You Owe Me a Murder(25)

My brain scrambled back to the day before, trying to slow down the events and see them freshly with this new information. Maybe he blamed me for the breakup. If Miriam had heard about what had happened between us, she might have taken my side. He would have hated that; he liked to see himself as a hero. He had a way of making sure unpleasant things weren’t considered his fault. I pinched the inside of my arm, cutting off that uncharitable thought.

“Hard to know what’s in a teen boy’s head,” DI Fogg said.

The female detective laughed. “Hard to know what’s in a grown man’s mind, for that matter.”

The two of them smiled slightly and I had the sense they worked well together. Like an old married couple who finished each other’s sentences and laughed at jokes they’d already heard a million times.

“Fair enough,” DI Fogg said before turning back to me. “Is there anything else you can think of to tell us?”

If I was going to mention Nicki, now would be the time. This is likely nothing, but I feel I should tell you I contracted for Connor’s murder just a few days ago—?but it was all a joke. Ha ha ha.

There was no way I could say that. It would make me sound crazy. Or guilty. Or both.

“Kim?”

I jerked and realized that Tasha was talking to me.

“Sorry. I can’t think of anything else.”

Tasha squeezed my hand. “Okay, you’re outta here. Go take a walk in the park or something. It’ll do you all good to get some fresh air. Enjoy your theater tickets tonight. It’ll be a chance to get your mind off things. You and Alex earned them.”

I nodded my agreement and slid off the chair. I’d forgotten about the play.

“If you do think of anything, you just let us know.” DI Sharma held out a business card.

I didn’t want to take it, but I did anyway. The thought that Nicki had pushed Connor was ridiculous and illogical. He either tripped or was way more upset about the breakup than he’d let on. There was no way she’d done this. She couldn’t have.

As soon as the library door clicked shut behind me, I bolted up the stairs, my feet sliding on the worn carpet. The door to Miriam’s room was wide open. The bed was stripped, the sheets in a ball at the foot of the bare mattress. The hooks were empty of Miriam’s things.

“She left,” Jazmin’s voice said. I spun and saw Jazmin leaning against her own open door. “Her parents came and picked her up.”

I blinked. “She’s gone?”

Jazmin looked at me as if I were slow. “That’s what I just said. Her parents took her to some hotel around here. I guess the police don’t want her to leave the country until they figure out what happened. Her dad was seriously pissed the cops talked to her before he and the mom got here. That dude looked ballistic.”

I stared into the empty room as if Miriam might still be there someplace, maybe hiding under the desk. “Yeah. I can imagine.”

I turned to go back to my own room. Now I wouldn’t get any answers.





Eleven


August 19


12 Days Remaining


I hadn’t wanted to go to The Phantom of the Opera. Confusion and sadness were like a thick blanket keeping me from moving, but Alex and Tasha had insisted. I’d trudged to the theater, resenting being forced to go out, but they were right. Once the show started, everything that existed outside the walls of the theater ceased to matter. I wasn’t in London anymore; I was in the tunnels below Paris.

As the lights came up, I kept clapping, my hands stinging. People shuffled toward the exits and I had the urge to scream that they should all sit back down. I wanted to hit rewind and see the show all over again. I wanted to stay here where things seemed to make sense. The emotion of the play had hit me like a punch in the gut. I’d cried through most of the second act, sucking in lungfuls of theater air filled with the smell of dusty curtains and wood polish.

Alex placed his hand lightly on the small of my back after a few minutes as the rows emptied. “You ready?”

I nodded. I half expected him to drop his hand, but he kept it there as we walked out. It was warm and steadying and I found myself pressing back against him. I wanted to stay in this moment.

He motioned to a place across the street as we walked out of the theater. “Want to get something to drink before we go back?”

The pub was full of the after-theater crowd and we had to wedge ourselves in. The evening had cooled, but the bar was steamy with all the people packed inside. We couldn’t get a table, but there were two stools next to a counter along the far wall. “Grab those and I’ll get us something,” Alex said.

I peered around, trying to take it all in. Every so often it would strike me: I was in London, seeing plays and going for drinks. The British accents of the crowd around me almost sounded like a song. It felt like a completely different life from the one I had at home. I wished I could call Emily and tell her about it or hold up the phone so she could hear it for herself.

Alex came back with two pints of beer and raised them aloft like a victor before putting them back down. “I asked for them as a joke, but he didn’t even want to see ID.”

It felt somehow right that we had real drinks. As though the evening called for it, as if we were older in this reality. We clinked glasses. “To the show,” I said as a toast. I took a tentative sip. The hoppy brew was room temperature. Alex sipped it slowly.