Darker Shades of Elise novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Wednesday

On Wednesday at seven fifteen I sat in my car across from the Marquand Hotel with a baseball cap pulled down over my hair.

Rain streaked the windshield.

Mitchell's silver sedan had been parked under the awning since seven.

I told myself I'd wait and see.

At seven fifty-five, a black town car pulled up and a woman got out.

She wore a camel coat and a silk scarf, and she carried a leather briefcase.

I knew her face.

I'd met her once in September at our sales center, when she walked the model homes beside the buyer himself.

She was the buyer's lawyer, and she had shaken my hand and called me "Mrs. Reddick" in a voice like warm butter.

She went in through the revolving door.

Through the glass of the lobby I watched Mitchell rise from a velvet chair.

He took her face in both hands and kissed her mouth.

It wasn't a quick kiss, and he didn't look like a man cheating out of boredom.

He looked like a man who got what he came for.

They crossed to the elevators together, his palm low on her back, and the doors closed on both of them.

I photographed it all through the rain with my hands steady.

Then I put the car in drive.

I don't remember the road.

I remember the brake lights ahead of me going on and off in the wet, and my own breathing.

I pulled into my driveway and sat there.

Then I got out and walked across the lawn to the house next door, soaked to the skin.

Ansel opened the door before I knocked.

He was in a gray T-shirt and old sweats, with a book in one hand.

His driveway camera had shown him my car sitting dark for ten minutes, and then me crossing his lawn.

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