Amy disarmed him the moment they met. She burst out crying. What was he supposed to do, yell at her? He hugged her instead, whispered in her ear that everything was going to be all right. Of course, a normal person would have screamed in his ear that he was comforting a monster. He was curious how she would talk herself out of this one. She could have shot the President of the United States and brought the First Lady tea and cookies the next day and gotten away with it. Sitting on an outside bench, she launched into her prepared speech.

“I know you told me you didn’t want to kill David. But after you gave me that ultimatum, I freaked. You threw everything we had planned out the window. When I went back upstairs to our cabin, David was sitting up awake. He started yelling at me about sneaking off to talk to Gilbert. I never told you he was jealous of him. He had been thinking of firing Gilbert for some time. When he yells at me like that—for no reason—I just feel so much hatred. It came over me strong right then. But I hid it, I smiled and told him that I had seen some dolphins swimming in the water behind us. I grabbed his hand and insisted he take a look. That’s how we ended up on the deck.”

“Going to see dolphins is a long way from committing murder,” Matt said.

“There were no dolphins, not then. I just wanted to get him out of our cabin. I half expected you to rush out of the shadows and push him overboard. But you didn’t, and David dropped his anger and tried to kiss me. I pushed him off but he kept insisting. After all I have put you through, I couldn’t bear the thought of you seeing that. I knew I had to finish it once and for all. Then an amazing thing happened. A bunch of dolphins suddenly appeared in the wake. Acting all excited, I pointed them out to David. He was still pretty stoned. When he leaned over to see them I just, you know, gave him a little shove.”

Matt felt that was the stupidest lie Amy had ever tried to run by him in her life.

“You lifted him up by the seat of his pants and threw him into the water.”

Amy switched from victim mode to annoyance. “I did it as much for you as for me. Your ultimatum was bizarre. I didn’t see how it could work. But right then I had David exactly where we wanted him. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Not for a second did I imagine you would try to rescue him.”

“I wasn’t able to rescue him.”