Coldness crept over my skin, and I felt suddenly foolish. Why had I grown complacent, stopped checking things like this? Since I ran into Ellie, I’d been in reaction mode, too preoccupied with everything to tally up the items in my cottage. And then, after the scarf and the photos and the note went missing, it had seemed unnecessary. Davis was lurking. That much was clear. Only, what if I’d missed something, something more than those tiny things?

What if I’d missed something big?

Fingers quivering, I swiped through the photos on my phone until I found the one of the list I’d made when I moved in.

There it was, in my familiar scribble:

knife drawer (six knives, red Lucite handles)

I counted again. Five. Only five.

No, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.

I searched the sink. Surely I’d cut up an apple or something and tossed it in. Nothing.

Stab wounds. John had stab wounds. And the only people, supposedly, who knew this, aside from the cops, were me, Vera, and John’s killer.

I whipped open the fridge, checking Pyrex containers, a weeks-old pizza box, to see if it had been tossed in haphazardly among the leftovers. Again, nothing.

One of my knives was gone. A bright red, easily distinguishable knife was gone. John had been stabbed, I was their main suspect, and one of my knives was gone.

Had the police taken it as evidence? Wouldn’t they have told me? A thought struck me, slim but hopeful, a silver lining on a storm cloud: John and I had often cooked together. Him helping me chop, me stirring a sauce he’d picked out of one of his dusty cookbooks. Had I lent it to him? I racked my brain, trying to think, and among the haze of conversation and pinot noir, one moment stood out – a week or so before John was murdered they’d brought over Vera’s lasagna, and she’d used one of my knives to cut it. It could have been left in the container with the lasagna, trapped under aluminum foil. It could be at her house, still.

I texted her quickly:

This is random but is there any chance you took home one of my knives one of the times you brought over dinner?

Vera called immediately. ‘A knife?’

‘It’s stupid,’ I said. ‘But I can’t find it, and I thought maybe you had it. It’s got a red handle.’

‘Oh,’ Vera said. A pause, long and stretchy.

‘I’m sure it’s nothing, it just got misplaced, but the way it would look, if the police realized I couldn’t find it. I just thought maybe if you had it …’ My voice trailed off, and I wondered, for another horrible moment, if she could suspect me.

‘Sure,’ she said, her voice even and smooth. ‘Let me check.’