Page 47

FORTY-SIX

Alex’s phone buzzes in her hand. Jonathan Amin. She rushes to answer it. “Jonathan, I’ve found something. Howard Demetri—”

Jonathan cuts her off. “Alex, listen to me for a minute. I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?” Alex asks, excitement still bubbling up in her chest as she scans the letter once more.

There’s a long, heavy breath into the receiver. “They’re here, in the office. They’ve come for him.”

“Who’s there?” She stops and looks up into the still darkness of the house.

“The police. He’s being arrested in front of everyone. He did it. Apparently they found something that ties him to the murder.”

“The sheath,” Alex whispers.

“How did you know?” he demands, suspicious.

“I did some poking around in his office the other night.” Alex squirms. “I saw it there and had a hunch it might be connected.”

“Wait, are you the one who went to the police?” It’s hard to miss the accusatory tone to his voice.

“No! No, I was trying to find something, I don’t know—evidence of his affair maybe, or something connecting him to those threatening letters I keep getting sent. And then I saw the sheath with the missing knife, and something in me knew right away that it was the knife that killed Francis.”

“How have you managed to find more out in the last two weeks than the cops did in all this time?”

“Jonathan, about that. Please don’t be mad at me, but I’m at Francis’s summer house.”

“What? Oh boy. Alex, I—”

“Listen to me. I’m looking at Francis’s computer right now. There is a note that was in a deleted folder on her desktop. It’s dated the day Francis was killed. It’s from Howard telling her he is about to leave his wife.”

“That’s—wait, what?” His voice echoes, and she can picture him standing against the railing of the stairwell, a perplexed look on his face.

“But why would he have written to Francis that he was going to leave his wife and then kill her?” Jonathan asks.

“Because he didn’t do it, Jonathan. He was absolutely in love with her.” She can see the beam of Lucy’s flashlight bouncing off the walls in the hallway.

“I think I’m going to be sick.” He moans, “I don’t know what to believe anymore, Alex. None of it makes sense. There’s something really strange going on.” There is a clatter of utensils coming from the kitchen, the sound of metal scraping against wood. “What was that noise?”

“I brought Lucy with me. I don’t have a car and she said she was happy to drive, so we left right away.” She is rereading the letter, scanning it for any clues she might have missed.

“Who?” Jonathan’s voice drops.

“ Lucy , Jonathan. Francis ’s assistant.” Alex hears a drawer open in the kitchen.

“Seriously. Who are you talking about?” Jonathan’s voice goes cold. “Francis never had an assistant.”

Alex’s heart plummets into her stomach. She lifts her fingertips from the keyboard, glancing back into the darkness over her shoulder. She lowers her voice. “What do you mean? She must have. Lucy knows everything about Francis.”

“No, Alex. That is impossible. Francis wouldn’t have let someone help her if she was hanging from the side of a cliff,” Jonathan says, his voice starting to sound worried.

Alex stops moving, stops breathing. Surely he is wrong. The sounds in the kitchen have stopped. She whispers, “But the things she told me about those girls…”

“What girls ?”

“The ones that Howard tried to sleep with. The young ones. From the mailroom.” Alex realizes that she hasn’t told Jonathan everything she knows about their boss.

“What? You think Howard—” He starts out sounding incredulous, but his tone quickly changes to fear. “Alex, I don’t know what is happening, but I think you should get out of there.”

“Why would Lucy lie?” Her voice is barely audible. Suddenly the words of Francis’s obituary come back to her. She suffered no fools. In her memory she sees Lucy’s rosebud lips moving and the words of the obit coming out of her mouth verbatim. In the hall, the light from Lucy’s flashlight goes off.

“Alex. Please be safe,” Jonathan begs. She nods into the dark of Francis’s study and hangs up the phone.

As she rises quietly from the desk, Alex thinks that the only reason you would memorize and repeat an obit is if you didn’t actually know the person you were talking about.