He stopped a few feet away from me. I searched his eyes in the semidarkness, looking for the Connor I knew, the one who loved me, the father of my child. But his face was a mask of suspicion and anger.
“I—I was looking for Juliet,” I said.
“Alone in her room in the dark?”
I felt vulnerable, in this cramped room on this empty floor, cut off from the rest of the house. I needed to put some space between us.
“I was just—I was going to leave her a note, but it can wait. Come downstairs. I need to ask you something important.”
I pushed past him, heart hammering, afraid he’d try to grab me. But he simply followed me down the stairs and into our room, shutting the door behind him. In the bright light of the master bedroom, I could see that stress was taking its toll on him. He looked as bad as I did, his skin gray, his eyes red, his tie hanging askew against a crumpled white shirt. I had to fight a rush of sympathy. This Connor didn’t deserve my concern. This Connor had let me be charged with murder, and had not even shown up to the courthouse.
“Where were you today?” I said, my voice dripping with disgust. “I went to jail, with our baby inside me, and you didn’t bother showing up. You didn’t come to court. You sent a useless lawyer. You didn’t even call. For all you knew, I could still be rotting there, and you wouldn’t care.”
Connor’s face went red, but he kept his voice calm as he replied.
“If you want to know the truth, I was trying to cool down before I had to face you. I was so angry.”
“You’re angry at me?” I demanded, pacing up and down just out of his reach, so furious that I was panting.
“Calm down. This is bad for the baby.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. You know what’s bad for the baby? Sleeping on a hard bench in an ice-cold cell. Going to jail for a murder I didn’t commit.”
“I sent a lawyer.”
“Courtney Whatever-the-fuck? Please. She had no clue, and you knew it. You wanted her to fail.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that you framed me.”
“First of all, I didn’t. And second, you put yourself in this position. When were you planning to tell me that you have a rap sheet? That you’re a drug dealer? That you sold exactly the same type of pill that Nina died from? Don’t you think that was something I had a right to know before deciding to marry you?”
For a moment, I had the strangest sensation of staring down at us from above. If I stepped outside myself, I was the one who looked guilty, not Connor. Maybe his anger was justified. Maybe he hadn’t killed Nina and wasn’t trying to frame me. But then, how did he explain Juliet? I had proof right there in my jeans pocket not just of her false identity, but of their preexisting relationship. I ran my finger over the smooth surface of the photo of the two of them together. I was tempted to pull it out and throw it in his face. But I had to be more strategic than that. I was supposed to be tricking Connor into implicating himself in Nina’s death for the benefit of the police who were recording our conversation. I didn’t exactly have a plan for doing that, other than getting him talking about the murder.
“I had nothing to do with Nina’s death,” I said to Connor. “And you know that.”
“I’m not accusing you of killing her,” he said. “I don’t believe you’d do that. But you have a criminal record for selling drugs. You were here at Windswept the night she died, along with your ex, who attacked Steve Kovacs. What the hell am I supposed to make of that? You know how bad it looks?”
“Yes, bad enough to get me arrested for a murder I didn’t commit. I’m surprised you’re upset, given how convenient that is for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look, I’m sorry I never told you about Derek. I was waiting for the right time. Those were his drugs, not mine. I didn’t even know they were there. I only pled guilty because they offered me a misdemeanor with no jail time, and my lawyer said it was the best deal I could get.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth. And here’s another truth. You’re the one with the motive to kill Nina. Not me. What would I gain from her death?”
“What would you gain? Me. This house to live in. Clothes and vacations, servants, private jets.”
“You had that, and you cared about it more than I ever could. Yet, you were about to lose it. Nina was going to divorce you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do, Connor. I know it for a fact.”
“How?”
I sat down on the bed. Nina’s journal was hidden under the pillows, inches from my fingers. I was itching to pull it out and toss it at his head. If only the police were listening in, I would have. But the recording device in the ankle bracelet was not a transmitter. They couldn’t hear me in real time. The only way to summon them was to push the panic button. How was I supposed to do that with Connor standing over me?
“Because, I know you were planning to use my record against me. At least, Julissa was.”
Connor’s jaw dropped. “Ju-Julissa?”
“Why else did you two show up at my restaurant Memorial Day weekend? She knew all about me. She set me up,” I said.
I’d been trying hard to keep my voice steady, but it came out small and shaky and filled with sorrow. Hot tears started rolling down my cheeks. We stared at each other, everything between us so broken. He hung his head.
“Nooo,” he said. “Tabby, no.”
