Chapter
Nine
Noah
The phone drags me from sleep at nine a.m. I check the screen—Hudson—and swipe to answer.
“Morning,” I say, voice rough. Night shift means I crashed around six after my perimeter check. Three hours isn’t enough, but it’ll do.
“You underwater?” Hudson asks.
I sit up, rubbing my face. Through the basement window, rain sheets against the glass. “Raining heavy. No flooding.”
The team agreed I’d stay on through the weekend, staying on site at Alicia’s, given everything that’s happened. Gabe’s on standby if I need relief, and Hudson flew in Jake, another teammate, for additional backup. But I’ve got it covered.
“Any signs of press?”
“Not yet. Alicia says the press doesn’t care about the person who found the body. Even if they cared, they aren’t standing on the curb in this weather.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Haven’t seen her yet today. But this week, she’s been strong. She’s got a daughter to put on a front for, though. Stella’s with her dad this weekend—but I’m not expecting a change.”
“Copy that,” Hudson says with a grimness that tells me he didn’t just call for a sit-rep.
“What’s up?”
“As you know, they determined on day one it’s a homicide.”
“Right. They found the digoxin residue on the coffee cup he was drinking from. Did they find fingerprints?”
“According to our source, only his.” He hesitates for a beat, long enough to put my senses on alert. “Alicia Morgan is now a person of interest in the investigation.”
I sit up straighter. “Because she found the body?”
“Possibly. But there’s more.”
“Gabe said the police spoke to her at her office yesterday.”
“They did.”
“At this stage, everyone who was around him that day would be a person of interest, right?”
“Has she mentioned that she knew Delacroix?”
“She said it’s a specialized industry—she knew of him.”
“He was also on her board of directors for Morgan & Company when she started it. Left in 2019.”
My gut tightens. Board member. Not just someone she “knew of.”
“Six years ago,” I say carefully. “That’s the kind of detail you offer up when police ask if you knew someone. And that makes her a person of interest?”
“My guess is it’s more how she answered the question when the police met with her.”
“If Alicia thought it was relevant, she would’ve mentioned it.” Even as I say it, doubt creeps in. She was evasive when I asked about him. I saw it in her eyes. Not sharing that with Hudson.
“The officer hasn’t filed a report yet, but when he does, we’ll see if we can figure out what she said that’s increased their interest in her.”