Chapter 5
What was I going to do in Vero’s bedroom for an hour until she got back?
I checked my phone for messages from Nick, hoping no news was good news.
My fingers hovered over the screen. Would he think I was checking up on him if I sent him a text?
He’d said he would call me right away if anything came up.
But on second thought, that wasn’t exactly what he had said. What he had actually said was, I’ll call you right away if there’s anything you need to know.
I felt uneasy as I considered that. Those words had come to take on new meaning over the last four weeks.
Ever since Nick and I had embraced a policy of one hundred percent honesty with each other.
On the rare occasions when we had been faced with a truth one of us couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell the other, there’s nothing you need to know had become a code: Everything is fine. You’ll just have to trust me.
I opened my messages and started typing a text to Nick.
Finlay: Made it to Vero’s. Thank you again for taking care of the kids. Hope they’re being good. I’ll make it up to you when I get back.
I added a kissing emoji, then deleted it and replaced it with a heart. Then I added the kissing emoji after the heart. Were two emojis too much? I tapped Send before I could talk myself into editing the message again.
Three bubbles appeared on the screen.
Nick: The kids are great. So am I. Just for the record, you don’t owe me anything, but if you insist on offering up a token of your appreciation, I can think of plenty of ways to cash in that IOU when you get back. Give Vero a hug from me. I love you. Be safe.
I tamped down the stubborn smile that stretched across my face.
Finlay: I love you, too.
Nick: By the way, if you were a two-year-old with sticky fingers, where would you hide my car keys?
I blanched as I remembered where Zach had hidden my van keys when he’d stolen them off the credenza in the foyer a week ago.
After a maddening two-hour search of the entire house, I’d found and dredged them out of the downstairs toilet.
I laughed darkly, remembering Zach’s tiny giggle in the kitchen that morning.
Finlay: Try the pantry.
A moment passed.
Nick: Thanks for solving that mystery! We’re heading to the station for a quick field trip. I’ll check in later tonight after I put the kids to bed.
He added a kissing emoji and a tongue-wagging wink.
I relaxed a little. Maybe Nick was right and I hadn’t given him enough credit. Clearly, I had been worrying for nothing.
I paced the length of Vero’s bedroom, wishing I had thought to use the bathroom the moment I’d arrived.
It had been a long drive, and the coffee I’d had that morning was already taking up too much space in my bladder.
I looked around for anything to distract myself, starting with the contents of the bookshelves above her desk.
I tipped my head to the side, reading the spines: economics books, personal finance books, romance novels, suspense novels, even a handful of my own novels …
I picked up a framed photo of Ramón, Vero, and Javi, taken the day of Vero’s high school graduation.
It was the same one in her photo album, the one Javi had been mooning over yesterday in her room.
A string of four tiny photos fell out of their hiding place in the bottom of the frame.
I grinned as I realized where the pictures had been taken.
Vero and Javi were drunk in a photo booth on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, holding each other’s faces as they laughed and kissed.
Their plastic bat and spider rings sat proudly on their fourth fingers, and Vero’s stolen white veil hung lopsided on her head.
It hadn’t been their names on the wedding certificate they found on the nightstand in his hotel room the next morning, and they hadn’t remembered any of it—or so they’d claimed.
But here it was—the undeniable proof—and I couldn’t help but wish I had been there to see it.
They really were perfect for each other.
I tucked the photo strip back under the frame and paused.
A large brown envelope lay on the shelf beside it.
A label had been stuck to the front: VERONICA RAMIREZ (DEFENDANT).
I glanced back at the window before loosening the string that held the envelope closed.
I pulled out the stack of papers inside.
It looked like a repository for everything Vero had collected about her case since she’d been home.
Typed letters from her lawyer. Sheets from a yellow legal pad, covered with notes in Vero’s handwriting.
Notifications of every time she’d had to appear in court.
Instructions for caring for and charging her ankle monitor, photocopied from a manufacturer’s manual, along with her receipt.
I skimmed the letters, finding nothing useful inside them except for a mention of a court date.
