Cassie knew exactly how terrible, and felt sick as she spoke. She prayed that nobody would ever find out she’d told Maurice this elaborate lie.
“I’m not sure myself,” Maurice said. “It might be on her laptop. That was where she monitored the cameras from. Her computer is in her office, and the password is Rossi, with a capital R.”
Maurice paused. Then, in the first display of empathy she’d ever seen from him, he added, “It might be better to tell the little girl her mother didn’t look round, even if she did. Just show her a still shot from the camera, if you have to. Otherwise she’ll blame herself forever, won’t she?”
“Yes, yes, she would. That’s excellent advice. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Maurice.”
Cassie put the phone down, feeling stunned, both by the conversation she’d just had, and by the fact she would be able to access the footage.
At some stage during the phone call, the kettle had boiled. She hadn’t even noticed. Quickly, Cassie made the girls their cocoa and took it upstairs. As they had promised, they were both already in bed and just about asleep.
“Good night,” she whispered to them, and placed the mugs on their bedside tables. Now, there was no more time to delay.
Cassie felt breathless with tension as she rushed downstairs to Ms. Rossi’s office.
She opened the door quietly. It was dark inside, and in a strange way, Cassie felt as if the woman’s domineering presence, which had always seemed to be tangible there, was still lurking in the room. She felt uneasy walking in.
Quietly, Cassie switched on the light and tiptoed round the desk.
There was the laptop, an expensive, silver model.
Sitting down on Ms. Rossi’s plush leather chair, Cassie opened it and typed in the password, praying that it would work and that she hadn’t make a mistake.
The screen shimmered to life and she leaned forward anxiously. Now, where would the footage be stored?
She searched the icons on the screen. There it was. That was the one she was looking for.
Cassie moved the cursor over it, and as she did so, she sensed a shadow in the doorway.
Her head jerked up and she stared, horrified, at Detective Falcone.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Cassie knew immediately why Detective Falcone had come back so soon, and made her way straight to Ms. Rossi’s office. It was to access the footage, of course. Now here it was, opened and waiting on the screen. Cassie felt overwhelmed by doom because her presence in this room underscored her own guilt.
She’d been too slow, just a minute too slow, and self-recrimination burned inside her as she thought about how she could have speeded up the conversation with Maurice, or even rushed straight to the office and given the girls their cocoa later.
Now it was too late, and she knew that Detective Falcone could read her guilt as clearly as if Cassie was shouting a confession to her. Cassie realized with a sick feeling that her presence here might even have expedited Falcone’s job, as she’d helpfully keyed in the password that could otherwise have taken the detective some time to find out.
“Good evening,” the detective greeted her. Cassie could sense the anger behind her calm demeanor. “It seems we have come here for the same reason.”
Swiftly, she walked around the desk, and Cassie scrambled out of the chair.
“Don’t go anywhere.” Falcone’s soft voice stopped Cassie in her tracks. “I take it you were about to access the footage. What a shame I didn’t know that it was here earlier. I assumed the security company would have kept records, but when I called them, they told me that after Ms. Rossi’s divorce, she delinked it from their servers.”
“I see,” Cassie said, although she had no idea why Ms. Rossi would have done that, or why Detective Falcone was now telling her about it. Still, she had to come up with an excuse as to why she was here. The story that had worked with Maurice wouldn’t work with the detective, because Falcone had already spoken to the girls.
“I—I wanted to have a look. I’ve been feeling terrible about this tragedy, I’m so distraught and grieving. I wanted to see for myself how it happened, in case I misremembered anything or perhaps even the girls did. I know I can do, when I’m under stress.”
Cassie knew she was babbling but couldn’t stop herself. When Falcone saw that condemning footage, nothing she said would matter. She would be instantly arrested, and Falcone would assume she’d forced the girls to give a false story in order to protect her.
The icon blinked, and then a checkerboard of pictures filled the screen. Twelve different cameras, twelve different views of the house, including the one that showed her and Falcone right there in the office. But Cassie’s eyes were drawn immediately to the square that showed the top of the stairs.
In full color, the picture looked crystal clear, and Cassie bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, as she imagined what that fight would look like when Falcone pressed Replay.
With a start, Cassie realized that Falcone would only have to go back a little further, to see the footage of Cassie rummaging around in this office and in the bedroom—searching through drawers, opening cabinets, even taking a look in the velvet jewelry boxes.
Together, those separate sets of recordings would create a cast-iron reason for her guilt. She’d been stealing from her wealthy employer, who had confronted her. They had fought, and Cassie had pushed her down the stairs—not just in anger, but to conceal her earlier crime.
Cassie had no doubt that Falcone would search all the footage at her disposal. She was clearly a thorough person, and she was already suspicious why Cassie had been employed for so short a time. She would
