Chapter Twenty-Eight

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I stay up late into the night, switching my scotch for chamomile tea and moving to the dining room table with my laptop and legal pad as I dig into hundreds of pages of sealed divorce documents.

I know Beth Barclay has money. But I've never looked at how much, since finances aren't an issue of contention in the divorce. I was far more focused on the relationships in play.

Now I pour over Beth's stock reports and bank statements, tallying figures and parsing financial terms. It takes quite a while to decipher the sums. But when I finally come up with the total figure, I lean back in my chair and rub my eyes in disbelief.

Beth isn't merely rich. She's spectacularly wealthy.

Her personal stock portfolio is worth nearly $150 million. As an only child, she's sole heir to her parents' fortune, which would triple her net worth.

Nearly half a billion dollars. That kind of money is incomprehensible to me. It's the sort of sum that sends crowds into frenzied buying of lottery tickets. People have lied, stolen, and killed for far less.

Ian's company made a profit of less than $200,000 last year—a paltry sum by comparison.

I flash to what Ian said the first time I met him: Business is down.

Ian's name is tainted. He may be ruined financially, especially if the house sells at a loss. His elite clientele will drop him, just like Ashley was cut loose by her boss.

Ian could end up where he began when he met Beth, as a paycheck-to-paycheck kind of guy. The private chef and housekeeper and awe-inspiring property will become a distant memory for him.

He seems fine with that. But is he, truly?

The grandfather clock in Charles's living room chimes softly once. It's 11:30. My eyes have grown gritty and my body is heavy. But I can't stop.

Now that I've met Beth and Ian, the terse legal words on my laptop screen leap up and become three-dimensional, as if the two of them are sitting around the dining room table with me, hissing accusations at each other. Immorality… Emotional abandonment… Infidelity.

Neither Beth nor Ian ever accused the other of any form of abuse, or even of having a temper.

Yet both immediately pointed the finger at each other as murder suspects after Tina died. And both walked out of the police station once they were asked about Rose.

Their movements seemed almost… choreographed.

By the time the clock strikes a dozen chimes to mark midnight, I've created a diagram of Rose's current schedule.

It feels both busy and empty.

Piano lessons with the Thin Man once a week. Therapy with Dr. Markman for fifty minutes on Tuesday afternoons. Riding lessons once a week. Tutoring with Harriet in core subjects—math, history, science, and English—for fifteen hours per week. Language sessions with a Chinese tutor twice weekly.

But no regular playdates or sleepovers. No group karate classes or soccer teams. No interaction with other children at all.

I review the schedule, my weary eyes snagging on one small detail. I call up the calendar in my laptop, cross-referencing two dates.

My body clenches up when I see the dates overlap.

The Thin Man was at the Barclay home on the day Tina died.

Even though I don't suspect the piano teacher, I want to know his impression of Tina.

She feels elusive to me, like a vapory shape-shifter who was different things to different people.

Pete described her as a victim; Ian, a seductress. Ashley viewed her as a wonderful friend who was deeply in love. Rose apparently saw her alternatingly as an ally and an opponent. In the video I saw, Tina seemed vulnerable and scared.

I wonder what the piano teacher saw.

I circle his name—Phillip—on my legal pad.

A sense of urgency grips me as the grandfather clock softly ticks, reminding me time is passing. That eventually it will run out.

There's one other person I intend to interview soon. Today, even. The Chinese language tutor. According to the schedule, Harriet brings Rose to that session twice a week.

I want to know what the tutor notices about Harriet's relationship with Rose.

She's just a little girl, Harriet told me, a pleading note in her voice, after I discovered the disturbing secrets Rose conceals in her room. She needs her family.

Harriet provided Rose with an alibi at the time of Tina's death. She said they were together in the vegetable garden. But Harriet also said Rose never went into the third-floor space.

So Harriet lies to protect Rose, too.