Chương 4
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she know it was there?”
“I don’t know.”
Maya muttered something under her breath.
Daniel heard it.
“She says someone planted it.”
Maya laughed without humor.
“Of course she does.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
Emily watched him.
“Do you believe that?”
He looked at her.
She wished she had not asked.
Not because she feared the answer.
Because she could see how much it cost him to search for one.
“I believe you were locked outside,” he said.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I know.”
Maya glanced between them.
“I’m going to find Claire.”
Neither stopped her.
The door closed.
Daniel and Emily were alone in the room where she had expected to spend five minutes touching up lipstick before walking toward him.
A bottle of champagne sat unopened in a silver bucket.
Someone had written MRS. WHITMORE on a card beside it.
Emily picked up the card.
Turned it over.
Put it back.
Daniel leaned against the door.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
He looked tired.
“For asking Maya if you’d said anything.”
Emily said nothing.
“I panicked.”
“I was missing.”
“I know.”
“Your mother told you I might’ve run.”
“She didn’t say run.”
“What word did she use?”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Overwhelmed.”
Emily nodded.
“There it is.”
“I didn’t believe her.”
“You believed it enough to ask.”
“Yes.”
The admission surprised her.
She looked at him.
He forced himself not to retreat from it.
“Yes,” he repeated. “For maybe thirty seconds, I thought there was a possibility you’d changed your mind.”
“Why?”
His expression changed.
Emily waited.
Daniel stared at the carpet.
“Because you asked me three times this month whether we should postpone.”
She felt the old argument opening between them.
“That was because of your mother.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then.”
“I knew you two were fighting.”
“No. You knew she was making decisions about our wedding after I asked her to stop.”
“I thought it was wedding stress.”
“You thought I was overreacting.”
“I thought both of you were.”
Emily laughed softly.
“There. That’s it.”
“What?”
“You always make it equal.”
Daniel frowned.
“I don’t.”
“You do. If she crosses a line and I get angry, somehow the problem becomes that two women you love are having conflict.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Maybe not.”
She folded her arms.
“I’m not fair right now.”
He looked at her for a long time.
Then he nodded.
“Okay.”
That irritated her too.
“Don’t okay me.”
A tiny, exhausted smile appeared.
“What am I allowed to say?”
She stared at him.
Against every sensible emotional instinct, she laughed.
This one lasted longer.
Daniel’s face softened.
Then Emily remembered his mother’s suite.
The phone.
The bracelet.
The locked door.
The laughter died.
Daniel looked toward the mirror.
“I don’t know who she is right now.”
Emily’s anger paused.
He did not say it theatrically. He sounded embarrassed.
As if discovering something terrible about his mother was also somehow a failure of manners.
Emily sat again.
“You don’t have to decide everything tonight.”
He looked at her.
“But you do believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Completely?”
“Yes.”
This time he did not hesitate.
Emily studied his face.
“What changed?”
“My mother lied about being in the garden.”
“That was enough?”
“No.”
He swallowed.
“The phone.”
She nodded.
Daniel stared at his hands.
“And the bracelet.”
A knock interrupted them.
One of the police officers asked if Emily was ready.
The initial interviews took almost two hours.
The hotel had cameras in the interior corridors but none inside the east garden, which was usually accessed only for private events and staff landscaping. Security footage showed Emily leaving the bridal floor at 4:37 p.m. Victoria entered the same elevator twenty-eight seconds later.
At 4:46, a camera near the service corridor showed Victoria returning alone.
Emily did not appear again until 5:09, when she forced open the ballroom doors from the interior hallway after climbing over the garden’s low maintenance wall and reaching an unlocked kitchen entrance.
The east-garden door had an electronic lock.
Hotel records showed it had been manually switched to staff-only mode at 4:41 from a control panel inside the garden vestibule.
The officers asked who had access.
The security manager explained that anybody physically standing at the panel could activate it.
The latch did not trap people under ordinary conditions. There was an emergency release inside the vestibule.
But the inner release had been blocked.
By a brass flower stand.
Emily listened without interrupting.
She had pushed that door at least fifty times.
She had not known why it would not move.
Now she pictured the tall decorative stands used throughout the hotel, heavy enough to hold arrangements three feet high.
Someone had wedged one against the door from the other side.
That detail changed things.
This was no accidental lock.
Victoria still denied doing it.
She admitted following Emily into the garden.
She admitted confronting her.
She admitted the bracelet must have broken during the confrontation.
She did not admit touching Emily’s phone.
She did not admit blocking the door.
And she insisted she had never intended to prevent the wedding.
“What did you intend?” the officer asked.
Victoria sat in a private meeting room with an attorney Daniel had not known she had called.
Emily was not present for the interview, but the question would matter later.
For that night, the police had enough to investigate possible unlawful restraint and theft but not enough to arrest Victoria immediately.
That outraged Maya.
It did not surprise Arthur.
“It isn’t television,” he told her.
They were standing in the hotel lobby at almost nine at night while guests finally departed.
Maya folded her arms.
“She admitted following Emily.”
“Following someone is not a crime.”
“She lost the bracelet at the scene.”
“Evidence.”
“Her phone was in Victoria’s room.”
“More evidence.”
“So arrest her.”
Arthur studied her.
“You’d make an excellent sheriff in a town with no appeals court.”
May you like
Maya glared.
Arthur almost smiled.
