A device materialized from a bag beside the couch and less than a minute after booting it up, Helia passed it to Leo. Without needing direction from Scipio, he put his head down and started looking. He didn’t bother explaining what for.
“Here’s Trish’s social media,” Kendall said, handing her phone over to Scipio. He took a minute to flip through a few posts, Kendall directing him through the various apps. He squeezed her shoulder when he handed the device back and offered a quiet “thank you” before walking over to Leo and reading the laptop over his shoulder.
Leo pointed to a spot on his screen, and Scipio nodded. Looking up, his attention settled on Helia. Monk’s body tensed. “Monk told us your mom’s theory,” Scipio said.
“What theory?” Callie asked.
“If this situation is like a Venn diagram, Helia’s in a few of the overlapping circles,” he said.
“But not at the center,” Lina said.
Scipio shook his head. “She’s not at the center.” He paused, a shadow of worry reflecting in his eyes as they settled on Helia. “Sundaram is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Helia’s stomach lurched. “No,” she whispered even as she saw the possibility. Collin’s hand squeezed hers, and he pulled her tighter against him.
“How?” she managed to ask as she fought visions of her parents’ business imploding. Everything they’d worked for since retiring from the military could go up in smoke. They’d have the land, sure, but that wasn’t what they loved. Not to mention all the people who relied on the business for income.
“How is it at the center, or how did I come to that conclusion?” Scipio asked.
She’d meant the former, but the latter would let her postpone hearing the answer she didn’t want to hear. “The latter.”
“The timing,” Scipio started. “Everything started a little over six months ago. You said you noticed Flannery coming around four to five months ago, which means he probably cropped up before that. It would have taken you a little while to see the pattern.”
She nodded.
“Based on what K heard, whatever poison Kelly and Flannery were feeding Roger took some time to take effect,” Scipio continued.
“You think those two things are connected. That Flannery was setting up a relationship with Helia that would be in place when Roger died,” Lina said, nodding her head in understanding.
“But why?” Helia asked. “I saw Roger on occasion at events and things like that, but we never had dealings that weren’t professional.”
“We’ll get to that,” Scipio said. “First, I want to talk about Trish. Another person from your past, Helia.” Helia nodded for him to continue. He walked over and handed her Kendall’s phone. “Take a look at those pictures.”
She scrolled through Trish’s social media feeds, glancing at picture after picture. Some with girlfriends, most with a man Helia assumed was her husband given the way the two touched each other. In several, Trish sat perched on her husband’s lap, his hand tucked between her thighs. In others, they were both caught laughing—genuine smiles of delight on their faces. And in a few, he was kissing her. Deeply.
“Trish and her husband,” she said, handing the phone back. “And?”
“Do those pictures show a couple about to get divorced?” Scipio asked.
A rhetorical question, but she had to point out, “We don’t know how old those posts are.”
“We do,” Scipio said. “The last one was posted seven days ago, but we can get Leo to run a time stamp analysis on them.”
“Happy to, but not sure it’s needed when we look deeper at Mark Pena,” Leo said. “We didn’t include him in our initial scope, and we should have. He’s a well-known importer of high-end light fixtures. Handblown chandeliers from Murano, silver sconces from India, those sorts of things.”
“But,” Joey pressed.
“This is preliminary since I just started digging into him, but if the paper trail of his finances is right, he also appears to be part of the DKZ.”
“No shit,” Lovell—James—said.
Taking in the range of reactions to that information, everything from small frowns to raised eyebrows to disgust, several in the group knew something she didn’t.
“What’s the DKZ?” she asked.
“Stands forda khukhi zai. Pashto for ‘the happy place,’” Marley answered.
