“Her name’s Reverend Maya and supposedly she knew Paul Brown. The funeral guys remembered her.”
“Well, that’s good. You’ll be able to talk to someone who knew your dad.”
“I think so,” I said. “Then I can put this all behind me and come back and hold you, and together we’ll figure out that three-finger-salute thing.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“More like first thing the following morning.” There was a silence between us before I said, “You okay?”
“Just trying to figure out where to go next. Any advice?”
“Try to see Stefan if you can. Find out what specifically made him suspicious of the area around the train tracks. I don’t think he mentioned it.”
“I already talked to Naomi,” Bree said. “She’s seeing him in the morning. What are you doing tomorrow until you meet the minister?”
“I told Drummond and Johnson I was free to help them,” I said. “Least I could do, considering how much they’ve helped me.”
“I miss you, Alex,” she said softly.
“I miss you too,” I said. “And thanks.”
“For?”
“Sticking your neck out for family.”
“I’m Alex Cross’s wife,” she said teasingly. “What else would I do?”
“Very funny,” I said, grinning. “I love you, Bree.”
“I love you too, Alex,” she said. “Have a good night’s sleep.”
“You too,” I said, and clicked off.
It was nearly eleven by then and I’d been up since five. I should have been turning off the light, trying to get back to sleep. But I felt like I’d had a cup of espresso, jittery, wanting something to do. My focus finally fixed on that stack of three binders that held a copy of the murder book covering the investigations of the socialites and the maid.
Had I missed something on my first trip through them?
Figuring I’d be better off seeking the answer to that question instead of lying awake in the darkness wondering what this Reverend Maya might tell me about my father, I opened the first binder and started to read the records all over again.
Sometime after midnight, exhaustion overtook me, and I slipped off into darkness and dreams that were a mishmash of things I’d seen in Starksville and Palm Beach: Sydney Fox lying dead on her doorstep; the sugarcane burning, throwing smoke and bugs into the sky; Rashawn Turnbull’s body in the crime scene photos; and a dark-hooded and cloaked man standing with his back to me on a street in Belle Glade.
He raised his gloved right hand and held three fingers high.
Chapter
61
Starksville, North Carolina
Dear, sweet Lizzie, her grandfather thought as he dipped an oar into the calm water. Still dressed in her white nightgown and robe, his precious little girl knelt on the floor of the rowboat, forward of the bow seat, her arms flung over the gunnel, and her sleepy eyes trained on lily pads that glistened in the rising sun.
He pulled gently and rotated the oar handle with finesse, causing the flat-bottom skiff to spin in a slow circle across those lily pads. Lizzie held on tight to the sides of the boat and giggled before she let out a “Whee!”
“I told you it was fun,” he said.
“Is that really how you catch them, Grandfather? The fairies?” Lizzie asked as she pushed aside the ringlets of blond hair that fell across her innocent, ever-so-blue eyes.
The old man fell in love all over again and said, “I have it on the highest authority that a fine way to catch fairy princesses is to wait for a nice warm dawn when they will be out sunning on lily pads. You spin over them, confuse them, and then snatch them up.”