, at least in my dreams. But he never showed.
“The last thing you need is to catch something from me,” I told her, “and give it to Khalid and the girls.”
“No problem. I’ll wear a face mask.”
“Listen, Lulu. Take a hint.” My voice hardened. “I lost my husband not four months ago. I deserve time to grieve in whatever form that takes without you jumping down my throat.”
“Oh.” Her tone gentled. “Is that what this is?”
Tears stung my eyes. Not exactly. But I was in mourning.
Despairing that Ali had endured his guilt alone.
If only he’d shared the burden. Maybe I could have eased it.
What happened with Lizzie’s dad was an accident, and Ali was a kid caught in an impossible situation.
A scared teenager who followed the directions of the only adult in the room.
That teenage boy must have been so frightened.
The adult he became had to have been riddled with guilt.
Lying by omission, hiding the truth, went against everything Ali was as a person.
I believed Lizzie about Ali feeling the need to talk to her about what happened.
Part of me was actually grateful she’d been there for him.
“Just let me be in my feelings,” I said to my sister, fatigue weighing me down. The truth drained everything from me. “I promise I’m OK.”
“Are you sure? I’m worried.”
“I’m sure. The only way through this is to let myself experience all of the emotions. I’m not going to let anything happen to me. I’d never hurt the kids that way. You? Maybe,” I said, making a faint joke. “But not my babies.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am. I promise I’ll call you tomorrow.”
As I disconnected the call, my phone pinged. A text from an unfamiliar number.
It’s Lizzie. I’m just checking in to make sure you’re OK.
How had she gotten my number? From her brother probably.
I pushed myself out of bed. Binti lazily stretched on her nearby dog bed.
A museum project was due soon, and I never missed a deadline.
But my head felt too cottony to tackle anything harder than making a cup of coffee.
I trudged into the kitchen, with Binti on my heels.
I selected a coffee pod. Normally I went for decaf, but I needed a full shot of caffeine to make it through the day.
Turning on the kitchen faucet, I filled the coffee machine’s water tank.
Yawning, I stood by as the machine whirred, dripping the steaming dark liquid into my coffee cup, the deep, nutty aroma floating through the kitchen.
I’d started using Ali’s favorite cup. He wasn’t one for huge thick mugs.
He preferred the thinner, smaller ones and drank his coffee to the last drop, while I barely got through half of mine.
I gave Binti her breakfast and refreshed her water.
Watching her eat, I sipped the hot, bitter coffee.
Black with no cream or sugar. One of the hardest parts of learning the truth was not being able to talk to anyone about it.
I normally told Lulu everything. But Ali had taken the secret to his death.
Telling anyone would be a betrayal of my husband and his memory.
Reaching for my phone, I called the last person I ever imagined turning to for comfort. Lizzie picked up almost right away.
“Are you all right?” she asked immediately. “I’ve been worried about you.”
I’d had a lot of time over the last few days to think about Lizzie’s culpability in all this.
When I thought of Ayla at age seventeen, I knew I couldn’t blame Lizzie.
She’d been just a kid at the time too. It was even hard to find fault with her mother’s initial instinct to send Ali home to spare them all from her husband’s anger.
Martha Martins couldn’t have known what she was setting in motion.
I exhaled into the phone. “It’s a pretty heavy thing to carry. I hate that Ali had to bear it for all of his adult life.”
She was silent for a long moment. “It is hard. That’s why I tried to keep you from learning the truth. It serves no purpose except to haunt you like it does my family.”
“But I was like a dog with a bone.”
She gave a quiet laugh. “You are very persistent.”
“Everything finally makes sense now about why Ali helped you and your brother.”
“My brother?” I registered the frown in her voice. “What does Billy have to do with this?”
“Ali got him a position at his firm.”
“He did? Billy never told me that. He shouldn’t have asked Ali to help him.
My brother’s not great at holding down a job.
” Her exasperation came through the phone.
