Whitaker, I'm sure you understand that this particular drawing represented significant proprietary. I don't have your drawing, Martha said. I have never had your drawing and I think you know that. She held his gaze without flinching. What you have told this deputy and what you told your writer before him and what you have been telling anyone who will listen for the month is a version of events designed to discredit me before I can tell my version.
Which is why I'd like Deputy Hol to read what I wrote in this ledger with a date at the top. The night of the 22nd. She held out the ledger. Hol took it. He read, "The yard was very quiet while he read.
Martha could hear the horses. She could hear the wind moving through the pine trees beyond the fence. She could hear Crane breathing slightly faster than he had been." Holt looked up from the ledger. He looked at Silas. This your signature at the bottom, Mr.
Boon? It is. Silas said he had signed it the morning after she wrote it at her request as a witness to the events of that day. He'd done it without asking why she needed it, which she had appreciated enormously. The handkerchief mentioned here, Holt said.
You still have it inside. Silas said he went inside. Crane looked at Martha. You're a clever woman, he said quietly. The way he said things when the deputy was occupied elsewhere.
The town voice was gone. This was the other voice, the flat private one she remembered from the day he'd fired her. "You've always been clever, but clever doesn't protect you from what's coming." "What is coming, Mr. Crane?" She said equally quietly. "Questions," he said, "About that drawing, about where it came from.
About who might have put it somewhere to find the drawing that isn't in my chest, she said. Isn't it? He said the two words landed like a stone. Martha looked at him. You would do that, she said.
Not a question. I'm a businessman, Mrs. Whitaker. I protect my interests. Your interests include keeping a dead man blamed for your negligence, she said.