I smoothed my hair and clothes even though the heat here made the action useless. At least it helped me pull my mind together.
I couldn’t suggest to Ahanti that Geoff might be involved in this. Not until I talked to him at least. Surely he had a perfectly good explanation for lurking around Ahanti’s apartment. Showing her this picture would only make her start fearing the person she should be able to trust the most.
I needed to talk to Geoff right away. The problem was I’d driven here with Ahanti, intending to spend at least the morning. Whether or not I could get away depended on how Mark was faring with golf. I had to admit, I wasn’t sure how long a round of golf should take, but they’d been out there close to three or four hours now.
I called Mark’s cell.
He answered almost immediately. “Hey, sweetheart. How’s your morning going?”
There was something weird in his voice, almost like he was trying to prompt an answer from me without giving away which one he wanted.
That made me think he wanted an out. From what he’d told me last night, he’d never played golf before and felt the only purpose for watching it on TV was if you were having trouble sleeping. The one time my dad had taken me, I was thirteen. I got bored, wandered off to look at a turtle, and fell into a water trap. He’d never invited me again.
Hopefully Mark hadn’t ended up in the water trap, too.
“Do you need a knight in shining armor?” I asked.
“That’s okay. We’re almost done, so if you need me, I can come.”
I kept my laugh soft so it didn’t carry through the phone if anyone was standing nearby. “I actually do need your help, so at least it’s not a complete lie. I’m at Skin Canvas.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
We disconnected.
I shook out my hands, trying to loosen them up. It didn’t work. My fingers still felt like sausages on the ends of my palms, my engagement ring tight.
But I had to pull myself together for Ahanti. I could do that.
I ducked back inside.
Ahanti stood with her hands on her hips in front of the teenager who’d passed me on her way in. “It doesn’t matter how many times you come in. I don’t give sleeves to anyone under twenty-five. Trust me, you wouldn’t thank me later if I did.”
I was rusty on the terminology, but I thought a sleeve was a tattoo that went from shoulder to wrist—a big commitment to want to make when you weren’t even old enough to legally drink.
Ahanti pointed toward the door, and the girl left without an argument.
I stepped out of her path for a second time. “That sounds like a conversation you’ve had before.”
“Too many times.” Ahanti swore. “She was here that day, hanging around. I should have asked her if she saw anyone going into the back room before I shut her down.”
“You didn’t ask Eddie, either,” Terrance piped up from behind the catalogue of gadgets he was flipping through. The front showed a red drone that looked a bit like a race car with propellers.
“Eddie wasn’t here that day,” Ahanti said. “Which is just my luck, since he has an excellent memory for details. He could have told us right away if Cary was here and what he did.”
I would have shot Terrance a you’re-not-helping glare, but he never lowered the catalogue. I squeezed Ahanti’s arm. “Don’t worry. Make the list, and we’ll work on it methodically when I get back.” I backed toward the door. “Right now, I have to go save Mark from my dad.”
Thankfully, Ahanti seemed to believe my excuse. It probably helped that Mark had sounded like he needed an out. Ahanti was one of the few people who could catch me in a lie if I were truly trying to get away with it, but she knew what my dad could be like.
I called Geoff’s office again and arranged to meet him for lunch. I didn’t tell him why. He’d assume it was about Ahanti, and that was true enough.
Even though I’d be meeting him in a public place, I did not want to follow the pattern of so many heroines in the mystery novels I liked to read who did things that made them too stupid to live. If Geoff turned out to be the stalker, he could very well wait for me in the parking lot or slash the tires of my rental car so that I ended up on the side of the road somewhere.
No thank you. I was going to hope for the best and plan for the worst this time.
Since Geoff had never met Mark, we decided to gamble that he wouldn’t know what Mark looked like. Men didn’t ogle pictures of their friends the way women did. We’d failed trying to pull the trick of Mark as an innocent bystander on Ahanti, but we might get away with it on Geoff. Mark had wanted to come along upfront, but I had to have complete control over the situation to read Geoff. I couldn’t mess this one up. Ahanti’s future happiness—and safety—depended on it.
I picked a table with another empty one next to it and waited for Geoff. Mark took a seat at the nearby table, placing himself so that when Geoff sat, Mark would be behind him. It’d make eavesdropping easier for Mark and make Geoff less likely to notice and recognize him on the off chance he had seen a picture.
Geoff showed up almost on time. Whenever I’d had a late-morning appointment with him, he’d always been running behind. My brain logged the unusualness of it the same as it had inconsistencies in witness statements back when I’d been actively working as a lawyer.
