I nod sadly.
“Okay, if you can, why don’t you start from the beginning,” Detective Fury says, sitting in the chair across from me.
My mouth goes dry and I take a sip of my coffee. “I guess the beginning would be when I was fifteen and walked in on my mother and billionaire Silas Montgomery having an affair.” I rub at the nape of my neck, my spine tingles. I feel a massive migraine coming on. “After the affair our families were at war. Then a few weeks ago, Silas Montgomery died of a heart attack, which left my mother so distraught she ended her life.”
This is where I start to cry.
I tap my fingers along the table and try to quell the emotional hurricane that’s been brewing inside me, but there’s no calmness to be found. “The minute I was called about my mother, I started receiving text messages from her phone. Each message demanded I go to her house—which I seriously had no idea she was living in—and find the offshore bank accounts that were her and Silas’s. If I didn’t do that, the caller said they would send images they made of me—I swear those are not really me doing those sexually explicit things—they were going to send them to my entire school. Parents, students, faculty.” I blink up at the detectives and shift uncomfortably in my chair. They probably saw the pictures. They both think they know what I look like naked.
I sip at my coffee trying not to vomit.
“Take your time,” Detective Cage says gently.
“Uh…So, I drove up to my mother’s place. Turns out it was a secret home she and Silas shared. They were still having the affair even after all these years. There were pictures of them all over the walls, smiling. Happy.” I shrug. “Maria Lowell was there when I arrived, she was Mr. Montgomery’s housekeeper. She knew about the affair, about everything. But she left me there because she was afraid to get stuck in the storm.” I take a long deep breath in and out.
“I tried looking for the accounts. Then Vaughn showed up. He was just as shocked about the house and the affair as I was. Then, um—” There’s no way I’m telling them we had sex. I mean, I don’t have to, right? “Anyway, there was a storm, and an avalanche, and we got stuck there, and when the weather calmed down, he called Matteo. They grew up together, we all did. He picked us up and dropped me home.”
The detectives looked at each other and back to me. “And how did this end with a homicide?”
“A…homicide?” I stammer. Who died? “You just told me you didn’t hear any news from the hospital! Vaughn’s dead? He’s dead?” I can’t breathe. I’m hyperventilating.
Detective Cage lays his hands flat on the table between us. “No, Miss Radcliffe, take a deep breath, we’re not talking about Vaughn Montgomery.”
“Then who are you talking about? Vaughn was the only one who Matteo shot. He was aiming for me, but Vaughn…he pushed me out of the way, he saved me.”
“And Paul Luger? What about him?”
I’m confused, and my pulse pounds in my temples. “Paul Luger is…is a colleague with me at St Maria’s. But what…what does Mr. Luger have to do with any of this?”
“His body was found, slumped over the steering wheel of his car, parked on the corner of your street.”
“Mr. Luger is…dead?”
“So is Willard Martin, the Montgomery’s butler. He was hit by a stray bullet to the back of the head in the Montgomery’s kitchen.”
“Who…who k-killed Paul? Did Matteo?” I stammer, trembling uncontrollably.
“We were hoping you could tell us why he might have been parked on your street today,” Detective Fury says, clicking his pen continuously.
“He came over yesterday, when the pictures of me were sent out. He…stayed over so I wasn’t alone. He accused me of sending out the photos myself, he didn’t believe me, so when I woke up in the morning and he was still there, I asked him to leave.”
“And did you shoot him?” Detective Cage asks, without emotion, without judgement.
“No, I didn’t shoot anybody. Why would I shoot Paul? I don’t even have a gun!” I feel faint.Poor Paul.
“So, you’re positive we’re not going to find your fingerprints at all on the murder weapon?”
Oh shit.
