“Last I saw, you had two.”
I kicked her under the table.
“How about Andrei Borovkov? What’s his story?”
I stopped chewing. I hadn’t mentioned anything to Vero about Patricia’s rich friend or the seventy-five-thousand-dollar promissory note I’d tucked in my desk drawer. “How do you know about that?”
Vero dropped her garlic bread, her wide eyes focused on the TV behind me. Her chair screeched as she lunged to the counter for the remote and turned up the sound. My stomach took a nosedive when I turned and saw the familiar faces on the screen.
According to police, an Arlington husband and wife have gone missing in two separate incidents, causing investigators to consider the likelihood of foul play. Patricia Mickler contacted her local sheriff’s office at approximately seven o’clock Wednesday night to report her husband, Harris Mickler, missing, saying she hadn’t heard from him since he’d left work the night before. But when police arrived at her home to take her statement, Mrs. Mickler didn’t answer the door. Police say they grew concerned after they made several attempts to reach her by phone, and more than one unanswered visit toher home. Tonight, police are launching an investigation into the couple’s whereabouts.
The camera cut away to the Micklers’ street, where neighbors all seemed to be saying the same thing. No, they hadn’t noticed anything strange. No, the Micklers were perfectly ordinary, a quiet couple, no children or pets. They both worked long hours at respectable jobs and had never caused any trouble.
Vero was still gripping my arm when the news anchor cut to a commercial break.
“Mommy, can I be excused?” Delia pushed her half-eaten bowl away, a deep wrinkle in her nose.
“Yeah, sweetie,” I said in a hollow voice. “Go wash your hands. You can play in your room.”
As soon as Delia was up the stairs, Vero turned to me. “What do we do?”
This was not a plot twist I had planned on. “We are not going to panic,” I insisted. Who was I kidding? We were definitely panicking.
“Where the hell is she?”
“Patricia? She probably got scared and left town.”
“It makes her look guilty!” Zach’s sauce-covered face snapped up at her outburst. His eyes ping-ponged between us and Vero lowered her voice. “If the police find her, she could confess everything.” She swiped my cell phone from the counter and held it out to me. “Call her and tell her she’s making a mistake. She needs to come back.”
“I’ve called her a dozen times. She wouldn’t answer my calls, so I went to her house—”
“Are you crazy?”
“No one saw me.” At least, I hoped not. I swallowed hard, remembering the knife protruding from Patricia’s back door. “But… while I was there, two men showed up.”
“What men?”
“I don’t know. But I think they might have been the men Patricia warned me about. They left a note. I think they might have been Harris’s clients. I think he was stealing from them. When I opened his mail, I found a bank statement—”
“You opened his mail? Your fingerprints are probably all over the envelope!”
I reached inside my pocket and put the bank statement on the table. “It’s fine. I took it with me.”
Vero choked. She snatched it off the table and opened it, her eyes narrowing as they skimmed the statement. “Twelve deposits, all on the first of the month, for the same amount. You think he was embezzling from his clients?”
I nodded. “It gets worse. Turn the page.” Vero flipped to the balance sheet, her mouth forming anoharound the big fat zero at the bottom. “The note said Patricia had twenty-four hours to return what she’d taken.”
“You think these men were the ones who killed Harris?”
“They definitely had a motive. They want their money back. And we have fifty thousand of it.”
Vero hugged my phone as she paced the kitchen. “Patricia paid us in cash. If these men did follow you home from the bar, they could just assume you were on a date and he’d had too much to drink. They’d have no way of knowing Patricia hired you. With a half million dollars, she could run anywhere. If they don’t find Patricia, they won’t find out about us, right?”
“Right.”
Zach fussed in his high chair. I wiped pasta sauce from his face, plucked him from his seat, and set him down to toddle after his sister.
Vero fell into her chair. She pushed her plate to the middle of the table, looking at it as if she might be sick. “What if the police find Patricia before we do?”