I flipped to Vero’s handwritten notes. The names Mia, Ava, Jackson, and Bennett had been crossed through with a line, as if Vero had been trying to solve the mystery of who had stolen the money herself.
One name had been thoroughly scratched out, the ballpoint pen leaving deep ruts in its wake.
I took a photo of everything in the file, capturing as many of the legible names as I could manage.
Even if Vero and I couldn’t solve the crime together, I could take all this information home with me.
With a little help from Nick and Cam, maybe I could figure something out.
When I returned everything to the envelope, I spotted a small slip of paper stuck in the bottom of it. It was a handwritten note, but the writing wasn’t Vero’s. It was crisp and clear, every letter written with deliberate and obvious care.
It’s wrong to keep things that don’t belong to you. You’re greedy and selfish, and you can’t hide in Virginia forever. Someday you’ll have to give back what you’ve taken from me.
Presumably, this note had been written before Vero’s arrest. It was probably one of the messages that had been sent to Ramón’s garage.
He’d started finding them in his mailbox a few months ago, all addressed to Vero.
Vero had suspected they were from someone who knew who she was and what she’d been running from.
Moving in with me had thrown her stalker off her scent—no letters or messages had come to my house in the entire five months she’d been living under my roof—but being under house arrest in her childhood home would have made her much easier to find.
The person who wrote this was probably the same person who had egged and spray-painted her mother’s house.
I took a photo of the message and folded it back into the envelope. Only fifteen minutes had passed, and there was no sign of Vero or Javi. I sat down at her desk and read through my emails on my phone, my legs crossed against the growing need to pee.
My phone buzzed with a new notification. A text message from Sylvia Barr, my literary agent.
Sylvia: Call me when you get this.
I debated whether to ignore her. She had been hounding me for three weeks about a book she wanted me to write with my neighbor, Mrs. Haggerty.
But Mrs. Haggerty was serving time in a detention center, and the book she planned to write was a scandalous exposé about all of her neighbors and their drama, including mine.
I’d told Sylvia several times that I wanted no part of it.
Maybe I was a fool for saying no to the money, but it felt too risky to monetize any more stories that mirrored my own life of crime, and I really didn’t feel like discussing it with her again.
My phone buzzed.
Sylvia: I can see the read receipt, Finlay. I know you got my message. This is very important.
I thunked my head against the desk and dialed her number.
Sylvia picked up without bothering to say hello. Her thick New Jersey accent was unusually grating, suggesting she was either very excited or very pissed off. “What’s this I’m hearing about your accountant being arrested for stealing?”
My head jerked up. I had not been ready for this.
Sylvia’s office was in Manhattan. She lived a full five hours by car from Virginia.
The only person who could have told her about Vero was Mrs. Haggerty, but she’d been locked up for nearly a month, and I wasn’t even sure how much she knew. “Where did you hear that?”
“It’s all over your social media.”
“I don’t have any social media.”
“You do now.” Her acrylic nails tapped loudly against her phone, and I could picture her switching it from one ear to the other.
“I had my assistant, Jared, build you a Facebook page. He posts daily updates pretending to be you. But don’t worry, he drafts the copy using AI, and I only let him post your photos after he’s applied at least three filters.
You look great, by the way. I need a few more pics of you, so send me some good ones.
But wear something nice and hold the camera high.
Otherwise, you look like you have a double chin. ”
“Sylvia, I don’t have—”
“You do, but so do we all. Be careful of the angle and no one will know. So, what’s all this drama with your accountant?” she barreled on.
“There is no drama. And Vero’s life isn’t anybody’s business.”
“Actually, Finlay, it’s everybody’s business. Some woman named Stacey posted a comment under one of your posts. She claims to be one of your neighbors. She says she knows firsthand that your accountant was arrested for stealing money from some college sorority.”
I gritted my teeth. Stacey was, in fact, one of my neighbors. She sat on the HOA and the PTA, and she was Vero’s most recent supplier for edible brownies and adult toys. She was also a horrible gossip. “Vero didn’t steal any money. She was falsely accused.”