Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(47)

9:55 p.m. THEO: Ange?

9:57 p.m. THEO: Ange can you pick up?

9:58 p.m. PETER: I just rang as well and it went to voice mail.

10:16 p.m. SOOZ: I’m back. Can someone tell me what’s going on?

10:18 p.m. YASH: Genuinely confused about what’s happening rn 10:21 p.m. JULIAN: I’m at a dinner. Is something wrong? What’s going on? My phone keeps pinging.

10:22 p.m. THEO: Ange please ring me whenever you get off the phone.

10:24 p.m. SOOZ: Which one of you is talking to her?

10:25 p.m. YASH: Not me. Does anyone know what’s happening?

10:26 p.m. PETER: Not me

10:27 p.m. JULIAN: Is there something wrong with Ange? I need to rejoin the dinner.

10:29 p.m. THEO: Ange please ring

“It goes on,” Izzy said, “just lots of texts from everyone asking where she is. Including me.”

“What’s this about a button?” Stevie asked, scrolling down.

“I have no idea,” Izzy said.

“That’s not a phrase? An English thing?”

“No.”

Izzy was right. This didn’t seem good.

“So I thought,” David said, “that we could help? Maybe by going to her house and having a look to see if anything seemed off? That’s kind of your thing.”

He laid on a particularly charming smile. He was right. Going into other people’s spaces was Stevie’s thing. She had done it at Ellingham several times when one of their classmates was killed and another went missing. She had even done it to David himself, something he didn’t let her forget. Her proclivity for investigating spaces was both a serious thing and a joke between them. He wasn’t supposed to just talk about it like that.

Still. Probably a good idea to have a look through Angela’s house.

“Can we talk for a second?” Stevie asked Izzy. “We just have to figure out what we’re doing.”

“Of course. Of course!”

Stevie stepped off to the side with Nate, Janelle, and Vi.

“Do you think this is a thing?” Vi asked.

“I don’t know,” Stevie said. “Angela had a serious trauma. And then she said weird things on painkillers. Every story I’ve ever heard about a crime . . . every person that’s been through something that traumatic, they have theories. They try to work it out. She was high. I don’t know.”

“But now she’s gone,” Vi said.

“People freak out,” Stevie replied.

“And need help when they do,” Janelle said. “You should go and do it. We can put together the report for today.”

It was time to go through a house.





13


OUTSIDE THE SNUG LITTLE HOUSE IN ISLINGTON, DOORKNOB WAS waiting for them, meowing loudly and throwing himself against their ankles and rubbing for all he was worth. Izzy scooped him up.

“You poor thing! Look at him. Look. He’s hungry. He’s scared.”

Doorknob seemed to be neither of these. He thrust his head into Izzy’s chin and purred, then rammed his face down the front of her sweater.

Izzy produced the keys and admitted them into the house. As they stepped into the dark hallway, Stevie slipped on something and grabbed the wall. She looked down and saw that she had almost been taken down by a pile of mail, including some glossily finished flyers for Domino’s pizza.

“See?” Izzy said, extracting a local council statement from under Stevie’s shoe. “Today’s mail. And look. Her coat and bag are normally here.” Izzy indicated some empty pegs on the entryway wall.

There was a stillness—an odd quality houses get when they are left to their own devices, even for a short while. Everything appeared just as they had left it the other night. The living room was in order, with a few mug rings and leftover crumbs on the coffee table from where their tea and cookies had been.

In the kitchen, the remnants of the takeaway were still in evidence. There was the bag, the containers. There could be no question that this was the same meal: the receipt was stapled to the bag with Izzy’s name on the order. The dirty plates were in the sink, still stained with curry and with rice sticking to them. The tea mugs were sitting by the sink, and the pack of Hobnobs was on the counter, half-open.

“She left these plates,” Izzy said. “That’s not her. She wouldn’t go away and leave plates like this. She wouldn’t leave food out.”

The rest of the kitchen seemed to indicate this was true. The small table was clear, save for an ornamental striped bowl, filled with apples and oranges. Stevie opened the cabinets and looked inside at the jumble of mugs—many patterns and types, but all where they were supposed to be. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where leftover curry would be allowed to sit out for days, the plates allowed to crust over and collect flies. This was a house out of its own rhythm.

Doorknob yowled by his bowl, so Izzy got a pouch of food out of the cabinet and filled it. He began to eat at once, in noisy chomps. Maybe Izzy had been right about Doorknob. He ate with urgency. This was a cat not used to missing meals. Stevie went back through the living room, took a long look at the elaborate cat tree in the corner and cat toys that were scattered around the room. The litter box in the downstairs bathroom was overflowing and ripe.

She walked the downstairs again, testing the windows. All were closed and locked. There was a cat flap out of the kitchen window leading onto the roof of the level below, but no human was going to get through something that was only a few inches high.