I’M NOT sure what it says about me that I wasn’t hungover. Probably nothing good. At almost 10:00 a.m., Sarah was bringing herself to life with a long, luxurious bath. I’d called down for our breakfast and, more importantly, coffee.
Meanwhile, I took the morning paper out onto the balcony. In my previous life, it was always Anthony who read the paper. He called it his morning quiet time. Now I was claiming my time, sliding back into the big, bad world I’d been locked out of for so long.
The sky was bright and clear, the air just warm enough for me to sit outside in my bathrobe. The smell of horse manure mixed with the softer odors of baking bread and frying eggs. I set the paper on the table, flipped past the first page, and went straight for the fluff: fashion and film, gossip and real estate. It felt like that kind of day—the kind where you linger and meander and keep the mood light.
But then there it was, in a slim sidebar on page seven: the story that would turn our lives upside down and give them a hard shake. The headline said it all: DISGRACED DETECTIVE SET FREE ON $5 MILLION BAIL. I waited until my breathing slowed to a seminormal rate, then read through to the end. There was a lot of speculation about who had such deep pockets. I could have solved that mystery. The question was, why? Why was Uncle Vincent backing a cop who’d been caught red-handed holding the weapon that murdered his nephew?
Best-case scenario, at least for us: Vincent wanted Sean outside, where he could snatch him up and take his time. I had no trouble believing that Vincent would pay five million dollars for the privilege of avenging Anthony’s murder himself, mano a mano.
Worst-case scenario: Sean had powers of persuasion I’d never noticed.
He’d convinced Vincent that the knife was a plant. There was no way Vincent would let himself be convinced unless Sean sold him another killer, and Sean only had three options to choose from: Sarah, Serena, and me.
I was spinning back and forth, trying to figure out which scenario was most likely, when the French doors opened behind me and Sarah came strolling out with our breakfast tray balanced professionally on one palm.
“I don’t think coffee ever smelled this good,” she said. “You must not have heard the knocking.”
The bath had done wonders for her. She’d woken up looking green around the gills and pale everywhere else. Now there was color in her cheeks again, a bounce to her step. She seemed weightless, ready to burst into song.
Then she saw my face.
“Oh, honey,” she said, “I know I only just got here, but we both agreed: we can’t be seen together until after the trial. Last night was risky enough.”
“It isn’t that,” I said.
“Then what’s the matter?”
She set the tray on the table, brushed her still-damp hair back behind her ears, and rested a hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t tell me the drinking did you in,” she said. “That isn’t the Anna I know.”
I just held up the paper and pointed. She hadn’t made it past the headline before she dropped into her chair and let out a sharp whimper.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
“I know.”
“But who…?”
“I’ll give you one guess.”
“Vincent?”
I nodded.
“But why?”
“That’s the five-million-dollar question.”
“Coffee,” she said. “I need coffee.”
I filled our cups while she read on, her face going from ruddy to crimson.
“You think Vincent will kill him?” she asked.
I was impressed: she seemed genuinely concerned, and not for herself.
Life in prison was bad enough for her soon-to-be ex: she drew the line at capital punishment. The cynical side of me thought, That’s reserved for other people’s husbands. But this wasn’t the time for a catfight.
“Consider the alternative,” I said. “My erstwhile uncle-in-law won’t be satisfied until someone stops breathing. Sean was framed. We framed him. Maybe he figured it out and made Vincent a believer.”
Sarah lifted the lid off her eggs Florentine and set it back down without so much as glancing at her plate. Then she took a little tour of the balcony, running her hand absentmindedly along the railing. She looked as though she’d lost her wits.
“It never ends,” she said. “You turn what you think is the final bend, but the road just goes on and on and on.”
“Oh, it’ll end,” I told her. “Everything does. The question is how it will end, and whether or not there’ll be anything left for us afterward.”
She sat back down, her eyes glassy, her mouth hanging open.
“What are we going to do?” she said. “What in the world are we going to do?”
Before I could answer, bells started going off somewhere in the room behind us—long, short, long, short. It was the ringtone on my burner phone. Only one person knew the number.
“That’s Serena calling,” I said, not sure yet whether I had the will to answer.
Sarah sprang up.
“I’ll get it,” she said. “I haven’t talked to Serena in ages.”
“The phone’s on my nightstand.”
I followed her inside, watched her lunge across my bed, grab at the phone, knock it to the floor, and then go scampering after it on hands and knees.
“Serena?” she said. “Serena, are you still there?”
“Put it on speaker,” I said.
She fumbled for the button. The voice that filled the room wasn’t Serena’s.
“She’s sitting right here,” a man said. “Would you like to speak with her?”
Defoe. I recognized his nasal, wispy voice, remembered telling Vincent that his right-hand man sounded more like a librarian than a killer. “Sheep’s clothing,” Vincent said. It sounded like a warning. I thought now that maybe it was.
“Sarah,” Serena said, “whatever you do, don’t—”
Defoe snatched the phone back.
“Is it Sarah I’m speaking with?” Defoe said. “I thought this was Anna’s line.”
I started to answer, but Sarah beat me to it.
“It’s Sarah,” she said. “And if you hurt her, I swear to God I’ll—”
“Feisty,” Defoe cut her off. “Just like your beloved aunt. She’s here, too. Want to say hello?”
Sarah clutched at her chest. I hoped to hell she’d remembered her insulin.
“Don’t you listen to a word this cadaver says,” Lindsey yelled. “He’s using us as bait, and I won’t—”
“As you can tell, the gang is all here,” Defoe said. “I thought I’d invite you to the party.”
Sarah looked up at me from where she sat slumped between the beds. It was clear she’d reached her limit.
“We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said. “You need us to bring anything?”
“Do my ears deceive me, or is that the Widow Costello?”
“Hello, Defoe. How’s life as Vincent’s trained monkey?”
“Always so brave,” he said. “At least from a distance. Last time I saw you, you were fleeing the scene of an accident. You’re lucky I didn’t call the police.”
“Thanks for that. Now about this little shindig…”
“Here’s the deal: it’s a kind of surprise party. At least, we want the location to be a surprise.”
He told us to pull up outside Lindsey’s house at 8:00 p.m. on the dot. There would be a black sedan parked at the curb. We were to follow it to what he called the “party house.”
“Needless to say, any sign of an uninvited guest—or guests—and the evening will end very badly for your friends.”
With that, he hung up. The room went as quiet as a crypt.