“And who would care enough about Boris Lazarov to avenge him?” Helen put in.
“He had kids,” Mary Alice said quietly. “I remember that from the briefing. Three?”
“Two,” Naomi corrected. “A boy, seventeen. A daughter, aged eleven. The daughter was killed with her mother in a car accident six years later.”
“You think Lazarov’s son, at the ripe old age of”—Helen paused to do the math—“sixty-one, has finally decided to take revenge on the people responsible for killing his father more than forty years ago?” Helen was frankly skeptical.
Before Naomi could answer, a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall shadow loomed over us. It was a long-legged, muscular man with a toddler perched on his shoulders. He was wearing cargo shorts and a pair of round, tortoiseshell glasses. The girl had cornrows, each tiny braid finished off with a bumblebee barrette. Her hands were twisted in her father’s hair and she was pulling on it while she drummed her little heels into his pecs.
“Babe, I’m taking Layla to the bathroom. You got any fruit snacks for her?” He smiled at us as Naomi rummaged in her bag and tossed him a pack of gummy sharks.
“Only one,” she told him. “And only if she does both.”
“Potty now, Dadddddddyyyyy,” the little person demanded, kicking him like a pony.
“Ladies.” He smiled again at us and left at a jog, the child giggling as he ran. We were all quiet for a minute, just enjoying the view as he moved.
“He looks like a nerdy Winston Duke,” Natalie said in a reverent voice.
“Mmmmhmmm.” Naomi’s voice was a purr.
“What does your husband do?” Helen asked politely.
“Dennis is a theoretical physicist,” Naomi replied. “I never understand a damned word he says, but I do like to listen to him talk. And he’s very good with his hands.”
Nobody said a word, but Mary Alice cut her eyes aroundto me and I gave a little cough. “The Lazarov mission?” I nudged. “You think Lazarov’s son is behind Lilian Flanders’s death.”
Naomi got right back to business but Natalie kept watching until the cargo shorts turned the corner. “I do. There was something clutched in Lilian’s hand when she died—a figure of a black wolf.”
Naomi reached down to pull a ziplock snack bag from her diaper bag and handed it over. Inside was a tiny wolf, rudimentary to the point of being crude. But it was clear what the thing was meant to be. “Obsidian,” I said, turning it over in my palm.
Mary Alice peered over my shoulder. “What does that have to do with Boris Lazarov?” she asked.
“The name ‘Boris’ means ‘wolf’ in Russian,” I told her. I turned the wolf over again. There were characters roughly carved into the belly—Cyrillic characters. One looked like a squared-off six, the other looked a little like pi. “Those are Boris Lazarov’s initials,” I said. I turned to Naomi. “You think the killer left it behind as a message?”
“I do,” Naomi said.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Helen put in. “Maybe it was a little tchotchke Lilian picked up on her travels.”
Naomi shook her head. “The neighbor who visited her every day said she’d never seen it, and Lilian’s place was neat. We’re talking Shaker neat. No knickknacks or clutter of any kind.”
“Like Marie Kondo,” Natalie said, nodding.
“Who?” Helen asked.
“Marie Kondo,” Nat explained. “You know, the woman who declutters? She wrote a whole book about it. She had a Netflix series? She’s from Japan?” she prodded.
Mary Alice shrugged. “Never heard of her.”
Natalie rolled her eyes. “The point is, if you use her method, you tidy your stuff once and never have to clean again.”
“Natalie, that’s sociopathic,” Mary Alice said. “People who actually live their lives acquire clutter. It’s inevitable.”
“It’s not inevitable,” Nat protested. “It’s lazy. All it takes is a little discipline and the proper method. You simply go through everything in your house and hold it in your hands and you ask yourself, ‘Does this spark joy for me?’ If it does, it can stay. If it doesn’t, out it goes.”
“Like you did with your husbands,” Mary Alice replied.
To my surprise, Natalie didn’t rise to the bait. She just laughed before turning back to Naomi. “I agree with Billie. There’s something more.”