Page 19 of Fluffed and Folded

Eli looked down, noting the lack of bloody footprints. He knew nothing, but to him that seemed significant. With so much blood, one would expect it to get everywhere. How had the killer kept his footprints from the room?

“Um,” Darby said, and she had blanched a light shade of pale. Tristan waited her out, notching an eyebrow to prompt her to answer. “Well, there was some blood but, um, I don’t know where it came from, and I might be mixing up my days because, um, there’s maybe been some other blood there before?”

“In your apartment?” Tristan pressed. He was using the tone again, the one that purposely lacked all judgment.Impartial, that’s me,the tone seemed to say.You can trust me with your darkest secrets.Eli wondered if he honed that skill as a cop or since he became a private investigator.

“In my apartment and, um, in my bed.”

Tristan pondered that a few beats, mulling as he stared at the bed. “Are you seeing anyone?”

“No,” Darby said quickly.

“Not even casually, for hookups?” He darted her another of those studying glances. Eli wasn’t certain if he was trying to see if she was lying or merely curious to read her expression.

“No,” she replied, more vehement, with a head shake for good measure. “No one, absolutely no one. I don’t date.”

Now Eli and Tristan traded glances. What was that about? Because she sounded awfully fervent for a pretty woman in her twenties. Eli found himself softening toward her even more. Clearly something was going on with her and she was in need of understanding, of a friend. He suspected that the new information made Tristan more suspicious.

“A lot of people don’t date,” he felt compelled to add.

Tristan’s cheek ticked, apparently amused by Eli’s defense. “True,” he said, nodding. He scanned the room again, made a few more notations in his notebook, and led the way outside. The three of them paused on the front stoop, and that was when the interrogation began.

“Have you ever been treated for mental health issues?” Tristan asked Darby, as soon as the door closed.

She was caught off guard, which was probably the point. “N-no.”

“Do you take medication? For migraines, for anxiety, for anything?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been arrested? Is there currently a warrant for your arrest? Have you ever been stalked, harassed, followed? Have you noticed anything unusual in your surroundings lately?”

On and on and on the questions went, until even Eli was exhausted and drained, and he wasn’t the one answering. Bythe time Tristan left, Darby was visibly listing, leaning against the bricks of the apartment, as if for support. Eli had at first resisted the impulse to help, to care, to herd. He didn’t want to come off as a weirdo or creeper. But she looked so gutted, so totally defenseless and lost, that he put an arm around her and shepherded her to his apartment. And it wasn’t his imagination that she looked relieved by that and even leaned into him as they walked.

Now they sat at his kitchen table, eating the sandwiches he’d assembled for them, along with fruit and yogurt. The silence was heavy but companionable. Finally, after Darby scraped her yogurt container and took the last bite, she set it aside and spoke.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” Eli said.

“I’ve never known a guy who could cook,” she noted.

“Technically I assembled. I’m fairly certain if Gordon Ramsey were here to observe, he would find a way to call me an idiot for my near incompetence. Probably put bread on my ears and call me an idiot sandwich.”

She snickered a laugh that ended with a delicate snort. Her cheeks flushed, embarrassed, but Eli smiled. The more he got to know her, the realer she seemed. Less like an untouchable beauty queen, and more like one of the women he’d been friends with for ages. She picked up the yogurt container and stared into its depths, unblinking.

“What’s it telling you?” he asked.

She jumped to attention and flushed again. “Nothing. I don’t actually hear yogurt speak, so I’ve got that going for me.”

“You’re almost lucid enough to be a senator,” Eli said.

“I just…” She stared into the yogurt again. “It would never in a million years have occurred to my husband to eat yogurt. Or fruit, for that matter.”

Eli felt like his tongue swelled four sizes and lodged in his throat. “You’re married?”

“Widowed,” she said, with a sad little smile, and then peered closer at him. “You didn’t know? I thought it was the talk of the complex.”

“I tend to tune out the other tenants, a lesson I learned the hard way after one too many conversations that started with, ‘Bro, I bet you…’ and then ended with someone jumping something motorized over a lot of stacked things. By the way, did you know that the guy in unit thirteen can jump a moped over thirty stacked bowling balls?”

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