“Did—?”
“Look, I need to go. I can’t stand to be here one more second.”
I nodded and reached for the door handle. I told her to phone me if she ran into any issues—which I hoped translated as “If you feel the urge to whip out your Glock again and point it at someone’s head”—and she even muttered a thank-you as I slid out of the vehicle. I waited for her to exitthe parking lot and then scurried back to my Jeep. She had a good head start, but I drove quickly and before long, I was only one car length behind her.
I used the first red light in the village to try Lisa. I was inclined to believe that J.J. hadn’t harmed her, but I had no proof. Reaching voice mail, I asked her to call me back pronto. I was relieved a minute later to see J.J. take the right-hand turn that led to her home.
Back at the Courtyard I made a beeline for the bar and ordered a glass of red wine—J.J. wasn’t the only one in need of vino therapy at the moment. As I reached for the glass, I realized that my shoulders were still somewhere up near my ears, rock-hard with tension. The experience had really rattled me. There’d been a moment when I’d been almost certain that she was going to shoot Doug, and that I’d end up as collateral damage.
But what, I wondered, did all thisReal Housewives of Lake Georgestuff matter in terms of the case? J.J. had been sleeping with Doug. Doug and Kelly had briefly put their house on the market. Doug had ditched J.J. the week of Shannon’s murder in order to sleep with another woman, one who looked vaguely like Shannon. And there was a chance Shannon had picked up a whiff of what her BFF and Doug had been up to. It was a hot mess of a family drama, but in the end I couldn’t see how it was related to the murders.
I paid my tab and grabbed my glass, which was still half full. As I crossed the lobby toward the elevator bank, I heard my name. I knew even before I swung around that Matt Wong was paging me.
“Wait, I thought you were going to have a drink with me tonight,” he said, his tone petulant.
“I am, promise,” I said, though it had totally slipped my mind. “I’m just taking this to my room for now.”
“You’re here at the Courtyard? Why haven’t I seen you?”
“This is my first day at this location. Why are you staying here? Can’t you drive back and forth to Albany each day?”
“Usually I do, but I decided to book a room for a couple of days. There’s a ton of reporters and TV producers around here. You’re not the only one who’d like to be on the tube one day.”
“For the record, Matt, I have absolutely zero interest in being on TV. My boss insisted on me doing the video.”
“It might be smart tolearnto like it. It’s all going to pivot to video in the future.”
“Wow, aren’t you the trend guru.... Sorry, but I really need to head upstairs for a bit.”
“And what about the drink?”
“Later, okay?”
“Nine at the bar here?”
“Um, yeah, okay.” I didn’t really have the energy to deflect him another time, plus as annoying as I found the guy, he was correct about the necessity of mingling. Who knew what you might learn at the bar.
Back in my room, I took another gulp of the wine, which unfortunately had a vague aftertaste of cherry cough medicine. Probably because my stomach was still churning from this afternoon’s showdown. Once again I warned myself not to let it distract me. I needed to return to what mattered.
I shrugged out of my jacket and changed into a new shirt since the one I’d been wearing was still damp with perspiration. As I reached for my laptop, my gaze fell on the composition book I’d been using over the past week. Jessie had said over lunch that I had a skill for seeing information from fresh and different angles, and if that was true—which I liked to think it was—the credit lay in part to my endless composition books. On more than one occasion, I’d had a eureka moment simply from rereading my notes.
I’d been good about scanning each day’s notes before turning in, but I hadn’t gone over them from start to finish. Maybe it was time to do that.
I opened the book to the beginning and began to read. On one of the earliest pages, I lighted on the rough timeline I’d sketched out for Shannon once I’d gathered bits of information. I’d been hopeful that if I kept fleshing that out, it might eventually point to a place or time where she’d intersected with her killer, but nothing had even whispered to me.
I stared at the points on the timeline: her cousin’s death last September, her return to work in March, her reinvolvement in the church midsummer. Not exactly much to work with.
Staring at the page, I was reminded of something Keith Windgate had mentioned when he shot the video. He worked with timelines, too, he’d told me. He would create one for each video he was doing and plug in various clips at points where he thought they would have the most impact.
Something began to tug at my memory, but it stayed stubbornly out of reach, as if I were patting around insidea desk drawer for an item I needed—an envelope, or a note card, or a take-out menu—but couldn’t put my hands on it, or even recall what I was looking for.
And then I realized what it was. I had Shannon’s timeline wrong. When I’d met with Riley at Baker, she’d mentioned that Shannon had been working at home for a period, which meant I had the wrong date for when she’d appeared regularly at the main office. During the interview with Riley I’d been so caught up in the significance of Shannon restarting her career that I’d neglected to adjust the timeline. It was probably insignificant, but I wanted to be sure I had everything right in my mind.
I snatched my phone from the bed where I’d tossed it and called Cody. To my surprise he picked right up.
“Is there news about Alice Hatfield?” he asked bluntly.
“No, not that I’m aware of. I have a question on another subject, though. I heard that when Shannon started working for Baker back in March, she did it mostly from home for the first few months. Can you confirm that for me?”
