Chapter 13: The Portrait

The Marlow Club had never seen a crowd go quiet that fast.

We walked in at eight on Saturday night, and three hundred people stopped talking.

I wore the green silk with the torn hem.

Conway wore a black suit he had bought that afternoon, still creased from the box.

Hattie came in behind us in red, with her phone already held up at her chest.

"Smile," she muttered. "You're in nine million pockets."

A woman by the coat check started to clap.

Then a man next to her clapped, and then a table of old fishermen in rented tuxedos stood up and clapped, and the sound rolled through the hall.

Not everyone joined in.

The board members near the bar turned their backs.

I kept walking.

Conway's hand was warm against my spine, and it was not quite steady.

He had not said a word since the car.

In his jacket pocket was a strip of yellow plastic, and I knew he could feel it against his ribs.

Tobias was waiting at the foot of the staircase.

He had lost weight in a week.

His tuxedo hung off him, and there was a cut on his chin where he had shaved badly.

"Annalise," he said. "Please. Two minutes."

"No."

"I need to tell you something before she does."

"Before who does what?"

"My mother." He glanced up the stairs. "She's been strange all week. She's been on the phone with a lawyer I've never met. She doesn't sleep."

"Good," I said.

"I mean it. Something is wrong."

"Something was wrong when you laughed at me in a bridal room," I said. "Move."

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