“Listen,” Bobby said, “I can’t talk long.We might have a lead on who attacked you.”
“Seriously?That’s great.”
“Your number one fan claims he was keeping watch last night, trying to protect you, and saw someone park a car on the state highway and sneak up toward the house.Whoever it was drove off when I came home, but he thinks he can identify the car.”
“Uh, that’s less great,” I said.“In fact, it sounds like a story Spenser made up to prove that he wasn’t the one who broke into the house and attacked me.Did you notice he hurt his leg?”
“According to him, the stress of meeting you made his gout flare up.”
“Did he say something about gout?”Fox asked.
“The sheriff thinks he might be telling the truth,” Bobby said.“Or mostly, anyway.Besides, we got an anonymous tip that might finally give us a break in the case.Get this: those one-star reviews on Simona’s book?The caller insists Whitney posted them.”
“An anonymous call seems…convenient.”
“I know, but we’ve got to check it out.I don’t know if we can track IP addresses from ten years ago, but we’re going to pull her in and see what she says.”
“Okay,” I said.“Okay, that’s great.”
“I just wanted to let you know.I think we’ve got this, babe.You stay safe.”
We disconnected.
“So, that’s it?”Fox said.“This woman, Whitney, she’s the one who killed Vivienne?”
“I…guess.I mean, maybe?”
Fox said something under their breath that almost mademygout start acting up.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said.“I guess it makes a certain kind of sense.Maybe Whitney was jealous of Simona.She might have thought if she could make Simona’s debut a failure, she’d be next in line.And if Robert figured out Whitney was the one posting those reviews, Whitney might have killed him to cover it up.And then, when Vivienne figured it out, Whitney might have killed her to keep the truth from coming out.”
Indira made a sound that suggested this was a lot ofmights.
“What about your number one fan?”Millie asked.
Keme made a gagging noise.
“He sounds SUPER shady.”Excitement at a new possibility brightened Millie’s eyes.“WHAT IF THEY DID IT TOGETHER?”
“It doesn’t make any sense.I don’t know why Spenser would have killed Vivienne or Steven or be helping Whitney.He loved my book—”
“It makes one wonder, doesn’t it?”Fox murmured.
I chose to ignore that.“—and he was a little overbearing, but I can’t figure out why he would do any of this.”
“Obsessed fans don’t need a logical reason for what they do,” Fox said.“In this one episode ofLaw & Order, a stalker pasted macaroni noodles on all those Ken dolls like they were their, uh,cough, and then sent them to that boy band.”Fox hesitated.“Wait, was thatLaw & Orderor a story I read on AO3?”
“I can’t deal with that right now,” I said.
“Nobody could,” Fox said.“And was macaroni the right choice of noodle?”
“Indira,” I pleaded.
“Fox might be right,” Indira said.“If heisobsessed with you, perhaps he thought he was protecting you.He would have known that Vivienne tried to kill you once already.She might have seemed like she was still a threat.”
I gave an unhappy nod, but my brain was churning, trying to make the pieces fit.Okay, maybe that story worked.(Not the macaroni-on-Ken-dolls one;thatstory needed to be burned, and someone needed to perform an exorcism on the ashes.) But maybe I could be convinced that years ago, Whitney had killed Robert.Or, alternatively, that Spenser had killed Vivienne because he thought he was protecting me.He certainly hadn’tlikedVivienne; that had come through clearly enough.Neither version of events, though, seemed very compelling.
“I don’t know,” I finally said.A glance at my phone showed me the time.“Shoot; I’ve got to get to my panel.”
