White Rabbit(13)
“April—”
“They left me here to take the blame for something I didn’t do!” My half sister’s pitch begins to rise, her cheeks becoming blotchy. “This isn’t like getting caught drinking with your loser friends, Rufus,” she fires at me stingingly, a weapon tailored to fit my dubious record. “I could go to fucking jail! Actual fucking jail!”
“And if I do what you’re asking me to, I could go to fucking jail,” I shoot back, my vision starting to shimmer as my anger soars above and beyond the call of duty. “Even if you throw out your bathing suit—even if we wipe your prints off the knife and every other damn thing in this place—Fox’s parents are still going to find him dead in the kitchen, the cops are still going to find a metric shit-ton of drugs in the dining room, and all your friends are still going to say that the last time they saw your boyfriend alive, he was alone in the house with you.” I guzzle air into my lungs, having ranted all that in a single breath. “Don’t you get it, April? You can’t cover this up, and if you try, it’s only going to look worse!”
She goes quiet again, her lips clamping into a narrow line, and we glower at each other for a long moment. I know her better than she thinks; I can see the wheels turning behind her lucid, blue eyes. Most of the people in her life are susceptible to her manipulations because they want to please her, but her tears and tantrums won’t work on me. She’s actively calculating my weaknesses, looking for another access point.
“Okay, you’re right,” she finally says. “I guess I wasn’t thinking. But you can’t just call the cops, Rufus. Dad—our dad—will kill me. You know he will.”
This is also debatable. Peter’s rages are infamous—and I would know, having both suffered and inherited them—but he and Isabel treat April with the care and handling of a holy relic. The man would lose his shit if his daughter became implicated in a murder, but it’s hard to picture him actually taking it out on her. However, the fact of the matter is that I really have no idea what goes on behind closed doors in the Covington household.
“So what exactly are you suggesting?” I ask warily.
“I know about your mom’s phone call today,” she reveals, having found her access point at last, and I feel a metaphorical trapdoor swing open under my feet. “I know you guys need money, and I’m willing to pay you—”
“I’m not taking money to help you cover up a murder,” I declare hotly, thrown off-center by how humiliatingly accurate her read on me is.
“Not for that,” she insists, leaning forward, the tendons in her hands standing out in high relief as she grips the coverlet. “You’re smart, Rufus—everybody knows it. Remember when we were in that summer reading group thing, and you solved all those little mysteries or whatever? Maybe you can figure out what happened tonight!”
“April, I was eleven,” I splutter, appalled, “and they were just a bunch of dumb riddles with the answers already built in!” The “summer reading group thing” was an activity sponsored by the public library, a way for parents to ditch their kids for a couple hours a day and feel good about it. A condescendingly perky volunteer read us a bunch of two-page mystery stories—tales of theft and people being bonked over the head—where finding the solution was as easy as identifying simple inconsistencies woven into the narrative. A man claims he was getting the mail when his neighbor was robbed, for instance, only this supposedly happened on a Sunday, when there is no mail delivery. It was kid stuff, and I only succeeded where the others failed because the others didn’t try. “This is real life—this is a real fucking murder—and I wouldn’t even know where to start! Even if I could figure it out, we’d have to go to the police anyway.”
“I know,” she whispers defenselessly, her chin wobbling. “But just … please, Rufus. Please. I don’t mean you need to catch whoever did it, but I need help. Really, really bad.” Tears splash down her cheeks, and I suddenly realize how authentic her fear is. “All I want you to do is talk to the people who were at the party and see what they say. Maybe you’ll be able to tell if one of them is lying, you know? Maybe somebody will, like, give themselves away? And then we can go to the police and tell them what we know. Everything. That’s all I’m asking.”
I sigh, a headache beginning to beat at my temples like a blacksmith pounding out a horseshoe. “April—”
“I’ve got two thousand dollars, in cash, and I’ll pay you all of it if you help me figure out who really killed Fox.” She cuts me off decisively, and my jaw lands in my lap. “Two grand, Rufus—no questions asked—if you agree to go talk to everyone. Just talk. And then, no matter what, we go to the police. Okay?”
I can see in her eyes that going to the police scares her beyond measure; I can also see that she’s dead serious about that two grand. I know it would be lunacy to agree—and my permanent record doesn’t really have the cushion to absorb a lot of cataclysmically bad life choices—but she’s nailed my Achilles’ heel on her first try. Even as I tell myself I need to say no, I’m mentally reviewing the reasons to justify saying yes.
My eyes fall to the clock on the Whitneys’ bedside table, bright red digits reminding me of our limited time. “When are Fox’s parents due back from New York?”