15th Affair (Women's Murder Club 15)

“You don’t have to say it, Cindy. I promise. You get the exclusive. If I find out anything at all.”

CHAPTER 75

WHEN I WALKED through the front door to the apartment I once shared with my husband, the wonderful Mrs. Rose said to me, “Lindsay, I have to go. My son is waiting for me at Tommy’s and I have to dress. You’ll find some pasta salad in the fridge. Oh, Martha has to go for a walk and the baby hasn’t eaten or had her bath. She just wouldn’t play ball with me. Sorry, dear.”

I told Mrs. Rose thanks for everything and have a good time and stood at the open door until she was gone. Then I closed the door and leaned against it, exhausted by the meeting with Cindy and Jad, thinking, No more. Please, I can’t take any more.

I was a mess.

I was the primary investigator on a quadruple homicide without witnesses or forensic evidence, and it was further compounded by a tangle of international players, a terrorist attack, and intelligence agencies working on the sly.

My husband was party to some or all of this, and he’d sucker-punched me, kneecapped me, and left me alone in a blind alley.

I was grateful to Cindy for including me in her meeting with Jad, and also thankful that she had agreed to sit on the story until I had answers.

But she wouldn’t sit on it forever.

I’d fed her the only theory of the murders I could think of, which presumed that Joe was not guilty of murder.

But he might well have had foreknowledge, if not his actual hand on a trigger. And for all I knew, he was a killer, many times over.

I became aware of Martha, who was whining and pushing at my legs. I said, “OK, OK, I hear you.”

We went to Julie’s room. I woke my daughter up very gently, and of course, she started to cry. I talked nonsense while dressing her in fleece and a hat. Then I awkwardly opened her stroller and strapped her in.

Martha was ebullient, and I hated to disappoint, but this was going to be a short, short walk.

I wheeled Julie into the elevator, keeping Martha on a tight leash, and somehow, Martha’s business was quickly done. She was desperate to go for a run. She pulled and barked at me when I turned to go back into the building.

“You don’t always get what you want,” I said to Jules and Martha. “And that goes for me, too.”

I then proceeded to do what single mothers all over the world do—that is, everything at once.

I fed the baby and I fed Martha, and after drinking the dregs of the opened bottle of Chardonnay in the fridge, I dished up some pasta salad and wolfed it down.

On the way to the dishwasher, I grabbed a basket that I keep on the counter near the microwave. It’s eight inches square, four inches high, a catch-all for receipts and the odd paper clip, marking pen, and business card.

Two men from the CIA had paid me a call last week, the point of which was to tell me to stop looking for Alison Muller. They had left their business cards on the counter. I couldn’t remember seeing those cards again.

I hoped Mrs. Rose had put them in the receipt basket.

I upended the basket and pawed through the contents, and yes, I found the cards. Michael J. Dixon. Christopher Knightly. Case officers, Central Intelligence Agency. Phone numbers were in the lower left corner.

I remembered that Dixon, the dark-haired one, had seemed to be the one in charge.

It was nearly 8 p.m. Would he answer his phone?

I had to try.

I dialed the number and he answered on the third ring.

“Agent Dixon, this is Lindsay Boxer. You visited me a couple of days ago to talk about Alison Muller.”

“I remember, Mrs. Molinari. How can I help you?”

“I need to see you. I have information that concerns national security. It also concerns my husband, and I think you’ll want to hear all about it.”

Dixon gave me an address and told me to come in the next morning at nine. I didn’t know wh