Madison walked over to Marissa’s bag and was about to grab her phone from inside, but the officer stopped her. ‘Unfortunately, we’re going to need that bag as evidence.’
‘But she has all our phones,’ Madison managed to say after a beat.
‘Don’t worry. You’ll get them back soon.’
There were murmurs in the hallway. Aerin stepped out of the bathroom and looked over the railing. Downstairs, the Easter Bunny party guests stood agape, watching as Marissa, dress wrinkled and hair mussed, was led by three police officers to a waiting cruiser in the front drive. Someone had thought to turn the music off, but it had been supplanted by whispers. A news team had arrived already, and a cameraman started panning the mayhem. Kids had spilled from the guesthouse, looking disheveled and drugged. Elena Fairfield, who was in Aerin’s grade, grinned at the camera, posing this way and that in her Easter Bunny ears, but then Mr. Fairfield swooped in and draped his blazer over her skimpy dress.
Aerin’s legs were still wobbly as she started down the staircase and across the ballroom. Everyone was staring at her, including all her friends, but she barely registered their looks and definitely didn’t hear their words. Marissa, rang a refrain in her head. Marissa. Her imagination was going crazy. She saw Marissa finding Helena, attacking her, murdering her there in the apartment. And then stuffing Helena’s body in a garment bag and dragging it into a service elevator. Burying her in that park, then cleaning the mud off her boots with bottles of Evian.
And then … just living the rest of her life. Hosting parties, buying yachts. Ordering a custom trinket from her jeweler. Enjoying her child, because Heath was still alive, unlike Helena. Enjoying her husband, as much as she could while knowing he was a cheating, child-molesting bastard, all because she was too fucked up to tell the truth.
Her stomach heaved, and she dug her nails into her palms, waiting for the feeling to pass. The last thing she wanted was to puke all over the Morgenthaus’ floor. She glanced over her shoulder for the others. Seneca and Madison were huddled near the stairs, pale-faced. Maddox was already outside near the squad cars. She couldn’t find Brett anywhere.
There was a bleating sound, and Aerin’s parents cut through the crowd and threw their arms around Aerin tightly. ‘I was so worried.’ Aerin’s mother pulled back and looked at Aerin in horror, then over her shoulder at the where the cops were shoving Marissa inside a car. Her diamonds glinted in the whirling lights. She had to pick up the ends of her gown so they didn’t get caught in the door. Once settled, she crossed her ankles, showing off her Jimmy Choo stilettos.
A strange, mournful look came over her dad’s features, and Aerin felt so adrift that she laid her head on his shoulder, too tired to care that it had been years since she’d hugged her father. After a moment, she gave her mom a turn, burrowing into her chest. Before she knew what she was doing, she pressed her thumb into the center of her mom’s palm. It was their old handshake, back when they were close: a thumb to the palm, then to the back of the hand. To her surprise, she felt her mom’s palm wrap tightly around hers. Then came the three squeezes, as decipherable as a skip code. I’ve. Got. You.
They stood like that for a while, letting the crowd and the news cameras and the police stream around them. Then someone else cleared his throat, and Aerin looked over. Thomas stood off to the left.
‘H-hey,’ Aerin stammered, straightening up.
There was a long beat where they just stared at one another. Her mother let go of her hand and nudged her toward him. Aerin walked a few paces, feeling shaky on her legs. ‘I was pretty sure no one was going to come for us,’ she murmured.
Thomas shrugged. ‘A 9-1-1 call came in of this guy whispering he was at the Easter Bunny party. The call didn’t hang up, though, so the dispatcher was able to listen in as Marissa threatened you guys.’ He smiled. ‘We were able to record a lot of her confession.’ The phone had been inside Marissa’s handbag, after all – it picked up her voice quite well.
Aerin glanced out of the window to the driveway. ‘Are you going to have to go back to the station tonight?’
‘Yeah. It’s gonna be a long one – interrogations, booking paperwork – and you might need to be interviewed, too, though you won’t be charged with anything. I promise.’ He winked.
Then he moved closer and cleared his throat. ‘And I understand,’ he said in a lower voice. ‘About … you know. The password. I shouldn’t have given you a hard time at the station. I would have done it, too, if it was my sister, Aerin. I would have done the same thing.’
