Ellery tried Reed’s cell phone several times without success before catching her own ride back to the hotel. She knocked on his door and waited, but there was no reply. She dug out her phone again and stared at it as though it would magically produce a message that said where Reed was. She hadn’t spoken to him since they went their separate ways much earlier in the day. Her phone produced no answers, and his hotel room remained locked and silent. Reluctantly, Ellery returned to her room, where she dug out the copied pages from Giselle Hardiman’s murder file. She had been unsuccessfully trying to break the code for a couple of hours now. Each entry in Giselle’s day planner began with two letters that might be initials of her clients. BR, for example, could stand for “Brad Ramsey.” Or not. She had no proof one way or another. She wished that Reed would show up so that she could get a second opinion.
She ordered a sandwich from room service, but when it arrived she found she couldn’t eat much of it. The tension created from the empty room next door sapped her appetite. She tried calling him again, and then again, but each time his line rang through to voice mail. “It’s me,” she said. “Where are you? Call me when you get this.” When another half hour passed with no word from Reed, she went down to the hotel’s bar/restaurant to look for him. It wasn’t crowded, but she made a slow circle of each table, anyway, even poking her head into the men’s room. She checked the parking garage as well but found no sign of their rental car. Her chest tightened with fear, alarm bells ringing loudly in her head. Something was very wrong. Reed wouldn’t take off and leave her here with no explanation.
She jogged back into the hotel, her phone out again, but this time she dialed a different number. “Las Vegas Police Department,” said a young male voice on the other end.
“I’m looking for someone—Reed Markham. He’s an agent with the FBI.”
“This is LVMPD, ma’am.”
“I know that,” Ellery replied, irritated. “He was there today, meeting with Sheriff Ramsey. That’s the last anyone’s seen him.” She didn’t know this was true. In fact, it probably wasn’t, but it was her only verified point on Reed’s timeline.
“There is no FBI agent here now, ma’am, and the sheriff isn’t around. Would you like to leave him a message?”
“No, you don’t understand. Agent Markham is missing. It’s past midnight and he hasn’t shown up yet. He’s not answering his phone. Something is wrong.”
There was a meaningful pause on the other end. “Ma’am, a grown man out past midnight is hardly remarkable around these parts. I’d suggest you wait ’til morning. They all come crawling back in when the sun comes up.”
“No, it’s not like that. He’s not out on some bender.” She paced the floor in front of the elevator, ignoring her reflection in the shiny doors. “He’s missing, don’t you get that? He was supposed to show up hours ago. Can you at least check to see if there are any reported accidents?”
He sighed, put upon by her requests. “None that I know of, but hold on and I’ll check.” She waited, her heart thumping, while he poked at some computer keys. “No serious accidents reported for the last twelve hours, ma’am—just an armed home invasion. I’m sure he’s just fine.”
Ellery seized on the only new piece of information available. “What home invasion? What happened?”
“I’m not at liberty to disclose all the details, ma’am.”
“Was anybody hurt?”
A long pause. “Intruder was shot,” he said, and the hairs rose on the back of her neck.
“Shot,” she repeated steadily. “Where? Can you tell me where?”
He gave a heavy sigh. “Ma’am, I told you…” He trailed off and Ellery heard only the sound of the blood rushing in her ears. “Ma’am, what did you say your friend’s name was again?”
“Markham. Reed Markham.”
She waited through an awful, interminable silence. “I can’t tell you what happened,” he said finally, his tone now soft, full of regret. “But I think you’ll want to go over to University Medical Center right away.”
“Why? What’s going on? Is Reed okay?”
“Check the emergency room,” he replied. “And good luck to you.”
Ellery ran back out into the cold night air. She had no car. “Hey,” she said to the sleepy-eyed valet loitering on the outside bench. “Hey, I need a cab.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, lumbering to his feet. “Lemme call you one.”
“Call? Can’t you just wave one over?”
He gestured at the empty street. “You see one out there? Relax. It’ll take five minutes, tops.”
“Five minutes!” She looked up and down the street. Maybe she could just run. “Where’s University Medical Center? Is it close?”
“UMC is a few miles north.” He looked her over with fresh concern. “Why? You hurt?”
“Just call the cab,” she said, taking out her own phone once more. She dialed Reed’s number, urging him mentally to pick up. Pick up, pick up, pick up. She would hear his voice and then it wouldn’t be true. She closed her eyes when she got his voice mail again. An armed home invasion that put someone in the emergency room. Reed, playing the hero again, she thought. Shit. She rubbed her eyes with one hand and then glared at the valet. “Where’s that taxi?”
