In Her Eyes by Sarah Alderson (ebook reader for pc and android TXT) 📕

fills the screen. ‘We’re crossing right now to Diane Washington who is outside the Ventura Sheriff’s Office where we’re expecting a press announcement any moment from the Sheriff in charge of the investigation.’

The camera cuts away from the studio to a woman with a helmet of hair who is standing outside Nate’s office along with a small army of other reporters.

‘Mom?’

Hannah is pulling on my arm. I turn to her impatiently, noticing as I do that everyone in the room is now gawping openly at us, a few of them exchanging whispers and nods at the television. Hannah jerks her head to the left and I glance in that direction to see a woman filming us on her phone with absolutely no subtlety whatsoever. She even stands up to get a better view.

‘Let’s go,’ I say, taking Hannah by the hand and pulling her towards the elevators.

As we pass the television I catch a glimpse of Nate on screen, striding out of the building and heading towards a podium. What’s he doing? How could he arrest Robert without telling me? I drag my feet, wanting to stay and listen to whatever he’s about to say, but the heat of all those eyes on us, and the awareness of the woman filming us, makes me turn and quickly usher Hannah into the elevator.

The doors close on us and once we’re sealed inside Hannah starts to cry even harder, shaking. ‘It’s OK,’ I say, putting my arms around her. ‘It’s just a stupid mistake. That’s all. Just a stupid mistake.’

It has to be. What else could it be? But then I realize that it isn’t Hannah who is shaking so hard her teeth are rattling. It’s me.

Chapter 20

‘Solicitation.’

‘What?’ I say, blinking at Laurie in shock.

She shakes her head and keeps on reading from her iPad. ‘I don’t think it means what you think it means. I think it means he solicited help to commit a crime.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘There’s more,’ Laurie continues. ‘Conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. Conspiracy to commit burglary. Aiding and abetting . . .’

‘Stop,’ I shout. I can’t handle it, can’t begin to understand what is happening. How can they have arrested Robert? How can he be guilty of all these things?

Laurie sits down beside me and puts her arm around my shoulders. The relatives’ room in the ICU is empty and for that at least I’m grateful. I drop my hands away from my ears. ‘It can’t be true,’ I whisper, feeling like one of those cartoon characters that walks into a wall and then stands there twanging like a plucked guitar string. Laurie doesn’t answer and I whip my head around. ‘You don’t think it’s true, do you?’

She shakes her head firmly but perhaps a beat too late. ‘Of course not. Look, we need to get down there to the station and find out what’s going on.’ She pauses. ‘And maybe you should think about calling a lawyer?’

I pick myself up from the sofa. ‘With what money?’ I ask tersely.

It turns out that we don’t need to hire a lawyer. They’ve appointed a public defender; a disheveled man called Horowitz, who has tufts of hair sprouting from his ears like succulents and who is wearing what I think is a polka-dot patterned tie at first, until I realize the dots are splashes of coffee.

‘They’ll set bail at around half a million dollars,’ he tells me when I arrive at the police station and he’s shown me into one of the interrogation rooms.

‘What? We don’t have that sort of money,’ I splutter. ‘We don’t have any money.’ Has he not been watching the news?

The man sniffs and shrugs his indifference.

‘I don’t understand the charges,’ I say, indicating the sheet of paper they’ve given me.

The lawyer sighs. ‘Your husband has been arrested for conspiring to commit a robbery.’

‘But he can’t have,’ I say plainly. ‘He wouldn’t.’

‘You’re in significant financial difficulty. Three weeks ago your husband pawned some jewelry of yours.’

‘What?’ I gasp.

He opens a folder and spreads some photographs across the table.

‘What are these?’ I ask, picking them up.

‘These are CCTV images from a downtown Oxnard pawnshop, taken three weeks ago.’

I snatch up a photograph. It’s pixelated but it’s still obvious to anyone that it’s Robert in the photograph, handing something over to the man behind the counter.

‘He was pawning these items.’

Horowitz lays out images of my stolen jewelry one after the other like cards from a winning poker hand.

‘They weren’t stolen in the burglary then?’ Laurie asks.

‘No.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I stammer.

‘You didn’t know that he was pawning the items then?’

I shake my head indignantly. ‘Of course not. I didn’t know anything was missing. I don’t wear jewelry all that often. They’re heirlooms, not things you’d wear every day.’

He takes umbrage at my tone and sniffs. ‘I’m not suggesting you were aware of what your husband was doing, Mrs Walker.’

‘I don’t believe this. It’s just . . . unbelievable. He wouldn’t do this.’

Horowitz sighs and then hands me a photocopy of something.

I take it. ‘What is this?’

‘It’s your home insurance policy. If you look at where it’s highlighted – that’s a request for a policy increase, made just a month ago.’

I glance at the highlighted area.

‘Your husband increased your insurance specifically for those items. He stood to make over two hundred thousand dollars if those items were stolen.’

‘But he didn’t make a claim, did he?’ I say, trying to muster some defiance. ‘I told the police, there were some car break-ins happening in the neighborhood. Robert wanted to make sure we were properly covered. And those are my most valuable pieces of jewelry.’

‘But the intention was clear, they’ll argue. They’ll go before the judge, lay out your financial situation, show them those photographs and the insurance paperwork and make a case that your husband arranged for some as yet unknown men to break in so you could benefit from a fraudulent insurance claim that would clear all your debts and bring you back into the black.’

Oh my God. All the puzzle pieces fit together. Is