Dead Letters(104)

“Where the fuck have you been?” I demand.

“Zelda?” she says, her mouth unattractively agape.

“No, you ninny. I have no idea where Zelda is. But I think you do.” I angle her toward the stairs to the cellar. “Go down that staircase and wait for me at the bottom,” I hiss. “I’ll be there in a second. Don’t you dare fucking go anywhere.” People are starting to look at us and murmur. I paste on a smile and head to the speaker setup, where I cue the playlist that I lifted from Zelda’s phone. It occurs to me in a moment of horror that I should have listened all the way through it, in case Zelda has embedded a surprise for all of us near the end. Too late now. I dart down the stairs into the wine cellar before anyone can offer me more condolences. Wyatt is watching me in concern.

Kayla is standing at the foot of the stairs, looking around uncertainly. She seems nervous; she’s scratching her arms and rocking back and forth.

“What the fuck is going on, Kayla?” I ask.

“Look, I really don’t know. Your sister is nuts. I mean, fabulously nuts. I was totally in love with her, but she’s gotten pretty…weird these last few months.” Kayla fidgets with her bag. “Listen, do you think I could have some of that?” She points to my wineglass. “I’m trying to get clean, but I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin.”

I hand her the last swallow in my glass and reach for another bottle. We don’t have a corkscrew handy, so I grab one of the sparkling wines; it’s what we were supposed to be drinking anyway. It fizzes spectacularly when I crack it open, too warm to gently burble as it’s meant to. Or we fucked up the fermentation process. I can’t remember if this is one of the naturally fermented French-style bottles or the variety where the carbonation gets added post-ferment. Of course, it genuinely does not matter. Stop chattering, Ava. Pull it together. Once Kayla takes a sip, she seems to calm down.

“Okay. So what’s the story?” I prod.

“I—okay, look, don’t get mad, I only did what Zelda asked. She said you’d understand.”

“Okay.” I grit my teeth.

“You know she and I were, like, together?” she asks. I nod. “Not, like, together together, just sometimes, on and off. She was just so strange and mysterious, and then we were hanging with Jason a lot, and the drugs. It was sort of, like, a mini Bohemia or whatever. Totally wild, but, like, good.” Kayla takes a deep breath. “But for, like, six months, she’s been totally bonkers. She’ll be crazy busy and excited about something, then she won’t even speak to me for two weeks. The drugs were getting kind of bad, for all of us….”

“And?”

“Listen, you have to promise you’re not going to turn me in or anything. Zelda promised you were cool.”

“I promise, Kayla.”

“We were selling a bit. Not a lot, just to, like, friends. But we were into Jason for some money, and he was getting all pushy about it. Zelda always acted like she didn’t have to worry about money, and when she showed me this place, I realized why. I mean, shit, look at it!” Kayla whistles. “But then she told me she was in debt like crazy, not just Jason, you know, and she told me everything about your mom. Anyway, she said she had to disappear for a while, and she had a plan to fix it.” Kayla accepts the bottle from me and tips a significant portion of its contents into her mouth, choking on the bubbles. Here at Silenus, we’d never quite managed to achieve the soft carbonation of a Prosecco or Champagne. Shame. Another failure. “She said I should keep quiet for a week, just to stay out of trouble, you know. Made me promise. And then she said that if everything went okay, there would be a funeral and I should come.”

“Great. And?” I press.

“Well, she gave me this, like, list? Of stuff to do, in a certain order? She said it would work best because of my job at the funeral home—I could grease the way. That’s the word she used. Grease.” She giggles. A few things fall into place with her revelation.

“The dental records? Was that you?”

“Well, not exactly. Zee said I should show you this, ’cuz you’d want to know the details. It’s a schedule that she wanted me to follow.” She pulls a rumpled piece of paper from her bag.

NOTES FOR SWEET KAY:

June 22, afternoon: Send in eulogy to newspaper using funeral home email address.

June 24, 9:15 AM: Send a text to Holly with a reminder to post the photo we talked about, and make sure she tags me in it!

June 24, afternoon, evening: Watch Ava (wear wig). When she heads to the strip club, send the text to Trent Roberts with Jason Reynolds’s whereabouts and a gentle poke, so that he’s riled.

June 25, 8:30 AM: Ring the doorbell at the house and leave the envelope labeled “Open me” on the doorstep. Watch to confirm Ava gets it, but DO NOT GET SEEN!

June 26, 8 AM: Dr. Whitcross does autopsies on Sundays, when he’s not at the practice. Be sure to deliver the dental records to the morgue before then, on Sunday morning. He may already have a copy, but we have to be sure! Be very vague if he asks why you have them, but make sure he has them when he starts the autopsy.

June 26, 9:30 PM: Drive to Two Goats and leave the letter labeled “T” taped to the windshield of Wyatt’s truck while Ava is inside—she’ll leave at 10, when the bar closes.