“Coming.”
When the cab finally showed, Ellery scrambled into the back, only to lean into the front seat and urge the driver to go faster. They seemed to hit every red light. By the time she reached the UMC emergency department, close to a half hour had passed since her phone call to LVMPD. She tossed some money at the driver and ran inside the building, breathless as she collapsed across the front desk. “I’m trying to find Reed Markham,” she said to the admitting nurse. Ellery kept one eye on the faces in the waiting area, hoping to spot Reed among them.
“Spell that for me?”
Ellery spelled the name through gritted teeth. “There was a home invasion. Someone was shot.”
“Oh,” said the nurse. “Yes, he’s in surgery. Upstairs. But you can’t—”
Ellery didn’t stop to hear what she couldn’t do. She barreled down the hall, dodging doctors, patients, and gurneys, following the signs for surgery. She knew she had found the right place when she spotted a waiting area that contained Sheriff Ramsey and one other officer she didn’t recognize. The alcove was otherwise empty. “Sheriff,” she called, and he turned with a frown.
“Ms. Hathaway. What are you doing here?”
She made sure to stand out of his reach. “I’m looking for Reed. Is he here? What happened?”
“Agent Markham’s in surgery.”
Her heart dropped to her knees. So there was more than one victim and Reed had been hurt, too. “What? How? I heard there was a home invasion. Will Reed be okay?”
“Yes, it happened out at the Owens place.”
“Did you get him?”
He regarded her with some surprise. “Get who?”
“The person who broke in. I heard he was shot.”
“He was.”
“I don’t understand. What happened to Reed? Why was he at the Owens place? Who broke in?”
The sheriff narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. We responded to a 911 call tonight from David Owens. It seems Agent Markham broke into their home—for what purpose I don’t know—and Amy Owens shot him in the dark.”
Ellery felt the sands shift beneath her feet, her legs going wobbly. “Reed broke into the house? He must have had a reason. The intruder…”
“Ms. Hathaway, Agent Markham was the intruder. According to the homeowners, he threw a rock through their patio door and entered the home with a gun. Amy said they had refused to talk to him anymore about the Flores case. Maybe he went in there intending to make them talk.”
“What? No.” She shook her head emphatically. “He wouldn’t do that, not Reed. He…” She trailed off, recalling the time Reed had broken into her house, thinking she was a murderer. She swallowed hard and looked at the sheriff. “Is he all right?”
“Shot twice. Once to the head, once in the chest. The doctors are with him now, and that’s all I know.”
“Oh my God.” She reached blindly for the nearest chair and sank down into it.
The sheriff loomed over her, his gun at eye level. “Maybe you can explain what in the hell he was doing breaking into the Owens home.”
Her head felt like it was swimming. “I—I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since early afternoon, when he went to talk to you about the DNA test.” She looked up at him. “If he broke into their home, you can bet he had a good reason. He wasn’t out to hurt them.”
The sheriff looked grim. “Amy says she saw a gun. That’s why she fired on him. We found his weapon out and next to him at the scene. Someone had broken through the patio door with a rock. There was glass everywhere.”
“If Reed broke in, it was because he thought they were in danger,” Ellery insisted.
“If it was on the up-and-up, why didn’t he identify himself? Why go smashing through the patio door?”
He was right that it made no sense. “There’s an explanation. I know there is. Reed can explain it when he … when he’s out of surgery.”
The sheriff exchanged a look with his sergeant, a broad-shouldered man with sandy hair and a mustache to match. The sergeant walked away toward the coffee machine, and Sheriff Ramsey looked at his shoes. “We’ll await Markham’s side of the story,” he said. “Assuming he lives to tell it.”
Ellery kept vigil through the wee small hours of the morning, shifting in the uncomfortable chair, dosing herself with caffeine from the soda machine down the hall. She had an ancient women’s magazine in her lap, but she hadn’t read a word of it. She used it as a prop to force herself to stay awake by turning the pages. The sheriff left after a couple of hours, but his deputy remained, keeping a watchful eye on the doors to the surgical suite, as if Reed would somehow rise from the table and escape.
