2 Sisters Detective Agency(65)

“What? Why?”

“Because Sean and Penny Hanley are dead,” Baby said. She turned her phone toward me. I saw a car crushed against a tree, the hood streaked with blood. “Only Ashton and Vera are left.”





Chapter 87



Vera walked up the cobblestone driveway, smoothing her curls back and smiling her best girl-next-door smile again. Jacob Kanular’s house seemed smaller in the daylight. The dark hours stretched things, created long shadows and yawning spaces in closets and at the ends of halls that frightened little children. Vera wondered if Jacob’s daughter had been scared of the dark. If she ever would be again.

It was the wife’s social media profile that had given Vera everything she needed. Jacob was a dark vacant space online—a stray elbow visible in the corner of a selfie Neina had taken with their grinning daughter, Beatrice, or a reflected outline in a window beside the slender woman as she snapped a sunrise. Neina, whose sculpture page on Instagram had tens of thousands of followers, had posted a brief note about Beaty’s condition the day after Vera and her crew invaded the house.

Pray for us. Beaty in hospital after severe asthma attack. All shipments/commissions postponed until further notice.



An earlier Instagram post about participating in an upcoming exhibition at the Palos Verdes Art Center had given Vera the ruse she needed to get through the gates. She tucked her clipboard under her arm and went to the huge front double doors of the house, the same doors she had run through with her crew only a few nights before. She tried to look eager when Neina opened the door and a little surprised at her bedraggled, exhausted appearance.

“Annabelle Cetes.” Vera put out a hand.

“Is this going to take long?” Neina asked. “I’m really busy here.”

“I just need a couple of snaps of the pieces you planned to exhibit for the program and the online marketing scheme.” Vera brandished the little camera hanging around her neck.

“This was too awkward to try to explain through the intercom.” Neina leaned in the doorway, sighed. “But the pieces I put together for the exhibition were destroyed. There was a…an accident here at the house. I won’t be participating in the exhibit. I explained all this to—”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Vera gushed. She pulled out the clipboard and flipped the pages on it. “This is so weird. You’re still on my list. I should have been told about this. God, how embarrassing. I’m so sorry.”

Vera squinted in the sunlight, wiped invisible sweat from her temple.

Take the hint, lady, she thought. But the killer’s wife didn’t budge from the doorway.

“Hoo!” Vera said. “A real hot one today, isn’t it?”

“Was there anything else?” Neina asked.

“Do you think I could come in for a moment and make a call back to the office, see what’s going on? It’s so hot out here.”

Neina looked back into the house. Vera smiled sweetly again. She knew Jacob wasn’t home. In case he was following her, Vera had driven through a series of parking lots and alleyways in Culver City before heading to the Kanulars’ address. She’d then texted Sean, saying she was going to meet with Ashton at Soho House, in case he had her dead friend’s phone. She’d even sent her phone to the restaurant by courier in case Jacob was tracking her device. She’d watched the Kanular house from the hillside for half an hour for any sign of him before approaching but had only seen Neina through the huge windows facing the sea, rattling around the house and gathering her things.

It seemed now that the woman was reluctant to be alone in the big house with a stranger. Vera concentrated, positively beamed innocence and genuine warmth while fanning her cheeks in the oppressive California heat.

Don’t let me drop dead of heatstroke on your doorstep, bitch, she thought. You already have one fragile little girl in a coma to worry about.

“Can’t you—” Neina began.

“I’ll only be a moment,” Vera said.

She stepped back reluctantly as Vera followed into the huge foyer.





Chapter 88



The Kanular house had been cleaned since the Midnight Crew’s rampage. The only indications left of their presence were the strangely bare shelves, where books or sculptures had stood, and the smell of fresh paint in the air.

Vera followed Neina into the big living room, looking at the back of the woman’s skull, thinking about the shape of it beneath her chopped dark hair, the delicious force it would take to crack it. There was a suitcase spread open on the couch, another clipped closed and standing ready in the hall leading to the bedrooms. Neina was leaving. Vera guessed a husband running around enacting his grisly revenge on a bunch of teenagers when he should have been sitting beside their dying child would put a strain on any marriage. That’s assuming Neina knew what was going on. How smart was she?

Vera watched the woman carefully as she settled on the arm of the couch. She made a show of playing with her phone. Made a fake call and huffed as it wasn’t answered.

“Do you think I could trouble you for a glass of water?” she asked.

Neina seemed to stifle a sigh but went to the kitchen. Vera followed. When Neina took a glass from the cupboard and then to the sink, Vera let her hand wander across the counter toward the knife block.