Page 13 of The Expat Affair

Ingrid grew up in Amsterdam. Her family lives here, in a city where news travels fast, especially bad news. If Xander’s death isn’t plastered on the front page of every news site in town by now, it will be soon.

“The guy with theritssluiting?” She mimes threading a zip tie with her hands, her keys jangling from a pinkie. “Sorry, I don’t know the word in English.”

“Zip tie.” I shudder at the memory of Xander’s empty eyes, his lolling tongue, the claw marks at the thin band of plastic squeezing his neck, the red swirls in the water where a finger was supposed to be. “That was him, Ingrid. That was Xander. I found him right after I got off the phone with you.”

Her shock is almost comical. She stumbles, catching herself in the doorway as a hand flies to her mouth. Her eyes growing wide above her fingers. “Wait. Xander isdead?”

I nod. “It was awful. He was just lying there, and it was obvious he was... His throat. His eyes.” I shudder, the memories coming back in terrible flashes. “I got out of there as fast as I could, and then I called the police.”

“Oh my God, Rayna. Oh myGod. I—I can’t believe this.” She steps into the room, shoving some clothes from a wooden chairbefore collapsing onto it. “What did the police say? Do they know who did this? Did you see?”

“No. Apparently, I slept through the whole thing, which I’m kind of assuming is what saved me. The room was dark. It’s possible the killer didn’t know I was in there. I don’t know. I have no idea why I’m still alive.”

I watch an angry patch of clouds chug by the window above my head and picture Detective Boomsma’s face, the heat of his gaze as he peppered me with questions I couldn’t quite answer, the way he tried very hard not to frown when I kept circling around the same answers.I don’t know. I was asleep. I was drunk.

Ingrid blows out a loud, hard breath. “Wow, Rayna. This is just... Wow. Did you... Do you have a lawyer?”

“You think I need a lawyer?”

“Yes, Rayna, I think you need a lawyer. A man is dead, and you were there when it happened. You don’t know what the police are thinking, what kind of evidence they’ve got, how much of it points to you. What if they don’t find someone else to point a finger at? You could be the only viable suspect.”

“Except I didn’t do it. And think about it, Ingrid: little me, in a hand-to-hand fight to the death with a man as large as Xander. Physically, it’s impossible. And what possible motive do I have? I actually liked the guy.”

“That necklace in the picture is a pretty big motive.”

“That necklace wasn’t real. I’m pretty sure he said it was a prototype.”

“A prototype that looks like it costs a fortune.”

“If that’s true, then why did he just... hang it on my neck like it was a toy? Why would he chuck it in the drawer? Shouldn’t he have been more careful? Shouldn’t he have, I don’t know, locked it away in a safe?”

I say the words with more conviction than I feel. Even if the diamonds in that necklace were lab grown, they would have been worth a shit-ton of money.

“Is that where he got it, out of his safe?”

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember what came before he hung it on my neck, but my memories are fuzzy at best. Champagne, music, laughter, sex. They’re all running together in a twisting, spiraling loop.

“I have no idea. The necklace just... appeared. I wouldn’t have remembered it at all if it weren’t for that stupid picture. What happened before and after is just snippets.”

Ingrid doesn’t respond. She just stares at me like the detective did, like she’s not entirely sure of my answers, either.

“Anyway, I’ve been doing some digging, and this company Xander worked for sells lab diamonds.” I peel open the laptop, unlocking the screen with my fingerprint. “The same chemical makeup as mined diamonds, same brilliance and shine, but for a fraction of the price, which a lot of people in the industry aren’t happy about. From everything I’ve read, there are dozens of people who might want him dead.”

“So what, you think his murder had something to do with the fake diamonds he was selling?”

“They’re not fakes. Lab-grown diamonds look, feel, and sparkle just like mined diamonds. Not even a jeweler can tell the difference between the two, not without a special machine that measures things like luminescence and fluorescence and some other complicated shit I don’t know anything about. Something to do with the stone’s growth structure.”

Ingrid tilts her head, frowning as she studies me. “You know an awful lot about this stuff.”

“I’m good at research.” It’s one of the few perks of my English Lit degree from LSU, that I can retain long passages, analyze themdown to a sentence or two. I tap a finger to my laptop screen, bright with the House of Prins homepage. “Honestly, I don’t understand all the science, but what I do know is that lab-growns are still super expensive.”

Ingrid lifts a shoulder. “And moneyisa big motivator. It makes sense the killer was there for diamonds, I guess. People have certainly killed for less.”

I sit back on the bed, and the tight knot I’ve been carrying around between my shoulders loosens just a tad. Most likely the killer is someone from the diamond world, or someone who knew Xander and knew the value of the stones he dealt with every day. A neighbor, perhaps, or even a friend. Maybe they thought Xander brought some of these big rocks home and wanted them for themselves. Or maybe it’s a revenge killing, one of the dozens of people calling Xander a traitor online.

“Did he get any?” Ingrid says, and I frown. “Diamonds, I mean. That necklace couldn’t have been the only piece Xander had lying around. Did the killer get more?”

“I don’t know. I ran out of there so fast, I didn’t see anything other than the bedroom and the hall to the elevator. It’s possible, I guess.”

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