Chapter 1 - The Diamond That Wasn't Missing
Julian Merrick dumped my handbag onto the marble floor as if everything inside it belonged to him.
Keys struck tile.
My phone skidded beneath a velvet chair.
A child's blue crayon rolled under the antique staircase and came to rest against Julian's shoe.
"Where is it, Lila?"
I stared at him.
"Where is what?"
"Andrea's diamond pendant. It was in the safe yesterday."
His seven-year-old son, Leo, stepped between us before I could answer.
"It's mine," he said.
Julian's face changed for a fraction of a second.
Then he smiled the tight smile he used when guests made mistakes at dinner.
"Go upstairs, Leo."
"No."
"Diamond missing. Leave now," Julian told me.
I had lived in the cottage behind the Merrick estate for nineteen months.
I had helped Leo sleep when nightmares made him afraid of the windows.
I had taught him to ride a bicycle with one hand hovering behind his seat.
I had sat through more than one anniversary of his mother's death, watching him press his face against a pillow that still smelled faintly of her perfume.
Julian was not throwing out an employee he barely knew.
He was trying to remove the only adult in that house Leo trusted enough to argue with.
I bent to collect my belongings.
Among them lay a folded drawing I'd found in Leo's reading folder earlier that afternoon.
He had drawn a boat on black water, the date OCT 14 in uneven pencil, and a figure falling or floating beside the stern.
I had been about to ask him why it frightened him when Julian summoned me downstairs and accused me of stealing a diamond.
The date on the page was nine months old.
It was the night Nadia Voss, a former accountant for Julian's company, vanished before she could testify in a fraud inquiry.
Nadia's disappearance had appeared in the news for weeks.
Leo had drawn a woman in a bright red coat standing near the boat's cabin.
I picked up the page and held it where Julian could see.
"He saw where you took the witness."
His hand stopped halfway toward my handbag.
For the first time since I had known him, he looked at Leo with visible fear.
"Who told you about Nadia?" he asked the boy.
Leo shook his head.
I raised the drawing higher.
"I'm not leaving until you tell me."
Julian's eyes darted toward the library door.
There was a man outside it whom I'd never seen before, wearing an earpiece and the same blue company jacket as the dock guards.
He stood so still I might not have noticed him if Julian hadn't looked.
"Leo," Julian said, "go upstairs. Immediately."
"I didn't steal Mommy's necklace," Leo whispered.
I watched the boy's face.
He wasn't afraid of being punished for taking jewelry.
He was afraid of what his father would do after he found it.
"Julian, I will speak to the police about what I've seen," I said.
He lowered his voice.
"You have no idea what you think you know."
"Then help me understand."
He moved closer, forcing me to step around my spilled possessions.
"You work here because I permit it," he said. "You stay on this property because I permit it. And you are forgetting which of us is Leo's parent."
"I'm not forgetting."
"Good."
His gaze returned to the drawing.
"Then understand that taking this outside the house could get my son killed."
Leo made a small, wounded sound.
Julian closed his eyes, as though he hadn't intended the boy to hear.
From somewhere beyond the windows came the distant engine of a motorboat.
The man at the library door touched his earpiece.
"Mr. Merrick," he said, "the gray launch is back."
Julian turned sharply.
"Who authorized that?"
The man didn't answer.
May you like
And Leo whispered into my sleeve:
"That's the boat from my picture."
