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TWENTY-EIGHT
One Month Before
January 2019
I’ll be right back,” Penny said, tucking a slew of complimentary mints into her coat pocket. “I left something at the table.”
Eliza had scored the trio of women reservations at a hot new restaurant in town for Anne’s birthday, and it was the first time Penny had eaten a truly gourmet meal in her life. On Hollywood Boulevard no less. Penny couldn’t help but think she should be on cloud nine, savoring every moment of this surreal experience, but instead, she was shoving free mints into her pockets to savor after a midnight snack of ramen noodles.
Anne nodded at Penny’s flimsy excuse to duck back to the table, but she was too busy tucking mints into her own purse to notice anything out of the ordinary. Maybe Penny and Anne weren’t so different. When it came to financial matters, it seemed they were on the same page—a vastly different page from Eliza Tate’s. But what would Anne think of Penny’s little hobby?
A harmless little hobby, Penny reminded herself as she eased past a server and made her way to where she’d sat with Eliza and Anne mere minutes before.
“I forgot my ring here,” she said to the busboy clearing the table. “It’s black. Did you happen to find it when you were grabbing the dishes?”
The young man offered Penny a bright smile. “Here you go, ma’am.”
Penny blanched at the word ma’am, but she didn’t offer a correction. She supposed that according to him, she was a ma’am. He couldn’t be over twenty-one. A thought that made Penny feel every one of her twenty-seven years.
If nothing else, Penny was definitely too old to be carrying on with her hobby. It was getting dangerous, becoming a compulsion. She couldn’t stop. She’d see something and need it. Want it. Take it. The limits between harmless prank and full-on thievery were beginning to blur.
This is the last time, she promised herself, sliding the ring onto her finger and admiring it in its new habitat. The petite, shiny black band fit perfectly on her pointer finger. She knew from spending time with Eliza that the ring wasn’t terribly expensive. She’d acquired it on one of her many trips to Italy from a street market. It was a piece of jewelry that Eliza surely wouldn’t miss but would mean the world to Penny. A ring from Italy—how exotic.
After all, if Eliza had truly cared about this particular piece of jewelry, she wouldn’t have forgotten it at the table in the first place. Penny had watched her remove the ring when the server brought around a tray of warm washcloths to wipe their hands before the meal. Before this evening, the closest Penny had ever gotten to a warm washcloth at a restaurant was the Wet-Nap Buffalo Wild Wings handed out after a meal.
Penny had watched and waited, but all meal long, Eliza hadn’t seemed to remember the ring sitting right beneath her hand. It’d been tucked just out of sight beside her water glass. Penny had spent the meal debating whether to tell Eliza about her forgotten jewelry or to merely let fate play out.
She’d opted for fate, and fate had led her back to the table to adopt the ring. It was just a tiny token, a little heirloom of a woman she admired so dearly. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Penny thought. It would round out her Eliza Tate collection. And then she’d stop.
But as Penny returned to the front of the restaurant, the familiar sensation of guilt crept slowly down her spine—this time, stronger than ever. Hadn’t Penny already stolen so much from Eliza? Too much? More than any woman should ever take from another?
She slid inside the car and repeated to herself: This is the last time.
TRANSCRIPT
Prosecution: Ms. Hill, please tell me what you remember about the afternoon of February 13.
Marguerite Hill: I don’t remember all that much. We were drinking and talking at the book club trial run. Regular chitchat. Nothing special.
Prosecution: I would think you’d remember if the subject of murder came up?
Marguerite Hill: Well, it did. But it wasn’t my idea.
Prosecution: Whose idea was it?
Marguerite Hill: Anne started it.
Prosecution: Mrs. Wilkes started the discussion on murder? How did she broach such a sticky subject?
Marguerite Hill: I don’t remember.
Prosecution: That’s convenient, seeing as none of the other women seem to remember, either.
Marguerite Hill: I don’t know why you’re wasting your time looking at me. I’m not the one who said I’d kill my husband with a knife.
Prosecution: Can you please repeat that for the court? One of you stated that you’d murder your husband with a knife?
Marguerite Hill: Eliza said if push came to shove, that was how she’d do it.
