People Like Us(73)
“What? Like I would waste my one phone call on you. I’m out, obviously. I’m calling to warn you.”
“About what? So, wait, you’re in the clear?”
“Apparently, for now. They held me overnight and asked a shitload of questions. They wanted to know about fragments of a broken bottle they found by the lake. They think they have the murder weapon.”
My blood runs cold. “What kind of bottle?”
“Some kind of wine bottle. They’re running a DNA test, but it takes a couple of days and it’s probably been contaminated by now. You may have twenty-four, forty-eight hours. Depends on how contaminated.”
“Shit. Why did they arrest you?”
“They found something of mine in the lake, too. A bottle with a label they traced back to my father’s credit card. Problem is, no fingerprints, no traces of blood. I don’t even drink. I think someone was trying to frame me, and I think the police may have finally, definitively excluded me.”
“So why are you warning me?”
“Because I saw the evidence board, and you are on it. With only one other person. Spencer Morrow.”
I grit my teeth. “That blows your Brie theory.”
“I’ve been wrong before. Kay, stay away from him. And get a lawyer. And when they ask you about—” As my train approaches, his words are drowned out.
Shit.
* * *
? ? ?
I MAKE A LIST of everything I know so far on the train ride back to Bates.
The location of the body, and the time we found it.
Estimated time of death, time and content of the conversation between Jessica and Greg.
Description of the body:
The marks on the wrists, position of the body.
Full clothes, eyes and mouth open.
Wristband from the dance, in costume.
Relationships: Greg, Spencer, family, teachers, unknown volunteers, community members.
I sigh. If the police have access to all of these people and are still only focusing on Spencer and me, that’s not good.
The revenge blog
Connected people: Tai, Tricia, Nola, Cori, Maddy, me.
I pause, and then add Hunter.
By the time I switch to the westbound train, my notebook is a spiderweb of information. I am about to nod off into my hand when someone stops in the aisle next to me and places a Hershey’s Kiss on my pad. I look up to see Brie gazing down at me nervously.
“Hi,” I say doubtfully.
“Everyone missed you,” she says.
“That’s it?”
“And I’m sorry. For everything. Things have gotten really out of hand.”
“How did you find me?”
“Called your mom.”
“Did she tell you to go back to school, switch trains, and travel away from civilization for a couple of hours?”
“She gave me your train number and departure time. I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to see you.” She pauses. “I like your hair. You look like that soccer pro everyone hates.”
“They hate her because she’s the greatest.”
She smiles a little and sits in the seat next to me. “I know. I’m really sorry, Kay.” She sheds her coat and snow-colored scarf and smooths her dress, soft gray wool with a white collar. “I shouldn’t have recorded you—I should have just talked to you. But I’m allowed to have my doubts. Doubt is the cornerstone of faith.”
I try not to smile, not because there’s anything funny about any of this, but because that statement is so essentially Brie. “How profound,” I say, in mock awe.
“It’s true. Blind faith is meaningless. And it doesn’t last.” I give her a pointed look, and she slides a folded piece of paper on top of my notebook. “I do still have faith in you. Don’t open that yet.”
“I thought you were ‘so done’ with me.”
“You’ve hurt me, Kay,” she says sharply. “What you wrote on my door was just the last straw. You’ve done some shitty things in the past and I’ve looked the other way because that’s what we do. Tai says shitty things. Tricia. Cori. I don’t like it, but I like you. So I suck it up. But I’ve spent a lot of time pretending to laugh with you guys over the past few years. And that’s on me, I chose that. I chose you.”
“You chose Justine.”
“I love you both. But she’s the one I’m with. And you’ve changed. You stopped returning my calls and started hanging out with Nola Kent all the time. And after Maddy died, I thought about it. The scratches on your arms. The window of time when you disappeared. The Spencer thing. When you add all those things up. Maddy and Hunter—Detective Morgan told me she found you dumping his body in the lake. Is that true?”
I open my mouth to deny it but I’m determined not to lie anymore. Not to Brie. “It’s extremely complicated.”
“I bet I can guess.” She sighs and lays her head on my shoulder. “Then you show up in my room accusing me of making Spencer cheat on you or something and talking about a revenge website that didn’t exist. You just stopped making sense at some point.”
I think about it for a minute. “First of all, the website did exist. It was taken down. As for you setting up Spencer with Jessica, there’s been either a lot of hacking into cell phones or a lot of lying about hacking into cell phones lately.”