busy trying to stanch the flow of Sarah’s tears to reply.
“My fault,” Cooper says, indicating Sarah. “I’m a heartless cad. Insensitive, too.”
“Oh,” Dad says, nodding. “Yes, of course. I’ve always liked that about you. Uh, Heather?”
I look up from rubbing Sarah’s back. “Yes, Dad?”
“Tad called. Apparently he’s been trying to reach you on your cell phone. He’d like you to call him back. Just wants to see if you’re all right, considering… well, all that’s happened.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Well.” He gives one last look at the stricken figure beside me on the couch, then shrugs. “I think this will be my last night here at the brownstone. If there are no objections, I’d like to make braised short ribs for dinner for all of you. I have them marinating now. I assume you’ll both be home for dinner?”
Cooper and I nod. Dad looks pleased.
“Excellent,” he says. “I’ll see you around eight o’clock then. You, too, Lucy.” To Sarah, he says, “You’re welcome to stay for dinner, as well, young lady. Hopefully you’ll be, er, feeling better by then. Plenty for everyone. Well. Bye, now.”
And off he goes. Lucy, disappointed he didn’t take her with him, goes sulkily back to ripping Giselle Béndchen’s face off. Cooper’s gaze strays out the window, at the pinkening sky, just visible over the roofs of the brownstones across the street. Sarah’s sobs, meanwhile, have slowed. She seems to be mellowing a bit, if the way she’s wiping her nose on her sleeve is any indication. I look around for a box of tissues… then remember where I am.
I manage to find a pile of napkins from Dunkin’ Donuts that don’t look too used. I pass them to her. Sarah raises her head, takes the napkin wad, then blows her nose. Then she looks at Cooper, and, hatred—it’s hard to mistake—glittering in her eyes, says, “I had nothing to do with Owen’s murder.”
“I didn’t say you did,” Cooper says. He’s taken his feet off his desk, and is clacking away at his keyboard, apparently Googling something. Knowing Cooper, it’s probably Giselle Béndchen.
“You called me a co-conspirator!” Sarah cries.
“What Heather said,” Cooper says, still not turning from his computer monitor.
“It’s true, Sarah,” I say. “They’re not going to let you talk to Sebastian. I doubt he’s even allowed to have visitors, aside from his lawyer. Besides, he’s probably not even in Manhattan anymore. He’s probably at Rikers by now.”
“Rikers!” Sarah echoes, with a horrified gasp.
“The Tombs,” Cooper corrects me, still not turning around. “They’ll have transferred him to Manhattan Detention Center from the Sixth Precinct by now.” He glances at the time on his monitor. “Or maybe not. He’ll go to Rikers in the morning, for sure, though.”
“He can’t,” Sarah says, jumping to her feet. Her eyes are wide with panic. “He can’t go to Rikers. You don’t understand. He has asthma! He has allergies!”
Cooper finally spins around in his computer chair. His expression, when he faces Sarah, is furious. He looks… well. He looks scary. Like he had this morning when he’d warned me about interfering in Owen Veatch’s murder investigation.
“Okay,” he says, angrily. “That’s it. I’ve had it up to here with this bullshit, Sarah. You tell me what the fuck is going on, or you get out of my house. No”—when Sarah glances for help in my direction—“don’t look at Heather. You look at me. Tell me, or get out. I’m giving you until the count of three. One.”
“He didn’t do it!” Sarah cries.
“I know he didn’t do it. Tell me how you can prove it. Two.”
“Because I just know! I know him!”
“That’s not good enough for the DA to drop the charges, Sarah. Three. Get the fuck—”
“He couldn’t have done it because Owen Veatch was shot from outside the building,” Sarah shouts. “And I can prove Sebastian was inside Fischer Hall at the time Owen was killed!”
“How can you possibly do that?” Cooper demands.
“Because,” Sarah says, her round cheeks suddenly going crimson. “I… I signed him in, the night before.”
“You what?”
I feel my blood run cold. But in a good way.
“She signed him in,” I say, rising from the couch and crossing the room to stand beside Sarah, pieces of Victoria’s Secret catalog crunching beneath my feet. “The sign-in logs, at the security desk. All guests to the building have to be signed in, and leave a piece of ID with the guard. What time did you sign Sebastian out this morning, Sarah?”
She shakes her head. “Late. After breakfast. It was like eight forty-five.”
I throw a triumphant look at Cooper. “After the murder could have taken place. Don’t you see? That proves he couldn’t have done it. The guard wouldn’t have let him out of the building without signing out. He couldn’t have done it.”
Cooper, however, is frowning.
“I don’t get it,” he says. “If this is all true, why didn’t the kid tell the cops when they asked him where he was at the time of the murder? Why didn’t he show them the sign-in log?”
“Because,” Sarah says, looking unhappy. “He… he was protecting someone.”
“Who?” I demand. “Who could he possibly—”
“Me, all right?” Sarah can’t seem to lift her gaze from the floor. “He’s… he was protecting me.”
Cooper, with a happy sigh, leans back again in his office chair, causing it to squeak. “And here I thought chivalry was dead.”
“It’s not like that,” Sarah says quickly, lifting her gaze, her cheeks flaming once more. “We’re not—we’ve never—”
I give her a curious look. “But, Sarah—then why else could he be protecting you?”
“I… I’d rather not say,” Sarah says. “Can’t we just bring him the sign-in sheets? Detective Canavan, I mean?”
“What were you doing all night,” Cooper wants to know, “if you weren’t having carnal knowledge of one another? I mean, if you’ll excuse my curiosity? Because I can assure you, Canavan will ask.”
“No, we can’t just bring him the sign-in sheets,” I say testily, in reply to Sarah’s question. “I want to know. What’s Sebastian protecting you from, Sarah? What—”
“And were you actually with him at eight o’clock?” Cooper asks. “You said you signed him out at eight forty- five. But were you with him the entire time from when you signed him in the night before until you signed him out this morning?”
“Would you two,” Sarah shouts, sounding like she was going to start crying again, “stop talking at the same time? It’s so frustrating! You’re like my PARENTS!”
This brings Cooper and me up short. We close our mouths and blink at one another.Parents?
“No, I wasn’t with him the whole time,” Sarah says. “And it isn’t anyone’s business what we were doing —”
“But, Sarah,” I interrupt, getting over the parent thing. Because, whatever. That’s her opinion. And did I mention her frizzies? “You know that when you sign someone in, it’s your responsibility to stay with them the whole—”
“You think you can waltz into the Sixth Precinct and tell them something is none of their business when they ask?” Cooper hoots delightedly. “Because I really want to be there when you do that.”
Then, like a sledgehammer, it hits me.
“The coffeemaker!” I cry, pointing at Sarah accusingly.
Both Cooper and Sarah stare at me as if I’ve begun speaking in tongues. Sarah’s the only one who looks slightly nervous, though.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says.
“Oh yes, you do,” I say, still pointing at her. “The storage room. Where we sat while we were waiting for the forensics team to get through with our office. I thought the guys from housekeeping were using it as a break room. There was a sleeping bag in there. And a coffeemaker. Someone has obviously been crashing in there. But it wasn’t the building staff. It’s Sebastian, isn’t it? You’ve been signing Sebastian in and letting him live there
