Chapter 14: Pearls

The hospital chapel had six pews and a window that faced the parking garage.

Diane Tourneur was sitting in the front row at six in the morning, with her coat buttoned to the chin.

She wore no pearls.

I stopped in the aisle and kept the folder under my arm.

"I came alone," she said. "You can look."

"I believe you."

"You shouldn't."

She patted the pew beside her, and I sat at the far end of it.

"Say it," I said.

She looked at her hands for a long time.

"Brett came home at three in the morning on the ninth of March," she said. "He'd been drinking since dinner. His shirt was torn at the collar."

"Was he alone?"

"Kelsey was with him. She was calm. She helped him up the stairs, and she told me he'd hit a deer."

"You believed her."

"I wanted to."

Her mouth twisted.

"The front of the car was black with something that wasn't deer. I saw it in the garage light. I did not go closer."

"And the next morning?"

"The news said a man had been pulled from a burning car on Route 9. A hit-and-run. They said his name."

"Jonas."

"Yes."

I kept my eyes on the window.

"You read his name," I said, "and you drove Brett's car to a body shop."

"I called them from my kitchen. I paid in cash and on my own card, because I was afraid of leaving a gap in the accounts."

"You were afraid of the accounts."

"I was afraid of everything," Diane whispered.

"Jonas could have died."

"I know."

"He was dead for a minute and a half on the road. I know the number, because I was counting."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Left at City Hall, So I Called In His Life Debt from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.