Five hours later, we waited in a small visiting room at the police station: me, Sebastian, Johnny, and Bert Glasser, the best criminal defense lawyer in New York City. Connor was a personal friend of his; now he was a client.

The door opened, and Connor walked in, escorted by a guard. Connor was wearing an orange jumpsuit. It pained me to see him treated as a criminal – this man I loved, who hadn’t done a damn thing.

Worse than that, though, were the manacles around his ankles and wrists.

The first thing that happened was Connor shot me a comforting smile. It’s okay. Don’t worry.

The second thing that happened was Bert Glasser started yelling.

“Is this really necessary?” he shouted, gesturing at the manacles. “That was a rhetorical question, by the way; the correct answer is no, it’s not. Unlock my client right now.”

The guard looked uneasy. “I was told – ”

“Let me tell you something. I had a client last week, charged with killing two people in a home invasion, and you guys didn’t bother chaining him up. This is done solely to humiliate my client and intimidate him, which was deemed unconstitutional in the Supreme Court case Anderson v. State of Illinois, so if you don’t want me to file an injunction as soon as I walk out of here and get your ass hauled into court, take them off right now.”

The guard grudgingly removed the manacles and stepped outside.

For a 5’4” balding guy with glasses and a Long Island accent, Bert Glasser commanded a lot of respect.

Connor wrapped his strong arms around me.

“Are you okay?” I asked tearfully.

He grinned wryly. “I’ve had better days.”

I laughed as he wiped away my tears and kissed me.

Then he extended his arm and shook hands with the lawyer. “Bert. Good to see you.”

“Connor,” Bert said grimly. “Wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Did they really chain Connor up just to intimidate him?” I asked.

“Oh yes. Standard operating procedure.”

I was seething. “But they didn’t put your other client in chains?”

Bert chuckled. “Oh, I just made that up.”

I stared at him. “You what?!”

“Hey, they make shit up about my client, I throw it right back at ‘em,” Bert said, completely unaffected, as he opened his briefcase on the table.

“He probably made up the Supreme Court case, too,” Connor asked.

“Of course,” the lawyer said. “He’s a security guard. He doesn’t know constitutional law.”

I looked up at Connor. “How did you know?”

“Nobody on a home invasion charge would be able to afford Bert,” Connor said. “Not unless he’d been extremely successful at burglary prior to getting caught.”

Okay… this was going to be an interesting lawyer-client relationship…

“Why the hell do they have me in here, Bert?” Connor asked angrily.

“Seems the toxicology reports came back on your father. They found cyanide.”

Everyone in the room but Bert murmured or gasped.

Connor stared at him. “You’re saying he was poisoned?”

“Yup. And they’re saying you did it.” Bert rifled through some papers he pulled from his briefcase. “The report says his stomach contents had traces, and his blood had lethal levels.”

Connor’s face contorted first in pain, then rage. “Somebody murdered him.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“But why do they think Connor poisoned him?!” I blurted. “And how?!”

“At this point they’re not speculating on motive. But they think he poisoned him at dinner the other night. They examined your kitchen and found traces of cyanide in the garbage disposal and the trap in the dishwasher.”

“That’s impossible!” I cried out.

“It’s not just possible – it happened,” the lawyer said.

“If they’re saying he did it, why aren’t they charging me, too?” I asked.

“Don’t give ‘em any ideas.”

“Out of curiosity, when did they find those traces of cyanide?” Connor asked darkly.

“They served the warrant and conducted the search during the funeral, while you were all at the church. Did a field test onsite. As soon as they found the traces, they went forward with the arrest.”

“Of course.” Connor laughed bitterly. “Of course.”

Bert frowned. “Why ‘of course’?”

“She had it all planned out like clockwork. And of course she timed it so that I would be arrested and humiliated, to boot. She had the press waiting outside – probably had a photographer somewhere in the church, too. I’ll bet you ten million dollars there will be a shot on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow morning of the cops slapping cuffs on me.”

My heart sank. As soon as Connor said it, I knew he was right.

“I’m a little slow on the uptake here,” Bert said. “Who’s this ‘she’ you keep referring to?”

“Miranda Lockwood. My ex-fiancée, and now my sister-in-law.”