He was looking at her so intently. Aerin’s heart swelled, and she swallowed, hard. ‘Oh,’ she whispered. ‘Well, thank you.’ And then she threw her arms around his neck for a hug. She longed to kiss him, too, but this probably wasn’t the right moment. She had a feeling, though, that there would be more opportunities. Maybe a lot of them.
She could only hope.
CHAPTER 37
The next morning, Seneca stood on the southbound Metro-North platform and stared down the tracks. The train was late by twenty minutes, and the platform was clogged with waiting passengers. I promise I’m at the station, she texted her dad – her phone, thank God, had been returned to her first thing that morning. Coming home soon.
She’d cracked and told him that she’d been at a party last night where a murderer had been arrested and that she’d needed to stay behind to be questioned. Her father had wanted to drive to Connecticut as soon as he’d heard, but she’d assured him that she was fine and would be on the first train in the morning.
She didn’t want to leave, but she owed her father a talk. And maybe, if he let her, she would come back to Dexby soon. Aerin had already offered Seneca her bedroom. Mrs. Kelly, whom Seneca had talked to for a long time last night at the police station, had said Seneca could come stay for the summer if she wanted.
Next to her, Aerin and Madison, who’d come to see her off, were peering at an online Connecticut society gossip page, which had posted pictures of last night’s Easter Bunny party. ‘Oh my God, Amanda looks horrible,’ Aerin murmured, pointing to a dazed-looking girl in a dirty white dress. ‘And what’s wrong with Cooper’s eyes?’
‘He looks stoned,’ Madison said wisely.
Then Seneca cast a tight smile toward Maddox, who was sitting on a bench a few paces away, checking his phone. ‘You can go if you want,’ she said tightly.
Maddox stood. ‘No way.’
She shrugged and turned toward the tracks, but she could feel his gaze on her. He probably thought she was going to let the thing with Catherine drop just because they’d had a major victory last night, but she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. So maybe Maddox looked especially handsome today in a hunter-green polo. So maybe she’d remembered a dirty joke he’d told her at the carnival about badgers and started laughing this morning in the shower. So maybe he’d written her a long email saying that he’d canceled future training sessions with Catherine and told her never to contact him again. He also said that according to the coach at Oregon, his scholarship was still intact, but he wasn’t sure if he was going to take it. It didn’t seem worth it anymore. The only thing that did seem worth it was Seneca.
So maybe that was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her. But it still didn’t matter. The door that had cracked open inside Seneca was now sealed. They could be friends again, maybe, but nothing more.
‘Well, I’d say this trip was a resounding success,’ she said crisply, holding up her phone. A Google Alert had just come in for Marissa; this one was a dazzling recap of Marissa’s arrest on CNN. Thanks to the 9-1-1 dispatcher recording Marissa’s confession, the police were able to hold Marissa without bail. For the time being, the two Ingrams were in jail together, though most were saying that Skip would be released on bail later today based on the reasonable doubt Marissa’s story had created that he’d actually killed her.
Last night, Seneca and the others had separately given statements saying that with Aerin??
?s help and from hacking into an app Helena used before she died, they’d figured out that Marissa might have been aware of Skip and Helena’s affair. The cops weren’t charging the group with withholding evidence. In fact, they seemed quite impressed with their sleuthing. The Dexby chief had even jokingly asked if they’d like to solve other mysteries around town, though Seneca was pretty sure he hadn’t been serious.
And best of all, Seneca and the others had gotten credit for their work. Research by a group of three local teens and one girl from Maryland was key in leading to Mrs. Ingram’s arrest. The reporter had messed up on how many of them had been in their group, and he hadn’t given any names, but Case Not Closed had been mentioned, which meant they’d get props from everyone on the boards.
Aerin crowded around Seneca’s phone, and the two of them gazed at Helena’s picture in the article. ‘That’s a good one.’ Helena stood outside the local Scoops of Dexby, wearing the brown fedora, a fringe vest, and wide-leg pants. There was something about the light at her back and the angle of the camera that made her face look older, her hair especially blonde.
