Page 11

CHAPTER 11

“Tell me about the note you found,” I said to Almond.

We were standing outside, under the eaves of the Hard Body building. I couldn’t help but think how she was back at work, acting like nothing had happened. But I wasn’t being fair. I had the tendency to dive into my job when times were chaotic as well.

Almond shrugged. “There’s not much to say.”

Maddie stepped forward, hands on hips. “Are you being serious right now?”

I gave her a gentle tap on the shoulder, hoping she’d relax.

Almond’s nonchalance wasn’t sitting well with me either, but I wanted to give her a chance to talk before I jumped to any conclusions.

“If I’m being honest, y’all are starting to creep me out,” Almond said, arms folded in front of her, muscles bulging. “What happened to Harmony, it isn’t your business. It’ll never be your business. Harmony’s resting at home, and things are settling down. We don’t even want to talk about what happened. Far as we’re concerned, it’s in the past.”

She made an explosion gesture, indicating the past was, poof, gone.

The weather of late had been wet, dreary, and cold, so I slung my scarf over one shoulder. “Look, it’s not in the past. It’s still an active investigation—I know that much. I’m just trying to find out what the note said and see if I can help.”

“I get it,” Almond said. “It’s like a car wreck. You can’t help but crane your neck to see the disaster. Like I said, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay? I’ve got work to do. If you need to talk to someone, talk to the cops.”

She turned to head back inside, leaving me standing there, stewing over how rude she’d been. We hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

Before she got the chance to walk through the door, I shouted, “Almond, stop.”

I said it with full force.

She swung her head around, eyebrows raised.

Maybe a little too aggressive, Sloane.

I dialed back on the intensity.

“Look, we consider you both our friends,” I said. “I have no pull here with the police. What’s going on? Please. It’s nothing about us wanting to know all the sordid details out of some twisted curiosity. Trust me when I say we have a lot of experience in this area. We’re good at what we do.”

Almond shot Maddie daggers for a few seconds, and I braced myself, thinking we were about to be kicked out the proverbial door.

Then she surprised me.

“Come on, then,” she said. “We’ll go to my office for some privacy. Follow me.”

And we did.

Along the way we passed a myriad of machines and mats and ropes and trainers working their clients into a lather. A powerful beat emanated from unseen speakers, ratcheting up the energy. It was small but impressive, and I felt a pang of guilt that I hadn’t been more committed to my own exercise routine.

Almond’s office space was a stark contrast to the hard angles in the gym area. Low, plush seating in neutral tones, décor that focused on positivity of mindset and manifesting the power of self-care, and calming music—none of the rhythmic beat could be heard from the outside. It was like a happy cocoon. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was Harmony’s office and not Almond’s.

Maddie had been holding herself tight, and it showed in her face and shoulders. She was doing everything she could to refrain from further comment—at least for now, which was good. When we walked into the room, she appeared to relax a bit, some of the tension draining. Maybe because, in this space, Almond seemed more … human? And not so robotic like she came off at times.

Almond slid onto a brown velvet loveseat and gestured for us to sit in the matching chairs opposite her. She lifted a teapot from a tray in the center of a low circular table. “Want some chamomile? Or anything else? I’ve got plenty of other options.”

“Chamomile would be fantastic,” I said, and Maddie agreed.

She filled a couple of mugs and handed them to us, the silence lingering for a moment as the tea cooled down enough for us to drink.

I was about to speak when she said, “Sorry … you know, about everything.”

“I’m sorry too,” Maddie said.

“I can only imagine the tension you’re feeling right now, Almond,” I said. “We’re not trying to add to it. We mean it when we say we want to help.”

I wanted to keep the door open, to get her talking. If there was any indication that she might have written the note, that she might have been the perpetrator of injury and threats to Harmony, I needed to focus on her words and mannerisms. If she was guilty, maybe she’d slip up.

“Okay, first things first.” She massaged her temples and looked at Maddie. “To be honest, I have some—” she tilted her head this way and that “—some jealousy issues, maybe? I get aggravated when men and women come up to Harmony and flirt with her. Sometimes I get mad at her too, but it’s uncalled for, and she never starts it. She loves me, and I know it. But my nerves just fire off. I was feeling a little bit of that with you, Maddie, at the vineyard. And I mean it when I say I’m sorry.”

