You Owe Me a Murder(51)

The lipstick around Detective Sharma’s mouth was a bright red, like an angry slash across her face. She slapped her thighs and stood. “Okay, then. If you think of anything else, you let us know. We want to hear from you if you get any more ideas.”

Detective Fogg looked less convinced that he wanted to ever hear from me again.

“I’m so sorry I dragged you down here.” I meant it, too. I wished now I’d never called them. I’d thought I was so clever, coming up with a way to get rid of her. It was beginning to dawn on me that that would never happen. “I didn’t mean to waste your time.”

“Getting clarity for Connor’s family is our number one priority. There’s nothing that we won’t do to further that aim.”

I couldn’t tell if Detective Sharma was reminding herself or if she was warning me.





Twenty-Three


August 25


6 Days Remaining


“You’re going to love it!” Nicki gripped the rail of the Thames Clipper as it cruised down the river. She bounced on her tiptoes with excitement. “The observatory is one of my favorite places in the city. You can stand right on the prime meridian.” She glanced over at me. “Do you know what that is?”

“It divides the earth into Eastern and Western hemispheres,” I said, my voice flat. She raised her hand for a high-five, but I refused to slap it back.

“Got it in one. Nicely done. The observatory was built in 1670.”

I couldn’t stand her nonstop tour guide patter. She’d called and insisted we meet at the wharf. I agreed because I was fresh out of ideas. I’d had to skip our official activity, too, pleading a fake migraine headache. Kendra had made a snide comment about how it was turning out that I was quite the delicate flower with all my health issues. So not only was I missing a chance to see Stonehenge and ticking off the other people in my group, but I was also stuck with a psycho.

“I went here the first time as a kid with my grandfather,” Nicki said. “He was an amateur astronomer. He had his own telescope, and when I would stay with them at their cabin up on the Orkney Islands, he would wake me up late at night and take me out to look at the stars.”

“Sounds nice,” I mumbled.

“It felt so naughty, being up past bedtime, when of course my grandma knew the whole time. She was the one who would make sure we had a big thick quilt and a thermos of hot chocolate and ginger biscuits, but I liked thinking it was something special, just for Grandpa and me. As if we were getting away with something. We’d sit in the garden, me in my pajamas, and he’d tell me all about the various constellations and Newton and Herschel and Halley.” Nicki’s voice trailed off as if she were still listening to the far-off voice of her grandfather. “I think that’s when I got interested in science. His excitement was infectious. How about you? Who got you into robotics?”

I watched the brown water slip past the boat, turning into a frothy cream in our wake. The Thames had an interesting odor, briny like the ocean, but with a thick, murky smell of mud. “My dad, I guess.” I shrugged. “I was always good at it. It made sense to me. I like things that can be measured. Data. Stats.”

“Was that hard with your mum? She seems a bit more . . . woo-woo. All that trust in your destiny, find your passion, know your moon cycle blah blah, she seems like the kind who’d believe in crystals.”

My hands tightened around the rail, the knuckles turning white. “What do you know about my mom?” I refused to even think about the line of “healing” crystals that Mom had lined up in the kitchen, reflecting light across the walls.

Nicki tossed her head to get her hair out of her eyes. “I checked you out online. I found her blog and started reading. Fascinating stuff.”

My heart clenched into a hot fist in the center of my chest. I hated the idea of Nicki crawling all over stories of me as a kid. Picking apart my history by reading between the lines. It was also a reminder that she didn’t leave any stone unturned. She thought of everything. She knew too much.

“Mothers, huh? Can’t live with them, hard to get away with killing them.” Nicki barked out a laugh just as the Clipper bumped against the Greenwich dock. Nicki squealed and grabbed my hand. “We’re here! Come with me.”

She pulled me through the crowd, weaving our way up to the observatory, calling out the sights as we went. I tried to pull my hand out of hers, but it was as if we were handcuffed together.

Nicki stopped short at the top of the hill. “Ugh, there’s a line to get in.” She glared at the people waiting to get inside the observatory. “Let’s wait a bit to see if it clears. It’s no fun to look around if a bunch of insipid tourists are milling about.” She poked me in the ribs. “No offense. I feel like you’re an honorary local. Here, check out the view.”

I walked over to stand next to her. There was a field of green below us leading to a cluster of old buildings, then the river and the glass high-rises just beyond. “Nice.” There was no way I was going to admit it was impressive, as though we were in the past looking toward the future. London was always overlapping the present onto the past, blurring the two together.

“We can talk here,” Nicki said.

Hot acid rose up in my throat. I’d known that’s why she wanted to get together, but now that she was going to speak, I wanted to bolt before I heard what she had to say. “Okay,” I said. I made sure I was ready.