Chapter 7: Where She Put It
The house went quiet around eleven. I’d put Lucas and Milo down in the guest room on the air mattress and the pull-out, both of them finally asleep after the day they’d had. Lucas had his hand tucked under his cheek and Milo had kicked his blanket off twice. I kept getting up to fix it. I didn’t turn the big light on, just the salt lamp by the window, and I sat in the chair by the door with my suitcase still parked against the wall where Daniel had carried it in that afternoon. I hadn’t unpacked. I didn’t know if I was supposed to.
The master was down the hall. I could hear the low hum of the air and nothing else. I’d left my door cracked so I’d hear the boys if they woke up, and that was how I heard the soft tap on the frame just after midnight.
It was Daniel. He was in sweatpants and a t-shirt, barefoot, and he didn’t come all the way in.
“Emily,” he whispered. “Are you awake?”
I nodded and stood. My heart was already going faster.
“I need you to come with me,” he said. His voice was low and flat. “Don’t turn on the hall light. Just come. As a witness.”
I glanced back at the boys. Lucas breathed through his mouth, soft.
“They’re out,” Daniel said. “Two minutes. Please.”
I followed him down the carpeted hall. The master door was open a few inches. The room was dark except for the glow from the walk-in closet. I could hear a faint rustling, like tissue paper, and a drawer sliding.
Daniel put a hand on my arm to stop me at the doorway. He leaned close.
“She’s been moving around in there for ten minutes,” he breathed against my ear. “I was awake. I pretended I was asleep. She thought I took something to help me sleep. I just laid there and listened.”
Through the crack I could see Victoria in a silk robe, her hair up, kneeling on the closet floor. Her jewelry box was open on the island in the middle of the closet – that big cream lacquer box with the glass top she kept locked. She had the top tray lifted out and was working at something with her fingernails.
Daniel nudged the door a little wider and we stepped in together. The closet light was bright and made everything feel exposed.
Victoria jerked her head up. Her hand was inside the box.
“Daniel?” she said. She tried to sound casual and it didn’t work. Her voice was tight. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer right away. He looked at what she was holding.
In her palm was the bracelet. The diamond tennis bracelet she’d said I took that morning from her vanity. It was scuffed on the clasp but intact, catching the closet light.
For a second nobody moved. I could hear the air handler again.
“Put it down on the velvet,” Daniel said. His voice was quieter than I expected. “Right there, so we can both see it.”
Victoria stared at him, then at me, and her face shifted. “Oh, thank god,” she said quickly, and she set it down a little too hard. “I found it. Emily, I was just coming to tell you. It was stuck. It must have slipped under the tray. I was going to return it in the morning.”
It hadn’t slipped. I could see what she’d been picking at. Under the removable velvet tray, there was a little square of clear tape, the kind you use for wrapping presents, stuck to the bottom of the box. One side was still curled up where she’d pulled it loose.
Daniel saw it too. He didn’t touch the bracelet. He took his phone from his pocket, opened the camera, and took three photos before she could say anything else. The shutter sound was loud in the closet.
“Don’t touch it again,” he said to her. Still quiet. His hand wasn’t steady though. I could see it shaking.
Victoria stood up. “You’re being ridiculous. I told you I found it. Are you really going to photograph me like I’m a criminal in my own closet?”
“You said Emily took it,” Daniel said. “You told me she took it this morning. You told me to let her go. You watched her walk out with that suitcase while the boys were hidden in the laundry room.”
“I was confused. I thought —”
“You taped it under the tray,” he said. He finally looked at me. “Emily, did you ever have the code to this box?”
“No,” I said. “Never.”
“I don’t even know the code,” Victoria snapped. “Daniel set it.”
Daniel’s jaw moved. “I set it to her birthday. You asked me to.” He picked up the velvet tray with two fingers and turned it over. The tape was right there, stuck to the underside. He took another photo of that. Then he lifted the bracelet with the edge of the tray, not his fingers, and dropped it into the little safe built into the closet wall. He shut it and punched in the code before she could step forward.
The click of the safe was the only sound.
Victoria crossed her arms. Her robe had slipped a little off her shoulder and she fixed it, quick and sharp. “Fine. So we found it. Great. Then we can move on. I want to call my lawyer.”
Daniel didn’t look at her when he answered. He looked at me.
“Thank you for coming in here,” he said. His voice dropped. “I needed someone else to see where it was.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. My throat was dry. The closet smelled like her perfume and cedar and something metallic.
Victoria was already reaching for her phone on the island. “I’m calling him now,” she said. “You can’t keep me in this house and take pictures of me. This is harassment.”
“No one’s keeping you here,” Daniel said. “The door’s open. But the bracelet stays in the safe and I’m keeping the photos. We’ll give them to the deputy in the morning.”
She unlocked her phone with a hard tap and turned her back to us, shoulders high. I backed out of the closet first. Daniel followed and pulled the master door almost shut behind us. In the hall, the boys’ room was still dark, the salt lamp still on.
He stopped me by the guest door. His eyes were red at the rims.
May you like
“I heard the tape,” he whispered. “I heard her peeling it.”
I believed him. I’d seen it with my own eyes.
