I wanted to step inside the building, but no one answered when I rang the office bell; the building never had a live-in superintendent when I lived there, so that wasn’t a surprise. I peered into the window of the room that had been Mirelle’s, afraid the police would come by at any moment and arrest me as a Peeping Tom. The lights were off, but I could see the floor was blond wood, not the dark that I remembered. Of course they’d replaced it.

I remembered shouting Mirelle’s name. I’d reached for her, and realized the knife was in my hand. When I tried to move, it felt like I was weighted down. That could have been the drugs. But for the first time, I was sure that someone else had been in the room with us.

CHAPTER 23

DEIRDRE

I had mixed emotions leaving the Thraxton International offices. Caro’s father-in-law hadn’t been anything other than kind to me, and I appreciated him telling me about Theo. But his casual dismissal of the woman Theo had killed—accidentally or not—left me unsettled. He regarded her like a piece of furniture. I knew he didn’t think of Caro that way, but he would only be an ally to a point. No matter what he claimed, he’d help his son out of a jam.

I texted Ben, asking if he could meet me. He answered immediately, suggesting the café at Pershing Square. I walked down Park and through Grand Central Terminal, exiting at Forty-Second Street. Even before I crossed the street, I spotted Ben. He was sprawling in one of the café’s metal chairs, casually dressed in torn jeans, a green button-down shirt, and scruffy leather boots. As I got closer, I saw he was reading Ernest Hemingway. Clearly he had a manual on macho male journalist tropes.

“Deirdre.” He smiled at me and waved, setting the paperback aside.

“Hi,” I said, sitting down.

“I thought this would be convenient for you, since you’re coming in on the 7 train.”

There was an awkward silence between us while I mentally filed through our minimal exchanges. “How do you know I live in Queens? And how did you get my number?”

“Caroline told me.” He said it as if it were obvious.

“Why would she?”

“Because she figured we’d be natural allies, I guess,” Ben said.

“Then why didn’t she give me your contact info?” As I asked the question, I thought of the photo she’d sent me. Aside from letting me know Ben existed, it hadn’t given me much.

“I bet she meant to. Caroline had a lot to deal with.”

“My sister never mentioned you to me. What was going on between you two?”

There was a startled silence. “Wow. Your sister always said you were direct,” Ben said. “She wasn’t kidding.”

I stared at him, refusing to fill the silence. He caved first, sort of.

“Just because someone asks you a question doesn’t mean you have to answer it.” Ben smiled at me, and it felt like he was used to getting his way with that grin. “Not that I’d want my interview subjects to realize that.”

“I know Caro and Theo were living separate lives. I’m not judging you.”

“Thanks for your permission.”

I’d been putting down Ben’s reaction the day before to the fact I’d surprised him at his building, but I was starting to think he was just an asshole. At that moment, a waiter homed in. Ben ordered black coffee—predictably—and I asked for water. I should’ve specified “tap” because the waiter returned quickly with a small bottle of Pellegrino.

“I wanted to meet you because I need information,” I said. “Did Caro send you a letter to read after she died?”

“I can’t talk about that.”

I pulled up the image of the message and held it up. If I fail, you have to do it. I am putting all of my faith and trust in you. My son’s future depends on it.

The color drained out of his face. He wasn’t so cocky now. “Where did she send that?”

“It’s to this random-sounding account. Is that you?”

He stared at it blankly. “Yeah. I have a bunch of burner accounts for sources.”

“But you hadn’t seen the message?”

He shook his head. “I don’t check them that often. But that message was for me.”

X, she had called him. I guess that meant ex, which I wasn’t even sure was accurate. “What does it mean? What did Caro want you to do?”

“I can’t share that.”

“You can tell me or you can tell the cops.” I didn’t know when I’d become a cheerleader for the NYPD, first asking Theo’s father to talk to them and now offering to sic them on Ben. I just didn’t have anything else to threaten him with.

“Look, Deirdre, I would love to be able to confide in you,” Ben said. “But I don’t know whose side you’re on.”

“I’m on Caro’s side,” I said. “I don’t care about anything else.”

“Show me the message she sent you.”

It was my turn to be affronted. “Excuse me?”

“If she sent me a message, she sent one to you,” Ben said. “I need to see it.”

Reluctantly, I pulled it up on my phone. He read it silently, nodding to himself.

“So she did tell you,” he said. “That’s good. Otherwise, you wouldn’t believe me about Theo.”

“What did Caro tell you?”

Ben raised an eyebrow. “She never described the torture her husband put her through? The shit that was happening at her house?”

“Like what?”

“Did she ever mention how she had no privacy? How things would move from room to room, how her private possessions would be rearranged?”

“I only heard a little about it.”

“Caroline was afraid to tell anyone,” Ben said. “It made her sound crazy. Claiming that someone moved your shoes to the wrong shoebox makes you sound psycho. But that’s by design.”

“By design?” I repeated. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s psychological warfare,” Ben said. “It’s like death by a thousand cuts. It was a tactic perfected by the Stasi—the secret police—in East Germany. They sent officers to move things around in dissidents’ homes when they weren’t there. It was meant to disorient them, and it was a perfect way to distance them from people they cared about. Because when they told people close to them, it was dismissed as lunacy and paranoia.”

“Let me get this straight. They just moved stuff? They didn’t take things?”

“Right. Taking things gives you a legitimate crime to report. Saying a ring is missing doesn’t make you cuckoo. But saying someone came into your home and rearranged your jewelry box . . . well, how would you tell anybody that with a straight face?”

“They’d think you did it yourself and forgot.” There was an ugly logic to what he was saying.

“I think she was embarrassed to tell people what was happening,” Ben said. “It felt like the ground beneath her feet wasn’t steady.”

“Was Caro meeting you the morning she died?”

“Yes. She was supposed to drop something off for me.”

“A memory card?”

“How the hell did you know that?”

“When I went to the police, they showed me a list of what was on my sister when she died,” I said. “There was a memory card zipped into the pocket of her leggings.”

“I was supposed to pick it up from her,” Ben said. “But Theo came to the house early that morning and freaked Caroline out. He overheard her talking to me on the phone—I don’t know how much he heard, but Caroline was terrified. He wasn’t supposed to get back from his trip for another day. She texted me that she’d come down to my building, even though she wasn’t feeling well. She’d been having heart palpitations. That bastard killed her.”

“You were going to her house?”

“A couple of blocks away. Caroline didn’t want the in-laws knowing.” Ben stared into the distance, his jaw tight. “Theo showing up changed everything.”

“What was on the memory card?”

“Evidence,” Ben said.

I could feel my own heart rattling the cage of my chest. “Evidence of what?”

“Theo is a criminal,” Ben said. “The entire Thraxton family is a criminal organization. Caroline wanted me to be able to prove it.”

CHAPTER 24

DEIRDRE

Ben stared at me, clearly eager for my reaction. I took a sip of water.

“Is this about them keeping two sets of books?” I asked.

His jaw dropped in open astonishment. “Caroline said she only told Jude and me. How do you know about it?”

“Jude knows?” I countered. My heart dropped to the concrete floor of the outdoor café and bounced back, bruised.

“How do you know?” he repeated.

“Caro sent me a memory card with hundreds of photos. Last night, I discovered there were spreadsheets on it too.”

“I guess that was her insurance policy,” Ben mused.

“I don’t understand why the Thraxtons have two sets of books.”

“They’re money launderers,” Ben said. “They have a long history with crime. That story about Theodore Senior winning his first big hotel in a poker game is bullshit. He was involved with criminals, and they needed a fresh face to run their scam.”

“Was that what you meant last night? When you said what my sister was up to was illegal?”