Page 4 of Edge of Secrets (The Edge Trilogy #2)

His master-and-commander tone bothered me. “I won’t be free until seven-thirty,” I said, although I could have probably done six with a little finagling. But I’d be damned if I’d go out of my way for a guy that bossy and presumptuous.

“Seven-thirty works. Tomorrow, then. My receptionist will give you directions.”

I wrote down the directions the receptionist gave me, committing them to memory.

Huh. Who knows. If the hours were flex, this might have potential, even if Duncan seemed grumpy and irascible.

Depending on the money, of course. Besides, tomorrow was Friday, and I had nothing better to do after my restaurant shift than go home and jump at shadows.

I shoved a pile of midterm essays into my bag.

They would keep me too busy to work myself into a paranoid frenzy over every little sound I heard—or else climb the walls all night with sexual fantasies about Mr. Hyper-Focused, which was my other classic option.

That one had a better short-term payoff, but neither was very restful.

I armed the alarm as soon as I went into my apartment.

A breach of the door or window would be instantly reported to the police, but the new alarm didn’t make me feel much safer.

I heated up a dinner of three different types of takeout leftovers cobbled together.

I did cook occasionally when Vivi stayed with me, but I usually didn’t bother when I was alone. Who had the energy?

I was finishing up a stale Oreo that I’d found forgotten in the cupboard when the buzz of my phone sent me zinging up into the air.

I picked it up with shaking hands, heart thudding wildly. “Hello?”

“It’s just me,” said my sister Nancy. “Relax, sweetie. You sound nervous.”

I sank onto the couch, knees trembling. “No, not at all,” I lied. “I’m good. Great to hear your voice. How are things? Vivi told me you guys were still in San Francisco.”

“We are, with Liam’s dad and his lady friend, Joanne. I have news. Remember when Liam’s friend Charlie Witt told me about that elderly guy with the designer clothes? The one they found in Jamaica Plains, with his throat snapped?”

“The one they called the clotheshorse? That was right after Lucia died, right?”

“Right. The time of death was estimated to be roughly the same time Lucia died, although they couldn’t be sure.”

I doubled over, pressing my hand hard against the nervous twisting in my stomach. “I see,” I said. “What about him?”

“Well, after what happened to me in Boston, Detective Lanaghan finally deigned to take all of this a little more seriously.” Nancy’s voice had an ironic edge to it.

“She had his prints compared to the ones found on the coffee cup in Lucia’s apartment, as I requested they do weeks ago.

But no one ever got around to it, evidently. Until now.”

“And they match?”

“Yes. They match,” Nancy said quietly. “Lanaghan just called and told me.”

We sat silently, for almost a minute. Then I let out a slow breath. “The clotheshorse must be Marco,” I said. “Lucia’s long-lost husband. That poor guy.”

“Yeah,” Nancy said. “It has to be him. He came to find her, and got himself murdered that same night, by the same person who killed Lucia. Maybe even at the same time.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my hand against my cold, clammy forehead. “That poor guy. After not seeing the love of his life for, what, fifty years? Finally they reunite, and then … oh God, Nance. It’s just so damn sad.”

“At least they’re together now,” Nancy said softly. “And she loved him to the very end. She stayed single all those years. With all those men beating down her door.”

“You could look at it that way, I guess. If you believed in love and eternity and all that good stuff, dusted with bright, hazy sparkles.” I hated the edge in my voice.

“And you don’t believe it?” Nancy asked.

“Not right now, I don’t,” I admitted. “Sorry to be a downer, but you’re in love. You’ve got hazy sparkles by the bucketful. In my world, they’re a rare commodity.”

Nancy paused. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to cheer you up. I really love you, sweetie. I’m sorry you’re having a hard time. I know exactly how you feel.”

I felt guilty. Look at me, scrooging on my poor sister, whose only crime was getting lucky in love, and after a dry spell every bit as long as my own.

“I love you, too,” I said. “And I’m sorry I’m being such a sourpuss.

I’m glad for you. Really. Did you tell Detective Lanaghan about the letter in the picture frame? ”

“Yes, and she said it’s a great lead, but since all we have is the guy’s first name and the name of his town, it’s going to take a while.

She has to contact the local police in Italy, find an interpreter, et cetera, et cetera.

So I started to think, in the meantime .

.. since you studied Italian … you know? ”

“You want me to call the cops there? In Italy?”

“Would you?” Nancy asked eagerly. “Just to facilitate things? To speed things up?”

I looked up at the clock, calculating time zones. “I could try tomorrow morning, before I leave for work, I guess,” I said. “But don’t get your hopes up. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy, no matter what country you’re talking about.”

“I understand. Where are you now? Are you still up in Silvana’s apartment?”

I gritted my teeth for what I knew was going to be a big fat overreaction. “Ah. About that. Actually, no. I’m back in Brooklyn, at my own apartment.”

“Nell! What the hell? You promised!”

“I know, I know, but Silvana’s fiancé came to visit, and I was clearly cramping their style. I did put in the new locks and the new alarm. And when Elio leaves, I can go back up there and stay with her again. It’s just a couple of weeks.”

Nancy carried on, I soothed and cajoled—all familiar conversations after our recent adventures. Then we went through our now near-obsessive routine of admonishing each other to be careful. When we finally hung up, I stared at the wall for a long time.

I was grateful for a job to do, something that might yield some answers. But I was going to have to brace myself. Any answers I found were not going to be comforting.

A sheaf of student papers later, I laid down the red pen, rubbed my eyes, stretched, and flopped onto my bed with a groan.

There wasn’t much room there, since the surface of my bed was covered with books.

There was a strip the exact size of my body to sleep on.

It was a poetic metaphor for my life. I couldn’t take a lover.

Where would I put him? Between The Riverside Shakespeare and my twenty-pound annotated Dante’s Divine Comedy ?

Would I perch him on top of the seventeenth-century religious poets?

Drape him over Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales? It sounded uncomfortable as hell.

Mr. Hyper-Focused popped into my mind, predictably enough. He was my default mode, whenever I needed to steer around an uncomfortable thought. I wondered why my brain had latched onto him so intensely. I’d never been the type to fixate like that.

Maybe it was not in spite of, but because he was so oblivious to me. He was completely inaccessible, and what could be safer for a scaredy-cat like myself? I knew nothing about him. Only that he had a truly stunning capacity for concentration, and he really, really liked strip steak.

But thinking about him was better than thinking about that poor old man whose body lay in the morgue in Jamaica Plains. Nameless, unclaimed, unmourned.

The bleakness of it made me roll over and shove my face into the pillow.

Maybe tomorrow I could put a name to the man who may or may not have been Lucia’s husband. I could give the man the dignity of recognition, at least.

That was the best I could offer, and it wasn’t too goddamn much.