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He’s sitting at his desk in the office, and he has the air of a man who is far too busy to entertain any more of his girlfriend’s wild delusions.
“Everyone? Who else knows about it, then?”
I worked myself up into such a state on the drive home that it’s amazing I can even get the words out. All the way here, I’ve been making a mental list of all the people who knew I’d told Jack about the messages, and who could therefore be the sender; and it was a pretty short list, let me tell you.
But now Jack seems to be telling me it’s just got longer.
“Mum and Dad; Rose; I don’t know,” says Jack, shrugging. “Well, Mum and Dad knew already, obviously —youtold them. Remember?”
He shoots me a reproving look, and I bristle with annoyance.
Someone keeps sending me messages telling me he’s a liar, but somehowI’mthe one at fault here. Nice.
“But you told Rose?” I ask bluntly. “What about John? Did you tell him? So he could look into it for us?”
“John? No, of course not,” Jack frowns. “John’s in PR; what would he know about it?”
I start to point out that he was the one who’d suggested getting John on the case in the first place, but he gets in first.
“I did tell Elaine, though,” he says. “She said it sounded like something from a film. Then she said she had to go and phone her sister, because she listens to a lot of true crime podcasts, apparently, and she always manages to figure out whodunnit.”
I sigh heavily. Elaine is Jack’s assistant, and if she knows about the messages, it probably means the rest of his staff does, too.
Fantastic. My list of suspects just keeps getting longer.
“Jack, I really wish you’d take this seriously,” I say, trying my best not to sounddramatic, as he would have it. “Whoever this is, they’re not stopping. This is the third message now. I think we should go to the police. Don’t you think we should go to the police?”
“Sure,” says Jack absently, not bothering to look up from whatever it is he’s reading at his desk. “I can’t imagine what they’d do about it, though. We’d probably get more sense out of Elaine’s sister.”
“Coo-ee!” interrupts Rose, appearing in the doorway of the room. “Jack, can I borrow you for a second? Dad’s got locked in the sauna again. I’m worried he’ll dehydrate, like that time in Cabo.”
Jack jumps up and goes off without a backwards glance, and I stand there on my own, resisting the urge to scream in frustration. I feel like I’m in one of those nightmares where you’re trying to shout a warning to someone, but all that comes out is a croak — and they’re not listening to you, anyway.
Then I look at Jack’s desk.
His desk which is still covered in the Emerald View paperwork, which he pulled out yesterday so he could show his parents his plans.
McTavish said the land Jack’s building on once belonged to the McTavishes. If I could just find out who Jack bought it from…
Before I have a chance to talk myself out of it, I step forward and start rifling through the papers, keeping one eye on the open door of the office as I go.
I have no idea what I’m looking for. Title deeds, maybe? A map, with X marking the spot? Jack’s diary, in which he confesses at length to having stolen the land from McTavish, with the aim of… nope, it’s no good: not even I can come up with a plausible reason why Jack would want to do something like that.
It’s not in his character. I would know if it was. There’s no way I’d have missed the signs of him being some kind of Machiavellian arch-villain. I’m notthatstupid.
I straighten up guiltily.
This is insane. I can’t believe I’m actually snooping through his things when I know perfectly well he’d never lie to me. Or to McTavish, for that matter. What a great start to married life.
“Emerald?”
My heart jolts with guilt as I look around to see Jack standing in the doorway, watching me.
How long has he been there? Did he see me looking through his stuff?
“What are you doing?” he asks, his tone giving nothing away as he comes into the room and crosses over to the desk.
“I was… just looking for this,” I say, spotting the notebook I’d been using for my wedding planning the other day lying half-buried under the other papers on the desk, and snatching it up gratefully. “It’s my book of lists. Can’t plan a wedding without this bad boy, can I?”
