Chapter 8: What the Camera Kept

Nate's POV

I had run the Alder for eight years, and I had never once watched thirty days of café video on purpose.

On Wednesday afternoon Libby's lawyer emailed me a request.

She wanted every clip of the corner table by the mirror, from the day Libby's husband first booked it to the morning Libby walked in.

I shut my office door and put the security feed up on the big monitor.

The café camera sat above the pastry case and caught the room at an angle.

I ran it at four times speed and kept my coffee going.

Libby's husband showed up on a Friday three weeks back, in the gray jacket, at twenty to nine.

He sat at the corner table and ordered eggs.

At nine, the woman from the café photo, sleek dark hair and a charcoal suit, sat down across from him and put her hand over his.

I noted the date and kept going.

He came again on the Friday after that, and the Friday after that.

Same table, same eggs, same hand on his hand.

Every one of those Fridays was a day Libby had told her friends he was on the road.

I thought about her in that sling in my lobby, asking me how much for the room.

I kept my eyes on the screen.

On the Friday three weeks ago there were three chairs at the table.

I slowed the video down.

A third woman walked in at nine twenty, in a gray cardigan with a paper bag in one hand.

Curly auburn hair, freckles, a warm, anxious smile.

She sat down in the third chair.

I knew her at once.

She had walked through my lobby on Saturday morning with bagels, headed for Room 214 and a hug for Libby.