Chapter 7

The police came for me at eight the next morning.

Two officers, polite, in a lobby with a rubber plant and a coffee station. Preston Hale had filed a formal complaint: theft of an antique gemstone valued at sixty thousand dollars, plus destruction of historic property. They wanted to take my statement. They wanted to see my tool kit. They wanted to know if I had any objection to a search of my locker at the pavilion.

I said I had no objection. I said they should ask Preston why the locks on the Queen's horse had been changed four days ago.

They wrote that down. They were not unfriendly and they were not on my side. That's what nobody tells you about being accused: it doesn't feel like a fight. It feels like weather.

While they were in the lobby, Nadia called and told me not to answer any more questions. And while Nadia was on the phone with me, Augustin Rourke was on the pier, in the pavilion, walking the deck with the insurance adjuster, and something happened to him in front of the Queen's horse.

I got there fourteen minutes later.

He was sitting on the chariot bench with his tie loosened and his hand pressed flat over his chest, and his color was not right, and his breathing was not right. Somebody from the festival crew had called an ambulance. The paramedics came through the crowd with the stretcher low. He argued with them, which I took as a good sign, and then he stopped arguing, which I did not.

They took him to Santa Lucia General. Nadia rode with him. I stood on the deck holding Sophie's hand and watched them go, and the pier felt like a place I had never been.

Rosalind found me there twenty minutes later.

She didn't waste time being charming. She stood beside me at the rail, looking out at the water, and spoke quietly, as if we were two women discussing a catering bill.

"Here's what I can do," she said. "You've been charged. I can make that go away - I have known the district attorney for thirty years. I can put you and Sophie in a house in Monterey, in your name, free and clear. I can put four million dollars into a trust for your daughter. I can make sure no newspaper ever prints the word 'stolen' next to your name."

"And in exchange?"

"You sign a private DNA result. You never speak to Augustin about your mother. And you let my brother die believing his daughter disappeared in a terrible, senseless tragedy instead of..." She stopped and looked at the gulls. "Whatever this is."

"He's in the hospital right now."

"He has a bad heart. He's seventy-four." She turned to me then, and her eyes were dry and perfectly calm. "Consider what you actually get from the truth, Ms. Velasco. Grief. Litigation. A man who declines in front of you because he can't carry it. The lawyers will make a fortune. Your daughter will grow up in a courtroom."

She said the word daughter very softly, and I understood the whole shape of it, sitting there on the pier rail - that everything she was offering and everything she was threatening came down to one thing, and that thing was sitting on a bench five feet away, swinging her sneakers, waiting for me.

For about four seconds I thought about saying yes. I want that on the record. Four whole seconds.

Then Sophie slid off the bench and came over and tugged the hem of my apron, and I bent down, and she put her mouth next to my ear and said the sentence that ended Rosalind Rourke Ainsley.

"Mommy. I saw Mr. Hale take the eye off the horse."