She nods. “It’s okay. It’s just a car. And he’s been itching to buy a new one anyway; he’s waiting for bonus season.” She gently rubs my arms. “Go hose off what you can. He’ll take out all his anger on some scathing motion he’s gotta write and cool off by the time he gets home.”
Valencia is the only one who has treated me like Nate from the start, and even she isn’t saying she believes me. She keeps sayingit’s okayandno one is madbut neverI believe you. She never even offered up another theory like Marcus said a murder suspect needs. She just decided not to defend me altogether.
I swallow hard and try to ignore the tears blurring my vision as I walk out to the driveway. Easton watches me as I unravel the hose attached to the spigot on the side of the garage. I peel off the paint can lid and turn on the hose. Most of the paint starts to come off pretty easily, but the dried areas are stubborn, and no matter which setting on the hose nozzle I use, it isn’t enough to wash it off.
“So what did he do?” Easton asks.
“What do you mean?”
“To piss you off. Obviously he said something yesterday. When I was helping you move the furniture back, the energy was... odd. Now you plaster his car in paint—”
“I didn’t do this.”
His hands go up. “Sure. Fine. But he thinks you did, which means he thinks you had a reason to.”
So Marcus set me up? He said the only way to get away with murder is an alternative theory, but there’s no evidence for one here. He told me, in front of Easton, to take the paint downstairs to the garage. Specifically to put it with the other paint supplies. I put it on the floor, and it somehow ends up on the car, which is impossible.
Marcus returns wearing a new suit. Without saying anything to me, he gets in the car. Easton gives me an anxious look and climbs into the passenger seat after him. The door is barely shut before Marcus shifts into reverse and backs out.
I spray down the driveway, washing the paint water into the grass so it doesn’t stain the asphalt—another thing for Marcus to freak out about when he gets back from work—and then put away the hose.
Valencia comes back out with her work bag and glances over at the paint on the garage floor.
“Can you do your best to clean all that up, too?” she asks. She tells me where some cleaning supplies are, and I nod.
“I swear I put it on the floor, not the shelf.” Again, I don’t know why I care so much that she believes me. But the look on her face—the one that says she feels sorry for me—tells me she doesn’t believe me at all.
She reminds me to set the alarm when I go inside, then I clean up the garage floor.
While I mop, I keep replaying what Easton said. The energy in the room was weird after I asked Marcus about how to get away with murder. If Marcus had something to do with Nate’s disappearance—he told me himself the best way to avoid a murder charge is for the police to not have a body—then he knows I’m onto him.
Twenty-Three
After cleaning the garage floor, and myself, I text Miles to come over and then turn off the alarm to open the back door.
I expect a text from Valencia, but none comes as I water the hydrangeas on the side and front of the house—making sure to walk in front of the doorbell camera so she gets a notification.
Miles hops over the fence as I’m coiling up the hose.
“Ready to snoop?” he asks, his eyes a little gleeful.
“You sound way too excited to be invading your neighbors’ privacy.”
“Yeah, I keep telling myself if we find out they’re murderers, it wipes my karmic slate clean. So let’s try and get something good.”
He marches around the house and I follow him, closing and locking the door behind us. I also set the alarm, because I want to know if someone tries to get in here again. If they really are watching, and they know I’m alone today, they might try. But at least I have Miles with me. If Valencia asks why I opened the door later, when Miles goes home, I’ll tell her I was fertilizing the hydrangeas.
Maybe she’ll be so grateful that I fertilized them, she’ll change her mind about the paint being a destructive outburst.
“Where should we start?” I ask Miles.
“I’d say start in Valencia and Marcus’s room.”
“Fine, but I’m not going through their drawers like a pervert.”
“Drawers are cliché,” Miles says, climbing the stairs. “All the freaky stuff is in the closets. I mean, we’d know, right?”
His joke is stupid, but he’s not wrong. I hid my go bag in the closet, after all.
