Page 16 of The House of Cross

“To my knowledge, that’s correct,” he said evenly. “Now, can I at least use my phone to call an Uber home? I mean, I’m cooperating. I’m not under arrest, am I?”

“Not today,” I said. “But don’t go leaving town on us.”

“I told you, I’m in school,” Pearson said, and got a sad look on his face. “And now I guess I’ve got to start planning Agnes’s funeral.”

After allowing him to hail an Uber, we bagged his phone and called for FBI criminalists to come take possession of it, the laptop, and the Durango. In our minds, we still had not cleared Pearson when his ride came and picked him up.

Nor had we excluded Professor Willa Whelan.

Mahoney dropped me off shortly after dark in front of my home on Fifth Street in Southeast DC. The cold wind blew leaves off the front lawn as I hurried up the stairs and into the house, which smelled incredible.

“What are you cooking?” I called into the front room where Nana was watching the evening news.

“Short ribs,” Nana Mama called back. “Been braising them for hours.”

I hung up my coat, put my weapon in the lockbox, and peeked around the corner into the front room. My grandmother was alone. “Where is everyone?”

“Jannie’s at a friend’s house, Ali’s in the kitchen working on a science project, and Bree is upstairs getting showered and changed.”

“I’ll do that too. When’s dinner?”

“Forty minutes.”

“Perfect,” I said, and went and kissed her on the cheek.

“What’s that for?”

“You just being you,” I said. I winked at her, winced.

She adjusted her glasses. “What happened to your face?”

“A very big guy hit me,” I said. “But I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Thanks,” I said, and climbed upstairs.

I found Bree dressing in her walk-in closet.

“Oooh,” she said when she saw me. “Who hit you?”

“A suspect who may or may not be a suspect,” I said, and gave her a short rundown of my day before getting into the shower. “And you?”

She described her calls to the real estate agent and the sheriff’s deputy in Elko, Nevada.

“Sounds open-and-shut from what the deputy told you,” I said.

“As far as she’s concerned, it’s a closed case,” Bree said, frowning. “But why would he go back up that mountain alone? In a handicap van without snow tires?”

Standing under the hot water, I said, “How much were they selling the ranch for?”

“Sixty-three million for twenty-seven thousand acres.”

“Well, that kind of money would warrant a second visit in my book.”

“But why alone? I mean, he couldn’t get around very far, I’d imagine.”

“Maybe that was the point,” I said. “He got up there, it started to snow, and he realized that he wasn’t going to get far in his wheelchair.”

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