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Eve began to dig at her cuticle. “Uh, yeah. Basically.”
“Except that you were needed for the big anniversary dinner?” asked Josie.
Eve looked up from her hands and met Josie’s eyes. “I was supposed to get some pictures we could use for social media and pass them along to Margot, yeah. I had offered to pick up the takeout, champagne, all that stuff, but Claudia wanted to do it herself.”
“The last time you spoke with Claudia or saw her was when?” asked Noah.
“I saw her at the studio around noon,” Eve said. “Which was the last time I physically spoke to her, but she sent me some photos before I got to her house.” She reached behind her where a large purse hung from the back of the chair. Fishing her phone out, she punched in a code and then pulled up a text exchange between her and Claudia.
“May I?” Josie asked, taking the phone from her.
Eve shrugged. “If you think it will help you.”
Josie scrolled back through a number of mundane exchanges having to do with scheduling, dry cleaning, and coffee. Then texts from that day beginning around two thirty in the afternoon.
Eve:What time should I get there?
Claudia:Any time after five thirty, I guess. I’ll have things set up by then.
Eve:K. Thx.
The next text was from Claudia at 5:13p.m., one hour before the 911 call came in. It said:What do you think?A series of photos followed. All of them were from the Collinses’ dining room. One showed a bag of takeout from Cadeau. Another showed two place settings arranged on the table together with unlit candles. In the center there was a vase of roses and a champagne bottle resting in a bucket of ice. The last photo was a selfie of Claudia, smiling. She held the phone up high above her head so that it captured the dining room table behind her. This time the candles were lit. She gave a thumbs-up. The large diamond ring and matching band that Josie had seen when they met sparkled on her ring finger.
Josie added to the theory she’d been building since she saw the crime scene. The killer had most likely come in through the front door, since the security system was disabled. He’d approached Claudia from behind in the kitchen and struck her, causing severe blood loss. Then he had carried her into the dining room, put her into one of the chairs, and taken the rings from her fingers. Before he left, he’d put a puzzle box into her hand and left with her phone.
A terrible sense of foreboding made Josie’s chest feel tight.
The last message was a text from Claudia received at 5:29p.m.Where is everyone? Thought we were doing this at 5:30. Food is getting cold!As if to mitigate the tone of the message, she had added a smiley face emoji.
Eve had not answered.
Josie added another detail to her mental reconstruction of the evening. The killer had carried all of this out within a thirty-minute time period. Presumably, Claudia was still alive when she texted Eve at 5:29p.m. Eve arrived approximately a half hour to forty-five minutes later and found Claudia dead—the scene staged—since the 911 call came in at 6:13p.m.
Josie said, “May we have copies of these?”
Eve shrugged again. “Sure.”
Josie handed the phone to Noah so that he could see the exchange. To Eve, she said, “Was the big dinner supposed to take place at five thirty?”
Eve nodded. She brought her thumb to her mouth and began chewing around the already irritated cuticle.
Josie said, “You didn’t get there until when?”
From behind her hand, Eve muttered, “Six. I was late. We were all late.”
She burst into tears then, her entire face crumpling. She splayed her fingers open and buried her eyes in her palm. Sobs racked her body. A high-pitched cry filled the room. Josie felt its vibration in her teeth. It was grief and guilt, pure and unadulterated. For a moment, Noah looked thrown, eyes widening as his gaze moved from the phone to Eve’s shaking body. Josie lifted a hand from the table in a gesture meant to indicate that they should just give Eve a few minutes to compose herself.
“If we hadn’t been late, maybe she would be alive,” Eve cried, raking the sleeve of her sweater over her face. “We were all late. Every single one of us. If I had just gotten there when she told me, maybe it would have been okay. Claudia is a good person. She doesn’t—she didn’t deserve this. She’s a great boss. The best. And the blood. There was so much blood. I stepped in it by accident, and it got everywhere. It’s still on me!”
Eve was close to hyperventilating. Josie spoke calmly but firmly. “Eve, look at me. I need you to take a few deep breaths. Can you do that for me?”
She nodded even as another sob shook her body. Josie could see in her eyes that she was fighting down the horror of what she had seen that evening. She took in a few shuddering breaths. Noah produced a box of tissues from the other end of the table and offered them to her. They let her blow her nose and dab at her eyes before continuing.
Josie said, “Eve, when you arrived at the Collinses’ home, were there any other vehicles there? In the driveway? Any that you may have passed on your way up the street?”
Eve fisted the tissue and shook her head. “No. Nothing. Claudia always parks inside the garage, and I knew she was home but there were no cars in the driveway. I don’t remember seeing any on my way up the street. Maybe I did, but I don’t remember.”
“Did anything strike you as unusual when you got there?” Noah asked.
