Poppy got into the elevator, pressed the button for her floor, and disappeared through the doors. Corinne swallowed hard. There she goes, she thought. Poppy would never ride that elevator down.
She settled back to watch, her heart still pounding. Rowan gripped her knees. Aster didn’t blink. No one passed through the lobby for a while, though a maintenance worker walked in the side entrance and a few unassuming-looking women in hairnets pressed the down button on the side elevator for the basement cafeteria. Corinne and Aster’s father appeared on the video that showed the main entrance. A few other people Corinne didn’t recognize swept past too, but they were employees of the other businesses in the building, going to the other elevator bank. A woman paused at the back elevator door, also pressing the down button for the cafeteria. Finally another woman walked in. Even though the image was black-and-white, Corinne recognized Danielle Gilchrist’s profile and that tacky color-block dress.
“Danielle’s at work early,” she commented, watching as the elevator dinged and Danielle walked into the car.
“Suck-up,” Aster muttered.
“Oh my God,” Rowan said.
She was pointing at something on the main entrance feed. Another familiar face passed through, but at first Corinne couldn’t place her. Then something in her brain caught—this person shouldn’t have been in the building. Not yet, anyway.
“Is that—” Rowan pointed a shaky finger at the screen.
“I think so,” Aster whispered.
Corinne paused the tape and slid her finger along the time bar, rewinding it so she could look again. The figure pushed through the revolving doors and nodded curtly at the security guard. The guard seemed confused, but then he was distracted with another guest signing in, and the woman pushed through, unchecked. Corinne leaned in close, her heart pounding hard. All sorts of alarms blared in her head. It was who she thought it was, all right. A light-haired young woman in a black skirt suit. Straight mouth. Furrowed brow. Her rigid posture all business, steely determination.
It was Katherine Foley.
Corinne sat back, spots forming in front of her eyes. “I don’t understand.”
But then something hit her. She grabbed the picture back from Rowan, the one of her from the night Steven died. She focused on two of the figures in the background, both of them a little out of focus. One was Steven Barnett. His face was in profile, his hand outstretched to accept a drink from a blond waitress. Now that she looked closer, there was a secret, conspiratorial look between Steven and the waitress; a shared little moment no one else saw.
Corinne had just seen those features, that same blond hair.
“What is it?” Rowan asked, rising to her feet.
Corinne hurried back into the sunporch and flipped on the light. The room flooded with fluorescence, and everyone squinted. “Look,” she cried, placing the picture on the table next to the iPad.
She compared the blurry image in the photo to the frozen face on the iPad screen. The faces were the same.
“Oh my God,” Aster whispered. And Rowan sank back down to the chair.
Katherine Foley had been to Meriweather before. She’d been there the night Steven was killed. And she was there the morning Poppy died.
Maybe they’d been looking in all the wrong places. Maybe Katherine had been in the picture all along.
29
The cousins were silent for what felt like ages. Rowan’s breath shook as she inhaled and exhaled. The weight of what they’d just discovered slowly sank in. She looked again at the two images, one from the surveillance camera and one from the party five years before, serving Steven Barnett a drink. Smirking at Steven Barnett, as though they shared a secret.
“Foley was at that party,” Corinne whispered, falling back into a seat. “She knew us.”
“She never let on that she did, though,” Rowan murmured. “Why?”
Aster leaped to her feet, looking at the picture of Katherine from the party again. “Elizabeth told me Steven Barnett had a thing for girls around town. She even said that there was one girl in particular with blond hair.” She pointed to Katherine Foley’s face. “Look at the way they’re staring at each other.”
Corinne paced around the room quickly like a windup toy coiled too tightly. “Maybe Katherine was in love with Steven?”
“It’s possible, right?” Aster said. “Maybe she was devastated when he died—but maybe she didn’t know who did it. Maybe she somehow just recently figured out that it was Poppy . . . and she got her revenge.”
Rowan nodded slowly. “And she took this case so she could control it. When she said the surveillance tape didn’t show anything suspicious, we all believed her without questioning it because she’s FBI. But she conveniently left out the fact that she was on it.”
Aster clapped a hand over her mouth. “And think about how quickly she got to the hospital the night of our crash. What if she was at the house? What if she heard us talking about Steven and was worried we were getting too close to the truth?”