Chapter 11: Seat 14B

The deputy who had been looking at my face asked the question everyone asks.

"Ma'am, which one are you?"

"Gwendolyn," I said.

"Thank you." He wrote it down. "I went to school with Cordelia. I wanted to be sure I served the right twin."

Tiernan stood behind me at the screen door.

He did not ask, and he did not say anything about not asking.

The older deputy turned a page on his clipboard.

"Ms. Harcastle, I read the complaint. It says you read a letter out loud to a survey crew."

"With pauses," I said.

"That's what it says. I've been looking for the felony."

"Is there one?"

"Not in reading." He handed me an envelope. "This part isn't ours. It came stapled to the complaint."

It was the lawyer's letter, one page.

Pending the sheriff's review, Gwendolyn Harcastle was suspended as acting chief executive of Harcastle Gems.

The board would not meet at noon on Friday.

It would meet on Tuesday at noon, at the request of counsel for the chair, to vote on the Thorsby sale.

The deputies drove away, and the younger one waved at the mare.

"Tuesday," said Tiernan. "Ambrose bought himself four days to find something worse."

"Or four days to find Cordelia first."

I took her phone out of my back pocket, because I had stopped being able to sit anywhere without it.

I had read every text on it, and none of the email.

The email was the problem.

There was a confirmation dated the Tuesday before the gala, sent at 9:02 in the morning.

It said Lisbon, two passengers, Cordelia Harcastle in seat 14A and T. Harcastle in seat 14B, $1,146 each.

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