Page 10 of The Expat Affair

“Someone was—” Martina swipes a finger across her throat while making a clicking noise with her tongue.

“That’s what I heard, too. Do you know any details?”

I certainly don’t. I spent most of the morning hitting Refresh on the various news apps, but there wasn’t much. Just a one-sentence bulletin inHetParool,Amsterdam’s main newspaper.Man (44)doodgevondenin eigenwoning. Forty-four-year-old man found dead in own home. No mention of what part of town he lived in, or how the man died, or that he may or may not have been murdered. Only that he’s dead.

Martina, however, might. She grew up in a tiny town in the south of Holland, but she’s lived in Amsterdam for ages, and she’s worked for Thomas’s family almost as long. She knows everybody in this part of town. There’s a good chance she knows more than what they’ve reported on the news.

“I ran into Dirk at the market this morning, you know, the Akkermans’ chef, and he told me the man was strangled. In the shower, apparently.” She pulls a jug from the fridge and moves tothe other side of the island, waving a hand in Sem’s line of sight until he looks up. “Jongens,wiewild’reenkopjemelk?”

Guys, who wants a cup of milk?It’s a rhetorical question, as Martina is already pouring.

Strangled, though, and in the shower. I shudder as the image comes to me, a dead and naked Xander sprawled on all that expensive marble.

And the pretty woman—where was she when this happened? Sitting on his chest with her hands around his neck? Hiding in a closet or under a bed? I try to picture it, but the image won’t form. The woman is a mystery.

I get the kids settled at the table, then pluck my iPad from the charger. “Martina, I need to answer a couple of emails. Do you mind keeping an eye on the kids?”

If it were Thomas or his parents, they’d phrase it differently.Keep an eye on the kids, would you, Martina, while I tend to my email.Polite, but still technically an order. Thomas grew up with a whole team of Martinas, hired hands to do the cleaning, the cooking, the laundry and the yard work, who cater to his every whim. He’s used to doling out demands for things he’s perfectly capable of doing himself, while I spent most of my adult life like Martina, on the receiving end.

She wipes her hands on her frilly apron and shoos me toward the door. “Of course, of course. You go. I’ll handle things here.”

Ollie trails me into the solarium, a sunny room that juts into a deep backyard. I dig my cell from my pants pocket and toss it onto the couch, then sink onto the cushion beside it.HetParoolhas added a few more details under the headline I spotted earlier, only a couple of paragraphs, but they push the boundaries of my Dutch vocabulary just the same. The man was found this morning in his luxury apartment in Amsterdam Zuid by a female guest, the samewoman who police carted in for questioning. The piece summons up more questions than it gives answers.

I’m about to back out of it when I spot a graphic at the bottom, one with the paper’s headline in tweet form. And underneath, two little words:47 Replies. I click it and the screen flips me to X.

The comments are all in Dutch, and most of them seem like what I overheard from themoedermafia—light on facts and heavy on conjecture. I’m almost to the bottom when one little word stops my scrolling.

@j_sperd__rcks47I hear the dead guy worked in diamonds. The killer hit the jackpot. A killer and a diamond thief.

Diamonds.The dead guy worked in diamonds. He lived in the building on the Valeriusplein. There was a pretty woman. It’s too much. The connections churn like acid in my stomach.

Now that the news is out there, I scramble for my phone and fire off a text to Thomas.Maybe a weird question, but is Xander at work? I just heard some concerning news.

The message lands as delivered, but not read.

I picture Thomas in his sleek office overlooking the factory floor, typing away at his laptop. I see his look of confusion as police officers march across the catwalk to deliver the news, the cutters down on the floor putting down their tools in confusion, in distress. A House of Prins executive murdered in his own home. It’s a shock that will shut down the factory for days.

“Sem wanted to show Vlinder his new train set,” Martina says, coming into the room with a glass and a plate, “so I let them go upstairs. I hope that’s okay.” She slides my lunch onto a side table, two slices of seedy brown bread topped with a generous layer of ricotta and prosciutto, and a glass of fizzy water, doing a doubletake at the look on my face. “What? What happened? What’s the matter?”

I shake my head, pointing at my screen. “I just... I don’t know if it’s true, but this person on X is calling the murderer a diamond thief.”

Martina tuts, shaking her head with a frown. “Not the Rolex gang again.”

“No, listen.” I read the post out loud, my tongue twisting around the Dutch. “The dead guy worked in diamonds, Martina. This makes it sound like his death was a robbery gone wrong.”

“You think it was someone you know.” Not a question. A statement.

I nod. “One of the mothers at school said this happened in that new building on the Valeriusplein. Apparently, there were all sorts of people standing around outside, tons of police cars. You know who lives there, right? Xander owns the penthouse.”

The gleaming apartment plopped onto the building like the fancy top layer of a cake. An architectural masterpiece of steel and stone and sliding glass, surrounded on all sides by a lush terrace.

“Did you talk to Thomas?” Martina says, the blood draining from her ruddy cheeks. “Thomas will know.”

I tap my phone to awaken the screen, but the text status hasn’t changed. Thomas still hasn’t read my text, which is not a good sign. I flip to his contact card and hit Call, but his cell doesn’t even ring. It kicks me straight to voicemail.

“Voicemail,” I say, and my stomach twists. The voicemail is another tick in the Xander column. It means Thomas is busy, and with something pressing. Healwaysanswers my calls. The thought sits like a hot ember, sizzling in my stomach.

“I’ll go make some calls. See what I can find out. I’m sure it’s nothing, but...” Martina doesn’t finish, just pats me on the shoulder and hustles back to the kitchen.

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