The Dangerous Edge of Things - By Tina Whittle Page 0,3

and manila folders, including Eric’s desk calendar.

“Did your brother have any appointments scheduled for this afternoon?”

“Why would he? He was leaving for the Bahamas.”

Ryan eyed the calendar. I stepped forward and moved a notebook on top of it, but not before I’d caught a glimpse of the day’s agenda—two items, both in the morning: Tai pick-up: 7:30, flight to Miami: 11:05. I wondered how much Ryan had scavenged from his brief perusal.

He smiled. “Maybe he forgot, made a mistake.”

“My brother doesn’t make that kind of mistake.”

“Thorough guy, huh? Organized, a good planner?”

I folded my arms. “Yes, Eric’s all those things. Why do you make it sound like that’s a crime?”

“Not my intention. I’m just wondering why a young woman would come to his home office unless she had an appointment.”

“What makes you think she was coming to see him? The car was parked across the street.”

Vance flanked me from the left. “Because we found your brother’s business card under the front seat.”

The white square I’d seen in the plastic baggie. So Eric had known the dead girl. And she’d heard of him.

Through the picture window, I saw movement across the street as the EMTs loaded the body into the ambulance, threading past a crowd that had swelled to include a news crew. Bars of waning sunshine cut through the branches of the oak tree, slanting across the hood of the Lexus. The sandy-haired man watched from the sidelines, cell phone pressed to his ear.

I noticed Ryan looking at me then, his expression alert. Vance seemed to be cataloging everything in her periphery—leather reading chair, framed Kandinsky print, cut crystal whisky decanter—and using it to decide who my brother was, who I was, what had really happened. Like Norris, she’d decided I didn’t fit. And she was right—I didn’t. But that didn’t make me, or my brother, a criminal, and I was determined to prove it.

“Is there anything else?”

Vance snapped her notebook shut. “We appreciate your cooperation, ma’am, but that probably does it for here.”

Ryan nodded in agreement. “For here.”

I felt a surge of relief. It was almost over. And then it hit me. “For here?”

Ryan nodded again.

“I know what that means. That means you’re taking me downtown, doesn’t it?”

Vance laughed. Ryan crooked a half-smile at me. “Oh yes, ma’am. You are definitely going downtown.”

I sighed and dug in my pockets for a piece of nicotine gum. God, I wanted a cigarette.

***

Waiting in the interrogation room felt very much like being kept after school. Boxy and square, off-white and badly lit, it had the same smell as a principal’s office—Pine Sol and plastic and industrial air conditioning—and the same sense of imminent unpleasantness.

Detective Ryan brought me coffee. Detective Vance turned on a video camera. And then I repeated a lot of the same information I’d told them before. But before I could explain once again how very little I knew, I actually learned something.

“Eliza Compton,” Vance said, slapping a file folder on the desk. “That name sound familiar?”

So they had an ID. “I’m sorry, no.”

“Did your brother ever mention knowing her?”

“No.”

“Not even in some offhand casual way?”

“No.”

I didn’t tell them that Eric and I had spent the majority of our lives being offhand and casual. But now, thanks to the gun shop, our every conversation was tinged with exasperation of the most personal sort. Still, we were trying to get along, and I was ready to follow our relationship wherever it led.

Of course, if I’d had any idea it would lead to the APD interrogation room, I’d have been a little more hesitant.

Ryan shifted forward and put his elbows on the table. “Any idea why she might be leaving him a voicemail message?”

“What message?”

Ryan motioned to Vance, who pulled out a small digital recorder and hit play. The voice that came from the machine was female and young, with a deep Southern accent. Her words were clipped and nervous at the edges: “Dr. Randolph? It’s Eliza. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it last night. I tried, but there was a problem, a big problem. I’m headed over right now, though.” Then a robotic voice announced the time: three-fifteen p.m.

Ryan looked at me. “You don’t recognize her?”

“I don’t know Eric’s friends.”

“She called him Dr. Randolph. Sounds like she’s a client.”

“I don’t think he works with individuals any more, just businesses.”

“If that’s true, then why would she be meeting him at his home, and not at work?”

I started to say she wasn’t really at his home, she was on the curb, but I