Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(96)

“Yes,” Stevie said simply.

“What are you looking for?” Izzy said, unlocking the door.

“I don’t know. But I know I saw something, the thing that makes this all make sense. I just have to look at everything again until I recognize what it is.”

Left unattended, even for a few days, houses take on a strange feel. The cold accumulates in the corners. The dark settles down and pools on the furniture. Quiet leaks everywhere. The air sours. Doorknob was fine with all this. He scrabbled inside, ran up the stairs like a bat out of hell, ran down again just as fast, chasing nothing.

It struck her instantly. She’d been too preoccupied to see the obvious. She went right to the little cabinet under the stairs, which was still partway open. She turned on her phone flashlight and shoved her head into the space, digging around until she could put her hand on Doorknob’s disgusting little treasures: part of a dead mouse, a used tea bag, a dirty cotton swab, a tissue . . .

Two buttons.

She plucked them out and brought them into the light, setting them on the coffee table. One was bright pink, the other silver. And once they were on display, Stevie instantly began to dismiss them. If Angela had a critical piece of evidence in the form of a button, it seemed like she would lock it up in the secure fire safe rather than let her cat get it. Besides, these buttons were next to the fire safe.

“We think this is evidence?” Izzy said, looking down at them doubtfully. “From 1995?”

Stevie deflated a bit when she heard the tone.

“They’re buttons,” she replied. “I just wanted to see them.”

“This one,” Izzy said, pointing at the bright pink one. “I think this comes off a sweater she has. It’s this color and it buttons down the front. I can check upstairs. And this one . . .” Izzy leaned close to look at it. “It says Stella McCartney.”

Stevie drew a blank. The name sounded familiar. McCartney.

“I don’t think Stella McCartney was designing in the nineties,” Izzy said. “Let me check.”

Stevie deflated a bit further as Izzy checked her phone.

“2001,” she said. “And I think I might know what this is from because I borrowed it once.”

“I was just thinking about the button,” Stevie said, trying to seem in control of this situation. “I just wanted to check.”

“Of course!” Izzy said. Her voice was full of confidence. “Look around. I trust you. Do whatever you have to do.”

That landed strangely. Izzy trusted her. For a moment, the gravity of what she had done settled on Stevie. She had gone AWOL in another country, and now she was standing here in the half-light of a dead woman’s house, trying to work out a feeling.

She pulled off her coat and got to work.

She opened her bag and fished out her phone charger, then she walked up the stairs, touching the gray banister lightly with her fingertips, moving into the shadow at the top. She plugged her phone into the socket in the upstairs hallway, switched it to do not disturb mode, and turned on the mix of Britpop songs. She put in her earbuds and began walking around the upstairs.

She went to the bedroom first. Neat and precise Angela, cashmere sweaters folded and shoes in clear shoeboxes. Just one book on the bedside stand—a biography of Catherine Howard, bookmarked in the middle. One book at a time, not the jumble of books in process that lay splayed by Stevie’s beside. She went into the bathroom and took a moment to go through the medicine cabinet. Floss. Deodorant. Extra heads for her electric toothbrush. A tub of skin cream. Nail polish remover. A bottle of bright pink indigestion medicine, birth control pills, and cold medicine.

No sleeping pills.

In the office, she worked her way around the room, staring down the spines of the history books on the shelves. She looked at every framed photograph. There were the formal photos from Cambridge—the group shots, the graduation photographs in the strange, sleeveless dark gowns with the collars that looked like skunk fur. The framed posters from the Nine’s shows. Posters from her documentaries. Pictures of Angela with friends and family. With Izzy at different ages.

Stevie sat in the desk chair and spun. What were you thinking, Angela, when you were gathering your box of evidence? Where did you find Samantha Gravis? What made you think of her? What did you remember or see or hear? What sent you looking into the past, at an American pretending to be a Canadian, who hooked up with two of your friends and then fell into a river and died . . .

Just like you.

Who likes rivers, Angela? Who kills with waterways and an axe?

There was something in that. The contrast. Samantha had a blow to the head and sank in the shallow waters, and Angela was full of medicine to make her sleepy. She wouldn’t have suffered. But Rosie and Noel? They suffered.

“Talk to me,” she said to the light fixture on the ceiling. “What did you know? Who called you? What did I see here that doesn’t make sense?”

Doorknob poked his head into the room. He rubbed his big orange body on the doorframe and purred loudly. He walked up to Stevie and rammed his head into her shins as a greeting. He allowed her to pick him up, going happily limp in her arms.

“What the hell am I missing, Doorknob?” she asked.

Doorknob circled her lap and coiled up into a resting position. She stroked him absently. She spun toward the desk and grabbed a pen to write a list.