Page 18 of The Expat Affair

“Yes.” I frown because I know what the detective is getting at, and I don’t need his judgment. “I already told you we drank a lot, Detective. The end of the night is a little spotty.”

“Okay, well, do you remember who called who, or what time this phone call occurred?”

I pause, considering the question. “I remember hearing his voice and following it down the hallway, so no. I don’t know who initiated contact. The conversation was already underway when I got there.”

“And the time?”

“I didn’t look at the clock, but I...” I trail off, about to say I was already naked when this all went down, which means it was late. “After midnight, certainly. Can’t you pull up his phone records to check?”

“We’ll take a look at his call logs. Anything else?”

His voice is brusque, clearly in a hurry to get back to his party, his people, his life, and honestly, who can blame him? Detectives need days off, too.

Still, though. I can’t let him go just yet.

“Actually, yes. Did Xander have a safe?”

There’s a stretch of silence so long I’m about to wriggle my mouse to check the connection when finally, he clears his throat. “What makes you ask about a safe?”

“I had a dream that he had one, and that it was filled with diamonds. But I don’t remember seeing it when I was there, so now I’m wondering if the dream is my mind’s way of telling me something I’ve forgotten or if I just made it up.”

“I see. And in your dream, where was this safe?”

“In the study, hidden behind a painting in the wall.”

“Which wall? Do you remember the painting?”

“In my dream, the safe was already open, which means the face of the painting was facing the wall. But it was in the wall behind his desk, kind of to the left, between the desk and the window.” Another long spell of empty air, which I fill with, “That’s where it is, isn’t it? I wasn’t making it up.”

He doesn’t answer, but his silence seems like a pretty firm yes to me, and I feel a warm rush of heat, my breath catching in the back of my throat. My dream wasn’t entirely fiction, wasn’t just my mind making up a story around the trauma I’ve been carrying around for two days now. Suddenly, I’m wondering what else I’ve forgotten. What else happened while my brain was too booze soaked to think clearly? What else did I miss while I was in Xander’s bed?

“Was the safe filled with diamonds like in my dream?” I ask. “Because I know about Xander’s job. I know he worked for a diamond house and that he ran their line of lab-grown diamonds, big ones that go for a hundred thousand a pop.”

“Like the necklace you were wearing in that picture.”

An elevator plunges down the center of my chest and lands in my stomach with a thud. And here I thought it was the people back home I had to worry about, their gossip and screenshots and shares. The detective saw the picture of me in that necklace.

“That picture was a joke. I already took it down.” Though apparently, not quickly enough.

“Ms. Dumont, I don’t know if you’re aware, but Xander van der Vos was something of a celebrity here in Amsterdam. His death is all over the news, and so is that picture of you wearing his necklace. The legitimate news sites are one thing, but people are posting to X and Reddit and TikTok, and they’re jumping to their own conclusions. I’d advise you not to go searching for those comment threads, but here’s the basic gist: they say as the last person to see Xander alive—”

“I’m pretty sure the last person to see him alive was his killer.”

“Exactly my point. People are talking about you. They’re identifying you by name, and they’re wondering if you took that necklace. If you have it in your possession right now.”

“The answer, for the record, is no. The last time I saw the necklace, Xander was dropping it in the nightstand drawer.”

“It’s not just the necklace. My colleagues and I are still trying to determine what was in Mr. Van der Vos’s safe, which is exactly where you said it was, by the way, except there was nothing in it. By the time we got there, it had been emptied out. The nightstand drawer, too.”

“So what are you saying? The necklace is missing?”

“Yes. The necklace is missing.”

My body goes hot and then cold, and I think about what this could mean. Maybe Xander moved the necklace after I fell asleep. Maybe he put it back in the safe for the killer to clean out later.

But what if he didn’t?

The thought drops into my head fully formed. What if the necklace was still in the nightstand when Xander got out of bed, when he flipped on the shower and stepped into the stream? What if the killer wasright there, opening and closing that nightstand drawer while I snored away, oblivious?

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