Maddie’s tenseness subsided, and she stood up, walked over to Almond, and gave her a big hug. The gesture seemed to surprise Almond, but she didn’t reject it.

“Harmony’s an amazing person,” Maddie said. “But even if she was single, that’s not my jam. We were just having fun, like friends do. And if you don’t mind me saying so, if that’s how you treat every person who tries to be friends with her … well, I’ll be honest—you need to chill out.”

I held my breath.

After such a perfect moment, the reprimand was not something I was expecting.

Almond went silent, then she burst into a fit of laughter, saying, “Girl, you are so right.”

I breathed a long sign of relief.

“I know I’m right,” Maddie said. “You have your gym here, your life with Harmony. It’s so easy to live on edge, to distrust everyone, to exist in a chaotic vacuum. I’ve done it a few times myself, but … yeah, it’s just not me anymore. And I’ll bet it’s not you either. As your many motivational messages in here point out, it’s no way to live.”

Maddie took a seat and reached for her tea. She pointed at a large print on the wall and read it aloud: “Release your worries, trust your path, and let the universe guide your every step.”

“Message received,” Almond said, folding her legs up underneath her as she got more comfortable. “Now, back to the note. I didn’t know about it at first. I just rushed her to the hospital to get her checked out after the assault. It was there that I found it in her coat pocket. Scared the hell out of me, someone leaving her a message like that.”

“Which was …?” I prompted.

“See for yourself.” She took out her phone and showed us a photograph of the note. The message was smeared but readable:

Continue this path

Please to avoid,

Friends of PI.

What might have been a signature or a sketch of some sort at the bottom edge of the note had been torn away and was barely legible. It could have been a million different things. As for the paper itself, it appeared to have gotten wet, which made sense. Harmony picked it up off the lawn, according to the chatty nail tech, and it had been raining off and on since we got here. That night in the hotel room, in fact, I remembered mentioning to Maddie how the constant stream of rain reminded me of being in the spa.

“Where did she find the note? On the lawn, in the bushes …?”

“Just off the covered patio, sort of where the mulch meets the grass. She said it freaked her out so much, she dropped it, like it was on fire or something. But then she thought better of it, that I should see it, so she picked it back up and shoved it in her coat pocket. That’s when she was whacked in the head and went down. I heard her cry out, and I rushed out to check on her.”

I had so many questions. “And you were where when this happened?”

“In the kitchen, right next to the sliding glass door to the back. That’s why I heard her so well. If I’d been anywhere else in the house, I might not have.”

“Why did she go outside in the first place?”

I wondered if they’d argued, though I doubted she would tell me if they had.

“To commune with nature,” Almond said. “She calls it her time to ‘reflect and decompress’ after caring for others all day long. She does it every evening after work. You could set your watch by it.”

There was no hesitation in her response, and it made sense.

“What are her work hours at the spa?” I asked.

“Six days a week, five hours a day, except for Mondays.”

“That’s a long work week, given she’s constantly kneading muscles.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s her passion, and I do my best to support it.”

“So her schedule is predictable,” I said, realizing this could have helped someone plan their attack if indeed they were aiming for Harmony.

Maddie cut in with, “I’m guessing you didn’t see or hear anyone running away?”

“To be honest, I didn’t even look. I was too concerned about Harmony. Although … maybe I saw something. A shadow? Hmm, no, it was more like I sensed that someone was there or had been there. Geez, now I sound like Harmony. Anyway, it was not my top priority at the time, though now I wish that I had taken a moment to inspect the area.”

“That old 20/20 hindsight,” I commented.

“Right. To be honest, y’all, even though everything is getting sorted out and Harmony’s okay, I can’t help feeling … well, terrified. I’m worried it will happen again. It’s hard enough to believe someone’s targeting her … but what if, I mean, what if they’re targeting us ?”

It was in that moment I was certain she was innocent of any wrongdoing. Whether she and Harmony had relationship issues, whether Almond needed to address her temper and jealousy, no matter what others might say about them … Almond’s partner had been targeted with an intention to harm, maybe even do more than harm.

It was a terrifying prospect.

Also terrifying was the fact that the note was referring to me, the PI.

It had to be.

But who wrote it, and why?

One thing was certain.

Vacation time was over.

Detective mode was now engaged.