Her face felt taut and lined with fatigue. She kept disappearing inside herself, searching her brain for any answer that might explain what had happened to Reed. The last she’d spoken to him, his focus had been on Angie Rivera, not David and Amy Owens. What had prompted him to go to their house? Why would he break the door in? The time he had broken into Ellery’s house, Reed had picked her front door lock with relative ease. If he threw a rock through the patio door, he must’ve been in an extreme hurry. He must have been convinced David or Amy was in danger. But that explanation didn’t add up, either. If there had been a real intruder, why wouldn’t David and Amy just say so?
“What in tarnation is going on here?”
Ellery’s eyes flew open at the sound of Reed’s voice, her body surging forward out of the seat as the magazine slid to the floor. She blinked in momentary confusion because Reed was nowhere to be seen.
“Ellery.” She jerked her head around and saw Angus Markham walking toward her. Not Reed. His father. The senator looked rumpled and unshaven, his blue eyes flecked with red. “What’s happening?” he demanded. “Where’s Reed? They wouldn’t tell us much on the phone.”
That’s when Ellery noticed his wife, Marianne, standing behind him, pale and afraid. She wished she could offer her words of reassurance. Instead, she glanced at the sheriff’s deputy, who was listening openly from across the room. “Reed’s in surgery. We don’t know anything yet.”
“They told us he’d been shot,” Angus replied tersely.
Ellery looked again at the deputy. “Come with me,” she told them. She led them down the hall to the coffee machine, where she explained as much of the story as she could. Angus Markham’s frown grew deeper with each passing word.
“That’s it? They think he went crazy and broke into some woman’s home?”
“There must be some other explanation,” Marianne said, folding her arms.
“I agree, but we’re going to need Reed to provide it. Right now, the Owenses are controlling the narrative, and their story is that Reed broke in unannounced, with his gun drawn. Amy’s saying she had no choice but to shoot him.”
“If that’s her story, then she’s a liar,” Marianne replied tartly.
Ellery recalled again how she’d found Reed uninvited in her bedroom, his gun out, prying loose the nails from her closet. “I don’t know,” she told him. “None of it makes sense to me right now.” There was one other complication, and she knew Angus would grasp the implications immediately. “Both David and Amy Owens are former cops. They’re friends with the sheriff, so you can imagine he’s inclined to believe what they say.”
Angus’s lips thinned as he considered the implications. “Right,” he muttered with a tinge of disgust. “It’s politics, and all politics is local.”
Marianne looked alarmed. “She shot an FBI agent. Surely she’ll have to answer for that.”
“She’s claiming self-defense,” Ellery answered. “And it sounds like right now they’re buying it.”
She looked down the hall toward the waiting area, where the deputy had shifted his watch to keep them all in sight. She knew what he was thinking: If Reed was a criminal, they were all potential accomplices. Anything they said might be used against him. “Sheriff Ramsey will be back here looking to talk to you,” she said, “but I’d advise you to keep quiet. Any questions he has will be designed to suit his own agenda, to further the Owens narrative. He’s implying Reed was so crazy for answers about Camilla’s death that he was prepared to threaten David or Amy at gunpoint.”
“Was he?” Angus looked at her sharply. “Tell me if it’s true.”
Ellery saw Reed standing breathless in her bedroom with a hammer, sweaty and dirty, convinced she was a killer. In return, she’d had a gun pointed right between his eyes. But even then, she hadn’t been afraid of him. “No,” she said with finality. “It’s not true.”
They returned together to the waiting area, and after only a few more minutes the surgeon finally appeared to give them an update. He looked as exhausted as they did, with his puffy eyes and the five o’clock shadow he sported at seven in the morning. Reed had been shot twice, he explained. Once to the head, once in the chest, but Reed got lucky, considering the circumstances. The bullet that hit his head didn’t penetrate the skull; it merely left a fracture on its way by. The bullet in his chest did more damage. It collapsed his left lung but spared his heart, although it had torn a couple of blood vessels and nicked a kidney in the process. Reed remained on a ventilator and in critical condition, but the doctor was optimistic that he would recover.
Ellery sagged in relief at the news. “Can we see him?” Marianne asked anxiously.
“Not yet,” the surgeon replied. “He’s still in recovery. He’ll be sleeping for a while. I’d say another six hours at a minimum. You could go and get some rest.”
“We’re staying,” Marianne answered, drawing her sweater closer around her.
“Suit yourself. There’s a cafeteria downstairs. They make pretty decent ham and eggs.” He gave them a tired smile. “I’ll make sure the nurses know you’re here so that you are informed of any changes.”
