“SO NICE OF YOU TO ARRANGE A POLICE RECEPTION FOR US at your house today,” Ed said, the moment he was settled into the desk chair in Kitty’s bedroom. The last thing he’d expected to see at the Wei residence was Sergeant Callahan leaving the house.
Olivia pulled her legs up on the bed, crossing them. “Is everything okay?”
Kitty nodded. “He was questioning my mom about the warehouse fire. They think my uncle set it on purpose.”
“Oh no,” Olivia said.
Ed whistled. “Aggravated arson carries a minimum sentence of ten years, plus he’d be in violation of his insurance policy.”
Kitty winced. “Not helping.”
“Sorry.”
“And I think maybe he suspects me,” Kitty continued, her eyebrows pinched together.
Olivia gasped. “Of starting the fire? Of being DGM? Of killing Ronny and Coach Creed and—”
“I’m not sure,” Kitty said sharply, interrupting the panicked rant. “It seemed like he knows I’m hiding something. Just a feeling, really.”
Ed straightened up in his chair. Kitty thought that Sergeant Callahan might be on to her? “If he really thought you were involved,” Ed said dismissively, “don’t you think he’d just haul you in for questioning?”
“I guess.”
Ed forced a laugh. “This is a murder investigation, with some arson thrown in for shits and giggles. I don’t think he’d dance around the issue.”
“Maybe.” Kitty looked less than convinced. “Let’s just get started, okay?”
“Okay,” Ed said, thankful to be changing the subject. “I have something that might cheer you up. I made a little visit to the Hayward Sanitation Plant this afternoon. Got to see our old pal Xavier at work.”
“How was it?” Kitty asked.
“Amazing. He literally monitors shit.” Ed sighed. “It might have been the best moment of my young life.”
“I mean,” Kitty said, “did you learn anything? Could he be behind all this?”
“I didn’t get a chance to initiate contact,” Ed said. “But I did follow him home. He lives with his mother, which is a point in favor of him being a serial killer.”
Kitty turned to Olivia. “Maybe you can follow up? Xavier might be receptive to your, um, approach.”
“I guess I can try,” Olivia said with a heavy sigh. “I’ve already been eye-molested by Maxwell Gertler today. How much worse could it be?”
“You visited the Gertlers?” Kitty asked.
Ed watched Olivia closely.
“Yes!” she cried, and sat up straight, her energy revitalized. “I was talking to Logan in drama class, and he thinks he saw the Gertlers in the theater opening night.”
“Is he sure it was them?” There was desperation in Kitty’s voice.
“I think so,” Olivia said. “It’s hard to say with the stage lights, but they work at the surf shop where he gets his board waxed and—”
Ed smirked. “Dirty.”
“And he was pretty sure it was them,” Olivia said, ignoring him. “When I brought it up they denied being there, but they were super shifty about it.”
“Great,” Kitty said. “That’s another possible suspect. But I think we can definitely cross Wendy Marshall off that list.”
“You talked to her?” Olivia asked.
“I ‘accidentally,’” Kitty said, using air quotes, “ran into her at the gym. Apparently, she’s selling LARP fan fiction online now. Something like a hundred thousand downloads.”
Ed cocked his head. “Is she single?”
“You’re not her type,” Kitty countered.
“If she spends a few years in prison for murder,” Ed said, flashing a finger pistol, “I might be.”
“Prison . . . ,” Olivia repeated slowly, as if the word triggered a memory. Then she sucked in a breath. “Oh my God! I forgot to tell you. Bree’s out of juvie!”
“What?” Ed and Kitty said together.
“She’s under house arrest, but she’s out. So that’s good, right?”
Kitty sank back against the bed. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.”
“And how did you come by this information?” Ed asked.
Olivia smiled sheepishly. “Promise you won’t be mad.”
“Mad?” Kitty said.
“John’s helping me figure out what Amber was doing with Ronny the night he was killed.”
“Ah, yes,” Ed said slowly. “Amber’s got her panties in a wad over John Baggott. Bree’s going to be thrilled. I should start taking odds on that catfight ASAP.”
Olivia slugged Ed in the arm. “This is serious.”
“It sure is,” Kitty said, narrowing her eyes. “You told John about Amber and Ronny?”
“Wasn’t he a suspect like a week ago?” Ed asked.
“Bree trusts him,” Olivia said. “Enough to have him make contact with us. I thought that was a good enough reason to swear him into DGM.”
