Either way, I was finished. Hook, line, and sinker. Caught in the deathly web of a master at the killing game.
I’d been such an idiot ... such a trusting, naive idiot, to think I could keep playing the ransom game indefinitely without getting burned. To imagine I could get away with pissing off rich, powerful women and expect nothing but money and signed NDAs in return.
Sitting on my crooked chair under the detective’s condescending glare and the lawyer’s indifferent one, and reflecting on the way I’d been earning a living for the past ten years, I realized I’d always been concerned with the men, and never their wives.
Such a monumental mistake—hell hath no furyand all that. I should’ve known better.
But I was still alive ... The cell they were going to put me back into wasnota prison cell. Not yet. Closing my eyes for a moment, I tried to remind myself what calm felt like, and its miraculous powers. And I breathed slowly, counting the seconds on each inhale, hold, and exhale.
Detective Stanek gathered the photos and autopsy report, then closed the file. “One, we have you on video at the victim’s hotel room,” he said sharply, counting on his fingers. “Two, surveillance video from the garage shows you were distraught, both upon entering the garage and leaving it, twenty-two minutes later. The time stamps on all thesevideos match. Three—the murder weapon was found in your possession with your fingerprints on it.” He looked at the lawyer, smiling smugly, and patted the thick file with his hand twice. “This is an open-and-shut case if I’ve ever seen one.”
“Except that you can’t prove motive,” I said. The lawyer stopped staring at his own fingers and looked up at me, his mouth slightly open, his brow furrowed. “Means, motive, opportunity, right? Don’t you have to prove all three during your investigation?”
“Not necessarily,” the detective replied, shattering my hopes. “It’s the prosecutor’s job to decide if and when they charge you with murder one. Based on this, we’re golden.” His fingers rapped against the file like drumbeats.
“You’re not even considering the possibility that I was framed?” Despair raised the pitch of my voice. “The murder weapon you found was in a convertible that was left outside with the top down all night, because the garage door wouldn’t open. Easy for anyone to drop it in there, don’t you think?”
Stanek sighed, rubbing his creased forehead with stubby fingers. “It had your fingerprints on it, sweetheart. Think, for crying out loud. If someone else put the bottle ofVisinein there, how did that happen?”
I started to say how but then stopped. So far, he didn’t seem to know about my meeting with Claire, and I wasn’t going to tell him. “Here’s a better question for you to ponder. If I killed Winston with those eye drops, why would I hold on to the bottle, and why would I leave it in the car, where anyone could find it?” He stared at me, unfazed. “Is that what your typical murderer does?” It was my turn to smirk. “I guess that explains how you manage to catch them, doesn’t it?” It was amazing to me that someone who seemed so smart could be content with such a sloppy investigation.
“Ms. Taylor, let’s not—”
We were back to “Ms. Taylor,” after “sweetheart” and “honey.” I held my hand up in the air. “Actually, let’skeepasking uncomfortablequestions, Detective. Maybe we’ll stumble upon the truth, even if it’s by accident.”
Sighing from the bottom of his lungs, he stood and ran his hands over his pants, straightening their creases, then adjusted his belt below his potbelly. “Unfortunately, we don’t have time for this. Your arraignment is in an hour.”
His words hit me like a physical blow. I couldn’t show up in court with this joke of an attorney. Which meant I had to make a decision. “Ah, okay. Then I’ll be ready.” Ignoring the detective’s raised eyebrows, I turned to Palmer Clayborne and said, “You’re fired.”
He sprang from his chair so quickly, it nearly toppled over. “What? You can’t be serious. Going into the arraignment without representation is a big mistake.”
I couldn’t help laughing. Stanek seemed to think I had lost my mind. “Oh, he speaks,” I said, then pointed at the door. “Out. I’ll do better on my own, thank you.”
Clayborne strode out of the interview room holding his head up high and with his lips tightly pressed into a thin, pale line. The door closed behind him with a soft thud.
“Do you have one we should call?” Detective Stanek asked. “I’m actually surprised I don’t see a flock of thousand-dollar suits clambering to yank you out of jail. I thought you were loaded.” He stared at me with that scrutinizing gaze of his. “Perhaps it’s all a facade,” he added, tilting his head a little, his eyes still drilling into mine. “Isn’t it, Ms. Taylor? Another one of your lies?”
I smiled faintly. “Let that be my concern. If I were you, I’d be more worried about arraigning someone for murder when there’s absolutely no motive to speak of. It’s not really a career bell ringer, is it?” I let that sink in for a beat. “When your case crashes and burns, it’ll be hard to explain. Won’t it, Detective?” The last word came with biting sarcasm.
A glimmer of anger lit his eyes. “Good luck in court, Ms. Taylor.”
He walked out of the room and immediately started talking with the officer who’d waited outside the door, saying something about a busthat was supposed to load “the day’s losers” and deliver them to court in less than thirty minutes. The conversation was sprinkled with obscenities and laughter. To them, everything was a joke. People’s destinies and their shattered lives. Truth. Justice. My future.
Yet all I could think of was how neatly I’d served myself into Claire’s murderous hands, a spick-and-span little package of evidence and whereabouts delivered naively in a white folder.
When she’d seen the photos of Winston proposing to me, she hadn’t cried, hadn’t thrown a fit, like I’d seen happen almost every other time. No ... she’d stayed dry-eyed, ice cold, studying everything, planning every little detail of her husband’s demise. And mine.
I was never going to make the police—or a jury of my peers—believe that I hadn’t done it without placing blame elsewhere. My only chance was to prove that Claire had killed her husband and framed me. I had no idea how to do that yet, but a nagging little thought kept gnawing at the edges of my mind.
No matter how jealous or enraged, one doesn’t become a premeditating, murderous mastermind in under three minutes. If I had to place my whole life on a bet, I’d say Claire Donovan had killed before.
And gotten away with it.
31
Bail
The courtroom was smaller than I’d imagined, but my expectations had been misinformed by television.
