Page 20 of Over Her Dead Body

“Tell me.”

“Marisol Vance. Field at Evening, Three.”

“Number in the edition.”

“It’s—I don’t⁠—”

“There is no edition.”

He has nothing to say.

There are six intact Vances left in the world. There were seven before three nights ago. I have spent nine years owning this one. I bought it in a private sale that took three years to arrange and another two to close. I have, on perhaps forty occasions, stood in front of it alone, in this room, with the door closed, and looked at it the way one looks at a thing that is absolutely real.

“Three nights ago,” I say, “you brought a woman home from a bar. You walked her past my front door and through my entry hall and up the stairs to the guest wing. She was coked out of her mind. The two of you had a fight. She found her way in here. You followed. She threw a lamp. The lamp hit the painting.”

He exhales long and slow.

“I can explain⁠—”

“There’s no need.”

“You cleaned up the mess and tossed the lamp in the trash. You closed the door behind her and you went to bed and you woke up the next morning in my house, in a guest room I gave you for free, and you came down to breakfast and you ate the eggs my housekeeper made you, and you said nothing.”

I let that sit.

“You thought—and this is the part I find genuinely impressive, Sean—that I would not notice. That a person who has spent years collecting paintings would walk past a damaged Vance in their own house and fail to see it.”

“I thought⁠—”

“No, Sean. You did not think. You hoped. People like you don’t think. They hope. They hope the woman will not be a disaster. They hope people will not look too closely. They hope that when the call comes, it will not be me on the other end of it.”

Sean opens his mouth again.

Nothing comes out.

I smile.

“And yet here we are.”

Sean looks at the painting again.

Then at the closed door.

Then at the men behind him.

Sean has finally stopped hoping.

My phone vibrates.

Calloway declined the call.

I read it twice.

It appears Sean and I have more in common than I thought.

CHAPTER 9

EMMA