Ed laughed. “Awesome. I was getting tired of being the only penis around here.”
Kitty narrowed her eyes. “You may not be the only penis, but you’ll still be the only dick.”
Ed dipped his head in approval. “Touché.”
“But I have even better news,” Olivia said, clasping her hands together.
“You do?” Kitty asked.
“I snagged Rex’s phone yesterday during gym.” Olivia spoke quickly. “He and Christopher Beeman had some kind of romantic encounter back in sixth grade.”
“Like the one Christopher mentioned in his emails with Ronny?”
“Exactly like that,” Olivia said.
“Rex Cavanaugh.” Ed snorted. “The biggest assholes are always hiding the biggest secrets.”
Kitty chewed on her lip. “So Ronny found out that it was Rex and blackmailed him.”
“Yep,” Olivia said. “And I’m pretty sure Amber was trying to buy Ronny’s silence the night he was killed.”
“With what?” Ed asked. “Cash? Stock options?” He pumped his eyebrows. “Sexual favors?”
Olivia wrinkled her nose, clearly disgusted. “With one of her dad’s Rolex watches.”
“I’m sorry.” Ed cupped his hand behind his ear. “Did you say ‘one of’?”
“Yep.”
Ed leaned forward. “And is she single?”
Kitty stood up and began to pace in front of the table. “Ed, if Amber gave you a thousand-dollar watch—”
Ed snorted. “Try ten thousand.”
Olivia’s eyes grew wide. “That much?”
“That much.”
“Damn.”
“Okay,” Kitty said with a deep breath. “If Amber gave you a ten-thousand-dollar watch, what would you do with it?”
“Strap it to my wrist and never take it off until my dying breath,” Ed said without hesitation.
“Exactly.” She chewed on her lip again. “Does anyone remember the crime scene photos Margot showed us?”
“Margot hacked into the Menlo PD crime lab database?” Ed asked. He knew she was good, but not that good.
Olivia nodded, her face suddenly pale. “We saw . . .” She swallowed. “The body.”
“I wish Margot was here,” Kitty said. “We need to see those photos.”
“Pshaw,” Ed said. He pushed himself out of his chair and pulled his tablet from his backpack. Margot wasn’t the only one with mad hacker skills.
“Do you think you can?” Kitty asked.
Instead of answering, Ed propped his tablet up on Kitty’s desk and unrolled a flat wireless keyboard. Then he went to work, the girls gathering around him, peering down at the screen. In a matter of minutes, he had the crime lab’s database open, all of their open cases labeled by victim and date. His eyes flitted over the list, pausing for a split second on the folder marked “Mejia.”
Dammit. He should have realized it would be in the database. He could only hope neither of them noticed Margot’s file. He didn’t want Kitty and Olivia to see what might be in there. Ed quickly scrolled down so her file disappeared off the top of the screen, then located the DeStefano case.
“Okay,” Kitty said, leaning close to the screen. “We’re looking for any photos that show Ronny’s wrists.”
Ed scanned through thumbnails, cringing at the tiny photos of Ronny’s lifeless body. However much Ronny might have deserved to pay for his actions, the harsh reality of his murder scene was not something Ed needed to see. After scrolling through the first page, Ed finally found a photo that seemed to have an arm in it.
As the photo enlarged on the screen, all three of them gasped.
“Holy shit,” Ed whispered. It was Ronny’s body, facedown on the bed. Well, facedown might have been a bit of a stretch, considering the fact that there wasn’t much left of his head. It was more of a bloody mass of hair and brain tissue, splattered across the sheets, pillows, and headboard. Ed pulled his eyes away from the kill wound and glanced quickly at one of Ronny’s arms, splayed out over the side of the mattress, before he closed the full-screen view.
“N-no Rolex on his right hand,” he said, quickly averting his eyes.
Kitty let out a sigh. “Okay. I’m almost afraid to ask, but any photos of his left hand?”
Ed scrolled quickly, not allowing his eyes to linger on any one photo for more than a split second, and finally found what they were looking for. The photo that popped up on the screen showed Ronny’s left hand, which had been placed on top of a white card with the letters “DGM” typed across it.
“Damn,” he said. “Someone really did try and frame you guys.”
“No watch,” Olivia said. “So he wasn’t wearing it when he was killed.”
“Or,” Kitty added, “the killer removed it.”
