After we finished eating, I opened the folder. “As I told you over the phone, all the photos have dates and timestamps on them. I matched them up with the days and times he told you where he’d be.”
“I remember.” She peered at the photos in my hands. I felt her leg jumping under the table.
My heart squeezed.
“All right, these first images I took at the Winston hotel. They entered, so I had to follow them inside.”
“Did they go up to one of the rooms?”
“Not immediately. They had lunch in the restaurant first. I followed them in but couldn’t get a table close enough to record the conversation. I was able to get these photos.”
I showed Marjorie the pictures of Kelvin with a woman as they ate. While the pair hadn’t kissed or made any overtly sexual advances towards one another in the photos, they still appeared super friendly. At one point, the woman tossed her head back, laughing.
“He can be hella charming,” Marjorie said, her eyes pinned to the photo. Sadness filled her vocal cords. “That was how he won me over.”
I swallowed. I didn’t usually get this emotional over a few photos.
“Did they leave after lunch?”
I shook my head, hating the following words I’d have to say. “They went up to one of the private rooms after lunch. I don’t know which once since I couldn’t follow without a reservation of my own.”
“This is the day he said he was going to the training facility to get a workout in, right?”
“If memory serves. Yes.”
Her shoulders sagged, and she looked up at me with such a deep emotion in her eyes that I had to look away.
“Do you know who she is?”
“Not yet. She’d already arrived when I followed Kelvin to the hotel, so I didn’t get to see which car was hers or her license plate. I can find out who she is if that’s what you want.”
“I do,” she said quickly.
“Okay.”
Marjorie remained silent as she looked through the other photos I’d captured over the past few months. Kelvin kept up a busy schedule, even in the off-season, so pinning him down was sometimes a task. Like Marjorie, he often traveled for work obligations.
After a few minutes of silence, Marjorie sighed and sat back in her chair, arms folded. The jangling of the bracelet around her wrist caught my eye.
“That’s a cute bracelet,” I said, leaning forward.
A small smile sprouted on her face, but it was mixed with sadness. She held out her wrist, allowing me to see the Disney characters that hung from the bracelet.
“It’s juvenile, I know. But I like to wear it a few times a week.” She pulled her arm back and examined the bracelet, a far-off expression now on her face. “My mother gave me this bracelet a few weeks before she left my dad and me to run away with another man.” She gave me another one of those weak smiles.
“It was for my thirteenth birthday. We were supposed to go to Disney World. She said this was a before birthday gift in anticipation of the trip. It turned out that it was her going away present.‘The happiest place on Earth.’” She scoffed. “Kelvin said he’d take me there since I’ve never been. I couldn’t go after my mother left. Now he…”
She trailed off.
I dropped my gaze to the photos sprawled out on the table in front of her. Soon, I found myself gathering the images and stuffing them back inside the folder.
“What if we hold off on all of this?” I blurted out.
“What?”
“Maybe we’re—I’mbeing premature about all of this. These photos coinciding with the dates and times he told you he’d be somewhere else look pretty damning, but you know…” I thought over my words. “Maybe there’s more I can find. So that we know we’re dotting all of our I’s and crossing all our T’s.”
She tilted her head sideways as if trying to understand what I was explaining and gestured to the folder. “Isn’t it obvious what’s happening?”
