She had quietly arranged to restore the stained dress after the evidence photographs were taken.

“I thought you might want it back,” she said.

“Or perhaps you want to burn it.

I wasn’t sure.”

I laughed despite myself.

“Neither, I think.”

Leila had been at Calder Meridian for six years.

She told me she had once considered leaving because executives treated assistants as extensions of their own moods rather than as skilled professionals.