The blood drains out of my face and hands, and my fingers feel like they’ve been plunged into a bucket of ice. My ears are ringing and my brain can’t begin to process what I’ve just heard. I open my mouth to attempt to speak, but before I can, Flynn starts talking.
“Her body was found early this morning. Floating next to her boat dock. A neighbor, out for an early-morning cruise on the lake, noticed her body as he drove past in his ski boat.”
Flynn’s eyes scan my face as he says this.
I feel as though someone has punched me in the gut, knocking the air out of me.
“So, she’s... dead?” What a stupid question, but I had to ask it for some reason. I can’t imagine Margot dead. It’s impossible. She seems too powerful. More powerful than even death.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“I don’t understand. What happened?”
“That’s exactly what we’re trying to figure out.” Flynn traces my face with his eyes, searching.
Well, this explains why she hasn’t been answering any of my texts or calls. But it doesn’t explain what in the hell happened to her.
“I really don’t get it. Are you thinking suicide?” But even as I ask this, I know it’s not true. Margot wouldneverbe capable of even entertaining thoughts of offing herself.
Flynn bites his lower lip, shakes his head. “No, this was no accident.”
Margot was a good swimmer, so I agree; I can’t see her drowning on her own.
Unless. Unless she had been drugged, too.
“How do you know? That it wasn’t an accident, I mean?”
Flynn draws in a deep breath and hisses it out between pursed lips. He seems to be trying to decide how much to tell me. “I’ll just say this for now: There were apparent signs of a struggle.”
The back of my throat constricts, and even though I try to hold back the tears, they come gushing out. Flynn averts his gaze for a second, giving me a modicum of privacy, as much privacy as you can get when you’re seated in front of a two-way mirror with a tape recorder picking up everything that comes out of your mouth.
“According to Mrs. Jenkins, you were the last one with Margot. And she never made it home after Wednesday out at the lake.”
His eyes are back on me now, drilling into my own. And it finally dawns on me why I’m here: This is another murder investigation and I’m obviously a suspect. Again.
Fucking Callie. The lying bitch.
WhatifCallie drugged her, too? What if she had been watching us through the window? I wouldn’t put it past her to go into a demented jealous rage and kill Margot.
I keep the part about being in the bedroom with Margot from Flynn, but I tell him my theory about Callie drugging us both.
He seems unfazed by it, batting it away with another flick of his wrist. I want to reach across the table and tear his hand off his body.
“You can’t prove that anyway,” he says with open exasperation. “The drug leaves your system after twelve hours.”
My shoulders slump in defeat. I can’t win here.
“Now tell me, were you, or were you not, the last person to see Margot alive?”
“I don’t know if I was or if I wasn’t,” I say through clenched teeth. “Like I told you, Callie drugged me, and it sounds as if she drugged Margot as well. I mean, I only saw her swimming once, but Margot was a good swimmer. I can’t imagine her drowning unless shehadbeen drugged.”
Or unless someone forced her underwater and held her down. The vision of a drunk Brad, leering in the doorway of the bedroom, comes back to mind. If Margot reallyhadbroken it off with him, no telling what he might’ve done to her.
I don’t know what to think. Or what to say.
“Like I said, when I came to, there was no one else out there except for Brad.” I stare evenly at Flynn as I speak. “And he was drunk, and acting strange.”
This gets a noticeable pause from Flynn. Just like it had with Wanda. Quick, but noticeable.
