His lips disappeared into a thin line as he tipped the phone in her direction. She hesitated, then leaned over. On the screen was an image of a page torn from a notebook. Scrawled diagonally across the paper in large letters were thirteen words.
Why, Helia, why don’t you listen? Why are you doing this to me?
She read it, then reread it before looking at Collin in confusion.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What does this mean?”
Carter shifted, and she turned back to the detective. His gaze flickered to Jess, then came back to her.
“Where were you on Wednesday night, Helia?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rage rolled through Monk’s body at the insinuation that Helia was involved inanyone’sdeath, let alone that of a man she clearly hadn’t wanted anything to do with.
Helia opened her mouth to answer, but he slid a hand over her knee, gave it a gentle squeeze, then spoke over her. “Between what hours?” he asked, his voice clipped.
Carter and Jess might think themselves clever in shocking her, but he’d been around the block a time or two. He knew their tactics.
The two detectives shared another look before Carter answered, conveying his displeasure at Monk’s interference with his narrowed eyes. “Between four and ten p.m.”
Monk brushed his thumb over Helia’s knee. “Between four and ten on Wednesday, what were you doing?” he asked, hoping she’d understand that she was not obligated to—and shouldn’t—answer any more than the specific question.
Her hazel eyes, now more brown than green, held his. A beat passed before she nodded and turned to Carter.
“We had a phone meeting with the bride,” she started, nodding in the general direction of the hall where said bride was currently becoming a wife. “It started at four thirty. I was inmy office before that, and my parents joined me at four fifteen. We took the call from there. It was scheduled for an hour, but it went over, wrapping up around five forty-five. My parents stayed for another fifteen minutes or so while we worked out the final plans, then I took another fifteen minutes to print the schedules for everyone on staff, then dropped them into the staff mailboxes.”
Carter scribbled in his notebook, and Jess nodded. Helia set her hand on his. Without pausing to think, Monk flipped his palm and intertwined their fingers.
“After that, I popped out to the Roadhouse to grab some takeaway. I arrived there at six twenty-nine. Those were the first three digits of one of our phone numbers when I was a kid, and it was a little thing I remember noting.” She paused and took a breath. “Marielle was working. She took my order, and I sat at the bar with a Pellegrino while it was being prepped. I don’t know how long that took, maybe twenty minutes?” Her brow furrowed. “I also saw Miles as I was leaving, Officer Hooper. He and my brother were in the same high school class, so I know him. We waved to each other as I pulled out of the parking lot and he pulled in. From there, I drove home and, well, ate and went to sleep.”
Her words trailed off as she finished, as if realizing she had no alibi from about seven fifteen when she left the Roadhouse to ten. He squeezed her hand.
“You keep the gate closed at night, don’t you?” he asked.
She nodded. “Unless there’s an event, it closes at five and doesn’t open until eight the next morning. Not without the code.”
He nodded, then turned to Carter. “There are CCTV cameras all over the facility,” he said. They were discreet, but he’d noticed them while helping earlier. “You’ll be able to check the gate logs for when Helia returned from the Roadhouse and the cameraswill show that she didn’t leave again.” He didn’t know that for certain; he and Helia hadn’t talked about it. But he knew her. Knew her in a way he didn’t really understand other than to be certain that if she’d gone out again, she would have said.
Carter studied them, then glanced at Jess, who nodded. “Thank you, Helia. Can you show us the rest of the knives?”
She grimaced but nodded. “I can, but the kitchen is getting ready for a hundred-person brunch/lunch buffet. They work like a well-oiled machine, and if we set foot in there and disrupt the mechanism, it throws things off.” Carter opened his mouth to speak, but she talked over him, making Monk smile. “I’m not saying we can’t go in, but would it be possible if I took only one of you with me?”
Surprisingly, the detectives didn’t pause to share another look. Jess pushed off the wall and grabbed her backpack. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
Helia rose, dropping his hand. “The ceremony is underway, but we’ll take the back paths in case one of the photographers is taking pictures of the grounds,” she said, leading them through her door and onto the walkway.
“One of the photographers?” Carter asked, falling into step beside Helia ahead of him. Jess came up alongside him in yet another predictable move—as if separating him from Helia would stop him from protecting her.
“There are seven for this wedding. And three videographers,” Helia answered. As Jess asked him, “You grew up here?”
He nodded.
“What was that like?”
Internally, he sighed. As a general rule, he didn’t talk about his life with people he didn’t know. Unfortunately, if he dodged too much, he’d give them more of a reason to focus on Helia.
“I left at eighteen, if that tells you anything.”
