“It doesn’t matter what I think.The great Vivienne Carver solved the mystery.”
“Whitney.”
She stilled.The soft rasp of the paper cup between her hands died away.At the billiard table, someone broke the next set of balls, and a woman laughed.
“No,” Whitney said—even more quietly now.“No, I never believed she did it.”Her gaze came up to me.“And that’s what I said at the trial.”
“But you were the one who provided the motive.”
“The motive?”Whitney made a little scoffing sound.“Simonaneverwould have killed someone over bad reviews.Certainly not Robert.”
I frowned.“Then why did Vivienne assume she did it?”
Whitney laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound.“You’re the one who caught her, right?Didn’t she bang you on the head with a frying pan or something?”
“Uh, no.Shegot banged—”
Which, I realized in that moment, was not myfavoriteway to put it.
“So, you never went through something like this with her,” Whitney said.“An investigation.When she was the detective, I mean.”
I shook my head.
“It’s hard to explain.”Whitney turned the cup again, more carefully this time.“She was like a force of nature.She was so smart.So charming.So…sure of herself.And what made it all the more powerful was that you could see when she made a mistake, when she focused on the wrong person, when she realized she’d gotten something wrong and corrected course.It was like being inside one of her novels.That probably makes it sound like we were all having a psychotic break, but—but that’s how it was.I’ve never been through anything like it.”She paused to smile.“Of course, I’ve never been through any other murder investigations, so maybe they all have that same surreal quality to them.Like a fever dream.”
The creak of leather from the sofas.The woman talking to her baby.The smooth jazz fading out.
“I never believed Simona did it,” Whitney said again.“But Vivienne had a way of pulling on every thread, tracking down every rumor, poking and prodding into the darkest and most painful moments of everyone’s life.Margaux’s affairs.Block’s drunk driving arrest.”
“The reviews,” I said.
Whitney shook her head, but the gesture seemed directed at the fresh surge of tears.
“What happened?”I asked.
“Simona told me that she’d found out Robert was leaving those reviews.She was upset at the time, understandably; later, she begged me not to tell anyone.But Vivienne—sometimes it was like she was psychic.Like she alreadyknew.She asked me, and the words started spilling out of me.And when it was done, I told her that Simona never could have hurt Robert.Simona never could have hurt anyone.She was such a good person.And she was so happy—her book, you know?And Robert was her hero—everything he’d done to make it happen.He’s the whole reason she ended up at Langstaff and Lock, you know.She called him her lifesaver.”
“I don’t understand.If that’s all true, then why did anyone believe Simona did it?”
Whitney gave that unhappy laugh again.“That’s the question, isn’t it?Simona and Robert had a public argument—I should call it a fight because it was so ugly.”
“About?”
“The book, of course.Simona’s work was…challenging.She wanted it to be challenging.Robert liked that, up to a point, but he also wanted a book that would sell.He’d paid a lot of money for the rights.It was a big gamble; when Simona pushed back on his edits, he started to worry that the gamble wouldn’t pay off.”
Something was wrong with that statement.
“What else?”I said.
Whitney looked down into her coffee again.“Simona was…missing.”
“What?”
“She disappeared.The night Robert died.”In answer to the question she must have seen on my face, Whitney explained, “We were sharing a hotel room.You have to understand, back then, Simona and I were both getting started.We had contracts, but our novels hadn’t come out yet.We’d been friends online for a while—it’s easier to be friends like that, you know?Less competitive.And when we both wanted to go to Snitches and Stitches, we decided to share a hotel room.”
“And she wasn’t in the room the night Robert was murdered.”
Whitney shook her head.
