Page 62 of Find Me

“But my only campaign, to be clear, is for a seat in the US Senate to represent my home state of Kansas, where I’m proud to have been born and raised and to be runnin’ one of the largest family-owned retailers in the country.” Melanie was already droppin’ her g’s like every politician tryin’ to be folksy, Lindsay noticed. “But, yes, absolutely, if elected, I would sponsor and support legislation aimed at true gender equity. And though it would be a nice starting point, it is not enough to pay men and women the same wages for the same jobs—not if we continue to denigrate and devalue work that has traditionally been performed by women.” Lindsay found herself nodding along as Melanie ticked off a list of underpaid professions on her fingers: nurses, teachers, secretaries... “Ask yourself—why do janitors make more than housekeepers? Or radiologists more than pediatricians? Because we systematically undervalue women’s work. I know we can do better, because I’ve been doin’ it at my company for years.”

A man who looked unmistakably like a university professor in his cardigan sweater and plaid bow tie rose from the front row, asked the audience to give a final round of applause for their distinguished speaker, and invited those guests who were registered for the ticketed reception to proceed to the plaza.

Despite instructions, a handful of audience members pressed to the well of the lecture hall as everyone else proceeded to the exits at the rear. Lindsay noticed that the bow-tied professor remained at Melanie’s side. As the host of the lecture, he’d be the one to escort her to the next location.

She and Ellie slipped from the room as the crowd thinned, but lingered in the atrium, keeping their eyes on the doors. When Melanie and her guide finally emerged, they followed a few feet behind.

The professor gestured toward a door marked with a piece of paper that read “Reserved,” and Lindsay saw her chance as Melanie moved toward it. “Oh, thank god. Is that a ladies’ room? I feel like a rat in a maze in this building.”

The professor stepped forward with one arm raised. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. There’s a restroom open to the public. Uh, I think it’s the end of this hall, then take a right, and then the next left?”

Ellie didn’t miss a beat. “But I can see the stick-lady sign under that piece of paper. TMI, sorry, but my friend really needs to go.”

“Um—”

Melanie was already holding the door open. Lindsay was certain that Carter Decker would have contacted Melanie by now about her husband’s murder, but if she recognized Lindsay from her connection to Hope’s case, she wasn’t letting on. “Oh, there’s plenty of space in here. I don’t need a room all to myself,” she assured the professor. “Come on in, ladies.”

Lindsay waited until Melanie was drying her hands to introduce herself. “Ms. Locke. My name is Lindsay Kelly. I’m a defense attorney in Manhattan.” Ellie had remained in the hallway outside, prepared to distract the professor in the event he decided to check on his guest speaker.

Melanie gave Lindsay’s business card only a casual glance before she returned the handshake and thanked her for attending the event.

“I enjoyed your comments very much,” Lindsay said, “but that’s not why I’m here. I represent a client with information about your husband—information that would be damaging to his reputation. She is interested in reaching a financial settlement—with an NDA, of course.”

Melanie folded Lindsay’s card neatly in half and then dropped it in the trash can. “Well, first of all, that sounds like blackmail. And second, you can drop the act, Ms. Kelly. The second I saw your name, Irecognized it. You know my husband is deceased because you represent Tara King.”

“But in the course of that representation, I have met one of your husband’s victims—”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and this conversation is over.”

“I can also tell you who killed Richard.”

Melanie’s forced smile was filled with disdain. “You should have your ticket pulled by the bar, do you know that? Are you seriously offering to sell out your own client for a payoff? Because as much as I’d like my husband’s murderer brought to justice—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Because I finally know who killed my husband—Tara King. And if you knew anything about my husband, you’d know that no one who actually knew him called him Richard. He started going by Hitch in the sixth grade to have a different name from his father. What exactly are you trying to achieve here?”

“Is that really what the police think?” Lindsay asked. “That Hope did it?”

“Hope?” the older woman scoffed. “You’re buying that bullshit? It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? She’s been hiding out under a fake name, claiming to have amnesia. And when her old boyfriend recognized her in New York, she killed him and then planted evidence to try to frame him for Hitch’s murder.”

Lindsay had hoped to lure Melanie with a potential nondisclosure agreement with Emilia Lopez, which she could then use to prove her motive to have murdered Alex. Now, however, she found herself focusing on her defense of Hope.

“That’s absurd,” she said. “What motive would she have to kill your husband?”

“You really don’t know anything, do you?”

“I know she was your babysitter.”

“Emphasis on thewas. Hitch caught her taking cash out of his wallet one day and had to let her go.”

When Evan Hunter believed Hope had ripped him off after asking for an advance, Lindsay had sworn that Hope wasn’t the type of person who would ever steal. She opened her mouth to defend Hope again, but found herself speechless.

“It was a shame, too,” Melanie continued. “Sophie adored her, and she’d been through so much.”

“Sophie? Or Tara?”

“Tara. That’s how we met her. Tara’s mother was in prison for child abuse, and she spent her high school years in a group home. She had gotten counseling through a child advocacy nonprofit that we supported and then became a volunteer there. We thought we might be able to help her out, and then she went and stole from us. I even pressed Hitch to see if it might be a misunderstanding, but he was adamant that she had to go. All these years, it never even dawned on me that she’d do something violent.”

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