Lindsay waited until Melanie was drying her hands to introduce herself. “Ms. Locke. My name is Lindsay Kelly. I’m a defense attorney in Manhattan.” Ellie had remained in the hallway outside, prepared to distract the professor in the event he decided to check on his guest speaker.

Melanie gave Lindsay’s business card only a casual glance before she returned the handshake and thanked her for attending the event.

“I enjoyed your comments very much,” Lindsay said, “but that’s not why I’m here. I represent a client with information about your husband—information that would be damaging to his reputation. She is interested in reaching a financial settlement—with an NDA, of course.”

Melanie folded Lindsay’s card neatly in half and then dropped it in the trash can. “Well, first of all, that sounds like blackmail. And second, you can drop the act, Ms. Kelly. The second I saw your name, I recognized it. You know my husband is deceased because you represent Tara King.”

“But in the course of that representation, I have met one of your husband’s victims—”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and this conversation is over.”

“I can also tell you who killed Richard.”

Melanie’s forced smile was filled with disdain. “You should have your ticket pulled by the bar, do you know that? Are you seriously offering to sell out your own client for a payoff? Because as much as I’d like my husband’s murderer brought to justice—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Because I finally know who killed my husband—Tara King. And if you knew anything about my husband, you’d know that no one who actually knew him called him Richard. He started going by Hitch in the sixth grade to have a different name from his father. What exactly are you trying to achieve here?”

“Is that really what the police think?” Lindsay asked. “That Hope did it?”

“Hope?” the older woman scoffed. “You’re buying that bullshit? It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? She’s been hiding out under a fake name, claiming to have amnesia. And when her old boyfriend recognized her in New York, she killed him and then planted evidence to try to frame him for Hitch’s murder.”

Lindsay had hoped to lure Melanie with a potential nondisclosure agreement with Emilia Lopez, which she could then use to prove her motive to have murdered Alex. Now, however, she found herself focusing on her defense of Hope.

“That’s absurd,” she said. “What motive would she have to kill your husband?”

“You really don’t know anything, do you?”

“I know she was your babysitter.”

“Emphasis on the was. Hitch caught her taking cash out of his wallet one day and had to let her go.”