Chương 4
Marcus removed his phone.
His hands were steady.
Mara watched them because Leonard had taught her years ago that hands often told the truth before mouths had agreed on a version.
She wished he had followed his own lesson.
By nine o’clock, the mourners were allowed to leave after providing contact information. Several departed through the side entrance to avoid the television van gathering beyond the gates. Someone had called a reporter. Perhaps more than one person had. Wealthy families inspired loyalty until loyalty threatened to become association.
Mara remained.
The police sealed the chapel. The coffin stayed in place beneath the silver cross, its lid propped against the altar rail like a broken door.
Leonard waited near the vestibule while Detective Ortiz finished with the estate staff. When they were briefly alone, he came close enough for Mara to smell peppermint beneath his aftershave.
“You’re suspended,” he said.
She had expected it.
“Effective when?”
“Immediately.”
“My personal belongings are at the funeral home.”
“I’ll have them boxed.”
“The preparation log is there.”
“The police can request whatever they need.”
“I need a copy.”
“No.”
“It has my signature.”
“It belongs to the business.”
Mara looked toward the officer guarding the chapel.
Leonard followed her gaze.
“Don’t make this uglier,” he said.
She almost laughed. The sound rose unexpectedly and died before reaching her mouth.
He mistook her expression for fear and softened his voice.
“You were under enormous emotional strain. Your father’s anniversary was last month. The Harrow case was unusual. Anyone can understand a lapse.”
“A lapse.”
“You damaged a twenty-eight-thousand-dollar casket in front of the family.”
“She was alive.”
“So you keep saying.”
Mara stared at him.
Leonard’s face changed by almost nothing. The corners of his mouth remained sympathetic. His eyes remained calm.
But the sentence had come out wrong.
Not she is alive.
Not thank God.
So you keep saying.
Mara felt cold beneath the fitted burgundy jacket.
“What did Dr. Rowe tell you when he released her?” she asked.
Leonard’s expression closed.
“Go home.”
“Did you see her before the transfer?”
“Mara.”
“Did you check her?”
“You are suspended.”
He walked out before she could answer.
Detective Ortiz appeared beside the last row of chairs. She had heard at least part of the exchange. Mara could not tell how much.
“Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?” Ortiz asked.
“I have an apartment.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone likely to bother you?”
“Mr. Danner avoids neighborhoods without gates.”
Ortiz’s mouth moved slightly, not quite a smile.
“Give me your phone.”
Mara stiffened.
“For what?”
“To preserve your call history and messages. You can hand it over voluntarily, or I can start paperwork. Voluntary is faster.”
“My whole life is on that phone.”
“That’s usually why people dislike the question.”
Mara took it from her apron pocket.
She thought of her father’s last voicemail, saved for four years. She thought of photographs she had never backed up, grocery lists, bank alerts, a half-written message to her sister that she had postponed since Christmas.
“Will I get it back?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
Mara unlocked it and placed it in the detective’s hand.
Ortiz slipped it into an evidence pouch.
“You did the right thing tonight,” she said.
Mara looked at the broken coffin.
“I waited eight minutes.”
“You were surrounded by people telling you that you were wrong.”
“That doesn’t make the eight minutes shorter.”
“No.”
Ortiz did not try to make her feel better.
Mara liked her for that.
She left the estate shortly after ten in a patrol car because the funeral van had been taken as potential evidence. The officer drove her to a third-floor apartment above a closed laundromat in Millbrook, twenty-six miles from the Harrow estate and a world away from its chandeliers.
The officer waited until she unlocked the building door.
Upstairs, Mara removed her shoes in the dark. She set them side by side on the mat from habit, then carried them to the sink because one sole was marked with a thin brown smear from the coffin.
She stood with the shoe beneath the faucet but did not turn on the water.
Evidence, she thought.
Then she remembered the officers had photographed her shoes and told her she could keep them. The stain was probably only dust mixed with wax.
She left it anyway.
The apartment was cold. Her radiator knocked twice and stopped, a sound so close to what she had heard inside the coffin that her body reacted before her mind did. She gripped the counter and listened.
Nothing.
She filled a glass from the tap.
Three taps came from the wall.
Mara set the glass down too hard. Water jumped over the rim.
A pipe, she told herself.
Old building.
Cooling metal.
The same explanations everyone had offered while Evelyn Harrow lay sealed beneath polished mahogany.
She did not sleep.
At two in the morning, someone knocked on her door.
Mara stood behind it without speaking.
The knock came again, two light taps and a third after a pause.
“Mara?”
Her sister’s voice.
Mara opened the door.
Nia Vale entered wearing a puffy green coat over blue hospital scrubs, her black curls gathered beneath a knit cap. She carried two paper cups and a plastic bag from an all-night diner.
“You don’t have your phone,” Nia said.
“The police took it.”
“I know. I called six times, then I saw your face on Channel Eight.”
Mara locked the door.
“My face?”
“About four seconds. You looked like you wanted to bite someone.”
“I was listening.”
“That’s how you listen?”
Nia handed her a cup.
The coffee was sweet and overloaded with milk, the way Mara disliked it. She drank anyway.
Nia set the diner bag on the small table. “Is she alive?”
“She was when the ambulance left.”
“Then you saved her.”
Mara sat down.
May you like
Nia remained standing, waiting for agreement.
“I heard her at six thirty-eight,” Mara said. “I opened the coffin at six forty-six.”
