“Alarms?” Coco says.
“Triple Eight burned to the ground,” the Chief says.
Coco’s jaw drops; her eyes widen, then fill with tears. The Chief has been at this job so long that he considers himself a human polygraph: He knows when someone is lying, when someone is acting, and his gut tells him Coco isn’t. But maybe Zara is right, maybe he’s too close to the situation to be a good judge.
“You didn’t know this?” Zara sounds skeptical.
Coco shakes her head, wipes under her eyes with her free hand; her other arm is attached to an IV. “What happened?”
“The fire inspector is still investigating,” the Chief says. He received a call from Stu Vick: It looks like the fire started in the primary suite. That house was a tinderbox, all that old wood, no insulation to speak of, just pockets of air that fed the beast. I’ll let you know if we find an accelerant.
“Once you were on the boat, what do you remember?” Zara says.
Coco was serving drinks, passing the hors d’oeuvres. She didn’t know many people on the boat; they were mostly new friends that Leslee had made. Bull and Leslee renewed their vows on the bow, Coco served the champagne toast, the sun set, Lamont turned the boat around.
“He told us he kissed you,” the Chief says. “He kissed you in public and Leslee saw.”
“Yes, that’s right.” Coco’s eyes brighten. “He kissed me.”
“Then what happened?” Zara asks.
“After I cleared the champagne flutes, I took a moment in the back of the boat.”
“Took a moment?”
“I went to the spot in the stern where the swimming ladder is. There’s a safety gate… I was standing inside the gate. I took a picture of the sunset on my phone. I wanted to remember the night because, after Lamont kissed me, he told me he loved me for the first time. Then the music on the boat stopped and I heard everyone yapping all at once. I remember thinking, I’ve got to get back, fix the music, wash the glasses… and the next thing I knew, I was in the water.”
“Did someone push you?” the Chief asks. “Or did you slip and fall?”
“I have no idea,” Coco says. “The gate was there, so I didn’t slip. I guess it’s possible someone pushed me… though actually, that gate wasn’t latching properly, so maybe I did slip and fall in. Lamont told Bull and Leslee the latch was faulty; he’d ordered a new one but it hadn’t arrived yet. They told him it didn’t matter, they wanted to sail anyway.” Coco offers the Chief a weak smile. “They don’t like anything getting in the way of their fun.”
“Believe me, I know,” the Chief says.
“Do you know anything about how the fire in the Richardsons’ house might have started?” Zara asks. “We learned that Leslee was a smoker—did she ever smoke in the house?”
Coco shakes her head. “I never saw her smoke, ever. She didn’t smoke around me.”
“Leslee and Bull both told us you all had a… thorny relationship at times,” Zara says. “They seemed to think it was you who started the fire.”
“Me?” Coco says.
Ed holds up a hand. “This isn’t a formal questioning. You don’t have to answer.”
Zara says, “They told us you had the code for the alarm system and that you would have been able to turn the alarms off.”
“I had the code, yes,” Coco says. “Leslee instructed me to turn off the alarms anytime they had a party in case the caterers burned something or whatever.”
Oh, dear god, Ed thinks. Did Coco turn off the alarms? Should he advise her to get an attorney?
Coco swallows. “But I didn’t turn the alarms off yesterday. The party was on the boat, so why would I? I didn’t touch the alarms. And I don’t know anything about how the fire started. I didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re asking.” She pauses. “Do people think…”
“If the nature of this fire turns out to be suspicious,” Zara says, “then we may have to bring you in for further questioning. And at that point, I would suggest you get a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” Coco says. She turns even paler, which Ed didn’t think was possible.
He says, “For now, the important thing is you’re okay. We’ll let you get some rest. When they’re ready to discharge you, Kacy can come pick you up. You’re welcome to move back in with us for a little while until you figure out your next steps.”
Coco sinks back against the pillow. “Thank you.”
As Zara and the Chief walk out to the car, Zara says, “All along I liked Coco for setting the fire and Leslee for pushing her off the boat.”
“That’s where my mind went as well,” the Chief says. When they climb into the Chief’s Suburban, he pulls out Coco’s green Moleskine notebook, which Kacy gave him that morning.
“Coco kept a list of her daily tasks,” he says. “Thursday, August twenty-second: ‘Change sheets in primary suite on Hedonism.’”
“Ahhh,” Zara says. “It’s almost as if someone knew they were going to be spending Thursday night on the boat.”
“Could be a coincidence. Leslee and Bull had just renewed their vows, so maybe the plan was always for them to spend a romantic night on the water.” The Chief points to the next entry. “But look at this. Friday, August twenty-third: ‘Drop boxes at Hospital Thrift Shop.’”
“Boxes?” Zara says.
“Kacy went upstairs to Coco’s apartment last night to use the bathroom and she told me there were at least a dozen boxes filled with clothes to be donated. Kacy opened a box and said that everything in it was not only expensive but in perfect condition—cashmere sweaters, party dresses, tennis dresses…”
“You think Leslee packed all her clothes up and moved them to the other apartment to save them because she planned to burn the house down?”
“It seems like a remarkable stroke of luck,” the Chief says, “that all her clothes were spared.”
“Is it terrible of me to say I would not be sad to see that woman charged with arson?”
