Our speedy return to the mountain estate was a mixed blessing. I had to swallow my bitterness toward Lawrence for pushing Andrew to work again so soon when I felt he needed to bond with his children more than ever. But knowing we would return to the main estate for Thanksgiving meant I could use these few weeks to organize what was turning into an ambitious investigation, and there were some things I wanted done outside of Lawrence's and Henri's sharp eyes.
I arranged for Francine to stay at the main estate instead of returning with us. It wasn't difficult to find a maid who could swing an early vacation, justifying Francine filling her space. I gave her orders to keep eyes and ears open, but not to insert herself. It wasn't worth putting her job or safety on the line. Instead, I was relying on her gossip-attuned ears to pick out trails that I would follow myself Thanksgiving week.
Andrew's schedule for the foreseeable future left me with few tasks outside of weekly duties. There were no plans for hosting guests, leaving his attention focused on project management. That left me with some stretches of free time, and I had two main plans to fill those. The first plan was on closing any loose threads, such as confirming Andrew's alibi.
The second plan was giving him the best sex of his life.
It wasn't for selfish reasons! As I disembarked from the helicopter and we made our way up the winding driveway through the autumn mists, I couldn't ignore how his eyes had the same cloudiness. He was conversing attentively and some of his color had returned to his face, but his eyes still looked through everything. I wanted to clear the fog of uncertainty he was facing and hand him back the reins to his self-confidence.
For the first couple days I let him focus on returning to routine. We ate dinner together, which allowed me to keep an eye on how he was feeling, and I cuddled him a bit before he would sleep. I used that time to make some preparations. It was surprising how hard it was to get my hands on an order of rope without it being automatically sent to the groundskeeper's office!
Those kinds of quests were fun distractions when I became frustrated in my more earnest searches. Confirming Andrew's flight schedule the week of Elaine's death was easy, there were paper trails a mile long. What was harder was finding ways to prove that Andrew had no financial ties to the murderer. Almost none of Andrew's finances were actually personal, with most things handled through the Khatri estate accounts. I spent hours combing through bank statements, double- and triple-checking them against statements from the same time period in different years, to confirm there were no unusual charges or transfers. I checked for new hires in the preceding months, and affirmed that none of those hires left the estate too soon after her passing. After a couple days of hair-pulling tedium, I felt confident that I could rule out the possibility of Andrew hiring someone for the explicit purpose of assassinating his wife.
More difficult still was getting my hands on the autopsy as discreetly as possible. The family had requested a copy from the coroner's office, and it was on file--lucky, because I didn't want a record of me requesting it myself. Unlucky, because it was kept behind a password-safe folder of family documents, deep in an encrypted server. I had access to that server for my financial obligations, but I knew the passwords for each folder were different. Having no hacking experience meant I would have to guess, and the last thing I wanted was to sound a security alert. I started by considering who was most likely to have set up the password, and who would have access to it. My intuition told me Lawrence Kumiega would have established the password, due to his position as the head of Khatri's security. But he would have also shared that password with Andrew. I either needed a convincing reason to ask for the password...or I needed a convincing reason to have one or the other log in to the folder for me.
I decided to start with the latter and created an opportunity at dinner. I had chosen a hearty curry for the menu, and there was a slight film of steam on the dining room windows, showing how much chillier the evenings had become. I was wearing my uniform for once, having rushed to dinner. Andrew was cozy in a sweater and jeans, but he was looking out the windows warily. "I never liked the cold very much," he was saying as he scraped the bottom of his bowl. "It's nice in small sittings, I suppose, for the winter holidays. But give me hot summers any day."
"Spoken like someone whose AC has never broken," I teased him.
He chuckled in acknowledgment. "True, true. But still, look at this face." He turned to me and pointed at his chin in emphasis. "Does this look like the complexion of someone who's meant for cold climates?"
I laughed and pointed to my own pale features. "I don't love the cold any more than you, I just can't live where there's any sun or I'll burn!"
"Ah, and that would be a shame. Nothing should damage this radiant skin of yours," he said, reaching to brush his fingers along mine. Our fingers intertwined, but neither of us made any move to become more intimate. He seemed content with the gentle contact, with the ability to hold and be held.
I rubbed my fingertips along his knuckles. "You travel to exotic resorts so often for work anyway, how often do you actually spend in the cold?"
"You would be surprised. About ten...fifteen? Somewhere in there. About ten years ago my father and I opened a resort in the far north of Canada. Place costs a fortune just to get working electricity up there, we only have it open a limited number of weeks per year. But people are convinced the water and air is so much cleaner up there. Mrs. Mbaye used--" Andrew paused, but pressed on. "Mrs. Mbaye used to bring her husband there annually, saying it would be good for him. Alice hated going."
"I'm sure it's gorgeous there," I said softly, watching his eyes carefully and trying to gauge his feelings. Moments like that were so hard to read, as he seemed to compartmentalize. I squeezed his hand. "Did you ever travel as a family?"
He looked thoughtful at that. "It was a mix. Traveling with my parents was often for business, although Dad would usually find a few times in the year to take us somewhere exciting. Elaine came with us on the pleasure trips, especially after we were engaged. After Dad passed away I was doing the business trips alone."
"How often would that be?"
"Not nearly as often as I have been, the past two years. But at least once a quarter for a week or so. Elaine used to do the cutest thing," he said, his lips softening into a smile as the memory arose. "Every time I went on a trip, she would write me a letter, one for each day I was gone. She used to handwrite them at her desk, just before she would do her diary each night. Of course if she actually had mailed them, I would be home by the time they arrived, so she would hold onto them and give them to me the night I came home. She used to sit on the bed and watch me read them."
I grinned, imagining an enthusiastic Elaine Khatri watching over Andrew's shoulder as he read her letters out loud. "What a wonderful thing to do together."
"They were wonderful," he agreed. "Even though I couldn't read them, knowing she was writing them for me every day kept my spirits up, even more than our texts and calls." Then his smile faltered, and his brows furrowed. "I never found any letters from...from the last week I was gone. There weren't any sitting on her desk."
I tightened my grip on his hand. "Oh, Andrew, I'm so sorry. That's heartbreaking."
