Chapter 23: What Was Hers

I laid the microphone on the podium.

Sheldon got up off his knees without looking at me.

The ballroom doors opened at the back, and six county deputies walked in.

Two of them wore the badges of the district attorney's fraud unit, and one carried a leather folder.

The first deputy stopped in the aisle.

"Carol Hanley," he said. "Dennis Hanley."

Carol's face had gone the color of paper.

"I haven't done anything. This is a misunderstanding. Sheldon, honey, tell them."

Sheldon said nothing.

"We have a warrant on charges of forgery, wire fraud and theft from a charity," the deputy said. "Please step down from the stage."

Dennis went first, with his big hands held out in front of him.

He didn't fight.

He only kept saying, "I'm sorry," to the floor.

Carol came down the three steps with her chin high and her cross winking under the chandelier.

She walked through the center aisle, between the round tables, past three hundred donors who had clapped for her ten minutes earlier.

Nobody clapped now.

An old woman in pearls drew her skirt back as she passed.

A man turned his chair so he wouldn't see her.

Carol stopped beside me at the foot of the stage.

"Annabel," she said, very low. "Tell them you misunderstood. I raised you. I fed you. I sat in your school plays."

"I know," I said. "You were in the front row."

"Then tell them."

"You kept my passwords on a card, Carol. You kept them so you could use me."

"I loved you."

"I know that too." My voice was steady. "That's the part I can't forgive."

The deputy took her elbow.

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