Page 17 of The Expat Affair

On Friday, Xander’s funeral is already in full swing by the time I arrive, a packed room of mourners sitting shoulder-to-shoulder while a man in a navy suit drones on at the podium. I slide into an open spot at the far end of the back row. A strategic spot close to the door, in case I need to make a speedy exit.

Yes, I am well aware that attending Xander’s funeral falls under the category of Things That Make Me Look Guiltier, but the reasons I should pay my respects were too many to ignore. I actually liked Xander. I spent the night leading up to his death in his bed. I let him kiss me and give me multiple orgasms. Xander and I were connected in the most intimate of ways, even if for only a few hours. I couldn’t not come.

It’s what the killer would do, I happen to know from my many hours spent watching true-crime TV—sneak into their own victim’s funeral for one last, blood-soaked finale. One final look at loved ones sniffling into their hankies, to revel in the damage he’s done. To think I did that. I put those tears there. My gaze scans the crowd, thinner than I expected it to be after all the press surrounding Xander’s death, and I wonder if the killer is one of the people in this modern and bright room, if he’s thinking all those things.

I don’t understand a lick of what any of the speakers are saying, a rolling parade of people at the podium while above their heads, pictures flash by on a giant screen. A skinny Xander chasing a ball down a scraggly field. Lounging on a Dutch beach packed with people. Sitting on the hood of a dusty Opel sedan in jeans and sunglasses, his shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned forearms. Holding a pile of uncut gems in a palm, or peering at them through a loupe, and my heart twists for this man I barely knew. He was so handsome, and that cocky grin, he’s apparently had it all his life.

My phone buzzes against my hip, and I dig it out of a pocket. A text from Lars, the second today. The first came this morning when I woke up alone—Good morning, , sign of life please. Now, another: Any beanie sightings?

I smile and tick out a reply: So far so good, thx for checking in.

It feels good to know someone is watching out for me, I think as I slide the phone back into my pocket. Even better still to know the man with the beanie didn’t follow me here. I’m pretty sure he’s not one of the people sitting in the rows before me, and he’s not outside, either, lingering in the lot or huddled on the corner with the press. By the time I arrived, twenty minutes past the starting time, everyone but three reporters was already inside.

A tall man in a tasteful black suit and glasses steps to the podium. I take in his thick thatch of dark hair, the black, horn-rimmed glasses, and the air in my lungs turns light and tingly. This is the guy from those articles I read, Xander’s partner in the lab-grown line. Thomas Prins.

He spouts off a jumble of guttural sounds I recognize as Dutch, and I can tell by the way he makes himself comfortable that it’s going to be a long one. My mind and my gaze wander, to the hunched shoulders and slumped heads of the people in front of me, the slices of pale, drawn faces whenever they look to the side. I picture Xander on the shower floor, the zip tie squeezing his neck, and I shudder. These people will need therapy for the rest of their lives, and probably, so will I.

A titter goes through the crowd, and I return my attention to the podium, to the man in the dark suit. He smiles at someone in one of the front rows, then tucks a sheet of paper into the inside pocket of his jacket and makes his way back to his seat. I sit up a little straighter, following him with my gaze. The place isn’t all that big, but I’m way in the back, and I don’t have a good angle on the others in his row. An elderly couple, stiff-backed and regal, another well-dressed couple, two teenage girls. The Prins family, and they certainly look the part.

I’m staring at the backs of their heads, all close-clipped cuts and salon highlights, when suddenly, a ripple of motion goes down the row like a football stadium wave. One by one, backs straighten. Bodies lean over or hike up on a hip, digging cellphones out of pockets and bags. They turn to each other and exchange alarmed looks, whispering about whatever is on their screens. Some kind of news, and it doesn’t look good.

My gaze sticks to one of them, the brunette seated at the far end. I see her pretty profile as she whispers to the elderly woman next to her, the delicate bones in her neck, the glittering diamonds dangling from her earlobes. I know virtually no one in this country, and yet I know her.

It’s the woman from the park. The one with the cute kid and ugly dog.

And she’s seated in the Prins row at Xander’s funeral.

What are the odds?

Never mind. I already know.

The answer is none.

Zero.

The funeral is still going strong when I slip out the back row and into the lobby, almost colliding with a woman with watery eyes and a severe bun. She hands me a pen and gestures to the guest book, where I scribble something illegible, then pluck my coat from the rack. Sometime while I was inside, the early afternoon clouds have melted into a bright blue sky, offering a perfect view of the press gathered at the corner. A good dozen bodies bouncing on their toes to keep warm.

I’m looking around for an alternative escape route when a familiar voice comes from just behind me. “I thought I might find you here.”

I rearrange my face, making sure to park my expression firmly in neutral before I turn around. “Detective Boomsma. Hi.”

Honestly, I would have preferred running into a reporter.

The detective leans back on his heels. “Funny fact. Only ten percent of murder victims die at the hands of a stranger. Family members, colleagues, friends. Lovers. Those are the more likely suspects.”

“Not funny ha-ha, but I can see the point of you telling it, and I feel like this is an excellent moment for me to assure you that I’m here because Xander was a friend. I came to honor his memory, and okay, fine, maybe a little bit for myself, to give his tragedy some closure.”

