“And Jonah Fallon?”
“I only met him on that day. I don’t remember him very well. He was handsome, I think. A big man.”
“But you don’t remember Gavin? Susan’s brother?”
Delaney shook her head. “No. I’m sorry.”
Serena took the box in her arms. “Well, let’s look at this in the car, okay?”
She brought the box to the Mustang and helped Delaney relock the storage unit. Inside the car, she removed the lid and began to methodically examine the papers in the box. Nikki Candis may have been an alcoholic in her personal life, but she kept neat, organized records related to her business. Everything about the event was in a separate folder: menu and recipes, food orders, equipment orders, wine and alcohol, serving staff. As she pulled out the folders, she also noticed a computer thumb drive in the bottom of the box.
“Do you know what this is?” she asked Delaney.
The girl nodded. “Mom took pictures of everything. I helped her with that. She wanted a complete record of every event, so we got photos of the food, serving trays, decorations, everything. During the reception, I took a lot of pics, so Mom could see which rooms were crowded and which weren’t, what people liked and what they didn’t, that kind of thing. She was really serious about research. I mean, that’s what’s so frustrating. She was good at what she did. The business could have been huge. But—”
“But she had a disease,” Serena said.
“Yeah.”
Serena reached around to the back seat and grabbed her laptop. She booted it up with Nikki’s thumb drive in the USB port, then loaded the photographs and examined them one by one. The early pictures had been taken before the event began, showing elaborate presentations of gourmet food. Later, Delaney had taken photographs while the reception was in progress. The girl had gone from room to room in the Cloquet estate. The library. The formal dining room. The gallery. The screened porch. Then outside, in the nighttime garden, near an elaborate fountain. There was a large white tent on the lawn where a dance floor had been built and a small live orchestra played. Delaney had been thorough, capturing multiple shots in every location.
Serena saw several pictures of Susan and Jonah Fallon together, bride and groom. She wore an off-the-shoulder white dress and tiara; he was in a charcoal-gray tux. She had curly hair like her brother, and their faces had a family resemblance, although her eyes were brown, not luminous blue. Her smile radiated pure joy. Jonah Fallon looked as Delaney had described him, magnetic and handsome, with a fit build. Serena had seen him before, but only in pictures of his broken body by the side of the road.
“I always think it’s weird to see pictures like this, when people don’t know what the future holds,” Delaney commented. “And how bad it’s going to be.”
“At least they had a beautiful wedding.”
“Yeah, and a year later, he’d be dead, and she’d have cancer. Sucks.”
Serena nodded. She kept going through the pictures.
She spotted Gavin a couple of times. He was in a black tux, dancing with his sister, then sitting at a table with his parents. Chelsey wasn’t with him. And there was no sign of Nikki Candis in the pictures at all. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that Gavin and Nikki had met at the reception. If they’d had a relationship that started here, it had happened outside the camera’s eye.
“Where was your mother?” she asked.
“Mostly in the kitchen,” Delaney said. “Occasionally, she’d go from room to room and check on things, but not for long. That’s the thing, Serena. She was busy that whole evening. She didn’t interact with any of the guests. She didn’t have time for that. I don’t think you’re going to find what you want to find.”
Serena nodded. “Unfortunately, I think you’re right.”
But she kept looking through the rest of the pictures anyway. One by one. Studying the faces. Then she stopped. She saw a photograph; it registered in her brain; she moved on to the next one. But almost immediately, she backed up to see it again. With a click of the mouse, she enlarged the picture to zoom in on the faces.
She recognized both of them with a wave of shock.
Two faces. A man and a woman.
Two faces in a corner of the garden, near the bubbling water of the fountain, lit only by twinkling fairy lights strung over their heads. But there was enough light in the picture to see them stealing a secret kiss. It was a passionate kiss, full of erotic energy and desire, the kiss of two hungry people enmeshed in a torrid affair.
“Oh my God,” Serena murmured in horror.
She knew.
She knew what had happened and why. From then until now. From the beginning of the murder conspiracy until the very end. It was all there in that one picture.
And it wasn’t over.
Delaney stared at her. “What is it?”
“I was wrong,” Serena said. “All of us — me, Stride, Maggie. We were wrong about everything.”
39
The burnt smell of the gunshot lingered on Gavin’s porch. The breeze through the sliding door had done nothing to wash it away.
Stride stared down at the dead body at his feet. He noted the singed wound in Gavin’s temple; the bone, blood, and brain on the carpeted floor; and the fingernail scratches on his hands. The lawyer’s blue eyes were open, his enigmatic stare now permanently fixed on a far-off horizon.
Outside, on the deck, broken glass glittered under the exterior lights. A bullet had gone through the door, shattering it as Gavin and Chelsey struggled for the gun. Another had gone into the ceiling, causing a cloud of plaster dust to settle over the body.
The house was crowded with people. The coroner and her assistant had arrived. The police officers who’d responded to the 911 call were still here, along with half a dozen other uniformed cops, as well as Stride, Maggie, and Guppo. In the corner of the porch, Chelsey Webster sat on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, her body shivering. Blood had sprayed over her face and splattered her clothes. Her eyes were nearly as fixed as her dead husband’s. She stared at Gavin’s body on the floor and didn’t even blink.
Maggie went and squatted in front of her. “Mrs. Webster? I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to ask you to relocate. We need to process the scene. Can we help you get to another room? We need to ask some questions.”
Chelsey didn’t react. Her glazed eyes didn’t move.
Maggie repeated her request, gently, and Stride positioned himself between Chelsey and her husband’s body to interrupt her concentration. Chelsey finally came out of her trance and nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
They helped her to her feet and led her down the hallway to the living room, which was adjacent to the house’s front door. Stride nodded at two police officers to vacate the space. Chelsey didn’t sit down. She walked nervously back and forth between the front windows and the built-in bookshelves.
“We’ll need to take pictures of you,” Stride said. “And we’ll need a swab of your hands for gunshot residue.”
Chelsey shrugged. “Yes, fine, but I’ve already told you that I fired the gun.”
“It’s standard procedure. We’ll also need to take the clothes you’re wearing as evidence, so you’ll have to change into something else. A policewoman will accompany you. After that, you can clean yourself up.”
“I can’t stay here tonight,” she murmured.
“No.”
“I guess I’ll go to a hotel.” Then she stopped as a thought occurred to her. “That is, if I’m free to go. Am I under arrest? You’re not going to arrest me, are you?”
“Right now, we’d like you to tell us exactly what happened,” Maggie said.