Angus turned to Ellery. “You should go, get some rest. We can call you if there are any updates.”
Ellery looked back at the chair she’d occupied since she’d arrived, the place she’d sat while Reed kept breathing. “No,” she said. “I think I’ll stay.”
The hours ticked by, the sun creeping higher in the sky outside, and the waiting room slowly filled up with other Markham family members. One by one, Reed’s three sisters arrived, in the precise order in which they’d first appeared on earth: Suzanne the oldest, followed by Lynette, and then, finally, Kimmy. They were each as blond and trendy as Ellery had imagined them to be—not showy, but put together in a way that Ellery never managed to pull off herself. Their jewelry was understated but obviously the real thing. Their jeans had an even dark wash, not the mishmash of various blue streaks that Ellery usually wore. They sported fashion boots, not winter boots. Lynette had a beautiful camel-colored duster that Ellery admired even as she recognized she could never own it, as hers would be forever covered in dog fur.
Ellery said hello to them but hung back as the Markham family gathered in a huddle. They rearranged the waiting room chairs to suit themselves, and Suzanne had brought everyone coffee. Ellery listened to them talk and laugh and cry and wondered what Reed would say if he could see them now. It didn’t matter what the hell his DNA test said: this was obviously his family. She closed her eyes, drowsing as she took in their stories.
“Remember that time he and Timmy Granger thought they were the Wright brothers? They built that glider thing and tried to fly it off the garage roof.” Lynette sounded half-awed, half-horrified, at the memory.
“He broke his left arm in the fall,” Marianne replied. “Of course I remember.”
“What about the time he started his own detective agency?” Kimmy said. “Remember that one?”
“I’m trying to forget,” Angus answered darkly, but Kimmy kept going with her story.
“Robby Bellamy hired Reed for twenty bucks because his mother threatened to fire their housekeeper for stealing her underwear. Robby believed the woman when she said she didn’t do it.”
“I think it was more that he liked her cooking,” Suzanne said drily.
“Whatever. Reed set up a sting at the Bellamy household to catch the thief in the act.”
“Yes, yes,” Angus said uncomfortably. “And he caught Mr. Bellamy. I think we all remember that one. I still can’t look Jeffrey in the eyes at church.”
“Really? ’Cause I was always checking to see if he had on a brassiere,” Kimmy said, and Marianne hushed her.
They got word that Reed had been removed from the ventilator and was breathing fine on his own, but he had not woken up. Ellery could tell from the way the doctor delivered the news that this was unusual. “Can we see him now?” Marianne asked.
“Family only. One at a time. No more than five minutes.”
Family only. Ellery retreated to her chair and tried not to let it bother her as she watched the Markhams take turns going in and out. The parade seemed endless, and Ellery had to ask herself what she was doing here. Reed’s family had this crisis more than covered. Her body felt on the brink of collapse, her stomach churning nothing but leftover soda and her eyes so tired that her vision had started to blur. She looked up groggily as Kimmy Markham plopped into the seat next to her. “How’s he doing?” Ellery asked, rousing herself one more time.
Kimmy gave a helpless shrug. “The heart monitor thingie is beeping like it should. He seems to be breathing okay. But he won’t wake up. That’s not normal, right? He should be up by now.”
“I don’t know.”
Kimmy ran a hand down the side of the chair, jangling her thin silver bracelets. “It’s all my fault,” she confessed in a small voice. “I’m the one who made him get that DNA test. I just thought it would be fun, you know? Find out you’re related to Joan of Arc or something.”
Ellery’s head felt fuzzy. “Did Joan of Arc have any kids?” Right now, she wasn’t sure if Joan of Arc had even been a real person.
“Maybe not.” Kimmy leaned back in her chair with a defeated sigh. “I just thought it would be a fun project. The commercials for these tests make it sound like a hoot, and scientists are coming out every day saying we’re all related anyhow. It’s just a matter of degree.” She cast a troubled look across the room at her father, who was dozing in a chair. “I didn’t realize what a hot mess my family was.”
“All families are hot messes.” On this point, Ellery was sure.
“Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
Yes and no. Either answer could be true. “One of each,” she answered finally, and Kimmy gave her a sad smile.
“Then you know how it is.”
Ellery said nothing. The mounted television playing silently in the corner had caught her attention. “That’s her,” she said, standing up. “That’s Amy Owens.”
