Page 148 of Over Her Dead Body

Then:

The dead girl in the shiny dress drank from yours.

For a second, the pharmacy is very quiet.

Not actually.

A child is coughing three chairs away. Someone is arguing about insurance at the counter. A printer spits out labels behind the glass.

But the sentence clears space anyway.

The girl in the shiny dress.

Lila.

The champagne.

The glass I gave to her.

I read the messages again.

Wrong car.

Wrong glass.

My phone rings.

Maybe: Michael Bennett flashes across my screen.

The attorney for the Whitaker family trust.

“Michael.”

“Emma. I was beginning to wonder if you’d disappeared.”

“Briefly.”

There is a pause.

“I asked around about the painting after we spoke.”

“And?”

“Things got a little strange.”

I sit straighter.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing dramatic. Just more resistance than I expected. It’s a painting the family has owned for years. I asked a couple of fairly straightforward questions and suddenly everyone wanted to know why I was asking them.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, mostly I got questions back.”

I wait.

Bennett does too.