I take a cab downtown to the Park Avenue building. There are officers on nearly every street corner, but no one seems to take an interest in me. A good detective wouldn’t be obvious, though.
I pull back the building’s heavy front door and walk through a shiny lobby to a security guard manning three turnstiles. I hand over my driver’s license, providing a record of my appearance, and then head to the elevator bank. As I approach my publisher’s offices, I hear the distinct whirr of a vacuum cleaner. If the cleaning staff is already here, there’s no way people are still working. I debate whether or not to hang around for an hour until my tail—if one exists—tires of me. Then I see Trevor.
He notices me as soon as he exits the glass office doors. “Liza?” He tilts his head as though I may be an apparition. Maybe editors, like writers, also suffer from thin realities.
“Hey, Trev. I am sorry to show up like this. Um . . .” Tears suddenly fill my eyes. I look at the tiled ceiling and blink rapid fire, shooing them with my lashes. “The police found Nick’s body. They are searching our home. I think, maybe . . .” My throat closes up. I can’t say that the officers suspect me. How would I even begin to explain that?
I feel the weight of Trevor’s hand on my shoulder. He gives it a squeeze and shakes his head, as though disappointed. “They suspect David?”
The fact that he has zeroed in on David calms me. Maybe I am imagining Detective Campos’s attitude. Any suspicion of me is insane, after all. I didn’t want Nick dead. I expel the tears with a long exhale. “Thriller editors.” I sniff. “Always trying to guess the plot.”
He doesn’t smile. “Come with me to dinner.”
I’d like nothing more than to go out with a friend at the moment. But dinner might give anyone following me the wrong impression. “I’m not that hungry. The idea of strange men going through my drawers has kind of sapped my appetite at the moment.”
“Drinks?”
Heading to a bar with Trevor will look worse than going out to dinner. “Coffee?” I suggest. The hour is wrong for it, but editors and writers can always use more caffeine.
“I know a quiet local place.”
I follow him an avenue over to a ritzy espresso bar. It’s the kind of shop with decorative bookshelves stocked with European literature and unabridged Shakespeare collections, a place where people hang out to seem well-read and artsy whether or not they actually are. The inside is nearly vacant despite half a dozen leather booths and a long zinc bar set with stools on each side. I’m shocked more people aren’t hunched over laptops. Writers love to “work on their novels” in places like this. Makes us seem legit.
When I see the menu on the chalkboard above the bar, I understand the emptiness. A fifteen-dollar latte is too expensive for anyone without a slew of bestsellers. I gesture to the chalkboard with the artisanal bean selections and outlandish prices. “Let me guess: all organic beans picked by Buddhist monk–trained monkeys.” The joke isn’t great, but it’s all I have. Humor is the only lid against the well of tears in my chest. I don’t want to cry in front of my colleague any more than I already have.
Trevor cracks a smile. “My treat.”
I order a black coffee on the principle of not paying triple the Starbucks price for something with milk in it. Trevor orders an Earl Grey tea because he’s unafraid of being a walking British stereotype. We slide into a booth and comment on what Manhattan eateries charge while waiting for the waitress to bring us our bland beverages. I, for one, don’t want to be in the middle of saying “murder” when the barista shows up.
My drink arrives too hot. Though I’d like an excuse for silence, I can’t sip this without burning off my lips. Instead, I hold the bowl-sized mug at chin level and blow onto the steam. It smells bitter.
Trevor pushes his tea to the side and leans his elbows on the table. “Are you concerned about this investigation?”
“I’m sure it’s all routine.” I try to steady my voice as I say this. I am positive it is anything but routine.
“What are they looking for?”
“My gun.”
Trevor blanches.
“I’m not sure where I left it last,” I say, pretending that my absentmindedness, not David’s forgetfulness (or willful deceit), is the reason it is missing. “It wasn’t in the lockbox in the house. I might have left it at a gun range that has lockers . . .” I put down my mug and gesture to my head. “These fertility hormones I’ve been on—I might have mentioned that I’m taking new ones—they’ve made the past month a bit hazy.”
“Did David have access to your gun?”
“He has access to everything. We’ve been together twelve years. He knows all my combinations. He has my e-mail password.”
Trevor raises his eyebrows as though I’ve just confessed to posting my social security number on an unsecured web page.
“If I didn’t tell him them, I’d probably forget.”
Trevor nods, shaking the instant camera film in his brain. I don’t like the picture he’s forming. I want him thinking that David is innocent—as he very well might be.
I set my nearly full coffee on the table. Hot liquid splashes over the side and onto the back of my hand. Instinctively, I jam the scalded skin in my mouth. Trevor watches, eyes crinkling with concern as though the accident is evidence of a fragile emotional state.
I drop my hand on the table. “David had no reason to want to hurt Nick. He was his best friend and law partner.” My voice is a pleading whine. I am imploring Trevor to agree with my argument and help convince me of it. “With him gone, David is drowning under the weight of all the work. He’s afraid the firm could go under.”
A splotch spreads between my thumb and pinky. It throbs with my heartbeat. Ice would be great. I wonder how much a place like this charges for it. I shake my hand, trying to cool it in the air conditioning while I attempt a casual tone. “The cops hassling us makes no sense. I talked to a sergeant from that writers’ academy I went to last year, and he thinks a woman spurned by Nick might have killed him. Apparently, Nick was gay. Can you believe it?”
Trevor reaches across the table and lifts my injured hand. He stares at the red spot, his thumb resting on my knuckles. Though he’s probably evaluating the severity of my burn, the gesture feels intimate. Longing empties out my insides. I miss affection. Since Nick’s disappearance, David has been so prickly. Since before Nick’s disappearance, if I’m honest with myself.
“I need to tell you something.” Trevor keeps his head down as he looks up at me. The result is a sad puppy stare that makes me nervous. “I probably should have said something before.”
My breathing quickens. Trevor has never before “needed” to tell me something. Snapshots of our friendship scroll through my mind. Has it meant more than that to Trevor? To me?
“Remember the launch party for Accused Woman? The one at the Thrill and Chills Book Store a few months ago?”
This is not what I thought he was going to say. I flash back to an image of me in a plastic chair with an unnecessarily tall stack of books on the table, trying to put on a brave face for the disappointingly small crowd. I nod my answer. The more time I spend with Trevor, the more I communicate like him.
“David and Nick showed up right as you were doing the reading.”
Again, I nod for him to continue. I don’t remember this. Though I do recall David saying he had to work late and barely showing. He’d been a few months into the teen suicide case.
“On my way over to the bookstore, I saw them walking down the street.”
My neck tenses. I feel the familiar twisting in my temples. “Yes?”
“I’m pretty sure . . . I think . . .” He looks at me, a defense attorney about to tell a wrongfully convicted client that her appeal has been rejected. “I saw them kissing.”
A bomb goes off between my ears. An immense pressure fills my head, like my brain is being squeezed in a vice. It’s followed by a high-pitched ring, as though I’ve developed sudden tinnitus. Trevor is still talking, but I only know because his mouth is moving. I read his full lips.