Chapter 5: The Necklace

Pearl opened the door before they broke it.

Two officers filled the doorway, and behind them the whole second-floor landing was full of neighbors in slippers.

"Kit Doyle?" the older officer asked.

"Wynne Sedgwick," I said. "But yes, I'm the one you want."

The younger one turned my bag upside down on the yellow table.

A necklace slid out among my lip balm and my bus pass, a rope of diamonds that threw light onto the ceiling.

Nobody in the kitchen breathed.

I had never seen it before in my life.

"Hands behind your back," the older officer said, not unkindly.

"That was not in my bag when I left the hotel."

"Ma'am."

"It was put there."

"You can tell it to the judge."

The cuffs closed on my wrists with a click that went up my arms.

Pearl grabbed the younger officer's sleeve. "She's a good girl, she's never taken so much as a spoon."

"Mrs. Doyle, please step back."

Preston stood beside the refrigerator with his hands in his pockets and his face perfectly sad.

"I'm sorry it came to this," he said to the officers. "My wife is heartbroken. That necklace was her mother's."

He actually looked at me, then, with a faint, kind smile.

He wanted me to know that he'd enjoyed it.

They walked me down the stairs, past the neighbors.

I passed the boy from 2C, who had once let me copy his math.

Somebody lifted a phone and filmed me.

Then another.

The street was bright with blue light.

At the bottom of the stairs, Anson Keyes stood in the doorway with his phone raised.

"Officer," he said. "Before you put her in that car, watch this."

"Sir, step aside."

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