Chapter 19: One Hundred and Twenty

The elevator video ran with the sound on.

You could hear the chime.

You could hear Lila laugh, and say, "Stop, someone will see," and then not stop.

On the big screen, she kissed my husband by the hotel elevators.

He lifted her off her feet.

A hundred and twenty people watched them do it.

Nobody on the lawn made a sound.

Brett stood next to me with his empty hand still raised.

"Turn it off," he said hoarsely. "Turn it off, that's not what it looks like."

"It's right there on video, babe," I said into the microphone. "It looks like exactly what it is."

The sound man reached for his laptop.

Tony stepped off the stage and put a hand flat on the table in front of him.

"Leave it," Tony said.

The man left it.

I pressed the clicker.

The next slide was a parking garage ticket, in at 5:52 PM and out at 12:41 AM.

The next was a room-service receipt for two breakfasts.

The next was a close photograph of a hair tie, black with a gold clasp.

It lay in the bottom of Brett's gym bag.

Lila wore a hair tie exactly like it on her wrist.

She had gone gray under her tan.

"That's not," she said. "Valeria, that's edited. Somebody made that to hurt us."

"You said you were at your sister's in Duluth," I said.

"That was the night I sat in a steakhouse with your husband."