“No, what? Are you saying it’s not true? Then explain this.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the photo. It had gotten crumpled along one edge. I smoothed it against the fabric of my jeans. He stared at the picture in stunned silence.
“This is very much how I remember you. Back then, that summer when we fell in love—I thought. But here you are with her, not long afterward.”
“You got that from her room?” he asked.
Let him believe I’d found the photo in Juliet’s room. That way, I’d protect Gloria, who had at least tried to help me.
“She’s not who she says she is,” I said. “She wormed her way into working for Nina under a false name. Then the two of you killed Nina for the money.”
“That is completely wrong. Please, tell me you don’t believe that. You can’t.”
He grabbed my hands, but I pulled them away.
“You brought me here to take the fall for Nina’s death. You were with Juliet this whole time.”
“No. I completely deny it.”
“Don’t lie. It’ll just make me hate you more.”
There was a tortured look in his hazel eyes. “I’m not lying. Tabby. How can you think I faked my feelings for you? It’s the most I’ve ever felt for anyone.”
“You faked your feelings for Nina. I know that to be true. So, why not with me, too?”
That brought him up short. “Well, okay—maybe. I mean, not exactly, but there’s some truth to what you just said. Since we’ve been together, I’ve changed. I sincerely have. Still, I deserve your doubts. I see that, because of my past.”
He rubbed his eyes, which were red and watery. He was fighting tears.
“Please, hear me out. I’ll tell you the whole truth, even if it makes you hate me. But you have to try to see my side, like I’m doing, with you and the drugs. At least keep an open mind. Please?”
“Yes. I’ll try. Go ahead.”
“This will only make sense if I start at the beginning. Okay.”
He took a deep breath. “I met Lissa in college, and we were together briefly. The relationship meant more to her than it did to me. Honestly, I still had you on my mind, and that’s not a lie. I wasn’t happy with myself. I was confused. My grades suffered. I left school for a while. Lissa and I broke up. She was fragile. Mental health issues. She had a tough upbringing—foster homes until she got adopted when she was ten. She actually attempted suicide after we broke up. I felt guilty, and protective of her. So I kept in touch. Not out of love. It was obligation. And friendship. Maybe it was more to her, though.”
He paused for breath. I watched his eyes. I believed he was telling the truth about Juliet, but so what? His sob story didn’t change the facts that Nina had been murdered and I was being framed.
“You think your protectiveness of her justifies what you’ve done?”
“I didn’t do anything. Just listen, okay? This isn’t just background, it’s my explanation, and you said you’d keep an open mind. About ten years ago, Lissa got her adoption records unsealed, and she discovered that her birth mother was Gloria. Gloria, the housekeeper here.”
I knew that was true. Again, it didn’t justify his conduct.
“So what?”
“I’m about to tell you what. Lissa was desperate to know her birth mother. She wrote to her begging for a meeting, but Gloria said no, it would be too painful. That’s when Lissa found out the truth about her identity. Gloria wrote her a letter explaining that she’d been raped when she was seventeen and forced to give the baby away. Well, it didn’t take much digging for Lissa to figure out that Edward Levitt was the perpetrator—and her father.”
“I believe that Edward would do something like that. But don’t think you can use it to excuse what you and Juliet did.”
“I didn’t do anything. Will you please not say that, at least until you’ve heard the whole story? Okay?”
“Go on,” I said grudgingly.
“At that point, Lissa had nothing. She was twenty years old, a college dropout, with no money, no job, no prospects, fragile mental health. And she’d just discovered she was the daughter of this fabulously wealthy man. So, she sued for paternity. But the case wasn’t viable. Because she was over eighteen, Edward no longer had any support obligation, and there was no requirement that he give her a penny. She settled for a hundred thousand bucks, plus a no-show job at some shell company of Edward’s.”
“Protocol Shipping Solutions?”
“Yes, how did you know?” he said, taken aback.
“Finish your story, then we’ll talk.”
He nodded. “So, they settled. Lissa was required to sign an NDA and agree never to contact Edward or his family.”
“You’re trying to tell me that’s the reason for the false name, so she didn’t violate the settlement?”