All the Markhams gathered with her as Ellery found the remote and turned up the volume on Amy Owens’s press conference. “… can’t eat or sleep since it happened,” she was saying with tears in her eyes. “I feel so terrible. It’s all a big mistake, a horrible accident. I didn’t know it was Agent Markham who had entered my home. All I knew was someone had broken into my home. It was dark. I couldn’t see well. I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Bullshit,” Lynette said succinctly.
“I’d been upstairs getting ready to take a bath. I—I was naked under my robe. My husband wasn’t home. Then I heard a loud crash downstairs in the kitchen, and I knew someone was in the house. I was terrified.”
Wouldn’t you call 911? Ellery wondered.
“I’m so sorry about all of this.” Amy broke down sobbing, and a man identified as her lawyer stepped forward to put his arm around her shoulders.
“Amy Owens was within her rights to defend herself,” he said. “A strange man broke into her home late at night, his gun drawn. She was terrified, as any of us would be. Amy deeply regrets the harm done to Agent Markham, but he left her no other choice, as the investigation will show. She expresses her condolences to Agent Markham’s family, and she’s praying for his recovery. We ask that you please respect her need for privacy at this time as the police conduct their investigations. We’re confident that the results will show Amy Owens acted well within the law.”
“Screw the law,” Lynette said. “I want actual answers.”
Ellery watched the screen as the lawyer and David Owens led Amy away from the LVMPD headquarters. Local Woman Shoots Rogue FBI Agent, said the crawl at the bottom. The only way to get answers, she thought, was to retrace Reed’s steps and figure out what he was doing at the Owens household in the first place. “I’m going to go back to the hotel for a few hours,” she said to Kimmy, who was standing next to her. “Will you please be sure to call me if there is any change with Reed?”
Kimmy took out her cell phone to grab Ellery’s number. “Of course. Please go get some rest. You’ve been here longer than any of us.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Exhausted, Ellery passed out hard in the back of the cab on her return to the hotel. She awoke to the driver calling, “Lady, lady,” in accented English as he tapped her knee. “Are you okay?” He squinted at her with a mixture of suspicion and concern.
“I’m fine,” she muttered, although her dry mouth felt stuffed with cotton.
She dragged herself up to her hotel room, where she scrounged around until she located the spare electronic key that Reed had given her when they checked in. She used it to enter his room, which had clearly been tidied by the hotel cleaning staff. The bed was made and Reed’s papers and files had been stacked neatly on the desk. She checked the bathroom and found his toiletries sitting next to the sink. She paused to finger the rough-textured handle of his razor, which looked for all the world like Reed would be back any moment to use it. At the desk, she checked Reed’s most recent notes and saw that Sheriff Ramsey had denied Reed’s request for a DNA test on Angie Rivera. Could this be why he had reverted to his earlier focus on David Owens? Ellery could find no obvious connection.
She took the notes with her back to her own room, where her work sat abandoned on the bedspread. Giselle Hardiman’s secret code would have to remain unsolved for the moment, as Ellery had more pressing concerns. She shoved the papers aside and lay down with Reed’s notes, determined to see whatever he had seen that prompted him to go to the Owens house. She managed to read only two pages before her eyes drifted shut and she couldn’t get them open again.
She awoke more than three hours later, jerking in fear when she realized she’d been sleeping. She groped for her cell phone and hastily checked to see if she had missed any calls from the hospital. Nothing. No news was at least not bad news, and she sank into the pillows with some relief. In her sleep, she’d rolled on top of her purloined papers, wrinkling the reports she’d worked so hard to get. She pulled the sheets out from under her body and looked at the top one. It was the start of the murder book, the typed statement from the responding officer the night Giselle had died. Ellery had read through it once before, but her eyes automatically scanned it again. The information told her nothing new. The uniformed officer was responding to an anonymous tip reporting screaming from inside Giselle’s apartment. Giselle did not answer the knock, and the front door was found open. The patrol officer had discovered Giselle mortally wounded in her own bed and immediately called for backup.
Only this time, Ellery read to the end, to the part where the officer had typed and signed her name to the statement: Amy Conway.
Ellery struggled to sit up in bed as she clutched the paper tighter. When she looked again, the name was still there. Officer Amy Conway. That had been her name back then, Ellery recalled, before she’d married David—about three months after Camilla had died. So at a minimum, Amy had been at the scene of Giselle’s murder and knew how she died. Knew enough, maybe, to re-create it one year later. After all, the DNA on the knife was female.
