Chương 6
“I can hear him saying something that isn’t true.”
Marcus looked mortified.
“I’m not lying.”
“I didn’t say you were lying.”
“You just said—”
“I said that isn’t what happened.”
“That’s what you said.”
Nora took one step toward him.
Reyes raised a hand.
“Stay where you are.”
Nora stopped.
Marcus swallowed.
Daniel watched the exchange with a growing discomfort.
Marcus was afraid of her.
That was not proof of poisoning.
It was proof of something, though.
“Why would Nora send you away?” Reyes asked.
Marcus glanced at Daniel.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t look at him.”
Marcus looked down.
Reyes waited.
Finally he said, “They argued earlier.”
Daniel’s head lifted.
“Who?”
Marcus immediately regretted answering.
“You and Ms. Nora.”
Daniel frowned.
“We did not.”
Nora gave a quiet, humorless laugh.
Reyes looked at Daniel.
“Let him answer.”
Marcus’s ears turned red.
“I heard voices in the study.”
Daniel searched backward through the evening.
He had been in the study with Nora for perhaps four minutes.
She had closed the door.
They had discussed the Calder account.
She had accused him of cutting her out of a decision.
He had told her they would talk after dinner.
That qualified as disagreement.
Not, in his mind, as an argument.
“What did you hear?” Reyes asked.
“Not much.”
“Anything specific?”
Marcus shifted again.
Daniel could almost see him deciding whether employment was worth honesty.
“She said, ‘You don’t get to decide this alone.’”
Nora looked at Daniel.
He felt the guests in the adjoining room become quieter.
“And what did Mr. Mercer say?”
Marcus swallowed.
“He said, ‘It’s already decided.’”
Reyes looked between them.
“What was already decided?”
Daniel answered before Nora could.
“A business matter.”
Nora stared at him.
Reyes asked, “What kind?”
Daniel hesitated.
The hesitation betrayed more than the answer would have.
Nora’s face changed.
“Oh, now you care about privacy.”
Daniel ignored her.
“I was restructuring part of the company.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Nora was being removed from financial authority over one division.”
A murmur passed through the sitting room.
Nora closed her eyes.
Daniel felt a wave of anger, not at her this time, but at himself.
He could already hear how it sounded.
Money.
Control.
Public embarrassment.
A private argument before a cup of suspicious tea.
The kind of facts strangers arranged into motives because strangers never had to live inside the complications.
Officer Reyes asked, “Did she know?”
“Yes.”
“When did you tell her?”
“Tonight.”
Nora laughed again.
“Tell me?”
Daniel looked at her.
“You saw the documents.”
“I found them.”
Reyes turned toward her.
“Ms. Nora, please.”
“No.”
For the first time, Nora’s voice rose.
“No, if we’re doing this in front of everybody, then let’s at least stop pretending Daniel sat me down and had an adult conversation.”
Daniel felt Lily tense beside him.
He wished immediately that they were anywhere else.
Nora pointed toward the study.
“I found papers on his desk with my authorization being revoked effective Monday.”
“Because you signed transfers I hadn’t approved.”
“Because you disappeared for six weeks when your father was sick and someone had to keep the division running.”
“I was reachable.”
“You ignored half my calls.”
“My father was dying.”
“And the company did not stop existing.”
The words hung there.
Nora’s face changed as soon as she heard herself.
Daniel felt something old and poisonous open between them.
His father had died eleven months earlier.
Nora had attended the funeral.
She had organized food at the house afterward and stayed until midnight loading glasses into the dishwasher.
Daniel had never told her he resented that she had called him twice during hospice about quarterly projections.
He had simply begun taking authority away from her a little at a time.
Perhaps she had noticed before tonight.
Perhaps that was the actual argument they had been having for a year.
Officer Reyes said, “Financial disputes matter here, whether either of you likes that or not.”
Nora’s eyes filled, but she blinked the tears away before they fell.
“I didn’t poison him.”
Daniel looked at the black purse hanging from the chair.
“Then let them search it.”
Her gaze met his.
The room seemed to empty around that look.
“I can’t.”
Daniel’s anger returned.
“Why?”
Nora shook her head.
“I can’t.”
Reyes spoke carefully.
“Is there something illegal in the purse?”
“No.”
“Something dangerous?”
Nora hesitated.
“No.”
Daniel heard the hesitation.
“So there is something.”
Nora looked at Lily.
That frightened him more than anything else she had done.
“Don’t look at her.”
“I’m not going to hurt her.”
“Then what’s in the purse?”
Nora’s mouth trembled.
For several seconds she seemed unable to force the answer past whatever it would cost her.
Then footsteps sounded from the hallway.
The younger officer returned with a middle-aged woman in a kitchen apron.
She held a small blue glass bottle inside a clear food-storage bag.
Every person in the dining room went silent.
Nora stopped breathing.
The officer looked at Reyes.
“We found this behind the tea tins.”
Lily’s fingers dug into Daniel’s hand.
“That’s it,” she whispered.
Daniel stared at the blue bottle.
Then he looked at Nora.
She did not deny recognizing it.
She simply sat down in the nearest chair as if her legs had finally refused to hold her.
Officer Reyes did not move toward the bottle immediately.
“Where exactly was that found?”
The younger officer turned to the woman in the apron.
“She can tell you.”
Evelyn Park looked as though she would rather be anywhere else.
Her hands were still dusted with flour near the wrists.
“It was behind the second row of tea tins.”
Reyes looked at her.
“Was it there earlier?”
Evelyn shook her head.
“I cleaned that shelf this afternoon.”
Nora’s face had gone completely still.
Daniel watched her with a feeling that was no longer simple anger.
He had wanted certainty.
May you like
Now that certainty seemed to be moving toward him, he found himself resisting it.
Reyes pointed to the bag.