“I take it you didn’t find any more trackers.”

I shake my head. “No, but there’s definitely a man following me. I’ve seen him twice now.”

“Did you get a description?”

By now, the lobby is starting to fill with bodies anyway—servers standing ready with trays of drinks and food for the mourners, who are probably getting up and out of their seats. The detective gestures to a side door overlooking a courtyard, and it’s not the worst place to talk. Open to the street but mostly concealed behind a giant weeping willow, dropping a thick waterfall of branches that hangs over the opening like a curtain. And behind that curtain, visible from the window but not from the street, are two benches, twin slabs of concrete sitting low to the ground. I zip my coat and follow the detective through the door.

Outside, the courtyard is quiet, though I can hear the reporters chatting through the branches. They’re still up at the street, but they’ve seen the movement in the lobby, and they’re getting ready, pointing their bodies and zoom lenses at the double doors. If they see us, though, it’s only our feet, stepping to the benches behind the swaying curtain.

“Young,”

I say, taking a seat. “Early thirties or so. Tall. Light skin that’s mostly white. Hair is brown, I think. Both times I saw him, he was wearing a hat. And before you ask, no, I wasn’t quick-thinking enough to snap a photo, but you better believe I will next time.”

“Do you remember seeing him that night with Xander? Did he maybe . . . I don’t know, follow the two of you home?”

I frown. “I was drunk, and even then, how would I know? He looks like every other guy in this country. Who knows how many times he’s trailed me before I noticed him.”

“I’m asking because there’s been another murder. A woman reported a body bobbing in the weeds behind her houseboat on the Amstel. The victim was shot through the head.”

I shiver, and not just because the bench is a block of ice. Because another person is dead. Shot in a country where guns are illegal.

“And you’re telling me this, why? Because the two murders are connected?”

He dips his chin, not quite a nod. “The man was a diamond trader. Up until last fall, he worked for House of Prins.”

I don’t have to think too long about what this means, not just that another man is dead but that yet another murder is connected to House of Prins. “I’m very sorry for that man’s family, but surely now you must see that Xander’s death had nothing to do with me. I just happened to be there for it.”

“It certainly complicates things.”

“The press over there”—I wave a hand in their general direction—“they told me I was the lead suspect.”

“That’s not for the press to decide, and they only said it to get a reaction. Don’t give them one.”

“My roommate said the same thing. But they’re making it difficult for me to get through my own front door. Anytime I try to come or go, it’s an ambush. My neighbors hate me.”

“I’ll tell the patrols to start scattering them. You said you met Xander on Tinder, correct?”

I nod. “Yes. And if you give me back my phone, I can prove it. All our messages are still on there.”

He gives me a look, one that says fat chance, and I’m guessing he’s already seen those messages. While iPhones are notoriously hard to break into, my passcode isn’t just a string of random digits. Like an idiot, I used numbers that meant something to me, ones that would be familiar enough for me to remember but also predictable for anyone who knows me: my birthday, the month followed by the year.

“Who initiated contact?”

“I’m guessing you cracked the code on my phone, which means you already know it was Xander. He’s the one who slid into my DMs, not the other way around.”

“Okay, but who swiped first, you or him?”

I frown, wondering where this line of questioning is going. “Xander did. Why?”

“Did he ever ask you about anything personal?”

“We met on a dating app, Detective. We were getting to know each other. Of course his questions were personal.”

“Let me rephrase. Did any of his questions strike you as strange?”

I pause, giving myself time to think, to remember the first flurry of messages. He asked me where I was from, what brought me to Holland, how I was liking it here so far, all pretty standard get-to-know-you fare. Later, during our date, we talked about our families, our schooling, past relationships and break-ups. All of it was personal. None of it went super deep.

“Nothing jumps out at me, why?”

“Did he talk about his work at all?”

“Barely. I knew Xander was a gemologist, but I didn’t know the extent of it until after his death. Most of what I know about Xander’s job I’ve learned since then, by searching his name online.”

“So you Googled him.”

“Yes. Why? What are you trying to get at here?”

“I’m trying to see if he told you anything significant, even if it didn’t seem that way to you at the time.”

“Like what?”

“Like if he had any reason to seek you out. For example, that you knew some people in common, or your work crossed paths somehow.”

“I’m a travel writer, and not a very successful one at that. My job has literally nothing to do with diamonds.”

His gaze wanders to my ringless hands, to the string of cheap beads poking out of my sleeves, to the scarf draped loosely around my neck, bare except for the gold-plate necklace I got at a boutique in the Nine Streets.

“They’re fake,”

I say, picking the pendant up from my chest, running a finger along the tiny stones set in the three Xs, the crest for Amsterdam. “Not even good fakes. I think I paid like €39, and that’s including the chain. I don’t own any diamonds.”

The not anymore piles up on my tongue, but I swallow it back down. No need to open old wounds that aren’t all that old, to prompt any new questions about my past.

“Not even in your jewelry box back home?”

