Page 36 of The Princess and the P.I.

At their home, Fiona’s father flat out refused to call the police. Instead, he directed a few men in the interconnected homes to affix a sheet of plywood to the window while he prayed incessantly in his room.

Esi’s eyes were wide as saucers. “He’s completely lost it now, Fiona. This is too far.”

Fiona blinked slowly. She had identified Kwesi’s body, hadn’t she?

She had seen him lowered into the ground in an excruciatingly slow descent, with her own eyes.

Yet now, her father insisted that he had confided something to Kwesi, something only Kwesi would know.

But how could anyone else know Kofi’s last words to him if Kwesi was truly gone?

Fiona took a picture of the brick and sent it to Maurice. He called before the checkmark even appeared under the photo.

“Where is this brick from?” His words sounded slow, and there was a deep thud of music in the background.

She hadn’t considered that. The image of him at a club grinding against some woman shot through her head. What had it meant, the way he touched her on the couch? She felt marked, claimed in some invisible way. But did he feel free? The thought zipped down the back of her neck like ice water.

“It was a gift through my dad’s window.”

“The church. You can’t stay there,” he said.

She also hadn’t thought of the possibility that it was the church.

She was embarrassed to admit how long she’d spent considering the possibility that her brother wasn’t dead.

Or that his spirit, righteously angry, had been the cause of all this trouble. She heard keys jingling over the phone.

“Are you drunk?” Fiona asked. Esi met her gaze. A silent indictment.

“Drunk is…very specific,” Maurice hedged.

“You stay where you are. I’m going to order you an Uber and—”

“You need to get your dad and go.”

“Maurice—”

“Now, Fiona!” he said, and hung up. Esi jumped back from the phone at the demand in Maurice’s voice.

“Fiona, you’re in over your head. I’ll help you. Remember Sister Sleuths? I’m good at it.”

Fiona knew she was. Plus, she could use all the help she could get.

And yet.

Fiona knocked on her father’s prayer room door.

“Fiona, he’s not going to go.”

“Esi, give him a chance,” Fiona hissed.

“We have. Over and over, we have. He’s going to do it his way—”

Kofi pulled open the door.

“Dad, we gotta go,” Fiona said.

He looked ten years older.

“Fiona! Esi!” His voice had taken on a frantic pitch.

“Pray with me. Don’t you see what is happening?

I did it. I have been a righteous man. My anger was warranted.

My punishment was swift and just. I proved myself faithful, and God has returned my son to me.

We are Abraham and Isaac, can’t you see that? ”

“Your anger at Kwesi was unwarranted, Dad. You shamed him and…” Fiona trailed off, but Esi came behind her and spoke. “And Kwesi is not coming back.”

Kofi’s face twisted to Esi.

“Fiona, let’s go. He’ll never learn.” Esi pulled her sister’s arm.

“Daughter, I have learned.” Kofi’s eyes were hard on Fiona. “God has turned my heart. You’ll understand this when you’re older. I know you want to go to that man. You think he is your salvation, but he is not. When his obsession with the church is over, he will be over with you.”

“Dad…”

“Fiona. Go. The Lord is with me.”

She hesitated, and Esi rattled the door handle with an impatient huff. With one last look at him, Fiona turned and fled the house.

Fiona didn’t know if Maurice would still be up, but she called anyway. Her breath sped up before he answered.

“Fiona,” he said, and his voice was so husky that she turned to look at Esi guiltily.

“Can we meet you? I mean my sister and I? We can come to you.” Fiona’s voice felt too small.

“I’m not going to his house,” Esi mouthed, folding her arms.

Fiona pressed her palm over the phone’s microphone. “He’s harmless.”

There was a sharp exhale on the other end. Maurice didn’t argue. “No need. I’ll come to you.”

He hung up without saying goodbye.

—

Thirty minutes later, Fiona slid her key card into the door of her dim hotel suite. Esi was right behind her, still complaining about how ridiculous their father was, but her voice died in her throat the moment they stepped inside.

Maurice was already there. Sitting cross-legged in the dark of her room.

He looked like he’d grown right out of the shadows. The shifting neon stripes from the atrium light show slashed across his face. His posture was deceptively casual, but there was something intensely alert about the way he watched them enter.