Seneca peered at Aerin, noting the circles under her eyes, the languidness in her movements. She hadn’t slept last night, Seneca bet. Aerin might have the truth about Helena now, but at a cost: it was eating at her, the reality perhaps worse than she’d ever imagined. How many millions of sleepless nights had Seneca had, after all, reliving seeing her mother on that slab? How many ways had she woken herself from a nightmare of seeing her mother being murdered? Was Aerin picturing Helena perishing on that polished wood floor? Wondering what her last words and thoughts were? Wondering if she’d suffered? Seneca wished she had some words of wisdom for her, or that she could offer some assurance that in time, those questions would fade. But that was the problem: they hadn’t, for her. Maybe they never would.
A gust of wind picked up, shaking the trees and lifting the ends of Madison’s pink scarf. A line in the new article caught her eye: Mrs. Ingram asserts that she had nothing to do with Ms. Kelly’s death, only coming upon her lifeless body after she’d been murdered. She pointed it out for the others. ‘I’m still stuck on that. If Marissa didn’t do it, that means Skip did. So what were his messages on Under Wraps about?’
‘Marissa’s lying,’ Maddox said, his voice full of certainty.
Seneca chewed on her thumbnail. It was just that Marissa had come up with the lie so handily last night. She hadn’t shown any of the telltale signs that she was making anything up. Then again, maybe she should follow Brett’s advice: they got their guy. She should stop worrying.
Then she peered down the platform toward the stairs. ‘Anyone know where Brett is? I texted him that I was leaving today. I figured he’d be here by now.’
Aerin shook her head. ‘I haven’t seen him since last night.’
‘He didn’t ride to the police station with me,’ Maddox said. ‘I waited and waited, but he didn’t show.’
‘Did he talk to the cops?’ Seneca asked. ‘I didn’t see him at the station.’
‘I’m sure he did,’ Aerin said.
Seneca pushed her hands into her pockets. Across the street, a bunch of cars pulled out of the Restful Inn. ‘It’s crazy how sketchy I thought Brett was,’ she said, recalling that first train ride. ‘Goes to show, first impressions aren’t always right.’ Then she thought about her conversation with Brett at the tennis courts the night before. If only she’d thought to ask about his grandmother sooner. Their conversation had been therapeutic for her, too.
Then a tooth in the intricate clockwork in her mind caught. Something about last night hadn’t sat right with her, and now she realized what it was. She turned to Maddox. ‘Why did you tell Brett about this?’ She grabbed her necklace.
He squinted. ‘Huh?’
‘Brett said to me, Good thing you got that back from her. He meant my mom’s necklace. But the wording was strange – like he knew how I got it.’
Maddox blinked. ‘I would never tell someone something you told me in confidence.’
‘But there’s no other way he could have found out.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Aerin asked.
Seneca couldn’t answer. A slithery feeling washed over her body. She switched over to the phone function and dialed Brett’s number. She would just ask him, no big deal. The phone rang once, and then a recorded message blared through the earpiece: The number you are trying to call has been disconnected.
She stared at her phone as though it had transformed into a snake. Madison touched Seneca’s arm. ‘You have the weirdest look on your face.’
‘What’s going on?’ Aerin said again.
Seneca sank to a bench. She was light-headed. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’
But it didn’t feel like nothing. There was no way the thing about her mom’s necklace could be public knowledge, even for people who had insider info. The coroner hadn’t yet taken pictures of Seneca’s mom when Seneca stole that necklace off her. As far as she knew, the detective on the case hadn’t made a note of her mother wearing it, either – the necklace had been tucked under Collette’s T-shirt, the chain and pendant hidden.
She hadn’t told her dad. She hadn’t told another friend. The only way someone could have known her mom was wearing that necklace when she died would have been if …
Seneca had a horrible, outlandish thought. No, she told herself. Absolutely not. She was being insane.
But maybe she should check.
She typed in a search for Vera Grady on her phone. A Wikipedia page came up featuring a picture of the heiress with her platinum-blonde hair and furs. The woman wasn’t so old – maybe only fifty or so. And a sexy fifty, with a taut, thin figure. Seneca then clicked to the picture of Helena from the CNN article she’d just looked at. A sick feeling welled in her stomach. She had the same white-blonde hair. So did Seneca’s mom, actually. Seneca had never made the connection before. Then again, why would she have?
All sound fell away. Seneca stared at the group, the tips of her fingers prickling. ‘Um, how did Brett know how to override the security system at the Dakota?’
