Chapter 15: The Woman Who Was Paid

By eight o'clock the floor had emptied and I was still staring at the closed binder.

The knock was soft, two taps.

Marissa Dunn stood in my doorway in a camel coat with her hair pulled back, and she wore no makeup at all.

"Your assistant went home," she said. "I told the guard I was delivering flowers. I didn't have any."

"Marissa."

"May I come in? I won't take long. I won't be able to say it twice."

I pointed to the chair across the desk, and she sat on the very edge of it.

She held her phone in both hands.

"You thanked me for the card," she said. "At the house. Nobody thanks me. I went home and sat on my kitchen floor."

"What do you need to tell me?"

"The photo was bought."

She said it flatly, and then she said the rest quickly, to get it out.

Leland had paid her to stand at the charity night in a cream dress and stumble at the coat check.

A photographer had been waiting.

She had not known where Weston's hand would land.

She only knew it would land somewhere the picture could use.

"It was catching me," she said. "That part's true. He did catch me. Leland just chose the second it looked like something else."

"Why would he do that to his own nephew?"

"To make Weston look unsettled. The chairwoman's family reads page six." She swallowed. "That's the small thing."

"What's the big one?"

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