Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 819(@200wpm)___ 655(@250wpm)___ 546(@300wpm)
“No,” he repeated, his gaze shifting away. “The monster you’re looking for is out there.”
Nodding, I stood up, breaking free of his grasp. “Thank you, Reynard. For being straight with me, and for saying so many nice things about me and my family—even though we’ve got to be the weirdest band of freaks you’ve ever come across.”
He chuckled. “Not at all.”
I moved to the door and pushed it open. “If you don’t mind, I’d like a minute alone. I just need to process everything.”
“Of course, of course. I understand.”
I held my smile until I shut and locked the door behind him. Reaching into my pocket, I took out my phone and held the recorder to my lips. “A guilty person never misses a chance to throw suspicion on someone else. Anyone else. And Reynard was doing so good until he got to the end and not-so-subtly put Micah in the frame.
“But why?”
I crossed to the window, looking out over the dead and dying garden. “If he was really an hour away with his buddies, why did Rhodes say he saw him in the garden that night? Was Rhodes mistaken, or did he slip away and come back here just to pick up a new bad habit beneath the room where my mother was being murdered?
“And what about Micah?” I rasped. “Why in the flip flipping fuck did he think my mother stole from his? What could’ve possibly given him that idea? Because that’s definitely the kind of grudge that sticks around. Ten years later, and I’m still plenty angry at the bitch who tricked and schemed to steal my college and trust fund from me.
“But,” I continued—my mind twisting itself into shape. “How do I approach this with him? If Reynard heard us fight about it, then it’s something Sue is already supposed to know about. I can’t act like he hid it from me because I’m already supposed to know. Is there even a way to approach this with him without giving away that I’m not Sue?”
My phone had no answers for me, naturally.
“All right, I’m putting that aside for right now and focusing on where things stand,” I said. “There were ten people who left the party and went upstairs during the time window. I’m going to exclude Pixie, Chic Ghost, and Button Nose. They lived their whole lives in New York, and Omma lived in Lantana. They had no reason to hurt her. No doubt they were upstairs snooping around like the nosy, catty frenemies they are.
“That leaves seven,” I continued. “Courtney, Charles Layton, Nicolas Stevens, Christie Baudelaire, Rhodes Newbury, Micah Spencer, and Alexander Montgomery.” My throat closed tighter and tighter until the final name was nothing but a strangled whisper. “Rhodes was upstairs on the third floor. Alex told me in the car that he left his phone in his bedroom, and went up to call his aunt and check on Lily.
“Christie cleared a cool seven figures that night, so what in the hell would she have been in a rage about? She had zero reason to pop upstairs and murder my mother. And if she did, she’s the best actress in the world, because all that screaming, crying, and vomiting after we saw Omma looked pretty real to me.
“But,” I forced out. “The fact is I don’t really know Christie, and I haven’t been the one she’s been dealing with all these months that her and Sue were planning the party. Maybe something did happen between her and Omma, and she settled the score that night.
“Then there’s Charles Layton. Why did he go upstairs that night? That’s the first thing I need to ask him when he comes over for Lily’s piano lesson tomorrow,” I said. “It’s not going to be as easy to corner Mr. Stevens, but if the cop that clocked Courtney going upstairs had seen her going up and then back down with Stevens by her side, wouldn’t they have hauled them both in?
“They didn’t, so Stevens went upstairs by himself. Why?” I asked. “Why?”
I dropped my hands to my side, shutting off the recorder.
Scoffing, I spun away from the bright, sunny morning—seething with hate. “I want to talk about how lonely and isolated Omma has become? Well, look at me. Talking to myself in an empty room, surrounded by murder suspects who think I’m someone else, all while my best friend sat in a jail cell. It’s me who has no one and nothing real.
“It’s me who’s all alone.”
If I thought someone would stick their head in right then to tell me I was wrong... no one came.
“THAT’S RIGHT, LILY. Now C, C, D. C, C, D. One smooth motion.”
Lily’s banging was far from smooth, but I had to admit she sounded better than she did the week before.
I stood in the doorway holding a tray of lemonade and cookies while Alex read in his armchair in the corner, and Lily and Layton practiced.