Rearranging his schedule to arrive on time meant he wanted to be sure I didn’t read in to his lateness. Poor guy didn’t realize I’d also read into his promptness.
We ordered and settled in at the table.
He didn’t touch his food. “How’s Ahanti? She hasn’t called me again since letting me know she has a stalker.”
“She’s managing.”
I took a bite of my bacon, brie, and apricot grilled cheese. Someone really needed to open a gourmet grilled cheese place in Fair Haven. I’d go there every day.
Geoff followed my lead, though it was clear by the how-can-you-eat-at-a-time-like-this look he gave me that he was waiting for my answer and didn’t want to wait long.
Based on what I knew of Geoff, he’d always seemed like a bad liar. He’d barely been able to string two coherent sentences together the week before he proposed to Ahanti. Same when he’d wanted to surprise her with the trip to the Dominican. All of that could be an act if he were her stalker. Or it could mean that the stalking somehow fit into the delusion he’d built and so it didn’t rattle him the way trying to hide a happy surprise from Ahanti did.
I wouldn’t know until I pressed it. “We do have a lead on Ahanti’s situation. That’s why I asked you here.”
He set his sandwich down and leaned forward.
I took my phone from my purse, queued up the photo of him, and handed it across the table. One of the best ways to assess someone’s guilt or innocence, according to my parents, was to catch them off guard. Geoff wouldn’t be expecting to see himself on my phone.
His hand twitched against his plate, pushing it away slightly. “How did you get this?”
No denying it was him. No trying to pretend it must have been taken at a different time. That was enough of an admission of some sort of guilt that I had no intention of telling him about the private investigator I’d hired. Or any other piece of information about Ahanti’s safety.
“What were you doing staking out her apartment?”
He put my phone on the table, face down. He didn’t want to look at it anymore, but he also wasn’t reacting aggressively by shoving it back across the table to me. That spoke to shame.
Not the emotion I’d expect from her stalker. Stalkers didn’t tend to exhibit shame, even when they were caught. They saw nothing wrong with their actions to be ashamed of.
“It’s not what it looks like. I’m not her stalker. Or a new stalker.” He took a swig of coffee that I knew must have burned all the way down—mine was still too hot to even tentatively sip.
“Has Ahanti seen these?” His words came out in a gasp, betraying him on how hot that coffee had been.
I wasn’t as certain as I needed to be yet that he was innocent, but it was important that he think I believed in him. “Ahanti doesn’t know about it yet. I figured there had to be some explanation, so I came to you first.”
His shoulders came down, and he brought his sandwich back toward him.
As strange as it might seem to someone else, he won me over with that small change. He’d been worried about Ahanti’s reaction. And I didn’t think it was worry because he’d been exposed for what he was. He wasn’t worried he might lose her. It seemed a lot more like worry that he’d add more stress to her when she already had enough.
“So explain it to me. Please. What were you doing there?”
“Once you told me the police couldn’t get a restraining order on the guy because Ahanti didn’t know who he was, I got worried. I thought if I could see someone we knew hanging around her place, it’d solve the problem.” He bit into his sandwich, swallowed, and grimaced. He ran a hand over his no-doubt scalded throat. “I’m no good at it. I fell asleep.”
His answer made sense. How many times had I gotten myself into trouble because I’d wanted to help someone that the police couldn’t aid? It was a good thing Mark couldn’t read my thoughts, because I knew his answer would be too many.
Geoff and I talked for a few more minutes, mostly me assuring him that Ahanti was okay and that I was putting what resources I had behind finding her stalker. Then he headed back to work.
Once he was out of sight, Mark slipped from his table over to mine.
“Do you believe him?” he asked.
I daubed the crumbs off my plate, stalling for time. His story didn’t have any holes in it that I could spot. He’d also seemed genuinely embarrassed by being caught and more concerned about Ahanti’s well-being than anything else. “I can’t think of any reason why he’d be stalking his fiancée or why he’d send a picture of himself with the face burned out to scare her. If he wanted to break up with her, he could have done it easier ways.”
Mark leaned back in his chair. “He didn’t seem like he’d want to anyway.”
He hadn’t. So why did I still feel all tangled up inside?
The logical side of me said it was because I’d learned to trust no one rather than because Geoff was guilty of anything worse than poor judgment. People had lied to me before, and I’d fallen for it. I’d thought people were innocent when they weren’t.
If pigs flew and he turned out to be her stalker, he also wouldn’t be the first friend who I’d helped convict of a crime.
I wasn’t going to gamble Ahanti’s safety on my desire to be a loyal friend to Geoff.
“I’ll have Rockwood Investigations look into him, maybe even tail him for a bit, just to be sure.”