Detective Charmbers had written down their information Emma’s neighbor, Clarissa, had given them about the SUV parked nearby the night of Emma’s accident. Now he was taking an unrelated call as they sat across from him. Aubrey slid a look at Jacob.
Charmbers had said he’d interviewed a half-dozen neighbors the day after the break-in, including Clarissa, who had failed to mention the SUV. No one else had noticed the unfamiliar car, and with no license plate or other solid identifying factors, they had no way to track down the driver who might or might not have had anything to do with their break-in. At this point, he’d said, that car’s involvement in the break-in was pure conjecture.
Aubrey bit her tongue, knowing she needed the police’s cooperation if nothing else. But she hadn’t spent her Friday nights pre-Jacob watchingDatelineepisodes for nothing. Investigations like this took months, sometimes years to uncover truths.
Detective Charmbers hung up the phone, folded his arms, and leaned back in his chair. “We did speak to your aunt’s ex”—he checked his notes—“Drake Lasserman, Esquire. Turns out he has an airtight alibi for that night. We also checked out his car. No damage. We have managed to narrow down the focus from the debris found on the road. It came from a 2016 Explorer SUV. Black. Lasserman’s car was a Mercedes SUV. Silver.”
“I never thought Drake could have…would have…” Frustrated, she stood, pacing in the small office. “Can you at least check to see if the necklace I mentioned might be in your evidence room?” she asked. “Maybe it was collected at the scene?”
He’d checked. It wasn’t. Even if it was, it would be considered evidence and not accessible to her.
“You say you left it in the car the night of the incident?” he asked.
“I had an unexpected thing come up. Emma was covering for me. I went to the spa for a quick facial. Jacob picked me up from there. Emma went to the meeting. I specifically left the necklace in the console of her car so I wouldn’t lose it. It’s not valuable. It’s just sentimental.”
Charmbers rubbed his jaw. “So,” he said, “if not for this unexpected ‘thing’ you say had come up at the last minute—”
“Dinner with Jacob’s parents who’d surprised us by coming to town.”
“Right. But if not for that, it would have been you driving down that road that night. Not your aunt?”
“Well,” she answered. “Yes.” She’d been over this scenario in her head a hundred times but couldn’t make sense of it.
The detective absorbed that for a moment, steepling his fingers together. “This appointment. It would have been on the books for a while? At your office?”
“On the office calendar, where all our appointments land. So that everyone knows where we’re supposed to be at any given time.” If she looked right now, her name would still be written under that appointment, not Emma’s.
Her eyes suddenly stung with dampness. If it was supposed to be her, then whoever had driven Emma’s car off the road had mistaken her aunt for her.
Jacob took her hand. “Aubrey’s car’s been in the shop for a couple of days. She’s been sharing Emma’s car.”
“So, here’s a question for you. Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt you, Ms. Wilhelm?” Charmbers leaned forward, hands folded on his desk. “Because if Ms. James was somehow mistaken for you, then maybe we’ve been staring up the wrong tree for a motive.”
*
Emma was notdead. Not yet anyway.
In fact, she was in the OR, having the surgery to mend her broken leg which, apparently, they’d been waiting to do until her condition had stabilized. Or stabilized enough to withstand surgery.
Connor stood to one side of the operating table watching the surgeon work on the other Emma. Beside him, his Emma turned her face away and focused on the music piping through the room, an upbeat mix of pop songs, apparently chosen by the surgeon. While the anesthesiologist kept an eye on her oxygen levels, the surgeon placed pins in her shin as he teased his surgical nurse about her football-player fiancé.
“If you can’t invite us to the wedding, Gabi,” the surgeon told her, “at least get us a couple of autographed pictures. You know I’m a fan of Washington football. I’ll get mine framed and hang it right there on that wall over there.”
“Oh, okay,” Gabi quipped. “I’ll make sure to do that so I can feel Kelvin watching me at work twenty-four seven.”
Laughter rippled through the room. Gabi blushed behind her mask. “You don’t see me all up in his business on the field. So, if you don’t mind, please keep that autographed photo in your own screening room, Doctor.”
“Fair enough.” The surgeon chuckled. “But if I got you a football for him to—”
The nurse gave him the evil eye.
“Okay, okay,” he said, still laughing. “Pin, please.”
Feeling slightly offended by their lighthearted banter, Emma grimaced. “This is why they put you out during surgery,” she told Connor. “So that you don’t have to hear how much fun your surgeon is having patching you up.”
As they teased one another under the hot lights, they worked with quick efficiency and, no doubt, immense skill. Though to Emma, they might as well have been working on an automobile or a broken fax machine, not a human being who genuinely hoped to use that leg again one day.
Emma caught Connor’s look as he watched her. “’Tis no’ personal. They mean nothing by it. ’Tis just their way. If they allowed themselves to get too close, they couldn’t do what they do.”