Ellery felt with chilling certainty now that Reed’s shooting had not been any kind of accident. Amy’s story stunk like the inside of a fake leg. Ellery quickly changed her three-day-old clothes and stuffed the copy of Amy’s incriminating statement in her back pocket. Then she went to get a cab, and thankfully the valet was ready and alert this time. “Certainly, ma’am,” he said as he stuck his arm out to wave for a taxi. “Where are you going to today?”
“Twenty-seven Faulkner Avenue,” she said. The place would of course be marked as a crime scene, roped off to the Owens family and the public, but Ellery didn’t care. There was only one thing that could prove her theory, and that was a piece of Amy Owens’s DNA.
She fidgeted in the car on the drive over, worried about her options if the cops had someone posted at the scene. Her concern proved unfounded when the car stopped in the driveway of the Owens house, which looked as peaceful as it ever had from the outside. “Thanks,” Ellery said, handing him a pair of twenties. “Do you mind waiting?”
“Your money.” He shut the car off but left the radio on, tuned to some soccer game.
Ellery knew the real action had occurred around to the rear of the house, so she followed the path Reed must have taken to get there—through the gate, past the overgrown landscaping, and into the backyard. Sunlight glinted off the pool. The place was so quiet that Ellery heard only her own footsteps as she walked over the patio. Bits of glass crunched under her feet, and she saw that the broken door had been blocked off with black plastic sheeting. She gave it an experimental push, but it held fast. She would have to rip it apart if she wanted to get inside. With a last look behind her, Ellery took out her pocketknife and slit the side of the plastic.
The scene inside made her stomach flip over. Shattered glass everywhere. The telltale rock. Worst of all, Reed’s blood smeared from one end of the kitchen to the other. There were dried, bloody boot prints and discarded paramedics gloves. The place smelled like decaying body fluids and a faint hint of gunpowder. Ellery edged her way around the mess and went to stand near the base of the stairs. Based on her eyeball estimate, this was approximately where Amy must have been standing when she shot Reed—only about fifteen feet away. Even in the low light, she should have recognized him.
Ellery went up the stairs to find the master bedroom and bath, one of which would surely have a personal product of Amy’s that she could use to get a DNA sample. The sunny bedroom had a thick carpet, pale green walls, and a cheerful quilt spread across the large bed. A pair of eyeglasses sat on one nightstand, a small stack of romance novels on the other. Framed family pictures watched her from the walls as Ellery crept toward the en suite bath. The tableau looked so homey, so ordinary, that Ellery had to remind herself that its designer might have slaughtered another human being to attain all this. In the bathroom, she found the tub still filled with water, a pair of candles set along the edge, presumably from where Amy had been set to take a bath before Reed’s intrusion. She had lined up her alibi in advance.
Ellery kicked the lever to drain the tub, taking satisfaction in watching some of Amy’s story wash away. She located a vanity with an accompanying tufted chair and large, lighted mirror. Amy took care with her appearance. Ellery felt a renewed rage as she imagined the woman applying makeup ahead of her press conference today. “You’ll be crying for real next time,” she muttered as she started gathering up objects into the paper bag she’d brought with her to the scene. Hairbrush, comb, lipstick. One of these would be enough to match the DNA.
Ellery fled the scene stairs two at a time and pushed her way back out into the warm afternoon sunshine, only to grind to a halt in the pile of glass. There on the patio standing in front of her stood Amy Owens. “Oh,” Ellery said abruptly. “Hi. I didn’t know anyone was here.”
Amy tilted her head as though confused by what she saw. “The sheriff said it was okay if I stopped by to pick up a few personal items, and I got curious when I saw the cab out front. The driver said you’d come around back here. What are you doing?”
“Just checking something.” Ellery glanced beyond Amy in the direction of the gate. It was either run back inside or get past her somehow.
“Checking what?” The split plastic tarp behind Ellery started flapping in the breeze, an angry slapping sound. “What were you doing inside my home without permission?”
“I just had to see where it happened. You know how it is.”
“I’m calling the cops,” Amy said, taking out her phone. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“It’s too bad you didn’t call them last night,” Ellery said, and Amy froze.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ellery shrugged. “You were awfully quick on the draw is all.”
“He broke into my house!” Amy gestured with the phone at her broken patio door. “He was acting crazy!”
