Chương 2
A paramedic approached Arthur and asked whether he had swallowed any wine.
“No.”
“Did it touch your lips?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
Arthur ran his tongue over his lower lip, then stopped as if the movement itself were dangerous. “The glass was here. She struck it before—no. I don’t believe it did.”
The paramedic guided him away from the table.
Celeste tried to follow. Warren blocked her path without touching her.
“That’s my husband.”
An officer stepped between them. “Ma’am, I need you to keep your hands where I can see them.”
The room inhaled around her.
Celeste looked down at her own hands, startled to find them subject to instruction. She lifted them slowly. Her diamond earrings trembled against her neck.
Evelyn did not see the empty vial beneath the table. A guest named Roger Bellamy did. He had crawled halfway under the linen to retrieve his wife’s dropped clutch, and his hand stopped two inches from the small glass cylinder.
“There’s something here,” he said.
Every nearby head turned.
“Don’t touch it,” an officer warned.
Roger withdrew so quickly he struck his shoulder against the table. The empty vial lay beside the toe of Celeste’s champagne-colored shoe.
Celeste closed her eyes.
It was not a confession, but the silence that followed felt like one.
Detective Mara Quinn arrived twenty-three minutes later, after the ballroom had been cleared in sections and the guests had been directed into three smaller reception rooms to wait for interviews. She wore a dark suit beneath an unbuttoned coat and carried no visible impatience, though everyone who spoke to her became aware of wasting time.
She found Evelyn seated alone in a service corridor between two industrial laundry carts. An officer stood near the door. Evelyn’s bow tie had come loose. A thin cut crossed the side of her right hand where a piece of crystal had caught her during the struggle.
Quinn looked at the blood, then at the phone sealed inside a clear evidence bag on a folding table.
“You need that cleaned.”
“It’s nothing.”
“That usually means it hurts.”
Evelyn looked at her hand. “It hurts.”
Quinn pulled a plastic chair away from the wall and sat opposite her. “Start with your name.”
“Evelyn Hart.”
“Your position here?”
“Temporary banquet server.”
“Employed by the hotel?”
“Through Northline Event Staffing.”
“How long have you known Celeste Vale?”
“Twenty-two days.”
The detective’s face did not change, but the officer near the door looked over.
Quinn said, “That’s more precise than most people get under stress.”
“I counted.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew you’d ask.”
Quinn rested her notebook against one knee. “Tell me how you met.”
Evelyn rubbed the edge of her thumbnail against the cut on her hand. She had practiced an answer, but the practiced version had been designed for a phone call, not for a detective who seemed capable of hearing the difference between fear and performance.
“She came to a private event at the Marlowe House. I was serving a board dinner. She asked me to bring her coat to the downstairs powder room. When I got there, she was waiting.”
“And?”
“She said she had a private job. One night. Cash.”
“What kind of job?”
“At first she said she needed someone she could trust around her husband.”
Quinn waited.
Evelyn looked at the sealed phone. “She wanted me assigned to his table tonight. She wanted me to pour his wine from a specific decanter and make sure no one switched the glasses.”
“What did you think she was asking you to do?”
“I thought she wanted to embarrass him.”
“By protecting his wine?”
“She said there might be something in it that would make him sick. Not kill him. Sick enough to leave early. She said he’d been drinking too much and humiliating her at events. She said she wanted control of the evening.”
Quinn’s pen stopped.
“And you agreed.”
Evelyn swallowed. “Yes.”
“For how much?”
“Five thousand up front. Fifteen after.”
The officer near the door shifted his weight.
Quinn asked, “Where’s the first five?”
“In my apartment.”
“Cash?”
“Yes.”
“Did you spend any?”
“Eight hundred.”
“On what?”
“Rent.”
The detective wrote that down.
Evelyn felt heat move into her face. Of everything she had done, that detail embarrassed her most. Not the lie, not the envelope, not the hours she had allowed herself to pretend Celeste’s request was merely ugly instead of lethal. Rent made the whole thing ordinary. Rent made it believable.
“When did you understand she meant to kill him?” Quinn asked.
“Four days ago.”
“What happened?”
“She changed the instructions. She said if he complained about the taste, I should tell him it was an older Bordeaux. She said I shouldn’t call for medical help immediately because he had a heart condition and people would panic. She wanted me to wait until he collapsed.”
“And you stayed in the plan.”
“I needed proof.”
“You also kept the money.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t contact police four days ago?”
“I called this afternoon.”
Quinn looked up. “What time?”
“Four twelve.”
“Who did you speak to?”
“I don’t know. A dispatcher. Then an officer called me back.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That I believed someone planned to poison Arthur Vale at the banquet.”
“Did you identify yourself?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“I hung up the first time.”
Quinn leaned back slightly.
Evelyn said, “I called again.”
“Why did you hang up?”
“Because once I said my name, I knew I couldn’t pretend I had misunderstood.”
For the first time, Quinn’s expression softened, though only around the eyes.
“Who told you to record Celeste?”
May you like
“No one. The officer said not to confront her and not to touch anything. He said police would come, but they needed something more specific than my suspicion. Celeste was supposed to meet me in the wine room before the dinner. I put my phone on a shelf behind a stack of napkins.”
“You knew she would poison the decanter there?”