“Partly. But the main reason for the false name was because of Gloria. Everything Lissa did—at least at the beginning—was because of Gloria. She’d never given up the idea of knowing her birth mother. But the lawsuit, which was something of a bust financially, had a terrible effect. It set Gloria against her. Apparently, Lissa’s lawyer had tried to subpoena Gloria to court, which made Gloria very uncomfortable. And after Edward died, when Lissa reached out again, Gloria basically said get lost and never contact me again. This just made Lissa crazy. To her, it was, like, this huge injustice. She couldn’t let it rest. She became fixated. She was obsessively following all things Levitt online, and that’s how she discovered that Nina was hiring an assistant. She decided to apply. I know that seems weird. Even twisted. But in her mind, it was a way into that world, so she could get to know her mother. But she had to do it under a different name, or they’d know it was her.”
“Okay, fine. Say I accept what you’re saying as true. That only tells me about Juliet’s motive. She’s not my concern, you are. Let’s talk about you, Connor. Your motive, your lies, your actions.”
“Me? I just needed a job. Lissa knew I was looking. She heard of the position in the Levitt Global PR department, and she passed that tip on to me. She offered to put in a good word, but only if I promised to keep her name change between us.”
“And you agreed to that? At that point, you knew something really sick was going on.”
“Sick? That’s an overstatement. You have to understand, Lissa was a friend, with a tragic story, who was trying to help me get a job. I thought what she was doing was weird, yes. But at that point, I’d never met Nina. And whatever Lissa was up to, it didn’t involve me. I didn’t feel any obligation to out her. Not then.”
“Connor, just so you know, I’m not losing sight of the fact that you ended up married to Nina, and Nina ended up dead. This stuff about poor little Lissa is just some smoke screen. You better be honest, because I’ll know if you’re not.”
“Yes. I swear. And here’s where the bad stuff starts. This is where I fault myself. This is when I should’ve known better, should’ve washed my hands of Lissa, and didn’t. As time went on, I realized she had a vendetta against Nina. She blamed her for everything. For forcing Edward to send her away. For making him be ruthless in the lawsuit. Which—I know Nina, and I know Edward by reputation—that just isn’t true.”
I recalled the words in Nina’s journal. “You sent me away.… You ruined my life.” Juliet had blamed Nina. I knew that much was real.
“The point is, I knew she harbored these feelings towards Nina. She started talking about getting back at her. I thought she was blowing smoke. I never took her seriously until—”
He paused, taking a deep breath.
“Until she came up with this crazy plan.”
“What plan?”
“To throw me together with Nina and see where it went.”
I stared at him, slack-jawed.
“I prayed there was some innocent explanation,” I said. “But there isn’t. Your marriage was a conspiracy from the beginning. Juliet hadn’t succeeded in getting her hands on the Levitt fortune through the lawsuit, so you did it for her.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. She never said, Let’s kill Nina and take her money. If she had, I would have done something. She presented it more as, almost, a practical joke. Let’s mess with her. To me, it wasn’t that. It was just … an opportunity. Hell yeah, I’ll go to this party. I’ll meet this rich, famous, beautiful woman. I’ll hang out with her, have sex with her, enjoy what she has to offer. I’m not proud I did that. But it’s not the same as conspiring to kill her. That, I would never do.”
His eyes were pleading. I could feel how much he needed me to believe him. But I couldn’t get there. Not yet, not without more of an explanation.
“Nothing changes the fact that you actually went ahead and married her without ever telling her the truth.”
“Yes, and that’s wrong. But you have to understand, things with Nina went faster than I ever imagined. Within a few months, she wanted to get married. And I wanted to, too. It was an amazing life I could have with her, and I wasn’t about to miss out on it because of Lissa’s bizarre situation. I know it looks bad. But I didn’t see Lissa as my responsibility, and I didn’t want to ruin things with Nina by confessing my knowledge of this—impostor—in her midst.”
I heaved a big sigh, partly convinced by his explanation, yet mad at myself for going along with it. I worried I was missing something. Then I realized that I was. Nina had ended up dead, and Connor with her money.
“None of this explains why Nina’s dead, you’re rich, and I’m framed for her murder. Go on. Explain all that.”
“Around Memorial Day weekend, Lissa told me she wanted to deal with Nina, as she put it. And she had this, like, delusion, that I’d help her. We’d kill Nina and split the money. And you know, it’s not like she’d never mentioned that concept. But I just put it down to her being crazy. I never thought it was real. And I told her no. I said, I will never agree to that. I want nothing to do with it, and if you’re serious, then I’m going to the police. That’s when she threatened to out herself in order to ruin me. She was going to tell Nina I’d been in a plot to kill her from the beginning. That was plausible enough that I knew it would ruin my marriage. There was no good explanation for why I’d concealed Lissa’s identity for so long. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do. That’s when I went up to New Hampshire to think things through. And I found you.”
