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Why would he lie? What was he trying to hide?

Almost on autopilot, I picked up the phone and sent Boone a text.

I think I’ve learned all I can from your father’s letters. I’d like to set up a time to meet so I can return them to you. I’d rather not entrust this to the mail.

Three gray dots blinked for a moment. Then Boone’s answer came through.

Sure. Can you meet me at my office again? I’m out at a site the rest of the week. How about Monday morning?

I sent back a thumbs-up. Whatever Boone Sidney was hiding, I had to find out.

Chapter

Twenty-Five

Within an hour of waking the next morning, Dad and I had already gotten into two major arguments. First, he refused to eat his normal breakfast of bacon and eggs. I couldn’t even get the man to eat a bowl of sugary cereal.

“I’ll pick something up in town,” he said, straightening his tie in the hallway mirror.

I resisted the urge to nag him. I knew I would sound too much like my mother. I also knew it wouldn’t work.

The second argument centered around going into the office at all. I planned to take the morning off with him, then go directly to his driving assessment.

He refused.

“No sense in sitting around here twiddling my thumbs waiting for the gallows. I’d rather keep busy.”

“The gallows? You’re being melodramatic,” I said. He gave me his patented side-eye. Even though I knew exactly what he was trying to set up, short of knocking him over the head and tying him to a chair, I had no choice but to go along.

“You could just stay here, and I’ll go in without you,” he said. “I’m sure Kobe’d be happy to come pick you up.”

“Kobe isn’t our personal ferry service,” I said. “He’s got a job as a dockhand, Dad.” I stayed silent on the other obvious reason Dad’s plan was a bad idea. It would give him a prime opportunity to ditch me.

Instead, I walked into my office just past seven while Dad disappeared into his. He was cryptic about his agenda for the day.

I tossed the backpack I used in lieu of a briefcase on one of my chairs and flicked on the lights.

That’s when I first realized something was wrong. Just a subtle shift. The air in the room seemed colder than it should have been. And you often never realize a room has a particular smell until something changes it.

Then one corner of the sheer, white curtain covering the huge arched window lifted at the bottom corner.

The window was open. I went to it. It was just a crack. No more than a quarter of an inch. But just enough to let the cool morning air seep in.

The locks on these windows no longer worked. But the building was nearly one hundred and fifty years old. The sills had been painted so many times that some of the windows stuck shut. Others swelled with the changing temperature. My window in particular was almost impossible to open for me without shredding my palms to do it.

But this morning, it was open. I noticed a few flakes of gray paint on the floor. When I gripped the sides of the frame to try to budge it, the window slid up more easily than it usually did. I was able to close it too with a quick, downward jerk that sent more chips of paint falling to the floor.

“Dad?” I called out.

He didn’t answer. I did a quick visual check of the inventory in my office. Nothing looked out of place. I couldn’t find anything missing. Still, I knew I hadn’t opened that window before I left last time.

I checked the conference room. Nothing there seemed disturbed either. My whiteboard took up most of one corner. I’d angled it a bit so you couldn’t easily read it from the hallway. Though it was fortunate Professor Derby saw it when he did, I didn’t want to make a habit of displaying the details of an active case to anyone walking by.

When I passed Dad’s office, he was already on the phone. He held up an index finger to me, gesturing for me to wait before interrupting him. A cursory eyeballing of his office showed nothing amiss here either.

I went back to my own office. Was I imagining things?

I didn’t get the chance to reflect on it. I soon had three phone calls of my own from two clients checking in, then a possible new client intake. That one took almost an hour to field. The woman was a fifty-two-year-old adoptee searching for her birth mother.