“He told you about the DNA test,” Ellery said. She cocked her head at Amy. “Didn’t he?”
The color drained from Amy’s face like that water from the tub. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said tightly. “Agent Markham didn’t say anything to me at all. If he had, I wouldn’t have shot him.”
“I don’t think so.” Ellery clutched the paper bag to her middle. With the proof in hand, she was feeling bold. “I think you shot him on purpose. As a matter of fact, I think you staged this whole thing.”
“That’s preposterous,” Amy retorted, but Ellery noticed she had stopped threatening to call the police. “It was an accident, plain and simple.”
“You’re good at staging crime scenes,” Ellery continued. “You set up Camilla Flores’s place so good that it took forty years before anyone caught on. But then, you had a good model to work from, didn’t you? You saw what Giselle Hardiman’s bedroom looked like the night she died. Her killer was still out there on the loose—easy enough to try to make Cammie’s murder look like the work of the same guy. Only Camilla turned out to be much harder to kill—after all, she had a baby to protect.”
“You’re crazy. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I barely knew Camilla.”
“You knew enough. You knew the important part, which was that she was David’s intended fiancée. I’m betting he talked about her all the time.”
“Sure, he talked about her some. Who cares?”
“You cared,” Ellery said, her voice turning hard. “You cared so much it made you crazy. I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that David slept with you, too. It must’ve made your blood boil watching him go home to her every night after that, listening to him talk about marrying her. What happened? Did you think he’d leave her and marry you?”
“He did marry me.” There it was, the triumph in her eye.
“Yeah, after she was dead,” Ellery snorted with ridicule, and Amy’s look turned mean.
“You can’t prove a thing.”
“I can with that DNA test.” She held up the bag. “I, too, stopped by for some of your personal items. What do you want to bet they’re a match to the sample on that knife, the one that killed Cammie?”
Amy took a step toward her. “You can’t take those. You have no right!”
Ellery sidestepped her. “I did it. It’s done. What, are you going to shoot me, too?”
“I could. You’re trespassing.” Amy gripped her purse, one hand sliding toward the pocket, and Ellery felt a flash of fear. “I read up about you after you came to the house the first time,” Amy continued. “The story is all over the internet. You’re already suspended, under investigation for a possible murder. That makes you dangerous, crazier even than he was. Just look at you here, breaking into someone’s house.”
“The cops took your gun.”
Amy gave her a thin smile. “How many cops do you know with only one gun?” She took out a small pistol and aimed at Ellery, her bag slipping down onto the concrete. “Give me back my stuff.”
“No.” The cabbie was sitting just around the front. All she had to do was get there.
“I said give it to me!” Amy lunged at her and grabbed for the bag. It ripped between them, scattering her things across the patio.
“You can’t shoot me,” Ellery said, trying to remain calm. “Once might be an accident. Twice is murder. Even your friend the sheriff is bound to ask questions. Then what happens when Reed wakes up? And there’s still that problem of the DNA test.”
“If he wakes up,” Amy said coldly. “And what about the DNA test? You think Brad Ramsey’s going to run that test on your say-so? You think anyone is? I don’t have to shoot you. I just have to call the cops and let them see you here, acting like a lunatic, and no one is ever going to believe a word you say. You’re that cracked-up victim from the serial killer case. You’re not a cop. You’re not anything. No one’s going to run a DNA test just because you ask for one.”
“No, but they damn sure will do it for me.” There was a rustling, a waving of the palm tree, and Ellery turned to see Angus Markham step out from around the bushes. He held up his phone. “Those cops you keep talking about—I’ve already called them.”
Amy’s face screwed up in frustration and the gun wavered in her hand.
“You can’t shoot both of us,” Angus said reasonably as he came to stand next to Ellery.
“Well, her track record says she could,” Ellery replied, matching his conversational tone. “Except for one thing.”
Angus raised bushy eyebrows. “Oh? What’s that?”
“This.” Ellery kicked as hard as she could in Amy’s direction, catching the arm that held the gun. It went sailing from her hand and landed with a splash in the pool. Amy let loose a string of curse words that would make a sailor blush as the sirens began to sound in the distance.
Ellery turned to Angus with surprise. “You have good timing,” she said. “But I have to ask—what are you doing here?”
“I went to fetch you at the hotel because I know you’re without transportation. The doorman informed me that you’d taken a cab over here.”
“You came to fetch me? Why?”
He smiled broadly. “Reed is awake.”