“Can I ask you something? Did Juliet follow you there?”
“Yes. It was her, outside the ski house that night. She took that picture of us and that gave her more ammunition to blackmail me with. But, by then, I’d found you again. And I came back here determined to tell Nina I was leaving.”
“Yet, you didn’t.”
“I was looking for a way to tell her without triggering the prenup. I hate myself for dragging my feet over that, because in my moment of hesitation, everything went south. Nina found out about Lissa. She called us to her office after the Fourth of July party, told me she was triggering the prenup, and to get the hell out.”
“What was your reaction to that?”
“Honestly? Relief. I wanted to leave, I wanted to be with you.”
“Relief? Not rage? Then, why did the night end with Nina floating in the swimming pool, dead?”
“That wasn’t me. I had nothing to do with that. If you don’t believe me, ask Steve Kovacs. He saw me go.”
“Go where?”
“I called an Uber and left. I was on my way to the city when I got the news that Gloria found Nina’s body. I turned right around and came back. The next morning, after they took Nina’s body away, I confronted Lissa. She admitted everything, said she drugged Nina’s drink and pushed her into the pool. She did what I wasn’t man enough to do, she said.”
“You’ve known for months that Nina was murdered, that it wasn’t suicide, yet you never came forward?”
He sighed. “I wanted to. But when I told Lissa I was going to the police, she laughed. She said she had to do it alone because I was a coward, but she wasn’t taking the fall alone. She would tell the cops we did it together, and they’d never believe my denial. But just to make sure, she had an insurance policy. My fingerprints on the glass that she used to drug Nina’s drink. Mine, not hers. She has it hidden somewhere. That’s why I haven’t turned her in.”
I wanted to believe that Juliet acted alone. I really did. But there was one big, glaring loose end.
“If she really acted alone, why am I getting framed for this? Why didn’t you stop her? Why not come to court today to proclaim my innocence?”
“Why you is easy. She wants you out of the picture.”
“And you’re letting her. Connor, she tried to kill me. She was the one in the Suburban, I’m sure of it. She ran me off the road. I could’ve been killed, the baby, too.”
He looked crestfallen.
“I didn’t believe that before, but I’m starting to think you might be right. When you first told me about that incident, I was sure it was Nina. That car is a company car. Anybody who worked for her had access to it. Lissa did, too, and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes that it would be her. Especially since, to my knowledge, Nina was not aware of your existence.”
“Juliet tried to kill me, and now she’s framing me.”
“Yes, that’s a fair conclusion to draw,” he said.
The sadness in his voice made me angry. It was for her as much as for me. He still cared about her—this woman who’d murdered Nina, who’d tried to kill me and his baby.
“You’re letting her. You still care about her.”
“I understand her. I feel sorry for her. But it’s you I love. And sweetheart, there is no way I’m letting you take the blame for this. I spent today working out a plan. That’s the only reason I wasn’t in court. I was moving assets around, looking for an apartment in Dubai—”
“Flee the country? Never. That’s the same as a confession. And I’m not confessing to something I didn’t do.”
“It would only be temporary. You would go, and I’d stay behind to clean up this mess. I already met with a lawyer and a private detective. We have a plan to find out where Lissa’s got this evidence hidden. Once I have that glass, she has no power over me. I can go to the cops then, without having it come back on me.”
“You know what that tells me? After all that’s happened, you can’t clear my name because you’re worried about protecting yourself. I leave the country, and then what? How do I know you don’t tell the police that I fled because I’m guilty?”
He grabbed my hands, wild-eyed and agonized. “Please—tell me you don’t think that. I would never do that. I love you too much. How can I prove it to you?”
“By coming with me to the police station and telling them the truth. Now.”
“I want to. I really do. But it’s not that simple. We’d end up taking the fall for Nina’s murder. You and I—we need to keep our hands clean. If it gets out there that we were involved, even if it’s not true, it would only muddy the water.”
“Muddy the water?”
I looked at him warily, a terrible understanding dawning.
“Oh, my God. This is still about the money, isn’t it?”
“We can’t forget about the lawsuit. Tabby, if it looks like you or I were involved in Nina’s murder, the courts will rule against me, and Kara Baxter will inherit Nina’s money. This is about our future—our future as a family. I’m not just looking to survive. I want us to be happy.”
“You want us to be rich. It’s not the same thing.”
“You’ll never win by betting on Connor’s ethics. You haven’t figured that out by now?”
Our heads turned in unison. Juliet stood in the doorway, a gun in her hand.