Chapter 4: The Memorial Gala
I didn’t open the door.
I stood in Grace’s kitchen with my phone in my hand and dialed Detective Alvarez’s direct line, the one written in Grace’s notebook. When she picked up, I said, “Victor Kane is outside my apartment. Decatur. He wants the dashcam card.”
“Stay inside,” she said. “I’m sending a car.”
Victor knocked once more. Then I heard him walk away. Slow, unhurried, like a man who knew he’d have other chances.
By the time the patrol car pulled up, he was gone.
Detective Alvarez came herself the next morning. She was fifty, short, with reading glasses on a chain and a face that had heard every lie twice. She watched the footage on my laptop at Grace’s kitchen table without saying a word. When it ended, she took off her glasses.
“Where did you get this, Miss Doyle?”
“From a locker,” I said. “I can’t tell you who put it there without sounding crazy.”
“Try me.”
So I told her the part I could. That Grace Doyle had found the missing card. That she’d been run off the road the same night Claire Bennett died. That Victor Kane wore cedar cologne and had been to Claire’s apartment.
I didn’t tell her I’d smelled it myself.
“I need more than a smell,” Alvarez said. “But this?” She tapped the laptop. “This gets me warrants. Give me a week.”
She needed less than that, because the Ashfords handed me a stage.
On Saturday, the Ashford Foundation held a black-tie gala at the Fox Theatre to announce the Claire Bennett Memorial Scholarship for design students. Julian’s mother’s idea. Turn the scandal into a tribute, a crisis consultant had said. Make her the tragic one.
Pierce & Whitlock bought a table. Grace Doyle was on the list.
I wore an emerald-green satin dress Linda helped me pick out, and the copy of the card in a tiny clutch.
The theater glittered. Four hundred people in black tie. A huge screen over the stage was showing a slideshow of my life: my design portfolio, my college graduation, a photo of me and Julian on a beach in Tybee, laughing.
Sienna stood in the front row in ivory silk, accepting condolences like a widow.
Julian gave the speech. “Claire believed in beautiful spaces,” he said. “She made every room better just by walking into it.”
He’d written that. I knew because he’d said the exact same thing at my thirtieth birthday.
When the slideshow looped back to the start, I walked down the side aisle to the tech booth. The kid running the projector was nineteen and terrified of anyone in a gown. I handed him the card. “Mr. Ashford asked for this to play next,” I said. “It’s the surprise.”
He plugged it in.
The theater went dark. Then the screen lit up with a timestamp, 12:47 a.m., and a woman’s voice laughing. “Watch this, I can make the light.”
Four hundred people watched Sienna Vale drive into Daniel Brooks.
They heard Julian say, “Drive. Just drive.”
Someone screamed. The kid in the booth yanked the cable, but it was too late. The lights came up on a room full of people staring at the front row.
Sienna was white as her dress.
Julian was staring at the screen. Then he turned, slowly, searching the crowd, and found me standing at the end of the aisle in green satin.
I walked up to him. Close enough to see the gray in his stubble.
“You promised you’d marry me the day it was over,” I said quietly.
Nobody else knew those words. Nobody but the two of us, and a phone line at 1:12 a.m.
He made a sound I’d never heard a person make. “Claire?”
Behind him, Detective Alvarez and two uniformed officers were already coming down the center aisle. Victor Kane was moving toward the side exit. A third officer stepped in front of him.
Sienna grabbed Julian’s arm with both hands. Her nails dug into his sleeve.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” she hissed at him, loud enough for the front three rows. “She was going to recant. Victor took care of it because you said so.”
Julian stared at her.
“You told us to handle it, Julian.”
