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Arriving at Dunne’s office on the fifteenth floor of a black granite and glass building, she gives her name to the receptionist and to her surprise it’s the attorney himself who comes out to greet her.
“Emma, good to see you,” he says, clasping her hand. He’s dressed in a navy suit and an expensive-looking patterned silk tie. “My office is overrun with documents, so I thought we could duck into one of the conference rooms.”
“That’s fine,” she says as he leads the way.
Dunne’s only about five nine or ten but he has a taut, powerful presence. At moments he can seem preternaturally calm, but she senses he’s always watching and listening intently, noticing others’ subtle cues of body language.
When they reach a sleek conference room at the end of the corridor, the lawyer motions her in, and once inside, taps a button that fogs the outer glass wall. He gestures to a tray on the table with a carafe, asking if she’d like coffee, and she greedily accepts. Dunne declines her offer to pour him a cup and takes a spot on the other side of the table where a folder, yellow legal pad, and Montblanc pen have been placed. With her coffee in hand, Emma settles in the chair directly across from him.
“I’m glad we could meet in person, Emma,” he says, both hands resting quietly on the table.
“Me, too. Did you have a chance speak to Detective Webster yet?”
He shakes his head. “I left a message for her this morning but haven’t heard back.”
“I can’t believe she just showed up that way, like she was trying to catch me off guard.”
“That will be addressed when I connect with her.... So, let’s talk about Miami, Emma.”
She takes a breath. “Right. Well, as I mentioned the other day, I was there to speak at a convention. For retail—”
“I got that. What I want to focus on is the dinner,” Dunne interrupts, pinning her with his gaze. “Could anyone there have seen you and Tom interacting that night?”
“No, of course not,” she says, slightly taken aback.
“You’re certain of that? Because I’ve been wondering if the tip Webster’s supposedly received had to do with the dinner. And you and Tom.”
So she’d been right the other day when she guessed that Dunne might have been contemplating whether she and Tom met that night, embarked on an affair, and then plotted to remove Derrick from the picture—being careful and clever enough not to leave a single clue.
“No one could have seen us speaking there because as I stressed to you before, wedidn’t.” She leans in, pressing her forearms against the table. “Peter, I know that over the years plenty of guilty clients must have claimed innocence to you, but I swear I’m telling the truth.”
He offers a small but warm smile, one that seems to reaffirm his steadfast support, but offers no indication whether he believes her. “Emma, I hope you see that I’m only doing my job, making sure there aren’t any potential land mines. Because if I’m oblivious to them, I can’t protect you properly.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And a land mine would be not only you and Tom meeting that night but the two of you having contact in the weeks immediately afterward.”
Panic spikes through Emma. She has to come clean with him—at least about some of it—or else shewillbe pushing him on a path toward a land mine.
“Peter, you have my word that I had no direct contact with Tom during the Miami trip or in the weeks immediately following. But, um... there’s another weird wrinkle. It turns out that Scott Munroe, who first hired me as a consultant at Halliday, learned about my work from an article that Tom gave him. Tom often forwards articles from the business press to his staff, and he didn’t realize when he sent Scott the link that I’d been the speaker in Miami. Like I said before, he had to leave early because of a toothache.”
For a few moments, Dunne is silent, his lips pursed the tiniest bit. Behind her, through the fogged glass wall, she hears the muffled drone of voices, people in conversation as they move along the corridor.
“And this person, Scott Munroe,” he says finally, “he works at Halliday?”
“Not anymore. But I’m doing a consulting project with him, and it came up the other day when we were chatting.”
“What are your thoughts on this, Emma?”
Part of her wants to unburden herself completely, confess what she’s learned about Tom’s behavior, even her fear that he might be behind Derrick’s death, but another part resists throwing Tom under the bus. He’s her husband, the man she loves, and, beyond that, she still doesn’t have all thefacts. Maybe that isn’t his handwriting on the Harvard Club program and he never actually attended the panel discussion. Maybe Tom’s assistant got hold of the program when she was putting together the press file. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
“I... I know it’s another awkward detail, but I give you my word I never met Tom until the summer.”
“All right,” he says again, “then there’s nothing for Webster to turn up.”
Emma nods. But of course, things aren’t “all right.” There might actuallybesomething for Webster to discover.
Out on the street a few minutes later, Emma feels deflated. There had been a moment when she could have spilled everything to Dunne, giving herself a sense of control, but she’d lost her nerve.
