Max had arranged to have a sedative slipped into Natalie’s drink. The girl was already heavily intoxicated. She would be comatose by the time she reached her Chelsea apartment. Max had followed her there, had played the concerned boyfriend for the indifferent cabbie’s sake. She had fallen out of the backseat, skinning her knees, hands, and chin. He’d picked Natalie up, retrieved her keys from her purse and helped the girl inside. She’d come to, slurring belligerently, but he’d gotten her inside, unceremoniously dumping her in the entryway. The pendant had conveniently fallen from her pocket, so he scooped it up. Then he rummaged through drawers, cupboards, and closets until he found the gun. Then he had left, caught the subway uptown to meet his cousin at the scene of the crime.

Oleg had told Celeste to stay in the Hamptons to avoid incriminating herself, but she couldn’t. Her daughter had just shot her husband in the face. She couldn’t pop an Ambien and go back to sleep like everything was normal. Gabe had been shot outside a parking garage at Eighty-Eighth and Lex. Oleg had agreed to conceal the corpse in a stairwell, buying her some time. Celeste had hurriedly dressed, slipped out to her car, and driven through the night. She had to see Gabe’s lifeless body to believe he was dead. And she had to collect Violet, to take her home, sober her up, and coach her through what would come next.

Celeste met Oleg and Max on East Eighty-Eighth Street, where her spouse lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the concrete stairwell. She didn’t need to see the damage the bullet had done to Gabe’s handsome features to know he was deceased. Her powerful, vigorous, arrogant husband was reduced to a pile of skin and bone, a bloody, lifeless rag doll. It was discombobulating to see a man, once so confident and robust, now so . . . dead.

Max had tossed Natalie’s pendant (ironically, a goodbye gift from Gabe) onto the body in the alcove. And then, he’d prepared to hide Nat’s gun.

“Wait,” Celeste had said. “I have something.”

The T-shirt. She’d found it on the passenger seat floor of her husband’s Mercedes that Sunday morning. It was in a plastic bag from Celeste’s favorite specialty food shop. She’d grabbed it, afraid Gabe had forgotten some groceries in the car that might spoil. But it was Natalie’s red stained shirt and tiny bikini top. She’d put them in the trunk of her car (she hadn’t wanted Gabe to use them as an excuse to see Natalie again). Celeste had planned to dump the garments in a public trash can, but now, she was grateful she hadn’t. Retrieving the bag from her car, she handed the spattered shirt to Max. He wrapped Natalie’s gun in it and dropped the items into a nearby dumpster.

The gun had been the greatest obstacle Celeste had had to contend with. Gabe had been killed by a nine-millimeter Glock. Natalie’s pistol was a Beretta. Luckily, Celeste had a friend in the NYPD crime lab. Manny Dosanjh was the firearms examiner. The two had grown close when Celeste was a public defender, having lunch on occasion, even after-work drinks. Manny would have taken it further, had Celeste ever given him an opening, but she hadn’t. She’d been loyal to Gabe. Blindly loyal.