“Oh my God,” Sebastian whispered, and buried his head in his hands.

Johnny looked like he wanted to kill somebody.

“Huh,” Bert said. “Sounds like the sister-in-law from hell.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Connor said.

“If she supposedly killed your father at your place, and she hates you so much, why didn’t she just off you, too?”

Connor and I exchanged glances.

It was a good question.

“If I had to guess, it’s because she was afraid that killing me might cast suspicion on her. After all, I’ve been accusing her of the attempt on my life last year.” Connor grimaced. “Not to mention that if I’m dead, I can’t suffer. She wants me to know that she beat me. She wants to grind me into the ground, then make me have to live with it.”

“You got any proof for this wild theory?”

Connor shook his head. “Not at the moment, no.”

“We didn’t poison the food!” I protested. “The only people who could have were Marta or Vincenzo!”

Bert looked at his papers. “Marta Gonzalez, one of your kitchen staff, and Vincenzo Damonza, your personal chef?”

“Yes!”

“Miranda must have hired them,” Connor said. “Or one of them, at least. Probably Marta – she’s the only one who could have made sure my father got the cyanide instead of me or Lily. She would have had to serve the right dish, or she could have killed the wrong person.”

Bert looked at us over the top of his glasses. “Marta and Vincenzo – have you seen either one of them in the last week?”

“No, but I was completely out of it.” Connor turned to me. “Did you see them?”

Oh shit.

“No,” I realized. “They both took personal time. I didn’t even think about it, what with the funeral and everything…”

“They’re both listed as missing,” Bert said. “Their families haven’t seen them in the last seven days.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“Miranda killed them,” Connor said.

“Well, NYPD’s implying you did. Either that or you got them out of town.”

“This is exactly what she did when I got shot last year,” Connor said. “The only guy that could have linked her to the shooter was found dead in his apartment. She had him killed to sever the chain.”

“Again, I gotta ask,” Bert said, “you got any proof of that?”

Connor had spent over a million dollars on PI’s to investigate Miranda over the last year, but not a shred of evidence had ever turned up that could link her to the murders.           

Connor gritted his teeth. “No. She covered her tracks too well.”

“That’s a problem, then,” Bert said.

Johnny suddenly spoke up. “There’s a serious problem with the cops’ theory, though.”

Everybody in the room looked at him.

Bert raised his eyebrows. “Who are you?”

“My bodyguard, Johnny Inaba,” I said.

“So what’s the problem?” Bert asked.

“They’re claiming he was poisoned by cyanide, right? I was Special Forces for five years. I did plenty of black ops with guys who may or may not have been CIA agents, who may or may not have been carrying cyanide pills on them. A fatal dose of cyanide gas is almost instantaneous. A big enough dose by ingestion can kill you within five to ten minutes. But you guys had dinner for how long?”

Connor and I looked at each other. “An hour, probably,” I said.

“And did you talk afterwards?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Probably another two.”

“So two hours after he ate, he died from cyanide poisoning. But I thought the heart attack, or whatever it was, came on suddenly in the limo?”

“It did,” Sebastian agreed. “That’s what the hospital said.”

“Any dose high enough to kill him would have acted immediately. With a lower dosage, the symptoms would have shown up gradually over time. Dizziness, vomiting, headaches, stuff like that. But you guys didn’t notice anything like that, did you?” Johnny asked.

“No,” I said.

“No,” Connor confirmed.

“In fact, any dose of cyanide big enough to make him sick would have produced some kind of symptoms. But when he left, he was fine?”

“Yes.”

“Then he couldn’t have been poisoned at dinner. It had to have occurred at some other point – and at a high enough dosage to kill him in the 20 minutes it took to get from your penthouse to the hospital.”

Bert smiled. “You should be a lawyer.” Then he turned to the rest of us. “That was my first order of business after I get out of here, to find a poisons expert to do exactly what Johnny just did: establish the timeline. If what he’s saying is true, we punch a hole in their case big enough to drive a Mack truck through. But there’s still the problem of the cyanide in the garbage disposal. Which means – ”

“That somebody planted it to frame me,” Connor finished. “Which means we’ve got a traitor in our midst.”