“Do you know where she was?”
Another slow shake of the head.
“Do you know what I don’t understand?”I asked.“Why would Robert tank Simona’s book?I mean, you said he took a huge risk acquiring those rights.To some extent, I imagine, his job was on the line.He must have wanted the book to perform well.”
Whitney released the cup of coffee.She sat back in her chair, arms folded across her chest.“I don’t know.”
“But you have an idea.”
She shook her head, but then, as though the words were being dragged out of her, she said, “People do things like that.They act out when they’re angry.It doesn’t always make sense.”
I waited.
“I don’t know,” she said again, but this time with a trace of weariness.“I’ve thought about it so many times over the years.Maybe he was frustrated that she wouldn’t take his feedback, and he thought he could scare her straight, so to speak.Or maybe he thought if he made the book a failure before it even came out, he wouldn’t be held responsible—an act of God, that kind of thing.”
“How did Simona find out he was the one doing it?”
“She didn’t say.”
“It didn’t come out at the trial?”
Whitney looked up then, her expression strange.
“What?”I asked.
“You haven’t read the book.”
“Uh, kind of working off a summary—”
She huffed a breath that was somewhere between amused and vexed.“Simona didn’t testify.”
“She didn’t testify at her own trial?”
Whitney shook her head.
“Why?”
Spreading her hands, Whitney shook her head again.
It wasn’t unheard of for defendants not to take the stand.In fact, I wasn’t even sure if it could be called uncommon.Sometimes, it was because the defense didn’t want to expose themselves to difficult questions.Sometimes it was because the defendant was, uh, problematic.And it certainly explained Simona’s lack of an alibi—she’d never given one.But I had a hard time imagining why Simona hadn’t seized the opportunity to explain, in her own words, all these troublesome questions that only she could answer.
Time for the surprise redirect.
“Whitney, how did you feel about Vivienne?”
“I hated her.”
And that jived with what I’d seen the first night of the conference, when Whitney had spotted us and looked like she wanted to attack Vivienne on the spot.
“So,” I said, “why did you sign up for a one-on-one with Vivienne?”
Color worked its way up Whitney’s cheeks.“I didn’t—” And then she stopped and gave a cracked laugh.“God, why am I lying?Yes, I signed up for a one-on-one with Vivienne.I don’t—I don’t know why.Not really.I’ve been angry at her for so long.And then, after I learned what she’d done—after everything that happened with you—I was able to let it go.It was like I forgot about her.And then I saw her on the list of authors attending the conference, and I lost my mind.I was going to—” But Whitney stopped again.Her breathing was rapid, and she touched her knuckles to her mouth before she finally said again, “I don’t know.”
Maybe she truly didn’t know.But, on the other hand, maybe she did.What would it feel like to come face to face with the woman you thought had, in effect, killed your friend?
“And where were you the night Vivienne was killed?”
“After I saw you in the lobby?I went up to my room.”She added a bitter smile.“Alone.”
