“Are you the Indian food delivery guy?” Wendell asked.
“Afraid not. I’m a friend of Remy’s.”
“I wouldn’t say friend,” she whispered.
“I’m anacquaintanceof Remy’s. And, Wendell, I have a lot of sympathy for you now that you’re the one having to live with her. The work she’s making you do looks like it stinks.”
“It’s the most awful thing in the world.”
“Yeah.” Jeremiah nodded sadly. “I’m sorry, buddy.”
“I am not an albatross to either of you!” Remy proclaimed. “I’m an asset.”
“Right,” Jeremiah said. “Which is why Wendell here is stuck sorting pink glassware.”
“It’s for his ultimate good.”
“And his temporary misery.” Jeremiah lowered to his haunches next to a box. “I’ll help. I’ll go through these”—he tipped a flap open—“jars of spare change?”
“No. You will not be lifting heavy jars of spare change! You’re an invalid.” It was far easier to think of him as such.
He peered at her for a protracted moment, head cocked. “You’re right. I’m much too weak to spend my time sorting through fifty years of”—he rolled his lips inward as if curbing a bad word—“things.”
“Might be best for you to leave, in that case.”
Setting his hand on top of a tall jar of change, he used it to lever himself to standing. “I came because I need your help with something.”
“Oh?”
He drew near so that they were out of Wendell’s earshot. His body suddenly contained such tremendous magnetism that she had to consciously hold her ground instead of retreat.
“Jude told me that, before I went on my boat trip, I was investigating Alexis’s death.”
“Investigating it? Why?”
“I didn’t believe it was suicide.”
His words struck, capturing her full attention.
“It’s important that I find,” he went on, “whatever research I’d gathered about her death so I can know what Jeremiah 1.0 knew.”
“You’re Jeremiah 2.0?”
“Yeah.”
“Where have you looked so far for this research?”
“The electronic files on my computer and the drawers in my desk. No luck.”
“Did Jude saywhyyou suspected Alexis’s death wasn’t a suicide?”
“No. I'd simply told him that I knew something about it wasn’t right.”
She pushed one finger at a time in toward her palm, thinking.
“If someone caused her death,” he added, “then my disappearance makes more sense because the same person could be behind both things.”
She turned that around in her head, examining it critically the way she would a sculpture in progress. “That feels like a stretch. Everything that I’ve read about Alexis’s death online points to suicide.”
