Page 40 of Insidious Threats
Will blinked in surprise but recovered quickly and raised his glass. “Welcome, Eleanor. We’re delighted to have you join us,” he said smoothly.
“Um, thanks. Call me Ellie.” She raised her glass in return.
Leo thought she looked even more shell-shocked than Will did. He suspected his indomitable wife had consulted absolutely nobody about her new hire and had sprung the job on Ellie just this morning. As if to prove him right, he caught Sasha mouthing ‘sorry’to Will with a sheepish smile. Then she met Leo’s eyes and gave him a puzzled look.
“No, she’s not,” Will said in an undertone.
“Nope, not even a little,” Leo agreed. “Excuse me, would you?”
Will nodded. “Sure. Tell her she made a good hire, but remind her that there’s a process, would you?”
“No way. At work, she’s your problem, not mine.” Leo clapped him on the shoulder.
Will laughed good-naturedly and made his way over to Ellie while Leo sought out his wife.
She greeted him with a quick kiss. “What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. Come on, I’ll walk you to your office.” He glanced down at the papers she held rolled up in a loose scroll. “What’s this?”
They headed down the hallway, and she passed them to him. He unrolled them and raised an eyebrow at a charcoal sketch of a man wearing clown makeup and a bereft expression.
“New art for the office? It’s … uh … different.”
“Check the title.” She pushed open her door, hit the lights, and slipped her coat off, letting it fall on her guest chair.
He picked up the coat, shook it out, and hung it from the hook on the back of her door. Then he read the title. “The Artist Realizes He’s a Fool.” He narrowed his eyes and took a closer look at the sad clown. “Is this Cinco?”
“Mmm-hmm. He did a series of these and mailed them to his wife from some artists’ colony in New York. Then, he fell off the radar. Nobody’s heard from him since before Christmas.”
He studied the Cinco clown’s expression. The eyes held defeat, pain, and shame. “It’s a weird picture. But it really is evocative, isn’t it? He’s talented.”
“And troubled.” She spread the rest of the sketches across her desk, and he frowned down at them.
“Do you think he hurt himself? This one with the graveyard is really disturbing.”
She lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know, Connelly. His daughter thinks he was trying to say something about Landon’s death. Maybe. I can see that—especially with the guy falling from the window. But what’s with this hammer one?”
He leaned over and read the title. “‘Unintended Consequences.’I don’t know. But it sure looks like he was having a crisis of conscience when he drew these.”
“Right. Which is surprising. Because, frankly, I didn’t think Cinco Prescotthada conscience.”
She shook her head, and her loose updo bobbed. A wavy tendril of hair escaped. He tucked it behind her ear and trailed his finger down her neck.
“Mmm … Hey, I’m at work.” She slapped his hand away playfully. “I do need to get back to Maisy’s party, but you never told me—whatareyou doing here?”
“I wanted to get started going through Landon’s papers, assuming you cleared it with Maisy and Jordana.”
A guilty expression flashed across her face, which was perfect. He figured she’d forget in all the drama of the past twenty-four hours, but now she’d be extra motivated to get him the go-ahead.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I don’t want to interrupt the celebration. I’ll come back later.”
“No, that’s silly.” She rolled open her top desk drawer and removed a single gold key on a small ring. “You know which room the documents are in, right?”
“Yep.”
She dropped the key into his open palm. “Knock yourself out. I’ll let Maisy know. She’s not going to object and, to be honest, I probably need to take a look at them, too. If Ellie’s right, and her dad’s disappearance has something to do with Landon Lewis, maybe there’s something helpful in there.”
