Page 114 of Without a Clue

“Nash doesn’t have a criminal history,” I say lowly. I glance up. Nash drops his eyes on me every once in a while, but true to his word, he has given me space to talk privately without hearing.

“Do you know that?”

Ricky ever so slowly pulls a crisp white napkin from his pocket. Which he has waited precisely until this moment to use. “I rescind my statement . . .” he says, wiping the napkin round his finger. “Hugh liked to . . . see the best in people . . . despite their faults. I . . . on the other hand . . . prefer to see people . . . as they are. Four years ago . . . we disagreed on precisely . . . that.”

“And what . . . precisely . . . is that?” I say.

His eyes move silently to stop at Nash.

That?

Ricky and Hugh disagreed four years ago about Nash joining the group? That kind of that?

“I would . . . consider your friend . . . again. Now . . . I am . . . finished.”

Ricky has ended the interview, not me, and with a sober look, I find myself compelled to stand.

He doesn’t.

Just goes on back to staring at the wall from his wingback chair, in total silence.

I don’t know if he’s counting the books or determining his blood count, but either way, of all the interviews so far, I am all too willing to get out of here now.

I make for the door.

“Oh, and Pip. I almost forgot,” he calls out.

I turn at the door.

I can’t even see his head beneath the height of the wingback chair.

I return to him.

I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to have this conversation anymore. I feel cold, the kind of cold you get from being outside in twenty-degree weather for too long. A brittle cold laced over your bones, the kind that takes an hour-long shower of pure heat to try to soak through to your insides, and even then you feel a lingering chill for days.

It’s not a desirable feeling.

Ricky holds out an envelope, sealed in red wax with the monogram H. I recognize the seal immediately. I’ve sent a thousand letters on Hugh’s behalf, but he never let me use that seal. He held on to the integrity of it, saying a letter with the seal of his ring meant it was truly and wholly from him.

Hugh.

It’s my turn now to have my sentences drift off. “Is that . . .” I begin.

“He wrote it to me the night of his . . . murder. Told me to only open it . . . if something went terribly . . . wrong.”

I flip it over. Frown. “But it’s still sealed.”

“You have become the investigator.”

“Not me, Pogache—”

“And I trust that in matters of life or death . . . it’s wisest to put a letter like this in the hands of the true decision maker.”

A pure, unopened letter from Hugh.

A wax seal.

I know this handwriting.