Cort’s nose flared at his daughter before he gave Mack his attention. “What is it?” He wiped his hands with a paper towel, then balled it up. Nena stilled, her ears perking while she appeared to remain semiclueless and only mildly interested.
Mack said, “You know about the day-spa homicide?”
Nena regulated her breathing. If Mack was bringing up Kwabena in this conversation, it wasn’t good.
“What about it?” Cort asked.
“The spa’s name is Lotus.” Mack gave Cort a meaningful look Nena couldn’t quite decipher. She looked back and forth between them. Georgia had her earbuds in and paid them no mind.
At first Cort was confused. He squinted at Mack, who kept looking at him, widening his eyes as if Cort should be picking up what he was clearly laying down.
“Lo-tus,” Mack enunciated.
It took another second for Cort to fully realize Mack’s meaning. Nena was mesmerized at how it dawned on him, the dots he had to be connecting in his mind to come up with, “The business card from the Cuban?”
Mack thudded a satisfied, beefy fist on the table. “Damn straight.”
“What is a lotus?” Nena asked, because if she didn’t speak, it would look weird.
Cort said, “Remember when I told you a little about the dead Cuban cartel member when you came for dinner a while back?”
She nodded. She knew a bit more than that.
“There was a business card in his room for a massage spa called the Lotus Flower.”
She nodded again.
“And,” Cort added meaningfully, “Dennis Smith was connected to the Cuban. Laundered money for him.”
She gave him a look as if to say, So what?
Mack chimed in. “There was a murder last week at this very spa. Someone killed the man who owned it and burned the place to the ground. The business card—”
Connects the three killings, Nena thought, her mouth drying. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that Cort might connect the pieces? Damn.
“Connects the three killings,” Cort said.
Mack said, “These three men, if we can prove it, had business ties with each other. We know the Cuban dealt with human trafficking. Smith was facing charges for racketeering. We now suspect the Lotus Flower was like a way station for funneling both money and maybe some of the people they trafficked, so whoever killed these three men did it as either a business play, a show of strength, or . . .”
“Or to settle a personal score,” Cort finished.
That would be why they were a federal prosecutor and lead detective. They were good at their jobs. And so was she. She absorbed their theories, easing back into a sense of calm. Still no mention of Paul or the Tribe.
She scanned the backyard, noting it was enclosed by a chain-link fence instead of the high privacy ones she had installed at her home. She felt too exposed out here. What if the Tribe was surveilling them, listening to Cort and Mack get too damn close to a member of Dispatch? If they decided that he was a clear threat to their cause, there was nothing Nena could do to stop them from sending a team to dispatch him, and her with him if she tried to stop it.
“But this is all just conjecture between two guys with overactive imaginations. We need proof, and we don’t have it.”
She nearly snorted. These “two guys” were spot on. It was all happening faster than she could think of new game plans. Her job wasn’t to plan these things, it was to carry them out, which was probably why she was making such a mess of everything. She wasn’t even sure when Paul would strike back for Kwabena, if he would.
“What’s for dessert, Bax?” Mack asked, switching topics. “That’s the most important meal of the day.”
But Nena had tuned them out. Her phone was ringing, with Maybe Mercy Hospital displayed on her screen. Could be one of those calls asking for a donation for some fundraiser. She considered ignoring it but knew she’d better not.
Her chair scraped the stone of the patio flooring as she moved to get up. She held her phone in the air. “Will you excuse me? I have to take this call.” She was away from the table and entering the home before either had a chance to respond.
A voice on the other end asked, “Ms. Knight? Nena Knight?”
“What’s happened?” Nena was out the front door now and needed the porch pillar to hold her up. She could hear loudspeaker announcements in the background and, over them, the words, “。 . . charge nurse at Mercy Hospital . . . admitted your father earlier today . . . rushed to the ER by ambulance.”