Allie pulled the list toward her and with trembling fingers flipped through page after page of items: artwork, furs, crystal, silver, jewelry.

Jewelry. An audible gasp escaped her lips.

“What is it?”

With wide eyes she met Detective Green’s curious stare, but when she spoke, her words were barely a whisper. “Her ring.”

“Excuse me?”

She swallowed hard to find her voice. “When they were bagging my mother’s hands, she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring. Would they have removed it?”

“No, they wouldn’t have tampered with the evidence.”

“My mother always wore that ring. She never took it off.”

“Can you describe it for me?”

“The center stone is an oval Ceylon sapphire,” she said. “About ten carats, I believe. It’s surrounded by a ring of diamond solitaires.”

The detective glanced up from her notes. “Like Princess Diana’s?” Allie nodded and the detective scribbled a few more lines in her notebook. “Is there anything else that jumps out at you?”

Allie scanned the list a second time. “It’s hard to say. Nothing as obvious as that, but I’ll have to think about it.”

“Take your time and let me know if you come up with anything. In the meantime, I’ll follow up with the insurance company and make sure a list of stolen property is given to area pawnshops as well as the local precincts. That ring would be hard to fence, but if someone tries to move any of the other items, we’ll be ready.”

“So you’re still going on the assumption that this was just a burglary?” Allie asked. It wasn’t hard to miss the hope in her voice. As much as she hated the thought that her parents’ death was due to some random act of violence, it was even worse to imagine they’d been targeted specifically.

“Right now we’re not ruling anything out. That’s actually the other reason I’m here. In addition to going over the household inventory, I’d like you to compile a list of any of your parents’ known enemies.”

“I’m not sure I’d classify anyone in their life as ‘known enemies,’ Detective. My mother’s friends at the country club can be catty bitches, but they’re relatively harmless.” She thought about that and added, “For the most part.”

“I know this is difficult, Miss Sinclair. No one wants to imagine such a heinous crime could have been committed by someone they knew. But your parents lived in a very elite, powerful circle. And at this point in the investigation, we have to look at any and all possible leads.”

Green leaned back in her chair and crossed an ankle over her knee as Allie turned her attention back to the list of household items. She’d just begun working her way through the section marked ART & COLLECTIBLES when the Detective clarified her earlier comment.

“Although you’ll be relieved to know we met with your new business partner on Thursday and have cleared him as a suspect.”

Allie’s head snapped up from the papers in her hand. “Hudson—I mean, Mr. Chase—was a suspect?”

“Given the recent revelation that he’d been targeting Ingram for a hostile takeover, and for some time it seems.”

She cringed at the mention of how long Hudson’s plan had been in the works. “Hostile is an expression, Detective Green. These types of acquisitions, while unpleasant, don’t involve murder.”

“I happen to agree with you, Miss Sinclair. And as it turned out, Mr. Chase had an airtight alibi.” She flipped the page on her notebook. “Visiting his brother at a rehab facility in Wisconsin that day. But we have to look at every possibility, and once we’d learned he’d met with your father—”

Allie felt the blood drain from her face. “He did?”

Detective Green nodded. “A few days before the murders.”

Why in the world would he have done that? And a better question, why hadn’t he told her?

“I’ll be in touch in a few days. But if anything comes to mind . . .”

“Yes, of course, I’ll call you immediately.”

Detective Green tucked her notes back into her leather satchel. “Sorry again for the impromptu visit.”

Allie began to stand but the Detective held up her hand. “Don’t get up, I can see myself out. I’ve taken up enough of your day already.”

The office door had barely clicked shut before Allie spun her chair around and booted up her father’s desktop computer. She’d spent the first week working off her laptop, not quite ready to sift through her father’s numerous files. But if what Detective Green had said was true, and she had no reason to believe it wasn’t, then Hudson had met with her father shortly before his murder. In this very office. A fact he had somehow failed to mention. She sighed. Just one more item on what seemed to be an ever-growing list. Then again, she thought as a headache formed behind her eyes, he might have mentioned it if she’d let him say more than two words to her.

Allie pinched the bridge of her nose while she waited for the calendar program to open. When it did, she discovered meticulous, color-coded notes indicating meetings, times, and topics. She scrolled through each of the dates, scouring the screen for any mention of Hudson’s name. It was so small she almost missed it. At the two o’clock entry on October 28, the words H. CHASE were typed in a simple black font.

October 28.

A cold chill ran down her spine as she read the date again. It was the day Julian returned unexpectedly from France. The day Hudson had come to her rescue, saving her not only from Julian’s attack, but from a life she no longer wished to live. He was the one she wanted to spend her life with. She’d made up her mind that morning after they’d returned from their weekend in Lake Geneva. But as anxious as she’d been to tell him the news, she’d wanted to do it in person, not over the phone. So she’d fought the urge to call him all day, only to later realize he hadn’t reached out to her either. At the time she’d meant to ask him what had kept him so busy, but with everything that had happened, the question had lost its significance. Until now.

Allie leaned back in her chair, trying to process what her father’s own calendar had just confirmed. She had no idea why the two men met, or what they had discussed, but one thing was certain—after tomorrow’s board meeting, she was damn well going to find out.

Chapter Ten

Hudson wasn’t accustomed to losing a battle, especially not in the boardroom. Liquidating the newspaper division made perfect sense when balancing down to the bottom line. But Allie maintained the print edition was the cornerstone of Ingram, what her grandfather had built his empire on, and had cleverly used that nostalgia to her advantage.

She’d backed up her claim that it was the most identifiable brand within their holdings by coming to the meeting armed with meticulous numbers and a shit-ton of research. When someone targeted her theory she fired back, countering the naysayer with brass facts. More importantly, she presented expansion options for the current online content to include streaming media components that were projected to more than compensate for any resulting loss in revenue.

He had to hand it to her, she’d done her homework, presented her case, and persuaded the votes she needed to lock in the new direction of Ingram Media. Hot-fucking-damn, he should have been pissed she’d persuaded the board to side with her, but instead he was impressed. And it took all of his self-control not to clap his palms together when the meeting ended.