described as a honey-and-strawberries complexion. She looked like a younger version of Alice. The final woman had short, wispy white-blond hair and dark green eyes that penetrated the camera. Her long, lanky arms were wrapped around the frail-looking woman in the center and the redhead who was undoubtedly Mia Andrews.
In retrospect, the fifth woman in the photograph had been there at every turn of the previous month. She had been the one to initially tell Alice that Drew Campbell was too good to be true, only to encourage her to meet him when he called. She had been the one to tell Alice not to dig too deeply into the background of Highline Gallery. She had been the one to dissuade her from calling Robert Atkinson while the reporter was still alive to tell his story. She had been the one to inform the police that Alice owned a pair of crocodile-embossed gloves lined with fur that might or might not be real mink. She had been the one to encourage Alice to run from the police.
The final woman in the photograph-the one nestled closest to a cancer-ridden Christie Kinley as she hosted the final party of her life-was Lily Harper.
Chapter Fifty-Six
F or two hours, she and Arthur had waited in Arthur’s parked Lexus, intermittently running the engine for warmth, while Hank dashed back and forth between Mia’s apartment and the car, assuring them each time that Danes had “promised” they’d be ready for her soon. But “ready” no longer meant an expectation that she would be turning herself in to face charges of murdering her supposed coconspirator and lover, Travis Larson. Now Alice the former fugitive was their best hope of understanding why Mia Andrews had opened fire on two police officers when they knocked on her door.
After two hours of waiting beyond the growing swarm of police cars, they finally received instructions to head up to the Thirteenth Precinct. Danes and the New Jersey officer who accompanied him would be required to follow protocol for an officer-involved shooting, but John Shannon would meet them there.
Hank smiled when he delivered the news that a patrol car transport would not be necessary. She was free to ride with her attorney. Hank would drive his own car. If she still wanted him. As a translator of sorts. But only if she wanted him to go.
It had taken nearly three hours for the three of them-Hank, Alice, and Arthur-to lay out everything she had learned about Christie Kinley, Mia Andrews, and Robert Atkinson: that night in Bedford, the settlement and confidentiality agreement, Mia’s birth while Christie was supposedly at boarding school, Atkinson’s attempts to locate the old police reports. And, finally, Lily Harper, whom she had met at the gym six months earlier.
It was after midnight. Shannon had given her the option of going home for a few hours of sleep before resuming in the morning, but Alice had spent too many days without answers. If the NYPD had been slow to believe her in the beginning, the gunfire at Mia Andrews’s home had kicked them into Alice Humphrey-exoneration overdrive. She was afraid that if she fell asleep, she’d wake up to a new reality. And she wanted to think about something other than Ben overdosing in his bathroom.
So now she, her lawyer, and her new friend, Hank, sat huddled around John Shannon’s desk as they watched two uniformed officers escort Lily Harper into an interrogation room. Her once-trusted eyes remained locked on Alice as she walked the gauntlet, but Alice could read no emotion in them.
Once Lily was out of sight, Alice assumed her spot behind a one-way mirror, as Detective Shannon had instructed, ready to hear what her good friend had to say for herself.
Some facts simply could not be denied. Yes, Lily conceded, she knew Christie Kinley. They’d grown up together in Mount Kisco. Raised by her widower father, Lily had spent more nights at the Kinley home than her own. Practically a sister to her, Christie had remained Lily’s closest friend until her death. And, yes, she had known and practically helped raise Christie’s younger sister, Mia, and had watched her grow up into a troubled and yet nevertheless loved young woman. Lily’s admission of these truths meant nothing to Alice. After all, Detective Shannon had already shown her the photograph they’d found in Mia’s apartment.
But when it came to any involvement on Mia Andrews’s part in the bizarre events at the Highline Gallery, Lily feigned ignorance.
“I’m very sorry, Detective, but if you could please slow down and show a little empathy here. Your officers just dragged me from my home with no explanation, and now you’ve told me that cops killed a girl who was practically my own baby sister.”
Maybe Lily was the one who should have gone into acting.
“For the record, your honorary baby sister fired on them first, and the preliminary report from the scene is that she shot herself when she realized she couldn’t escape. We are looking now for connections between Mia and Travis Larson, the man who used the name Drew Campbell when he hired Alice to work at the gallery. We will find those links, Lily. There’s no doubt about it. Her fingerprints at his place, or his at hers. Phone records. E-mails. It will happen. And once we have that evidence, do you really want to be nailed down on your story that you had absolutely no idea that Alice’s dream job had something to do with Mia and her scumbag boyfriend? If I were you, I’d start looking to help yourself.”
“I never
“Was Mia’s boyfriend named Travis Larson?”
Someone who didn’t know Lily would have said she answered without hesitation. But Alice knew her. Or at least she thought she had. And she could tell Lily paused.
“Yes, I met him. Once. Down in Williamsburg, for dinner.” Dinner meant potential witnesses. Some facts simply could not be denied. “But how was I supposed to know he was the same guy who hired Alice? Are you sure Mia was involved? I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this.”
“Can you think of some other reason she might have opened fire on two police officers?”
“I didn’t even know she owned a gun.”
“Well, apparently she did, and it’s probably going to turn out to be the same weapon that killed her boyfriend. You deny knowing anything about the gallery setup, so let’s go back in time. What did you know about Christie Kinley’s settlement with Frank Humphrey?”
“Nothing.”
“This woman was one of your closest friends, and she never told you that Frank Humphrey raped her?”
Lily was thinking again. Mentally lining all the ducks in a row. How much could she deny? “I knew something bad happened to her. I wasn’t at that party, or maybe it wouldn’t have happened. But she told me the next day she got so drunk she blacked out. But she could tell-you know, from pain down there-that something might have happened. Something sexual. And then when she opened her purse, she found a camera and remembered the guy taking pictures. She must have grabbed it afterward when she ran out.”
“So you knew about the pictures all these years.”
“But I never saw them. I knew she was planning to go to the AV room at school to develop them, to get evidence against the guy. But then when I talked to her the next week, she said she didn’t want to have to testify and all that stuff. She never told me who the guy was, but I just assumed it was one of the other kids at the party. A couple of months later, she said her mom was pissed at her for getting so drunk and was sending her away for a year.”
“So you’re trying to tell me that you didn’t know Mia was Christie and Frank Humphrey’s daughter?”
More thinking. More calculating.
“Let me give you some advice, Lily. If you think there is even the slightest possibility that what you say here tonight is going to get you out of this jam, you are absolutely mistaken. Tonight is just the beginning. Whatever version of events you give us tonight, I am going to search high and low for evidence that’s either going to back that up or prove to me you’re a liar. I’ve got an officer outside your apartment right now, securing the premises until we get a warrant. We will search your computer. We’ll read every e-mail you ever exchanged with Mia. We’ll check your search history and see if you’ve been Googling Frank Humphrey in your spare time. Or if you checked out Alice before coincidentally befriending her at the gym. So I would choose your next words very carefully.”
She sighed dramatically, as if to acknowledge that this time, she was truly coming clean. “I had no idea about Frank Humphrey’s involvement, or even about Christie getting pregnant, until after Christie passed away. I was helping Mia clean out the house to get it ready for sale, and that’s when we found all the papers.”
