“THE JEWELS,” Haagen said. “You stole Anna Costello’s jewels.”
“I didn’t steal them,” I said. “I mean, I did, but I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know I had them until it was too late.”
“Really?” she said. “You accidentally walked off with six figures’ worth of your employer’s jewelry?”
Her grin was pure gloating, as if now she’d pinned down my motive, as if she was looking forward to watching me squirm out of this one. I just stared at my fingernails, refusing to take the bait.
“All right,” she said, “let’s back up. I don’t want to miss any of this. You’re in the kitchen. You know Anthony reached out to Vincent before he expired. So what next?”
I shrugged.
“For a while,” I told her, “I just froze.”
I stood beside Anthony’s body and couldn’t muster a single thought. I couldn’t make my feet move. Then the spell broke, and I grabbed my purse and ran for my car. I floored it down that mile-long driveway, desperate to get off the property before Vincent’s men could stop me.
“No time to call 911?” Haagen asked.
I thought about it—I did—but Anthony was dead, and if Vincent heard that I’d called the cops, then he’d know it was me who’d found his nephew’s body. At the very least he’d want to talk to me. The kind of talk where I was tied to a chair. And if he didn’t like what I had to say, there’d be a well-fed alligator somewhere in the Everglades. If Anthony had been wounded, if there’d been any chance of saving him, then I’d have made the call. But he was gone, and there was no point in risking my own life.
“Heroic,” Haagen said.
“I’m not claiming to be a hero.”
“No, but what you are claiming doesn’t make any sense. How did you come by those jewels if you ran right out of the house?”
“I’m getting to that,” I told her.
I needed to pull over, collect my thoughts. I was shaking uncontrollably. And bleeding. There was blood leaking from the gash in my pants. I could feel it spilling down my calf. But the only place to pull over was a narrow shoulder, and that would have left me sitting out in the open.
I rounded a bend, saw a cop car idling in a small clearing. My blood really started pumping then. I thought for sure he was waiting for me. I couldn’t say if I was speeding or not, but I yanked my foot off the accelerator. Sean taught me never to hit the brake: It only makes you look guilty, he said. My eyes shot to the rearview mirror, but the cop didn’t budge. At first I felt relieved. Then I figured he was radioing ahead, setting a trap. I braced for a fleet of squad cars, but they never came.
I made it to the nearest gas station, parked in front of the convenience store, and sat gripping the steering wheel.
“Get ahold of yourself, Sarah,” I said out loud. “Think.”
First things first: I needed to stop the bleeding. I pulled a handkerchief from my purse, took off my belt, leaned forward, and fashioned a makeshift tourniquet. As I was straightening back up, I saw it: a PBS tote bag resting on the seat beside me.
All I knew was that it couldn’t be mine. I’m not the tote bag type, and I’ve never given a dime to public television. Slowly, as if something might jump out and bite me, I reached across and pulled the straps open.
Instead of a rat, I found pearl necklaces, a tiara, a gem-encrusted bracelet. Anna’s collection. She’d shown it to me more than once. I’d even say she rubbed my nose in it. Any one of those pieces cost more than I make in a year. Maybe a decade.
“And still you didn’t call the police?”
“Are you kidding? That bag was one more reason not to call the police. Someone had put it there. Someone was trying to frame me.”
And what could I do but run? From Vincent and the police.
“Any idea who that someone might be?”
“There are only two possibilities,” I said.
“Let me guess: the missus and the maid?”
I nodded. It had to be one of them.
“Serena, maybe,” Haagen said. “But you think Anna Costello would part with her personal fortune? On purpose?”
I shrugged.
“She’d get it back, wouldn’t she? Once I was caught. Meanwhile, she’d count on you asking that very question. What better way to throw you off the scent? And Vincent, too, for that matter. She’d been robbed. She was a victim, like her husband.”
Haagen took a sip of water while she mulled things over.
“Not bad,” she said. “But I have an alternative theory.”
I waited, knowing full well she’d share it with me whether or not I asked.
“Maybe you really did black out,” she said. “But it had nothing to do with diabetes. Maybe Anthony caught you robbing his wife. Maybe you only saw one way forward. You hadn’t planned on killing him. You figured they’d blame the theft on the maid. Everyone blames the maid. But stabbing a man to death—that’s more than a fluctuation in blood sugar. That’s a real shock to the system, the kind of thing a mind might try to erase. Don’t you think?”
Of course that made sense, but it wasn’t what happened. The question was how to convince Haagen, who seemed bound and determined to throw away the key.
“There’s just one problem,” I said. “If I was planning to blame Serena, then why did I run?”
It was her turn to shrug.
“Maybe you’re not that bright,” she said. “Or maybe you’re the type who’s always dreamed of running away, starting over.”