Almost fricking midnight. Edward Tarrant tried to look welcoming, tried to look loving, tried to look like the affectionate husband of a weary-but-devoted spouse and the son-in-law of a conscientious college president who’d cut their vacation short to handle an emergency. Not only had said relatives’ flight been ridiculously late, but they’d clearly been the last to deplane. His ass hurt from the plastic airport seats. If he never saw another cup of coffee again it’d be too soon, and he’d gotten fifty thousand texts from Sasha Vogelby.
We need to talk, she’d written. And then: When can we talk?
Who the hell would text someone at this time of night?
Another text pinged. Are you ignoring me? Do not ignore me! With an exclamation mark, like a schoolgirl.
Certainly he was ignoring her. And her badgering texts. He’d call her—no, show up at her office so he could read her face—tomorrow. He didn’t give a shit what she wanted. Only the attention-hungry Sasha Vogelby could use someone else’s death—unconnected to her, and none of her business—to grab the spotlight for herself.
The good news? She’d leave him the hell alone as soon as Brinn was back in town. More good news: no cops had called him. And no reporters. The eleven o’clock TV shows, headlined and bursting with stories about a Red Sox win, had come and gone without a mention of Avery Morgan. He’d watched it all from the corner stool of the Take-Off Bar, having bribed the bartender with a five to turn up the volume.
He narrowed his eyes, seeing two familiar shapes, each pulling a black roller bag, coming toward him on the carpeted concourse. All the other gates were deserted now, Logan Airport’s Terminal C echoing with late-night emptiness.
“Darling!” Brinn called out, waving an arm, as if there was some way he wouldn’t have seen her. She’d turned to her father, pointing toward Edward like she’d won the lottery by spotting her own husband. Brinn. Her hair cropped and carefully silver, in her predictable travel outfit of little black sleeveless dress, flats, a scarf looped around her neck.
Reg Buchholz, equally predictable in his gold-buttoned blazer, wrinkle-free even after a transatlantic flight, raised a palm in greeting.
In the brief time it took them to reach him, Edward reminded himself of all he had to accomplish. These two, wife and father-in-law college president, should be handled as allies. He needed to remember that.
“I’m so sorry.” He turned on a smile as they drew closer. “I had no idea you were coming back so quickly.”
“What the hell did you think I would do?” Buchholz wheeled his bag to heel as if it were an obedient dog. “A death, and possible homicide?”
“Hello, darling,” Brinn interjected. A hint of Beacon Hill lingered in her voice: dah-ling.
She kissed him once on each cheek, as if she were still in Paris. He felt his skin flinch as her lips touched his, hoped she didn’t notice.
“Welcome home,” Tarrant said, gesturing toward the exit. “The car’s out there. I take it your flight was—”
“And, Daddy.” Brinn hadn’t stopped talking. She spun her black bag toward Edward, relinquishing control of the wheelie while she turned to her father, talking over her shoulder as they walked out the glass doors and entered the parking garage. “No need to discuss all that here in public. We’ll get in the car, we’ll drive home, we’ll … I don’t know. It’s six A.M. Paris time. I’m exhausted.”
“There’s no time for me to be exhausted,” Buchholz said. He’d left his bag on the pavement, apparently for Edward-the-lackey to deal with. “We have a possible murder to solve.”
Edward let go of both suitcases to click open the car doors for them, ever so considerate, then loaded their bags. He slammed the trunk. A “murder” to “solve”? Hell no. That’s not our job.
They drove to the airport exit in silence. The elevated highway revealed the lights of the surprisingly modest downtown Boston skyline glowing in the distance before the car descended into the gloomy darkness of the Sumner Tunnel. Edward was always aware of the depths of Boston Harbor above and around them, a few feet of luck and complicated engineering protecting travelers from drowning in the unimaginably crushing weight. He always wanted to drive faster through here.
“Is someone texting you? Your phone keeps pinging.” Brinn’s voice from the backseat. He’d gotten lazy in her absence, kept his ringer on.
“It’s nothing,” he said, clicking it to “vibrate.” Damn Sasha. It was almost one in the morning.
“Any calls from the media? What did you tell them? Do the police think there’s a danger to the students?” Buchholz fired one question after another at him across the front seat’s center console as they continued through the tunnel, annoyingly crowded for this time of night. “I assume not, or you’d have certainly conveyed that to me, correct? Do we have a plan? Am I holding a campus-wide meeting? Or making a statement? Is it written? I’ll need to see that before…”
Tarrant tuned out Buchholz’s high-handed interrogation. Preposterous. Obviously he’d handled it. Obviously there was a plan. That’s why he had this job.
By the time the lights of Boston reappeared on the other side of the tunnel, Tarrant had finalized that plan. His first priority was making sure Brinn Buchholz Tarrant never suspected her husband’s liaison with Avery Morgan. Even dead, that woman could ruin his life.