Derek pointed to the calendar. “That dinner was Friday night, so your conversation with everyone at the exhibit would’ve been Thursday.”
“Right,” I said. “Same day as my lunch with Elizabeth. So there I am, talking to Jackson, and he agrees to go to dinner with us, and suddenly I hear this big gasping sound behind me. I turn and see Elizabeth, who looks like she’s seen a ghost. She can’t breathe. And now I’m worried, so I turn back to Jackson for help. And he’s gone. Vanished.”
“Where’d he go?” Gabriel asked.
“I have no idea. It was like he vanished in a cloud of smoke.”
“What did Elizabeth say?”
I rolled my eyes. “She made up this story about how she thought she saw some woman she used to know. I told her we should go find the woman, but Elizabeth insisted that it wasn’t that woman, after all. She got over it pretty quickly.”
“Sounds bogus,” Gabriel said.
“I thought so, too. And then Jackson didn’t show up for dinner the next night.”
“Yep, definitely bogus,” Gabriel said.
“I totally agree.”
“So you believe they knew each other,” Derek said.
“Doesn’t it sound that way to you?”
“Yes, it does,” he said. “I think we should have a talk with Jackson after we finish up here.”
“Can you get me a photograph of Elizabeth?” Gabriel asked.
“I’ll take care of it,” Derek murmured as he typed a note into his calendar.
I’d watched NCIS enough times to know that Derek could submit Elizabeth’s photograph to a facial recognition program and find out who she really was within minutes. Hopefully she wasn’t some sort of criminal mastermind, but you never knew.
“Let’s get back to the caves,” Gabriel said. “Since last Thursday, the day of your lunch with Elizabeth, and up until yesterday, I’ve got log entries once each day and twice on Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday.”
Derek checked his calendar and frowned. “I had time scheduled with Garrity every day but Saturday.”
I sat back in my chair. “So Saturday there were two entries and neither of them were yours?”
“That’s right. Along with one extra entry on Sunday and Tuesday.” He thought for a moment. “No, Garrity and I only entered the caves once on those days.”
“What times? Do you remember?”
Derek told him the times he met Garrity and Gabriel checked off the applicable entries. “So we’ve got a question mark for Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning, and Tuesday morning.”
“Were they all the same times in the morning?”
“Different times,” Gabriel said.
“I tried to meet Garrity in the mornings,” Derek said, “Usually around ten. But there were a few afternoons, as well.”
“I think I’ve noted them all.” Gabriel double-checked his log-in list. “So we’ve got four entries unaccounted for.”
“That’s disturbing,” Derek said.
Gabriel shrugged. “It could be completely innocent. Maybe Robson stopped by to check on something.”
“Or an employee had a valid excuse to go in there.” Derek’s eyes narrowed in concern. “Brooklyn and I were discussing the possibility that the appraiser or one of the reporters was able to cajole someone into letting them inside the cave. Even Trudy might’ve asked Robson if she could take a look. After she opened the door, someone could’ve snuck inside. This is all conjecture, but it’s worth considering.”
I had stopped listening and simply stared at my calendar page until my eyes went blurry. “Oh no. Oh my God. This time it really is all my fault.”
“What is it, love?” Derek said, taking hold of my arm. “What’s wrong?”
I jabbed my finger on the calendar note. “My chat room! I sent them all the first paragraph of the letter that Guru Bob’s grandmother sent to her sister. It was in some medieval language, remember? And I described the watermark on the paper. I told them the letter came from a storage box in a friend’s house. It wouldn’t be hard to track it down. It must be connected.”
“Not necessarily, darling,” Derek said in his most soothing tone. Usually it worked to calm me down, but not this time.
“Something else is going on here,” I said, growing more agitated. “Look at the timeline, Derek. My online communication about that letter might’ve set everything in motion. What if something in that ancient language triggered some kind of reaction in cyberspace? What if someone connected to my chat room killed Amelia?”
*
An hour later, after an extended rant on my part combined with Derek’s lightning-fast skill at pointing out the obvious flaws in my hypothesis, I managed to compose myself. But though I’d stopped sharing my ideas on this, my brain kept racing. Had I brought all of this trouble to Dharma? Was it my fault Amelia was dead?