Chapter 7: Lobby

Lorna Lonergan held the phone up and filmed my face.

"Say something, Mrs. Garvey," she said. "Say it to the camera. 'I broke into a dead man's home.'"

I did not say anything.

I slid the key out of my cardigan pocket with two fingers.

I dropped it into my husband's coat pocket, and he did not so much as blink.

Then I took off my glasses and began to breathe the way I do before an interview.

Rowan put his hand flat on the doorframe above Lorna's head.

"Good morning, Lorna," he said. "How did you get a key to a Garvey Group unit?"

"What?"

"This apartment is on the corporate lease. We pay the rent.

I'm the chief executive, collecting company records from a dead employee's home."

"At a quarter to six."

"I'd like to know what authority you have in it."

Lorna's red mouth opened and closed.

"The doorman called me," she said.

"I did not," said the doorman, from behind her, in a voice thin with terror.

Everyone turned.

He was standing in the corridor in his cap, holding his croissant.

"Miss Lonergan called me at ten to five," he said, to me, because I seemed to be the one he trusted.

"She said the Garveys would come. She said to give her my master key and not mention it."

"I didn't say that."

"You gave me a hundred dollars."

"Lorna," Rowan said, very quietly. "How did you know where we'd be?"

I knew. I'd known since the stairs.

A camera in a hallway had watched us leave.

"Your father's security company records the upstairs hall," I said. "Someone watched us go out the door at dawn."

Lorna's eyes went to me, bright and furious. I had said it out loud in front of a witness.

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