Hope shook her head in mock dismay. “It’s so hard to get good help these days.”
“You two are hysterical.” Faith stepped around Hope and pushed the sleeves of her sweater up on her forearms. “I’m here now, and you’re standing around shooting the breeze.”
Hope spun around. “I’m going to get out of the way. I’ll be in the kitchen, and I’ll have coffee ready in about ten minutes. Decaf?”
“That sounds great.” Luke spoke to Hope’s retreating form, then turned to Faith. “Is she okay?”
“She is. She’s going to hurt tomorrow.”
“No doubt.” He could relate.
“How can I help?”
Faith hadn’t been kidding when she said she could help. She anticipated what he needed, helping with screws and the level.They had the new brackets in the wall and the new shelf set on it before Hope reappeared.
“This is amazing!”
“Give us five minutes, and we’ll have the boxes back on top.”
The five turned into ten as they swept the floor and removed the old shelf to the garage for a later trip to the curb with the trash. When it was done, Luke sat at Hope’s small kitchen table and sipped his coffee. Faith had a small cup too.
“I didn’t think you liked coffee,” Luke said.
“That”—Hope pointed at Faith’s cup—“is not coffee. It’s hot chocolate. Because some people never grew up.”
Luke tried to hide his smile behind his cup. The two sisters picked at each other, but there was no question that they loved each other very much. “Not to be overly nosy, Hope, but I’m curious how that”—he pointed down the hall—“happened? Were you trying to do some pull-ups on the shelf or something?”
She laughed. “No. I have some notebooks on the bottom shelf, and I was looking for a specific one when the top shelf collapsed.”
“It collapsed because y’all had overloaded that pitiful wire shelf with more than it could have ever hoped to hold. We need to reinforce the shelf on the other side too. But I don’t think you’re in any immediate danger.”
“My deepest appreciation, again. To both of you.” Hope looked between him and Faith. “I can’t be late tomorrow, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of that closet!”
Faith narrowed her eyes at Hope, and Luke thought she might say something about Hope living alone or how she could have called 911, but she went in a different direction. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. Why can’t you be late? Another big case?”
Hope dabbed her lip. “Not big. But important. I’ve been in court all week, but I have a pro-bono client I’ve been working with for awhile. She runs a bed-and-breakfast/boardinghouse here in Raleigh. Her clientele is almost exclusively Asian. She’s a second-generation Korean American, married to a man who is Japanese and Taiwanese. She gets the cultures and her food is to die for. With all the tech and research going on here in the Triangle, word got around. She’ll have boarders who will stay for a few days when they are here for a meeting or up to a couple of months when they are here for a project or even when they are moving here but haven’t found an apartment yet.”
Luke had never heard of this place. Not that it mattered in the grand scheme, but if they had a head of state from that part of the world coming in, it would be a good idea to take a look at who was staying there.
“So, what’s wrong?” Faith prodded.
“It’s an estate issue. Her home is in a historic district. It’s beautiful and worth quite a bit of money. There’s a big business in town trying to buy up the whole block. The residents and businesses are banding together to try to hold it off. About a month ago, she shut down and went to visit family in California. She got home two days ago and called me in a panic. The house reeked, and when she investigated, she found someone dead. She didn’t recognize him until they found his ID. He’d eaten at her house, and she thought he was a friend of one of her boarders.”
“Did he squat in her house while she was gone and have a heart attack or something?” Faith leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Fatigue flowed from her, and Luke stopped himself from pulling a strand of hair away from her face.
“No.” Hope’s voice was rough. “It looked like a suicide.”
Faith dropped her head. “How awful.”
Luke could feel the tips of his ears burning. He should keep his mouth shut. This was none of his business.
He sipped his coffee and tried not to concentrate on Faith andHope’s conversation, but it was no use. They talked about the body and the way the police were handling it so far. With every moment, his agitation grew until he had to speak up. “Hope, do me a favor. When you get the report on this guy, will you double-check to be sure it’s a suicide and not a murder? And find out if there were other problems, beyond depression or mental health issues. Maybe something that could have contributed.”
“Okay.”
He’d tried to keep his voice dispassionate and clinical, but Hope’s expression told Luke he had not succeeded. Leave it to him to bring the evening to a depressing end. He needed to get out of there before he made an even bigger mess of things. He was about two more sentences away from blabbing about fathers and suicide and how much he hated the FBI.
“Thanks.” He finished his coffee in one long drink and set the cup down with more force than he’d meant to use. “I’m going to get an Uber back to the hotel.” Faith protested, but not as hard as he might have expected her to. “Will you text me when you get home and let me know everything’s secure?”
