Page 21 of One of Us Is Guilty

Patrick says cancel the Hamptons party.

Vanessa had been planning this party for months. In meticulous detail. The decorations, the catering, the band and the guests, including Patrick’s father, Julian. Nailing that man down to a date that suited him had been hell. The date had to accommodate him, or he wouldn’t show.

She would reschedule.

She had time.

Her plan would work out just fine.

The bracelet was a lifeline she could cling to.

She had suspected Patrick wasn’t happy, but that could have been the stress from his father, who was pushing him into another run for governor. She wondered if that was all that was wrong. Even though he’d made her cancel their anniversary celebration, it didn’t mean he wasn’t happy. He wasn’t planning to leave her. After all, he had bought her something truly beautiful.

Everything would be fine. She just had to hold the marriage together a little longer.

She breathed in and out. Exhaled the anger from her body, letting it steam the window. She sent a text to Melissa to cancel the party.

She swore. And drove home to Manhattan, and Patrick.

Vanessa parked the Mercedes on the street, climbed the steps and entered the house. She stopped and looked into the dining room, now re-christened the war room.

Geoff Gilbert stood in the corner, his arms folded, watching a TV mounted high on the wall, showing a local news channel. There was a piece about a shooting in Brooklyn that had taken place in broad daylight – an attempted mugging gone horribly wrong. Gilbert’s thinning hair was badly managed by him discharging some kind of spray onto the top of his scalp every morning. In terms of disguising his baldness, it worked, from a distance perhaps, in the winter. In the summer, when it got really hot, Vanessa occasionally noticed a trickle of what looked like black molasses dribbling down the side of his face.

‘We’ve got to pin this on Coleridge,’ said Gilbert. ‘Heidi, I want Patrick prepped on this and on the six o’clock news to call out Coleridge’s soft approach to crime. Take a hard line when you’re pitching this – we’re not blaming Coleridge for the death, but in reality, it’s a result of his policies. You got it?’

Heidi, a twenty-something blonde in a blue Chanel suit, furiously made notes and said she would get right on it. She was one ofthe staffers in public relations and her striking appearance was all that mattered to Geoff when he hired her. Her beauty was only marred by a constant vacant expression on her face, as if she had lost something important but couldn’t remember what it was or where she had put it. Geoff only hired pretty young women. He was more interested in their dress size than their résumé.

At the table sat Patrick, and beside him Molly Green.

Close beside him.

It was a long table. With plenty of space. Patrick had his suit jacket off, draped over the back of his chair. His tanned hands rested on his chin as he watched the news. He wore a blue tailor-made shirt, a yellow tie and a vintage gold Rolex Submariner on his wrist, with gold and ruby cufflinks that Vanessa thought were way too gaudy. They made him look as though he owned a private island. Which, of course, he didn’t. Not yet.

His father had two.

Molly was in a green silk blouse. Her short, dark hair curled over her delicate features, a contrast to her pale skin. Her head was down staring at the iPad on the table. It wasn’t overly warm in the house, the temperature set at a steady seventy-five degrees throughout. And yet Molly had more buttons open on that fine green blouse than one might expect.

‘How’s things in the war room?’ said Vanessa.

Molly’s head shot up from the iPad, startled. She glanced at Patrick, then shuffled her chair an inch away from him.

‘Darling,’ said Patrick, ‘you’re back. How’s everything at the house?’

‘It looks great. Don’t let me keep you from your plotting. Molly, do you think we could have a quick word?’

Like all of Geoff’s hires, Molly was another beauty. She had once heard Geoff at a party, parroting a line from another politician, making the claim that he didn’t have the smartest campaign team, but he definitely had the hottest. And Molly was hot. Perhaps toohot. But of course Vanessa wasn’t thinking of the woman’s body temperature and those open buttons on her blouse. Molly was sitting far too close to her husband.

It made Vanessa uneasy.

She had learned to trust her instincts.

Molly smiled, got up and followed Vanessa past the row of shopping bags in the hallway, and into the kitchen. It was a great space, with an imposing marble-topped kitchen island and a vast twelve-ring stove. Vanessa had only ever lit one ring, for morning eggs. She was largely uninterested in food. Coffee was another matter. There was always a pot brewing. She poured herself a cup, then opened the refrigerator, found the almond milk and poured a little into the coffee. She turned to the counter, pulled out a drawer and her fingers hesitated over the neat pile of silver teaspoons.

Memory can be cruel.

Images flashed through her mind.

A pair of pliers gripping the spoon handle.