I shake my head, a silent no when what I’m really thinking is, what’s the point of a jewelry box when you own nothing worth putting inside?

He pulls a black velvet bag from his inside coat pocket, wriggling a finger inside to tug out a bracelet, a complicated cuff with what’s got to be hundreds of diamonds fanning out from a spectacular whopper in the center. “Then I take it this doesn’t belong to you.”

I laugh, because while it’s true that once upon a time, Barry bought me nice things, they were nothing like this. This is the kind of piece jewelers show in private back rooms, with cameras in every corner and an armed guard blocking the door. The kind you see on auction websites, or in photographs wrapped around Princess Diana’s arm.

Like the necklace Xander hung around my neck, the one that disappeared from his nightstand.

“No, that bracelet doesn’t belong to me. Not in a million years would it ever belong to me.”

I run a finger over the biggest stone, smooth and icy under my skin. “It’s stunning, though.”

“We found it in Xander’s desk.”

I look up in surprise. “So the thief found the matching necklace in the nightstand drawer but left this piece behind? How did they miss it?”

“Could be they ran out of time, or maybe they just didn’t look hard enough. It was wrapped in a cloth at the back of his desk drawer, buried under a pile of papers.”

“Are the stones real?”

“Unclear. It’s not that easy to determine a diamond’s origins. Unless it has a laser inscription stating it’s lab-grown, which these don’t, it’s hard for even the experts to tell. These have certification numbers, though, so I’m guessing yes.”

“Well, either way, I’ve never seen it before, and it’s definitely not mine.”

He slides the bracelet into the velvet bag and tucks it back in his coat pocket. “Did Xander ever mention anything about a gun?”

“You seem to be under the impression that I knew Xander better than I did. No, he didn’t mention anything about a gun. Why would he?”

“Because Xander had one, built from parts created on a 3D printer and just as deadly as a metal one, but virtually untraceable. No serial numbers, no paper trails for us to follow.”

“Can printers really do that? Summon a deadly weapon out of thin air?”

“Guns, ballistic knives, grenades. They’re flooding the market faster than we can stop them. Last month, a newspaper got their hands on a design for a 3D semiautomatic. You could buy the instructions along with the printer and all the materials you needed on the internet and have it shipped to your doorstep here in Holland. Nothing illegal about it until you actually hit Print.”

“That’s quite the loophole you’ve got on your hands there, but I’m still trying to figure out why you’re telling me all this. Unless you think that Xander was the one who shot the guy in the Amstel.”

“The gun we found in Xander’s apartment hadn’t been fired, but it’s just as easy to print ten as it is to print one. The technology extends to other things, as well. Face masks printed from a scan of a photograph, or gloves with someone else’s fingerprints. The last one’s especially handy when the safe works with biometrics.”

“And let me guess: Xander’s opened with a fingerprint, which explains his finger, I guess, though yuck. I’m guessing that’s how they got in the safe.”

“There’s a keypad, too, but you’d have to know the code to bypass the fingerprint. Either way, you’re correct. The thief used Xander’s finger to gain access.”

“And now you’re wondering if maybe I’m the thief. If I took the necklace and whatever diamonds were in his safe.”

“It crossed my mind at first, but then I realized only an idiot would call me up, on a Sunday evening no less, to tell me about the dream she had about a safe she’d cleaned out a couple days before.”

He shakes his head, regarding me. “I don’t know you all that well, but you don’t strike me as an idiot.”

“Is that a compliment? Because if so, it could use a little work.”

“You didn’t let me finish. There’s a but. That picture you posted, the one of you and Xander currently circulating online, that was a dumb move.”

“I know. That’s why I took it down.”

“It may be off your page, but it’s too late to stop it from getting plastered all over the internet. Everybody who sees it knows you were in Xander’s bed the morning someone murdered him and took off with his diamonds. He compared you to a Cullinan. He mentioned the stones by name. Do you know how many people are looking for the Cullinans? How much they’re worth?”

“By the look on your face, I’m guessing a lot.”

“The point is, people are going to be wondering if you’re telling the truth about what you heard and saw. If maybe you were watching from under a bed or through the cracked door of a closet and saw something that could identify them. If maybe you were the one who emptied out that safe.”

“You just told me you didn’t think that.”

“No, but the killer will, and he’s a professional. A trained assassin who knows how to dump a body in the Amstel or get in and out of a secured building without being seen.”

I stare through the branches at the bodies bustling around the parking lot, saying tearful goodbyes, dropping into cars while, just beyond, a shallow mist has gathered like steam over the grazing field.

I turn back to the detective watching me with a solemn expression. “Like the man in the baseball cap, who I’m guessing was behind the tracker since he was with me in the tram. And two days ago, someone left a note in my mailbox. A warning note.”

“What did it say?”

“That if they can find me so easily, then so can he. The person who wants the necklace. They told me to watch my back, that I’m not safe.”

“They’re right. You’re not.”

“If you’re trying to scare me, Detective, it’s working.”

“What I’m trying to do is keep you safe.”

He pushes to a stand, his big body towering above mine. “Be aware of your surroundings. Trust your gut. Because two people are dead, and I’d really prefer you not be the third.”