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her high-school class. She had applied to and had been accepted to some of the top colleges in Massachusetts – Boston College, Boston University and Tufts. Those schools couldn’t offer the same financial aid package as Suffolk.
    According to the interviews, Emma Hale was the polar opposite. She was outgoing, popular and gregarious. The young woman wanted for nothing. Daddy provided everything – the penthouse, the clothes and jewellery, the convertible BMW.
    Darby felt the sting of class resentment – not because Emma Hale was born into a rich family but because the young woman didn’t have to work for anything. Darby had little use or patience for a pretty party girl who went through life shopping and going on European and Caribbean vacations; summers spent in Nantucket and weekend nights spent drinking at the clubs; long days recovering from her hangover on friends’ boats, her rich daddy picking up the entire tab.
    Here was a picture of Emma Hale attending some ritzy party. An antique platinum locket dangled above her ample cleavage. Here was another picture of the pretty co-ed with her arm around a good-looking man with dark hair and brown eyes – the boyfriend, Tony Pace, a Harvard sophomore.
    Something twitched deep in Darby’s mind, a twinge of familiarity. Was it something about the boyfriend? No. Bryson had interviewed Pace. He hadn’t attended the party. He had the flu and stayed in his dorm room. All of his alibis checked out. Pace agreed to a polygraph and passed. What was it, then?
    Here was a picture of the couple standing on a boat, their skin deeply tanned, smiles perfect, not a wrinkle on them. Darby wondered why she was focusing so much on Emma Hale and switched her attention to a picture of Judith Chen dressed in sweats, a black Labrador puppy held in her arms as she smiled to the camera. Here was a picture of Chen with her roommate.
    Darby paced inside her office. Every few minutes she stopped and looked back to the wall to see if something in the pictures or the women’s faces grabbed her attention. When it didn’t happen, she went back to pacing or stopped to pick up trinkets and held them in her hands for a moment before putting them down. She kept neatening her desk, making sure everything was in its proper place and alignment.
    The wind blew, shaking the old windows. Blinding white sheets of snow whipped across the old brick buildings. Darby finished the last of the bourbon. She felt relaxed, calm. She thought about spring. It felt years away. Emma Hale had a summer home on Nantucket. She played tennis and golf and spent days on the boat. She wore designer dresses and lots of jewellery.
    (the locket)
    What about it? The locket, Darby knew, contained a picture of Emma’s mother. What else? Jonathan Hale had identified the locket, which Emma was wearing when her body was found. She was wearing the locket when her body surfaced. She was wearing the locket…
    ‘Oh Jesus,’ Darby said out loud, hands trembling as she reached for the murder book.

9
    Darby flipped through the pages, stopping when she reached the one containing the list of items found in the jewellery boxes located in Emma Hale’s walk-in closet. Here it was: ‘Oval antique locket with platinum chain, middle drawer, jewellery box #2.’
    She grabbed the phone and called Tim Bryson. The phone seemed to ring forever. She felt a surge of relief when he picked up.
    ‘A week after Emma Hale’s abduction, you and your team went through her house and catalogued her jewellery.’
    ‘That’s right,’ Bryson said.
    ‘I’m looking at the list of Emma’s jewellery. It says an oval antique locket with platinum chain was found in the middle drawer of the second jewellery box.’
    ‘Where are you going with this?’ Bryson sounded put out. Was he still sore from their talk at the morgue?
    ‘When Emma Hale’s body was found, she was wearing a platinum chain and locket,’ Darby said. ‘It’s listed on the inventory