The Wife Who Knew Too Much(80)

Why was she there?

I put myself back at the ski house that night, and I remembered. The noise outside that Connor went to investigate. Was that Juliet? What about the blackmail photo? Was that her, too? And the Suburban—following me, trying to run me down—was that her? I caught my breath. It had to be. It had to be Juliet behind the wheel of the Suburban. She’d tried to kill me.

Jesus. Now I believe that Nina was telling the truth. Connor claimed he’d come back to the lake looking for me. It hadn’t made any sense at the time. It did now. They were looking for someone to take the fall for a murder that hadn’t been committed yet.

Our whole relationship was a lie. That’s exactly what Nina had said. She and I weren’t that different after all. We both fell for the same beautiful, charming con man.

I hated him. I wanted to rip him apart.

I still loved him. I wanted him to tell me I was wrong about this.

I sank back against the pillows and covered my eyes, with no idea what to do. Was there some way out of this awful scenario? Something that didn’t fit, that suggested my interpretation was wrong? I thought, and I thought, until I found it. It was this: If they’d been planning all along to set me up for Nina’s murder, why did Juliet run me off the road before Nina actually died? That made no sense. She’d need me alive later in order to take the fall for Nina’s murder.

Unless. Maybe they weren’t in on it together. Maybe this was all Juliet. Oh, God, how I wanted to believe that.

I looked at the photo of the two of them again. Connor was looking at the camera. Juliet was looking at Connor, and she was dazzled. Completely gone. Madly in love. You could see it on her face. But him? He was just enjoying the attention.

Maybe he never really loved her.

The report. I skimmed the pages, looking for something, anything, to back up that faint hope. And there it was in black and white. The account given by Juliet’s college roommate of their relationship. The relationship was unhealthy, obsessive, one-sided. “When Connor left school to try to make it in the music industry,” the roommate had said, according to the interview transcript included with the report, “he told Lissa he needed space, that they should just be friends. She flipped out and attempted suicide. She had to be hospitalized. She was really messed up over him.”

There you go. She loved him. He never loved her back.

Right. Keep telling yourself that, Tabitha.

I didn’t know what to believe, so I kept reading. According to the report, Julissa had disappeared from New York about three years before she turned up as Nina’s assistant using the name Juliet Davis.

Okay, question. Why not just use her own name? Was there something about her name that would have stopped Nina from hiring her?

I continued reading. There was evidence that Juliet had been in touch with Connor right before she disappeared. The report included a xerox of a grainy surveillance photo showing the two of them together outside her apartment mere days before she disappeared. They were facing away from the camera.

I studied that photo. It was him. I knew him by heart, even the back of his head, the slant of his shoulders. And there was more. The private detective had gone back through Connor’s Levitt Global personnel file. When Connor applied to the Levitt Global PR department, he was asked how he learned of the job opening. He wrote, “Referred by: Juliet Davis, personal assistant to Nina Levitt.”

Julissa went to work for Nina, then brought Connor into the company. I wondered if she’d introduced the two of them, or had it happened some other way.

And then, this. Buried on page three of the report, a fact that might have seemed minor to someone else leaped out at me. Juliet’s employer before Levitt Global was Protocol Shipping Solutions, the company that owned the Suburban she’d used to run me off the road. Proof positive that it was her.

Juliet and Connor had murdered Nina. Juliet tried to kill me and failed. And now they were setting me up to take the fall for Nina’s murder. Not just trying to set me up. Succeeding in setting me up, since I’d been arrested and charged with the crime.

I had to give this diary to the police. Immediately.

I pulled out my phone. Detective Hagerty had warned me to take precautions against anybody finding out that I was working with them. The line “snitches get stitches” exists for a reason, he’d said. The threat of retaliation is real. I’d listed him not as Hagerty, but as “Hayley from the restaurant,” in case someone at Windswept searched through my contacts. I found his number, but then hesitated, my thumb over the screen. Handing over Nina’s diary would be an irrevocable step. The journal implicated both Connor and Juliet. They could go to prison. They would. Not just her. Him, too. Deep down, I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want to lose him. Was I ready to give up hope of his innocence? Did I honestly believe he’d been lying to me all along—not just about Nina, but about his feelings for me? At least, before taking this very final action, I could talk to Gloria. There were so many unanswered questions. Where and when did she find the diary? Why did she keep it hidden, instead of giving it to the police? And why did she turn it over to me? Gloria must have read the journal and known about Nina’s accusations, or else she would have had no reason to give it to me when I’d begged her to tell me what really happened. Did she believe that what Nina had written was true? Did she have evidence that could prove that? There had to be more that Gloria could tell me. At the very least, I should ask her, before turning in my own husband for murder—even if he’d done that to me.