Chapter 4

 

Julia had never been so relieved as when her grandmother walked through the doors of their suite the following afternoon. Not only because she wasn’t in jail, but because it meant Julia wasn’t alone with Joe anymore. She rushed over to embrace her, but her gran held up her hands.

“I just spent almost a week in a cell with ten other women and no shower. You might want to wait with the hug until I’ve cleaned up.”

“I’ll take my chances.” Julia wrapped her in a tight embrace while they both laughed. When they eventually separated, Julia could see the dark circles under her gran’s eyes. Eyes that were filled with an equal measure of worry and relief. “Have all the charges really been dropped?”

“All of them,” Patricia said. “Now, we need to find Alice.”

That took the bottom out of their jubilant mood.

“We will,” Julia promised, knowing it wasn’t a lie. One way or another, they’d find Alice. She only hoped the woman was in one piece when they did. “We got your luggage from the police. Your bags are in my room. Go get showered and I’ll order food.” She pointed at the room they would share.

“Bless your heart.” Patricia waved over her shoulder at the two men who were watching her. “Won’t be long.” And then the door closed behind her.

Julia stared at the door for a moment, enjoying the fact her grandmother was free. Then she turned to the men. Taking all of her courage in both hands, she looked up at them. “Tell me what’s wrong. There’s no way she should have been released like that. Something is going on, and I don’t want to be kept in the dark.”

“Smart,” the lawyer muttered.

Julia fought a blush. Just because she had issues, didn’t mean she was dumb. Plus, his comment was insulting on so many levels.

“Would you say that to a man?” Julia asked him softly, her heart racing at her temerity. “With the same degree of shock you used with me?”

“My apologies,” Ed said.

Joe shook his head at the man, as he held out a hand to her. “Come on, babe. Ed will fill us in while Patricia is busy. There are things she doesn’t need to know right now.”

Not wanting to leave him hanging in front of Ed, she took his hand. When he sat beside her, it was just close enough that their thighs were barely touching. Julia wasn’t quite sure what to make of the whole thing, so she did what she did best: she pretended it wasn’t happening. She grabbed her iPad from the table beside her, opened a new document for notes and faced Ed. She stared at his chest, rather than his eyes, but didn’t hesitate with her questions.

“What happened? Was there new evidence that proved she didn’t do it? I went over the documents she sent, on the flight here. I might have missed some of the details because I ran them through a translation programme, but I thought the case against her was sound.”

Joe’s arm stretched along the back of the sofa, and she felt his fingers playing with her hair. She scooted forward an inch, out of his reach, bizarrely missing his touch once it was gone.

“Well.” Ed cleared his throat. “I would be interested to see what documentation you received, because the documents I got yesterday afternoon were full of errors and gaping holes. On top of that, there’s been a gross mishandling of the evidence. Based on everything I saw, your grandmother should never have been charged.”

Julia had been making notes as Ed spoke. She paused when he finished, her agile mind running over everything. “There was tampering. Someone wanted Gran out of jail.” She couldn’t quite look at Ed, but she found she could look up at Joe. “Does Gran know who’s behind this?”

“We’re missing some of the facts, babe. Your gran wasn’t exactly forthcoming.”

“She kept saying that the walls had ears,” Ed added.

“She knows, then.” Julia made a note. “Does the person who wants her out of jail also have the mummy?”

“We don’t know,” Ed said.

Again Julia addressed her question to Joe. Something he seemed inordinately pleased with. “Did Gran and Alice steal the mummy?”

“Someone filmed the break-in on their phone and sent it to the cops,” Joe said. “Your gran was on it, but Alice wasn’t. Patricia was seen talking to someone off camera.”

“Did it record Gran actually taking the mummy?” Julia asked.

“No, only the break-in,” Ed said.

Julia nodded. “Someone wanted us to know that Gran was there, but they didn’t want us to know who actually took the thing. Or they don’t know who took it, and this is a setup to frame Gran.”

“She was filmed in the owner’s house,” Joe pointed out. “On the night the mummy was stolen.”

“But maybe the mummy was already gone.”

“That’s a stretch,” Ed said. “But the recording is useless now anyway—it became mysteriously corrupted this morning and can’t be used in court.”

“More tampering? Somebody definitely wanted Gran out of jail. Maybe the same person had something to do with Alice’s disappearance.” Julia had listened in while Joe spent the morning calling everyone he could think of, to stir up the investigation into the missing woman. There was no sign of her and nobody knew where to look.

“What has Elle dug up about Alice?” Julia asked Joe, because he’d been the one to talk with her. “Did she discover anything that can help us find Alice and the person behind all these weird things happening to Gran?”

Joe reached out to play with a lock of her hair, and Julia realised she’d relaxed back into the sofa beside him at some point. Against her better judgment, she’d left her hair down instead of putting it in her usual bun—all because she knew Joe liked it that way. She was a fool. She’d spent the better part of the night lying awake worrying about what was happening with them and vowing to put an end to it. And the first thing she’d done on waking was leave her hair loose for him. She was losing her mind.

“Elle hasn’t been able to dig up anything,” Joe said. “Alice’s credit cards haven’t been used and her passport hasn’t been scanned at any border.”

There was silence. Julia felt what Joe didn’t say. It was a rock sitting in her stomach. She took a shaky breath and said what everyone was thinking: “Either she’s dead or someone has her.”

Ed leaned forward. “I’m curious—why don’t you think she’s hiding?”

“Money,” Julia said. “Alice is paranoid about carrying around a lot of cash. If she hasn’t used her cards, then she doesn’t have money. You need money to hide.”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” her gran said as she strode into the room. “There’s no way that woman has run off, no matter what the police tell you. We’ve been friends since before we started school. There have been times I’ve wished she’d disappear and couldn’t get rid of her. She’d never wander off on her own now.”

“Somebody must have her,” Julia said, because the alternative was just too horrible to contemplate. “The question is why? Surely if they’re going to ransom her off, they would have contacted us by now.”

“You always were too smart for the rest of us,” Patricia said with pride. “Give her a puzzle and she’ll get to the bottom of it in no time at all. She’s a genius when it comes to arranging things in patterns that no one else can see. Never could get anything past her.”

Julia ducked her head, wishing she would just turn invisible. “Gran, that isn’t true.”

“Honey.” Her gran patted her head as she passed on her way to the food trolley sitting beside the dining table. “The university think tank tried to recruit you straight out of college. I still don’t know why you didn’t jump at the offer. Instead you took that awful job as a production assistant with that overblown moron, just to fit in with the family.” She lifted the lid on a warming plate and inhaled with a look of pure delight on her face. “Like you don’t already fit in perfectly. I hear that director is in a mental institute now, getting the help he so obviously needed. Small minds, dear, they all eventually crack. Trust me. I’m old and I know these things.”

Patricia grabbed a plate of steak and salad and sat at the table. “Do we have any wine to go with this?”

There was silence.

She let out a heavy sigh. “Let me eat and I’ll fill you in. Promise. Julia’s right—someone has Alice. I just don’t know why yet. Now can someone order a bottle of wine? Trust me. After the week I’ve had, I need it.”