Esi gasped behind her. “What the—”

“Did you touch it?” Maurice was quiet but commanding.

“With gloves,” Fiona whispered, holding up the sealed freezer bag with the brick fragment inside.

His gaze lingered on her, ostensibly checking for scratches and bruises.

“Good girl.”

The words curled around her like smoke, dark and intoxicating. It was their time now—late at night, when the city was half asleep, when reality loosened its grip just enough.

He took the bag and walked toward the kitchen.

He found a carton of strawberries. He probably wasn’t even hungry, just needed to do something with his hands while he thought.

Maurice pulled a strawberry from the basket and bit into it with such force that red, wet pulp pushed between his long fingers.

“Hmm, that one was riper than I thought.” He caught the drip of juice with his tongue, and Fiona was convinced her daddy had been right about the man all along.

The devil.

Her sister ate Maurice up with her eyes, and it didn’t make Fiona feel jealous exactly—vindicated, maybe? Like she wasn’t losing her mind after all. Like she had seen him clearly from the beginning—past his boy band eyelashes and soup cup dimples to the raw, smoldering center of him.

She felt a childish urge to leap up on the sofa pointing her finger.

See? See!

Don’t you dare call me a silly little girl again.

Don’t say, “I would never let this man blah, blah…”

But with that flicker of satisfaction came the darker, colder fear. Esi gets what she wants.

It was a fact of their lives. If Esi decided she wanted Maurice, there would be little Fiona could do about it. Maybe nothing at all.

Maurice shut the fridge, setting the strawberries back inside. He opened a cabinet, found a glass.

Esi leaned in. “He knows your space very well, eh?”

“Softest place on earth,” Maurice confirmed, slipping on tiny old man glasses and dragging the bagged brick with him.

He rotated the brick again and again, examining every groove, every scuff.

Seven minutes ticked by.

Finally, Esi let out a sharp huff and snatched the brick from his hands. “Stop trying to impress my sister.” She jabbed the corner of the brick with a perfectly manicured finger. “This is simple.”

She tilted the fragment toward the light, exposing a faint mark that Fiona hadn’t noticed before—small, sharp letters stamped into the surface like an afterthought.

“It’s a manufacturer’s logo,” Esi said. “Standard issue.”

Maurice’s eyes darkened, but he said nothing, settling back into the chair with a calm that felt practiced.

“Is this all you do, Fiona?” Esi asked, not bothering to look at her. “Sit around and look amazed when he states the obvious?”

Fiona felt the familiar burn of embarrassment rise in her chest. “No, I’m part of this. I’m investigating too.” Her sister’s undercurrent of I can do this in my sleep was the most cutting. Because Fiona wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t true. What thing had Esi not conquered on the first try?

Esi chuckled. “Whatever you say, sis. But can we move on? All we have to do is cross-reference this against the new developments going up around DC that use these bricks. Find where they overlap—”

“No need.” Fiona’s voice cut through the room. She pulled the brick from Esi’s grasp, holding it just out of reach.

Her gaze met Maurice’s, and something clapped between them.

She held up her phone, flashing the photo he’d taken during their last stakeout: Mark’s loft, half-built, with identical bricks stacked in haphazard piles near the construction site.

“It’s Mark,” she said.

Maurice smiled—genuine and satisfied. A rare thing and just for her.

Esi swatted her hand like someone trying to get rid of a fly.

“Fine. But you’re missing the human angle.

What about leverage?” She paced like she was back in the hospital, explaining a complicated diagnosis to an inattentive resident.

“I know much more about Mark and Kwesi’s relationship than Fiona.

We were both in college. Fiona was too young.

Mark and Kwesi were obsessed with building something in Ghana.

Like they were dead set. I don’t think he was faking about it either.

You can tell with a person.” She looked down at Maurice. “What would make him do this?”

Maurice leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. “He saw us at the club.”

“He was pretty upset,” Fiona said. “And this brick through the window proves that he is still very upset about Kwesi, but how could he be when he betrayed Kwesi so thoroughly?”

“Maybe you don’t know what you think you know, Fiona,” Esi said.

Maurice opened his mouth, and Fiona rushed to speak.