Or the cops, Ed thought to himself.
Kitty tapped him on the shoulder. “Any way to see the evidence list from Ronny’s room?”
Ed zipped back to the main folder and scanned to the bottom. “Your wish is my command.”
The three of them pored over the list together, noting all the items removed from Ronny’s room, including the clothing he was wearing at the time. One thing was definitely missing: the Rolex.
“The killer must have taken the watch,” Olivia said. “Don’t serial killers do that? Take a memento?”
Could it have been pocketed by a police officer before it was admitted into evidence? Absolutely. And if so, had it been taken out of greed, or was someone—say, a relative of the Beeman family—actively attempting to hamper the investigation?
Because he might be the killer.
“We find the watch,” Ed said, “we find the killer.”
“It definitely seems to point to . . .” Kitty’s voice trailed off. She was staring intently at the screen. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Ed followed her eye and found that he’d stupidly left the page open to the list of evidence folders. Shit.
Kitty jabbed her finger at the screen. “That.” She was pointing at the file marked “Mejia.”
“Nothing we don’t already know,” Ed said, trying to turn their attention away. “You guys were there, I mean. The thing we need to focus on is—”
“Open it!” Olivia cried. “Maybe there’s something we’ll recognize. Something the cops might have overlooked.”
“I hardly think the upstanding members of the Menlo PD need our help in—”
“Ed!” Olivia and Kitty cried in unison.
“Fine.” Ed, you’re an idiot. He opened the file and leaned back in his chair.
Kitty and Olivia scrolled through the photos while Ed averted his eyes. He could see Margot’s unconscious body in his mind; he didn’t need to see it in three hundred dpi.
“Stop!” Olivia cried after a few moments. “Go back.”
Ed peeked at the screen as Kitty scrolled backward. After a few photos, Olivia pointed at the screen. “There!”
It was a photo of Margot’s prompter’s script, open to the last scene, which clearly showed that a piece had been torn away from the corner.
“A torn page in her script?” Ed asked, trying to sound unimpressed. “Big deal.”
“I’ve seen Margot go through that script a dozen times,” Olivia said. “She was meticulously neat. No way that piece was missing before opening night.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Kitty said. She closed the web browser and straightened up. “Except maybe she pulled it away when she was attacked?”
“Maybe,” Olivia conceded. “But it does seem weird.”
“Ladies,” Ed said, rolling up his keyboard. “It’s getting late and the Head needs his beauty rest.”
“Okay,” Kitty said. “Before we go, any updates on Tammi Barnes or Christopher’s family?”
“No,” Olivia said.
Kitty’s eyes shifted to Ed.
“Nothing,” he lied.
“Then we keep searching,” Kitty said, with a strong nod of her head. “And meet again tomorrow night. Agreed?”
Ed didn’t hesitate. “Agreed.”
Kitty stood up and grabbed her bag from the floor. “Come on, Olivia. I’ll drive you home.”
Olivia was oddly subdued as she followed Kitty through the kitchen and out to her car. She’d been so elated yesterday afternoon when she discovered the link between Amber, Rex, and Ronny, but even with that amazing piece of information about the Rolex, they seemed as far away from finding the killer as they had been a few days ago. The hopeless feeling that had swamped her after the Bangers and Mosh concert was threatening to overtake her once more, and it took every ounce of her courage to keep fighting.
Were Kitty and Ed feeling the same sense of deflation and futility that was making Olivia want to give up? They must have been, because no one said a word as they walked to their cars.
Until Kitty opened the front door of her Camry and gasped.
“What?” Olivia said.
“What the hell is this?” Ed cried from the street. He was standing with his car door open, staring down at the driver’s seat.
Olivia felt her stomach fall away. She didn’t want to look inside the car, knowing what she would find there, but her eyes weren’t listening to her brain.
There, on the passenger seat of Kitty’s car, was a manila envelope with her name on it.
“Did you guys get one too?” Ed asked.
“Yep,” Kitty answered, her voice flat.
Olivia gazed at the envelope through the window, unwilling to open it or even touch it, as if doing so might make it real. But Kitty had already lifted hers from the seat and had popped the seal. “It’s a note,” she said.
“Do I want to know what it says?” Olivia asked.
Ed trotted up behind her. “Nope, but you’re going to.” He shoved a typewritten note in front of her eyes.
I will destroy everything you love.
