Chapter 11 #2
“That’s what I figured.” Kerr breathed out.
“So here’s the thing. I have a woman who signed out a sedative in your name two days before the cruise.
I have a captain who saw her walk up alone from the stern with your phone in her hand, and go straight back up to sit with your husband like nothing happened.
I have a lawyer who says she found that phone on the back deck the next morning, and a whole crew who searched every inch of that deck at dawn and found nothing.
And I have a first statement to the Bahamian police that somebody tried to bury.
” Kerr paused. “That’s a warrant. I’m writing it now. ”
“Where is she?”
Kerr hesitated.
“Agent Kerr. Where is she right now?”
“Scarlett—”
“I’ll find out anyway. Jess can find out anything in four minutes.”
A long sigh. “She’s speaking on a panel at the Bayfront Club. Noon. Some women’s health luncheon. Caring for the Caregiver.” Another sigh. “I can’t stop you from walking into a public event. I’m telling you as a person, don’t go near her. Don’t touch her. My people will be there by one.”
* * *
The Bayfront Club was all white columns and ceiling fans and a view of the water through tall windows.
The ballroom was full. Two hundred women at round tables with white cloths and tall centerpieces full of orchids.
Iced tea. Little plates of salad. A small stage at the front with four chairs and a banner that said CARING FOR THE CAREGIVER: WOMEN WHO HOLD FAMILIES TOGETHER.
Scarlett stood at the back of the room in jeans and a white shirt and her short dark hair. Jess stood beside her in scrubs, arms crossed.
Nobody noticed them. Everyone was looking at the stage.
Alexis was speaking.
She sat in the second chair in a pale blue dress, with her dark hair smooth and a small microphone clipped to her collar, and she was talking in her low, warm voice about grief.
“I’ve had a very hard month,” Alexis was saying.
“Some of you know. A family I care about very deeply went through something unimaginable. And I did everything I could. I sat up with them at night. I held a man’s hand while he lost everything.
” She paused, and the whole room seemed to lean toward her.
“And I’ve been attacked for it. Publicly.
By someone in deep pain, who I tried and failed to help.
And I’ve had to learn that sometimes the caregiver gets blamed.
That’s part of the job. We hold the family together, and when it breaks, we’re the ones they point at. ”
Women at the tables were nodding. One woman near the front pressed a napkin to her eyes.
Scarlett recognized some of them. A woman from her gym.
A woman from the hospital board. Two women she had sat next to at a hundred charity dinners.
And she knew, without having to be told, that half the women in this room were Alexis’s patients.
That half the women in this room had Alexis’s personal number. Call anytime, and I mean anytime.
“We’ll take a few questions,” the moderator said.
A microphone on a stand stood in the center aisle.
Scarlett walked down the aisle toward it.
* * *
She didn’t walk fast. She walked the way she walked out onto a pool deck before a race. Steady. Head up. Heels down.
Somebody at a table saw her and gasped. Then somebody else. It went through the room the way it had gone through the aquatic center, heads turning, a wave of whispers, but this one was different. This one had fear in it.
On the stage, Alexis looked up.
Scarlett watched her see. She watched the calm face stay perfectly calm, the way it had stayed calm at the stern. But something moved in the eyes. Something went still and fast behind them, like a fish darting under a dock.
Scarlett stopped at the microphone. She put one hand on the stand. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her teeth. She let it pound. Her voice came out perfectly level.
“Hi, Dr. Burke,” she said. “I have a question.”
The room had gone so quiet she could hear the ceiling fans.
“You told the FBI you followed me to the back of the Halcyon,” Scarlett said.
“You said I pulled away from you, and you left me there, and you went back upstairs.” She paused.
“Your lawyer sent my husband a photograph of my phone. My green phone. He said you found it on the back deck the next morning.”
Alexis didn’t move.
“The last time I held that phone,” Scarlett said, “I was standing at the stern of the Halcyon, holding it up in front of your face. And you were the only person beside me.” She let that sit.
“The crew searched that deck at dawn, looking for me. There was no phone on it. So my question is, Dr. Burke. If you left me there, how did you get my phone?”
Nobody breathed.
“Also,” Scarlett said, “I swam six miles.”
Then she turned around and walked back up the aisle, and sat down in an empty chair at the very last table, and folded her hands in her lap.
* * *
For three seconds, nothing happened.
Then Alexis leaned toward her microphone. “Scarlett is very unwell,” she said, in a soft, sad voice. “I think we all saw the—”
A chair scraped.
A woman at a front table stood up. She picked up her purse. She did not look at the stage. She walked out.
Another chair. And another. The woman from the hospital board.
The woman from Scarlett’s gym. Two women who had been nodding a minute ago.
A table of six rose together, as if someone had given a signal, and walked toward the back doors.
They were not running. They were walking very fast, the way you walk away from a car accident.
Their faces passed her, one after another. One woman’s hand went to her own phone in her purse and held it tight. Scarlett knew exactly what she was thinking. What did I tell her? At one in the morning? What does she have on me?
In less than a minute, the room was half empty.
On the stage, the moderator had unclipped her microphone and was edging away.
The other panelists were staring at Alexis.
Alexis sat very straight in her pale blue dress and looked at the empty tables, and for the first time since Scarlett had known her, her face was not calm.
It was white. It was pinched and white and suddenly much older.
* * *
The agents came in at twelve fifty.
Four of them. Kerr was the first one through the lobby doors. She was wearing the gray pantsuit and her reading glasses, and she didn’t look at Scarlett at all, which Scarlett understood was on purpose.
They didn’t go up on the stage. They waited in the lobby, by the white columns.
They waited while Alexis came down off the stage and walked up the aisle with her head high, past the empty tables, past Scarlett, without looking at her.
They waited until she was out of the ballroom and in the lobby with the tall windows and the view of the water.
“Alexis Burke,” Kerr said. “I have a warrant for your arrest.”
Scarlett had followed. She stood in the ballroom doorway and watched it. She didn’t come any closer. Jess stood right behind her, one hand gripping the back of her shirt as if Scarlett might go through the door and do something.
Scarlett didn’t. She didn’t need to.
An agent took Alexis’s purse. Another turned her around, not roughly, and put her hands behind her back. There was a small, clean click.
Alexis turned her head. She looked straight past the agents, across the lobby, at Scarlett in the doorway.
“He was never going to leave you,” Alexis said.
Her voice wasn’t warm anymore. It was flat and tight and full of something ugly.