Bc the bombing process uses cyanide to clean the jewelry. So the fan would blow the cyanide out the window onto the pigeons and kill them!!!
Vivian gasps, and the phone tumbles out of her hands onto the floor.
Xavier’s note suddenly makes sense, though Vivian wishes it didn’t.
Send my love to Rachel and Claudius. Can’t wait for the common play.The Shakespeare play she, Rachel, and Xavier watched together on the Boston Common wasHamlet. Claudius is one of the characters inHamlet.Claudius, whopoisonshis brother to ascend the throne.
We’ll raise a toast and clink our dirty martinis with extra olives.This is a reference to both Oliver—olives—and again to poison. Xavier was giving a nod to what Vivian previously taught him about clinking: It was historically performed to mix the contents of the two glasses, in case one contained poison.
Xavier’s message is as clear as that overhead Murano glass chandelier she’d spied in the bedroom: Oliver planned to poison his father with cyanide.
Christ. Vivian’s stomach drops. No, she thinks.No, no, no.She was there; she saw it happen. Graham had a heart attack.
Or did he?
What did she see, other than the man collapse over his food? It was possible. Oliver could have somehow slipped cyanide in his father’s food or drink.
But where would Oliver have gotten the cyanide from?
Dread slowly inches its way down her spine.Xavier.Olivermust have gotten it from Xavier, who holds that jeweler’s permit for cyanide.
Christ. What was he thinking?
Remember when I told you and Rachel about the pigeons on my building? I wish I’d known that was going to happen.Xavier likely meant he’d supplied the cyanide, but he didn’t realize it was going to be used to poison Graham.
Still—it doesn’t really matter if he didn’t realize. Graham is dead. Xavier is in way over his head at the Knox. And, right now, so is Vivian.
Michael witnessed her snooping around—and he knows about her ancestral link. What if they have sniffed out her true intentions? And what if they got to Xavier’s note before she did? The envelope was unsealed—had it already been opened? Even if they didn’t understand the note’s meaning, they would have realized Xavier knows Vivian—and that he was trying to deliver a message to her.
The Knox is far, far more dangerous than she’s given it credit for. They even have the fucking stolen Rembrandt!What to do, what to do, what to do?She knows, deep down, what she cannot do: return to Peter and pretend like everything is fine.
Rachel’s words about the Knox/Thurgood family plot now echo in her head, how everyone was buried there.
“EveryoneexceptMargaret.”
The Knox clearly has no issues covering up their crimes; Vivian’s not about to be another job for their cleanup crew.
She needs to get the hell out of here.
Jabbing at the phone with a trembling hand, she deletes her messages with Rachel. Then she rushes back the way she came, scurrying down the metal staircase. Her feet feel, for once, clunky in Louboutins; her heart is in her throat. Thoughts swirl maddeningly around her. Who at the Knox orchestrated Graham’spoisoning? Oliver? Michael? Peter insinuated there was transition underfoot at the Knox and dissenting schools of thought. Peter, she recalls, was Team Oliver.Is Peter in on this?Did Peter off Graham to implement the desired change?
But Peter was doing CPR on Graham. He seemed genuinely shaken, unless that was an act.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she bursts through the door that deposits her back on the second floor. Luckily, no one is in the immediate vicinity, but she should have been more careful. She’s not thinking properly. Her brain is like the inside of a dated media cabinet, wires all askew.
She edges along the same hall that she confidently strutted down minutes earlier. She’s finding it so hard to propel forward, so hard to think. Fear clings to her, hot, sweaty. Each half step she manages toward the grand staircase—and the front door of the Knox—feels like a hard-earned victory. She could really use one of her Xanax right about now. Or two.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spots movement.She’s not alone.
She halts, hyperaware of the crack her hip makes just then. She draws in a breath and holds it as if that could make her disappear.
The figure does not move. It—he?—waits for her.Who is it?
They stay like that for a few solid seconds. Then, her eyes slowly adjust, taking in the gold filigree frame surrounding the person. It’s a mirror, for crying out loud. A large hanging mirror that she must have missed seeing earlier. She’s looking at herself. She almost laughs, she’s so relieved.
In a few more steps, the staircase comes into sight. Relief washes over her. She feels like she’s rounding the last corner of a marathon. The hall remains empty, faint echoes of the ongoing commotion in Canton’s Restaurant carrying down the corridor.
At the top of the stairs she pauses for a moment, wondering ifshe should find Peter before leaving. But then she realizes it’s a stupid idea, even if he’s not involved.