“Esi, you’ve helped. But you also pulled a full shift. I think you need to rest,” Fiona said. It was direct and not a suggestion.

Her sister’s mouth opened in shock.

“Look, someone from the old church circle hit me up, said you were out here exhibiting ‘ungodly behavior’—whatever that’s supposed to mean. And you know I don’t give two shits about that place anymore. They could hold a prayer vigil in a volcano for all I care, I’m not showing up.”

She paced, then pulled Fiona deeper into the bedroom.

“But there is a heaviness, Fiona. A crack in the room whenever he walks in. Makes all the marbles roll to his feet. American hoodoo. It makes my skin crawl.”

“Esi, you are too educated to be talking like this,” Fiona said, even as she recognized what Esi said was kind of true.

“I don’t care how it sounds. This man is going to put your soul in a mason jar! I’d rather see you in turtlenecks, locked in the church basement singing ‘How Great Thou Art’ on repeat, than out here catching feelings for the first sexually competent juju man you meet.”

She softened—just barely.

“Let Kwesi rest, Fiona,” Esi said.

It was the wrong thing to say. Fiona turned away from her sister. That was the one thing she wouldn’t do.

Yelling toward the bedroom, Maurice asked, “Who contacted you from the church? Are they still inside?”

“And there you have it,” Esi said, holding the bedroom door open. “The real reason he’s even here. Leopards don’t change their spots, Fiona. I’m going to bed, and staying here for a few days,” she announced, looking pointedly at Maurice.

They watched her disappear down the narrow hall.

“She’s…intense,” Fiona said, by way of apology.

“She also didn’t answer the question,” Maurice said, but he watched her go to Fiona’s bedroom with a touch of relief. “Just when we got into a sleeping routine, too,” he said.

“Oh, right. The bed’s occupied. How will you sleep now?”

“I don’t think the bed was the key ingredient,” he said absently while still turning the brick. If Fiona could spontaneously combust right now, she would.

“I turned Mark’s pearls in to the lab, and it’s not much but they are from the same batch in the same factory in China. So, it’s possible he bought them in bulk for an event. This may prove that he sent the shitty pearls to Robert. Established a deep motive to sell.”

“This is good. This is good, right? Mark wanted Robert to sell!” Fiona rocked on her heels.

“And the pearls said ‘over your dead body.’?” Maurice leaned back in the chair.

“It’s black-and-white.” Fiona felt a flush of relief. They were closing in on Mark.

But Maurice only made a face. His lack of enthusiasm worried her.

“So, when do we involve the police?” she asked.

“What is your uncanny obsession with the police all of a sudden?” Maurice was evasive. This was starting to concern Fiona. How would she ever be proven innocent if the cops hated Maurice?

“Maurice…we are going to report this?”

“Of course…eventually.”

“No, no, no.” Fiona shook her head. “This is ego, isn’t it? You and that detective?”

“Fiona, say what you need to say.” Maurice sighed and pulled his glasses off.

“It feels like…maybe you wouldn’t turn the information over to Detective Ryan if you had it.”

There, she said the thing: his ego or whatever chip he had on his shoulder about the police could mess up this investigation for them both. And moreover (maybe her sister had gotten in her head), part of her still felt like her investigation was secondary to Tameka.

“Look, would I find it pleasurable to beat the cops to a solid lead and suspect? Sure. Would I withhold solid evidence? No…Not super -solid evidence.”

“Maurice!”

He finally shrugged. “I want whatever we have to be tight, Fiona. No more mistakes.”

He looked at her, and Fiona was unsure if her heart would ever stop galloping when his full attention was on her.

“While you’re lining everything up to close Tameka, the police still haven’t ruled out foul play, so if you don’t mind, I’m sharing this with my public defender.”

He recoiled like she’d slapped him. “Good, he’s going to tell you the same thing. It’s not fucking enough, Fiona.”

“Perfect is the enemy of the good, Maurice.”

Maurice’s mouth rose at the corner, almost bitter. Then, abruptly, he straightened, like he’d just remembered himself.

“Good enough doesn’t exist in this profession, Fiona,” he said, voice tight, already gathering his things.

He slipped out of the door, leaving only coldness in the room behind him.