Maddox shrugged. ‘He said his family had the same one.’
‘Doesn’t that seem convenient?’
He looked at her crazily. ‘Huh?’
Seneca’s mind couldn’t stop. ‘And when we were interrogating Kevin, Brett mentioned a secret boyfriend stealing Helena away from Kevin and wining and dining her at his Upper West Side pad. But that’s before we knew about the Dakota.’
Aerin wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m not following you.’
‘Me neither,’ Maddox said.
More and more ugly bubbles rose to the surface. ‘And the call, from Loren, at the hospital. His number was unlisted, but Loren’s cell phone had come up on caller ID. And Brett answered it – he was the only one who spoke. How do we know Loren called at all? And why did Brett keep pushing us to go to New York? Why did Brett, out of nowhere, bring up the paper crane to me in a text when I was leaving? Why was he the one who opened the closet where Helena’s hat was? Why isn’t he here?’
Madison blinked hard. ‘Where are you going with this?’
Maddox started to pace. ‘Brett’s one of the best amateur detectives on Case Not Closed. Maybe he’s half-psychic – that’s how he knew about the apartment on the Upper West Side.’
‘Half-psychic?’ Seneca cried.
‘And as far as Loren, of course he called that day,’ Maddox continued. ‘I mean, what are you saying, Brett blocked his number and dialed Helena’s old phone and had a conversation with no one? That he already knew Skip Ingram had a place at the Dakota in advance?’
‘I don’t know,’ Seneca said dazedly. Her throat felt wrapped in duct tape.
‘Brett has access. He’s Vera Grady’s grandson. He could buy out the CIA if he wanted.’
But Seneca wasn’t sure about even that anymore. She looked again at the Vera Grady page. The site also included a family tree, complete with pictures. Sur
e enough, there was a grandson named Brett Grady. Only …
Seneca pressed the phone closer to her face, trying to make sense of the tiny image. Brett Grady had a beaky nose and dark hair. His eyes were wide-set, and he had prominent cheekbones. He had the doughy paleness of someone who never worked out. The page said that he lived in Cupertino, California, and worked for Apple.
‘I’m confused,’ Madison said, seeing it, too.
‘Um …’ Seneca passed the phone to Maddox and Aerin. They read slowly. Color drained from Aerin’s face. Maddox just looked angry.
‘This has to be a mistake,’ Maddox said. ‘Wikipedia is wrong a lot, right?’
But he didn’t sound so sure.
Seneca stared down the platform, a screaming sound rushing through her ears. How had she let this slip past her? How did Brett know so much? And who was he? She pictured him now, his broad, average face and squinty eyes, that sandy hair, those broad pecs and strong biceps …
Her brain clicked through the details of Helena’s case as well as her mom’s. Then she looked up, a new chill running down her spine. ‘Oh my God. Aerin. Your sister’s bones showed very aggressive blunt-force trauma, right?’
Aerin blinked at her. ‘Yeah …’
‘Meaning someone very, very strong beat her before she died, right?’ Her voice shook. ‘Someone much, much stronger than Marissa. I mean, she could barely hold you still at the party, with that piece of glass.’
‘Okay, so then it was Mr. Ingram who killed her?’ Aerin asked slowly.
Seneca shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I’m thinking that maybe … maybe it was a serial killer thing.’
‘Wait, what?’ Madison squeaked.
‘Seneca, what do you mean?’ Maddox looked horrified.
Seneca felt a lump in her throat. ‘Helena’s pelvic bones were beaten the worst, weren’t they?’
A terrified look crossed Aerin’s features. ‘H-how did you …?’
Seneca understood Aerin’s shock – that detail wasn’t in the news. The reporters said some of Helena’s bones showed very violent trauma, but they didn’t reveal which bones. There was something perhaps too cruel and perverse about discussing a seventeen-year-old’s pelvic region, the cradle of all her blossoming reproductive organs, the knobby bones that constructed her hips and butt, with the public. Seneca knew the truth, however, because she’d illegally procured a coroner’s report a few years back, paying money on a questionable website to get it. At the time, her eyes had skimmed over the words multiple fractures to the coccyx, sacrum, pubis, ischium, the pelvic bones’ scientific terms, without thinking much of it. But maybe there was a hideous connection. A serial killer’s calling card.