“But who am I to talk? I convinced Ali to help me hide my purchase of the Cozy Glenn house. I’m sorry about keeping it a secret from you. He truly didn’t want to.”
“None of that feels like it matters now,” I responded. “But I reserve the right to be mad about it later.”
“Noted,” she said with another light chuckle.
“About the Xanax,” I said slowly, bringing up one last unresolved question. “Do you think Ali was taking it?”
Lizzie paused before answering. “I honestly don’t know. I mean, he was obviously bothered by the events surrounding Daddy’s death. Maybe he wanted something to take the edge off.”
My phone buzzed. I had an incoming call. It was Detective Fox.
“I have to go. I have another call. A business call.” I’m not sure why I lied to Lizzie about the police being on the other line. But it was my first instinct.
“I’ll let you go, then. No problem.” She talked fast. “Listen, Amira. Call anytime you need to talk.”
“Thanks,” I said, eager to switch over to pick up Detective Fox’s call.
“I mean it. It’s the least I can do for you . . . and Ali.”
Thanking her again, I clicked over to pick up the detective’s call.
“We have a new development,” Detective Fox said.
My stomach twisted. “What is it?” Irrationally, I jumped to the conclusion that she suddenly knew about Ali’s role in Lawrence Martins’s death.
“Surveillance footage near the Parkview Hotel in Rosslyn shows the loaner car your husband was driving pulling into the hotel parking lot on the evening of the accident.”
“The Parkview?” I repeated. “What was he doing there?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you. Can you think of any reason Mr. Abadi would have to visit the hotel after leaving the Channel Three work event at Waterman’s Grill?”
“None. We’ve been to a few weddings there, but he’d otherwise have no reason to be there. How long was he at the hotel?”
“Not long. According to our timeline, your husband left Waterman’s at eleven o’clock, and the accident scene is only fifteen minutes from Waterman’s. We think Mr. Abadi was at the hotel for less than twenty minutes.”
What had Ali been doing there? “Is there any surveillance tape from inside the hotel?”
“We’re checking, but it could take some time. Hotels like to protect their guests’ privacy. They don’t willingly share surveillance tape unless a crime has actually been committed on their property.”
“How long could it take to get the tape?”
“If we have to go through the formal process? It could take weeks, unfortunately.”
I hung up, completely bewildered. I could think of no reason for Ali to go to that hotel.
I needed to see that surveillance tape, possibly the last footage ever taken of him.
I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting weeks for that to happen.
There had to be a way to see it sooner. Who could I call?
How could I get that tape? Would Nasser have any special pull?
But just as quickly, I backed away from the notion of asking Nasser. I was still uneasy that he’d known about the second break-in. I wasn’t sure I could trust him now. Or if I ever should have. Maybe I was being overly suspicious. But I needed to rely on myself to figure this out.
Then I remembered running into my second cousin Hamza the last time we attended a wedding at the hotel.
I searched my memory. He was some sort of manager over there.
Did he still have a position at the hotel?
I’d seen Hamza at Ali’s funeral, but we hadn’t talked much beyond him offering condolences.
I went through my contacts and pulled up his number.
“Hamza,” I said when he picked up. “I need a favor.”
“Anything for you,” he said right away. I’d learned that many people jumped at any opportunity to make a widow feel better. Hamza was clearly one of them. “What can I do?”
“Do you still work at the Parkview Hotel?”
“No, I’ve moved to another property. I’m the assistant general manager at the Parkview location in Fair Oaks.”
My heart sank. “Oh.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
I told him about Ali being at the Rosslyn hotel on the night he died. “Do you guys even hold on to surveillance tape for that long?”
“Only if there’s some reason to keep it.”
“Like what?”
“If there’s some sort of accident or altercation. It’s a liability issue, so they keep the footage just in case.”
“I guess I’m out of luck if you don’t work there anymore.”
“It’s still a sister property. A friend of mine is the banquet manager over there. Let me call him. Tell me the date again?”