Page 76 of Dying to Meet You

“Natalie...”

“What?” She shrugs. “You may not care what happens to him. But that doesn’t mean I can’t.”

Shit. “Look, there’s someone I could call who might know why he was arrested, and how it all works.”

Her eyes burn with hope. “Will you? Today?”

“On my walk to work,” I say, regretting it already. “I’ll make the call.”

“Awesome. Go!” She waves me toward the stairs. “If you hear something, you’ll call me?”

I stand and pretend not to notice her hands are clutching the phone she’s not supposed to have. “I’ll text you later. It might take her some time to get the answers, though, okay?”

“Okay.” She gives me a miserable little smile.

I’m out the door ten minutes later, my phone in one hand and the sticky note with Jules’s number in the other. I don’t want to owe this woman a favor, but I promised Natalie, so I make the call.

She picks up immediately. “Hello?”

“Hi,” I say tightly. “This is Rowan Gallagher. Did you see...”

“Yes. They arrested your ex-boyfriend, right?”

That shuts me up for a second. “How do you know he’s my ex?”

“Found his name on an old lease when I ran a background check on you.”

I stop walking. “On me? Was I on Tim’s list of names, too?”

“No,” she says curtly. “But you’re a person of interest in a murder investigation, and I needed all the facts. Didn’t take you for the kind of girl who liked bad boys, either. Harrison’s file was a fun read.”

I have to take a deep breath. “My ex and I don’t really speak. But even given his history, it’s a stretch to think that he’d kill Tim. It doesn’t really make sense.”

“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Why are you calling me?”

“Because my daughter is losing her mind, and I thought you might know something. What do they have on him, and what does it mean?”

I can almost hear her wheels turning. Should she help me or not? “They picked him up on a probation violation. That’s what they call a parole violation in Maine.”

“Yeah, I can read the newspaper, too. But what does thatmean?”

“It means they can hold him over the weekend while they’re waiting for a probation hearing. And it also means they don’t have enough to charge him with murder. The actual violation is probably something stupid—like he drank a beer, or missed a date with his probation officer.”

“And then what happens?”

“A judge will hold a hearing—Monday or Tuesday—to decide if the breech is serious enough to send him back to prison. Jails are crowded and expensive, so the state will have to convince the judge that it’s too risky to leave him on the streets. Could go either way, depending on how skilled his lawyer is. The prosecutor is probably hoping to find better grounds for a murder charge—and lock him up for good—before the judge decides.”

Natalie will be inconsolable.

“Find me Tim’s page in that ledger,” she says. “Unless your ex has a thing for killing journalists, I think there’s something else going on.Tim started digging into the Magdalene Home, and then died in front of it? That’s what keeps me up at night.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say tightly. “Thank you for the information.”

“Feel free to repay in kind,” she says before I end the call.

Refocusing on my surroundings, I realize I’ve made it all the way to the mansion. From where I’m standing, it’s only a few paces to the spot where Tim died.

I make myself look over at the parking lot—to that place where his blood seeped into the earth.