“Not Sean. He thought he was going to swoop in and save us all.”
“He should have been saving himself. Did he give you the speech?”
“All the way from Texas. He wanted me to say you’d paid Serena, then Serena hired her brother. Longest car ride of my life.”
“He wanted me to say that I’d paid you, then you paid Serena, who in turn paid her brother. Every finger pointing in a different direction. He kept saying, ‘That’s how we beat this. Confuse them until they throw up their hands.’ We have to assume he’ll use the same strategy in his defense.”
“Too little, too late,” Sarah said. “In the end, we had the better plan.”
“Underestimate us at your own peril. Mob man and cop boy couldn’t fathom being brought down by three little women. Speaking of Sean…”
I dug into my pocketbook. Sarah set her drink down.
“Take a look at this,” I said, handing her a newspaper clipping. “It’s worth framing.”
She read the headline aloud: “Bail Set at $5 Million for Detective Accused of Murder.”
“The third paragraph from the bottom says the amount is unprece—”
“Five million?” She was shell-shocked. “I don’t care how much Sean was reeling in on the side—no way he comes up with that kind of cash.”
“That’s what the judge had in mind. Apparently he gave a long lecture on the disease of corruption in the Tampa police force.”
“To our husbands,” she said, taking her glass back up. “Two diseases we’ve finally cured.”
We clinked rims. Then Sarah turned serious. Serious is Sarah’s default mode. Whether she was baking a soufflé or conspiring to commit murder, she always seemed to be thinking of the worst possible outcome, holding it up in her mind’s eye like a threat. That was how she motivated herself. All stick and no carrot.
“It isn’t over, you know,” she said. “We need to rehearse.”
“What now?”
Sarah took out her glasses, slid them up the bridge of her nose. Glasses with sheer plastic lenses. Glasses she bought when Sean started hitting her, as if four eyes would somehow make him a gentleman. She was wearing them now in order to appear more lawyerly.
“Until the three of us are all set in our new lives,” she said, “we can’t afford to waste a second.”
“I wish you’d thought of that two hurricanes ago,” I said.
“I mean it, Anna. Sean is wily. He has resources. So far we’re ahead, but we can’t forget we’re playing in his world.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “You go first. I’ll take small sips between questions.”
She cleared her throat, sat up ramrod straight in her chair.
“How would you describe your marriage to the deceased?” she began. “Was it happy? Were you what people call soul mates?”
“Soul mates? Who’s defending Sean, a Hallmark card?”
“Anna, this is important. Get into character.”
I shut my eyes, shook myself semisober.
“Yes,” I said, “we were happy. There were ups and downs, but on the whole I’d say we did better than most couples.”
“Hmm…The ups must have happened in private, because people I’ve talked to only seem to remember the downs. Is it true that at your own wedding you threatened to castrate him if he so much as glanced at one of your bridesmaids?”
“If I didn’t love him, I wouldn’t have cared.”
“You must have loved him a whole lot, because I have witnesses on record saying that you threatened to slit his throat when he fell asleep, to burn down the mansion with him in it the next time he passed out drunk, to lace his shampoo with sulfuric acid, his iced tea with antifreeze, his underwear with—”
“Yeah, and he threatened to run me through a meat grinder. It was The War of the Roses at our house. We fought. We were passionate. But we never would have hurt each other.”
“Maybe not, but would you have paid someone to hurt Anthony?”
“What?”
Sarah shot me a look that said, Nice job. Your surprise seems genuine. I thought, Maybe I should bring a hurricane to court with me.
“It’s been widely reported that three women disappeared immediately after Anthony Costello’s murder: you, Sarah Roberts-Walsh, and Serena Flores. What hasn’t been reported is that something else went missing. Something very valuable. Your jewelry. A half million dollars’ worth, maybe more.”
“I don’t know where my collection went.”
This was one bald-faced lie I’d told Haagen. I was confident I could repeat it without tipping my hand.
“Really? Because Sarah Roberts-Walsh told detectives that she sold every one of the pieces.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“No, don’t say that,” Sarah scolded. “Don’t pretend to have heard.”
“I have no idea what Sarah did or didn’t do. The jewels aren’t worth much unless you know how to fence them and I doubt she figured that out.”
“You doubt that, huh?”
“She’s a cook, not a jewel thief. She wouldn’t have the stones to take them, and even if she did, she wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to fence them.”
“Do you also doubt that Sarah had access to Detective Walsh’s collection of knives? Do you doubt she had access to his vehicle? To the Jeep where the murder weapon—a monogrammed knife—was so conveniently discovered?”
“Oh, please,” I said. “Sarah Roberts-Walsh is about as dangerous as a retired librarian. If I was going to pay someone to kill my husband, it sure as hell wouldn’t be her.”
“So who would you hire?”
I pretended to be looking over the courtroom.
“I didn’t hire anyone,” I said. “But if I had, it would have been someone like him. Someone who traveled in Anthony’s circle. Someone who knew how to handle himself. Someone who might stand a chance against a three-hundred-pound man who grew up in a mob family.”
Sarah nodded.
“The defense would have objected until he was blue in the face, but you got your point across. Now you grill me.”
“Later,” I said. “I’ve got something to show you first. Something I don’t like to leave unguarded for too long.”
Chapter 37
BACK IN my room, I slid a titanium suitcase out from under the bed, knelt down, and undid all three locks.
“What’s this?”
