And now he was dead, and no longer able to confirm or deny what he’d seen or who he was. I hardly expected we’d get a straight answer from his widow. Which meant we really would never know who was dropping the cards into our postbox or if that person had also made the phone call three days ago.
“Someone out there is doing a fair job of pointing fingers at you, Miss Moriarty. Are you sure you want to leave here without telling us who that might be?”
“She’s a sixteen-year-old child,” Alice interjected. “What kind of enemies could she possibly have made?”
“No threats have come to your house? No one following you around?”
I stared down at the picture of Charles Ross and said, “Does this mean I can go?”
Mallory gathered all the papers up but one, straightened them, and placed them in the perfect center of the file folder. I glanced over at the remaining paper long enough to see that it was a custody form with my father’s name at the top. He was evidently fighting Alice’s guardianship. “I expect we’ll find a body soon for Mr. Charles Ross. I also expect we’ll find some kind of evidence of you on or around that body.”
“What are you trying to say?” Alice asked.
Mallory pushed the custody form toward Alice, but she didn’t bother to look down. Instead, she kept her hands folded neatly in her lap and her gaze zeroed in on the inspector. He was focused completely on me. “I’m saying, Mori, that you should be very careful whom you trust. We found evidence of a murder in your rubbish and have a witness statement that you hid evidence of five more murders.”
“Four,” I corrected him. “He killed Sadie with his bare hands. He didn’t use the sword on her.”
I thought perhaps I saw a glint of pain in Mallory’s eyes, but he quickly covered. “Someone is orchestrating this campaign against you.”
That’s when Mallory finally looked at Alice. He suspected her. But then, he would. Regardless of whether or not he was still in my father’s camp, I was sure he’d heard a mountain of stories about Alice’s evil ways.
Alice, unfazed, said, “Exactly. And I hope that the police catch whomever it is and bring him to justice.”
Mallory’s smile was tight lipped and short lived, and still he didn’t take his eyes off her for a long moment. But when he spoke, he addressed only me. “Leave this to the police. This is no place for that little detective boyfriend of yours to stick his nose in. Let us handle it.”
“The way you’ve always handled my problems?” I asked.
He tried not to react, but I could see his anger in the clenching of his jaw.
“If we’re done here.” I stood, and Alice followed suit, but Mallory reached across the table to grab my upper arm.
“If you keep secrets from us, we can’t help you.”
I pulled free of his hand. “If I need your kind of help, all is lost anyway. But I’ll make sure to keep that in mind.”
Chapter 18
In the middle of the night, my phone blared the barcarolle through my dreams until I finally found it with one fumbling hand and answered. “Sleeping.”
“I can’t find him.” It was Mycroft’s voice, only barely recognizable. And as the silence opened up between us, I started to realize why. He coughed to clear his throat, but he sounded like he was about to weep. “I can’t find him, and it probably wouldn’t matter if I could. He needs you.”
“What’s happened?”
He didn’t respond, and suddenly I remembered standing in the hall of my mother’s ward, facing the patient, expectant faces of three nurses who wanted me to answer a similar question. And I couldn’t seem to say the word “dead.”
“Where would he go?” I asked.
Mycroft barely answered, “I don’t know,” then ended the call.
I didn’t know what to do at first. The ringtone was Lock’s, which meant Mycroft had his phone. And Sherlock could have been a thousand places or even on his way to my house. Still, I got myself together and went out with no real plan.
I doubted heavily that he’d be at his house, but I decided to check there first. The door was locked, so I used the key hidden in the rocks to let myself in. I could tell no one was home the moment I stepped into the entry. The house had that empty feel to it, like no one had been there for a long while. But I ran up the stairs just in case, deciding to start at the very top floor of the house and work my way down.
His mother’s room was spotless but not sterile. It was welcoming, actually. Her bed was turned down and a side table lamp was on, spotlighting a novel that she’d never finish, despite the silver marker holding her place. Next to it, an ornate frame housed a picture of the brothers from when they were young. A floral robe was draped across the foot of the bed, slippers lined up perfectly beneath. It was a room waiting for someone to come home.