第2章 The Alibi

They brought Clara Holt in at noon the next day. She was twenty-six, slight, with dark hair pulled into a careless knot and eyes that had not slept in what felt like weeks. She wore a sweater that had been washed too many times and a pair of jeans that belonged to someone else. She looked like a woman who had spent the last three days sitting on her bathroom floor and staring at the grout lines between the tiles. Her hands trembled when she sat down, and she folded them in her lap, unfolded them, folded them again, as if she were trying to remember how to use them. "Ms. Holt," Elena said, sitting across from her. "Thank you for coming in." Clara did not look up. "I didn't do anything." "I know." "You don't know anything." Her voice was flat, hollow, the way a room sounds when someone has died in it and the furniture doesn't know what to do with itself. "You don't know what happened that night. You don't know my father. You don't know—" "I know that you were at The Glass House with Julian Vane at eleven o'clock on Saturday night," Elena said gently. "I know that you told the police you were having dinner together. I know that you have never met Julian Vane before in your life." Clara's head snapped up. For the first time, she looked at Elena with something other than exhaustion. She looked alarmed. "How do you know that?" "I don't know it," Elena said. "I know that Julian Vane has no record of communication with you. No phone calls. No texts. No emails. No social media interactions. The first time your name and his name appear in the same sentence is in your police statement. And I know that Julian Vane has never been to The Glass House, because the manager told me he's never seen him there, and the hostess confirmed it, and the security footage from the restaurant across the street shows no one matching his description entering or leaving between nine PM and one AM." Clara's mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again. "So what are you saying?" "I'm saying that either you and Julian Vane conspired to create a false alibi for each other, or someone has been very clever about making it look that way. And I need to know which one it is before I decide whether to arrest you for lying to a federal investigation or for murdering your own father." The silence between them was so thick Elena could have cut it with a knife. Clara's hands trembled in her lap. She folded them, unfolded them, folded them again. "My father was going to cut me off," she said suddenly. "Not financially. Emotionally. He said I was a disappointment. That I had wasted my education. That I would never be anything useful. He said it at dinner, two weeks ago, and I haven't spoken to him since." "That's motive," Elena said. "It's not enough for a conviction, but it's enough for suspicion." "I hated him. But I didn't kill him." "No," Elena agreed. "I don't think you did. But someone wanted me to think you might have. And they wanted Julian Vane to be the person who could prove it." "Julian," Clara whispered. "Who is he?" Elena leaned forward. "That's the question, isn't it? Who is Julian Vane? Because the man sitting in a federal holding cell right now is not the man you claimed to be having dinner with. And I need you to tell me who the real one is before this goes any further." Clara stared at her. "I don't understand." "You don't have to understand," Elena said. "You just have to remember. Think back. Before that night. Before your father died. Think about who you were talking to. Who you were seeing. Who you were afraid of." Clara closed her eyes. And when she opened them, something had changed. Not her expression. Something deeper. The way a locked door swings inward when you realize you were pushing it the whole time. "Her name is Sloane," Clara said. "Sloane Darcy. She's my father's lawyer. She's been seeing him—no, she's been working for him. But not just about the money. About me. She told me that if I didn't apologize to him, he'd write me out of the will. She told me to go to The Glass House on Saturday and wait for a call. She said my father would come there. She said I needed to be there when he arrived." Elena felt something cold move through her chest. "What happened?" "I waited," Clara said. "I waited for three hours. He never came. And then Julian Vane walked in and sat down at my table and asked if he could join me. And I said yes because I was lonely and I was scared and I didn't know what else to do, and he was nice, and he ordered me the shrimp cocktail by mistake, and I spent the evening sneezing, and at eleven-thirty he said he had to go meet someone and he left, and then my father's body was found at midnight, and Sloane called me an hour later and told me to say I was with Julian Vane that night, and when I asked why, she said because she was with him too, and she needed an alibi just as much as I did." Elena's pen hovered over her notebook. "Where is Sloane Darcy?" "Gone," Clara said. "She's gone. Her office is closed. Her phone is disconnected. She's disappeared." Elena looked at the woman across from her—the frightened daughter of a murdered man, the pawn in a game she didn't understand, the only person who could connect a ghost to a crime scene. "Did Sloane have a relationship with your father?" Elena asked. Clara was quiet for a long time. "She had a relationship with everyone," she said finally. "That was the problem." ---