🌁 chapter five: co-conspirator [let me be your ghost]

"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." -Benjamin Franklin

"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." -Benjamin Franklin

previous: about | chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four

My mouth went dry as Eze plucked the moka pot off the stove, wiping away the coffee that had bubbled over the sides.

“I never screw the damn thing on tight enough,” he muttered, pouring the hot espresso into two stone cups flecked like eggshells.

He went to hand me a cup, and paused. “I surprised you.”

“You think your father was murdered?” The words came out low, and I tried to keep my voice from shaking.

“Sit down,” he said, setting the cups on the small round table in front of the loveseat by the kitchen, the one facing out over the office. I hadn’t realized I wasn’t following until I felt his hand on the small of my back, warm through my sweater, steering me toward the couch. My body answered his touch before I could tell it not to.

I sank into the plush blue cushions and reached into my bag for my notebook—the harmless costume of a woman here to take notes. Beneath it, my thumb found the tape recorder, the record button worn smooth from years of use. I pressed it as I set my cup down, the click swallowed by stone meeting wood.

Get me something admissible, Matthew’s voice rang in my head.

So I would.

“What proof do you have of your father being murdered?” I asked.

“Proof is not the problem.” Eze settled beside me, close enough that I caught the coffee on him and, underneath it, something warmer. Cedar, maybe. His voice had dropped to a hush even though we were alone. “I know he was murdered.”

“But how do you know? The news said it was a heart attack.”

Eze took a sip of his espresso, his eyes locked on mine. “He was speaking at a conference. We were supposed to talk the night before he gave his keynote. There were… sensitive details he was going to cover about Crane Industries and he wanted my opinion on how to handle it. We never had that conversation, and I think it was in someone’s best interest for him to not share what he was going to.”

“You think someone was trying to keep him quiet?”

“I know the board wasn’t happy with him. There were grumblings of a mutiny. That they might try to get him removed. And then before I know it, his body came home embalmed, and my father’s security detail—men he trained to document everything down to what he ate for breakfast—have a forty-minute gap in their logs the night he died.” Eze said it flatly, the way you say a thing you’ve repeated to yourself so many times it’s lost its temperature.

“Gaps happen.”

“Not in my father’s world. In my father’s world, gaps are made.”

I drank. The espresso was quite good, which annoyed me. “And you hired me. Not a private detective.”

Eze smirked. “Is that so hard to believe? You must be pretty good if all of your past clients ended up in jail.”

The cup stopped halfway to my mouth. Did he know—

He laughed at whatever crossed my face. “Relax. It’s clear you have as much luck as some magazines’ thirty-under-thirty lists. Your agent sure knows how to pick them. And I picked you because of your writing. I’m not just talking about the ghostwritten memoirs.”

My stomach tumbled, but for a different reason this time. “You thought because I’m a good writer, I can solve a murder?”

“No, Lola. I think you’re a great writer, not just a good one. And great writers see things the rest of us don’t.” He leaned in, and my heart did something I chose not to examine. “Your debut novel—” he shook his head, a faraway look crossing his face. “You picked up on things that should have stayed buried, and you gave them a name. That makes you an exceptional observer. Whatever that gift is, I need you to use it to help me find the person who killed my father before they come after me.”

“You’re in danger?”