“He really wanted to kill me. Does he hate me so much that he also had to torture and taunt me?”

“Obviously he wanted it to look like someone else was doing it, or to make you seem like you were crazy,” Blaire said. She looked at Detective Anderson. “One thing I don’t understand is why Simon would use a similar Gmail address. Wouldn’t it be more effective to make Kate look bad if he’d used her own?”

Kate shook her head. “He doesn’t know any of my passwords.” Something odd had occurred to her, though. “My husband isn’t here. How did he send the email, if the phone was here?”

“It looks like this email was scheduled,” Detective Reagan said. “He could have set it up days ago.”

“Simon must have forgotten to take the phone with him when your dad made him leave,” Blaire said. “That’s why it wasn’t turned off this time.”

“Lucky break,” Anderson said.

By the time Harrison arrived, Reagan had left, and only Anderson remained.

“Kate, what’s happened?”

“Sit down, Dad,” she said.

“What’s going on?” Harrison asked, continuing to stand.

“They found Mother’s bracelet.”

“Found it where?” he demanded.

“Right here, hidden in Simon’s shelves.” She began to cry, her shoulders shaking. “I’m so sorry I brought him into our lives, Dad. Mother would still be alive if I hadn’t . . .”

He stood, perplexed, as if she were speaking a foreign language. “Are you saying that Simon killed your mother?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly her father roared to life, his eyes blazing. “I’ll kill the son of a bitch. I’ll kill him with my bare hands.” He was ranting, saying things she couldn’t decipher, his face red and spittle spewing from his lips.

Kate understood his fury, but the force of it frightened her nonetheless. She feared he was going to go into cardiac arrest.

Detective Anderson went to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, take it easy. Nothing is certain yet. I’ll take the evidence, and we’ll see what they come up with.” He turned to Kate. “Is Simon at his office now?”

Blaire answered for her. “Supposedly.”

The thought of facing her husband filled Kate with dread, as did the thought of everything that was about to unfold, ripping their lives further apart.

Anderson pressed his lips together and sighed. “We’ll go and arrest him now. You should probably call your attorney.”

“Attorney? Why would we get him an attorney?” her father asked. “He can rot in hell.”

“Okay, I’ll be in touch,” Anderson said, and was out the door.

Kate turned to her father. It was painful to see his earlier rage turn back to suffering, to see the misery in his eyes.