“My computer is at the house,” Emma said. “My phone—I need my phone.”
“We can get you a phone to use,” Chris said, looking the paperwork over. “This is all in order.”
“We need you to hand it over now,” Mehta said.
“Can I get some numbers off it first?” Emma asked, and Mehta nodded. Chris offered a pen and a pad of paper, and Emma sat frantically scribbling things down. When she was done, Mehta took the phone from her without so much as a thank-you, and Chris touched her arm, indicating that it was time to get up.
Back at the car he gave her a look that was not entirely pleased. They were standing on the street, baking in the sun. A few people passed on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, well out of earshot. Some of them cast curious glances at Emma.
“I’d like to have someone go talk to this woman,” Chris said. “I’d like to know why she broke things off with Nathan, and what was going on between them. And most of all, I want to know what she’s going to tell the police.”
“Do you think I’m a suspect?” Emma asked.
“Of course you’re a suspect. Right now, you’re pretty much the only one. We need to make sure there is nothing that could bolster that suspicion, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some alternate avenues to investigate. I want you to keep thinking about who else might have wanted to harm Nathan.”
“Wait. The cameras,” Emma said. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Nathan got them set up, so there should be footage, right? We didn’t have a camera covering the carriage house, but there was one at the front door and the back door. It would show me getting home and not leaving again. If someone else came to the house, they might be on it. That’s got to help.”
“Do you have access to the footage?”
“I think so. I’ll have to use a computer,” Emma said. “I can probably borrow Gabriel’s.”
“Ms. Palmer, do I need to point out the obvious?” He only called her that when he was frustrated with her.
“You’re just going to have to deal with it. I can’t give up the one person who actually likes me in this town. Someone I have never had any romantic involvement with at all, by the way,” Emma said.
“All these years and you haven’t gotten less stubborn,” he muttered.
“Would you rather I ask JJ?” Emma said, watching him openly. He shifted uncomfortably. “She doesn’t like you very much. Why not?”
“Your sister and I had something of a disagreement during the investigation into your parents’ deaths,” Chris said. “She thought I was, in her words, ‘out to get her.’”
“Meaning what?” Emma asked, alarmed.
“Meaning I tried to convince her to come forward with any information she had that might help you,” Chris said quietly.
“You weren’t supposed to—” Emma began, and clicked her teeth shut. “You were supposed to protect all of us,” she amended.
“I was trying to find a way out of the mess you’d gotten yourself into, Emma. And your sister wasn’t my client,” Chris said.
“You were Uncle Chris to her, too,” Emma reminded him.
“It wasn’t like I was trying to throw her to the wolves, whatever she might have thought. But I suspected that she knew something that might have helped you. And judging by how fiercely you guarded her secrets, I’m guessing you thought the same,” Chris said. “You took a bullet for your sisters, Emma. And that’s your prerogative. But right now, you ought to remember that they’re not your only family anymore. And you’ve got other obligations.”
Emma’s hand started instinctively toward her abdomen, but she forced herself to drop it. “Believe me, I know,” she said.
He made a noise of surrender. “Get the footage if you can and send it to me. I can pass it along to the police if they don’t already have it—and assuming it shows what we expect it to.”
“You mean, as long as it doesn’t show me waltzing out with a gun to murder my husband?” she asked. “I’ll get it.”
“And then you stay put,” he said.
Stay put. Sit tight. Wait for things to blow over—or not. That was the smart thing to do.
And there was no way she was going to do it.
35
EMMA
Now
It took Emma three tries to remember the password, but then she was looking at camera feeds. Gabriel had brought a laptop into the guest room and sat beside her on the bed as she pulled up the footage from the night Nathan died. Emma watched with her heart in her throat, but if she had hoped for a smoking gun, a perfect image of a killer stalking toward the carriage house, she was disappointed.