“But you’re also lying!”
One of the papers falls out of my hand but I don’t bother picking it up. I thought—and I don’t know why—but I thought Miles really did care about all this. Nate, me, maybe the Beaumonts. But he doesn’t. He cares about his podcast with twenty listeners.
Once the silence between us goes on for too long, he shrugs. “I’m sorry. But... I’m not going to jump to conclusions based on everything we found here.”
“You mean the stuff you snooped out with an imposter.”
Miles has the decency not to lie and say that wasn’t what he was thinking. “I’m sorry. I trust you, because you told me the truth. But I’m not sure how far that truth goes yet.”
So he, like Valencia, probably doesn’t even believe me aboutthe paint. Or the gas leak, both of which I’m now convinced were Marcus.
“So because I’m lying about who I say I am, you ignore evidence.”
Miles picks up the paper on the ground and takes the rest from me. “It’scircumstantialevidence. If it was something tangible, he would have thrown it out or found a way to destroy it so it couldn’t come back to him. This wasn’t even in the locked drawer.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
“Information gathering. Getting something the police don’t have and tying their investigation and ours together.”
I’m not sure why I thought this day would go any different. I already learned this lesson months ago: the only person you can rely on is yourself. Guess I needed a reminder.
Miles holds the key he found in Marcus’s room. “Should we see if there’s anything else?”
I shrug. “Go for it. I’m sure if you found Nate’s severed head in there, you’d say it doesn’t prove anything.”
He ignores the jab and unlocks the top drawer, but it holds only a couple of phone chargers, batteries, and key chains without keys attached to them.
“Phone chargers!” Miles gasps. “Now it all makes sense!”
I shoot him an annoyed look and pull open the drawer beneath it. Maybethat’sthe one Marcus wanted to lock. You can’t lock one without locking the other.
And yes. It’s definitely the one he wanted to lock.
Inside is a blue glass pipe with a Philadelphia Flyers logo stenciled on it. It’s a bowl to smoke weed out of. My laughter breaks the room’s silence.
“So Marcus is a stoner,” Miles says. “Surprising.” He takes out a black glass jar and holds it out to me. Sure enough, when I open it up, there are four ziplock bags of dried bud. Each bag has the strain written on it in Sharpie—Slapz,Green Line OG,Motorbreath #15, andBlue Zushi. He even has a grinder and pipe cleaners.
But that’s it. It’s only his weed stash. The fact that Marcus Beaumont is apparently a stoner doesn’t add suspicion. If anything, maybe being a stoner improved his “short temper.” I’ve never smoked weed. Frankie and I were offered it at a party once and I was afraid I would get too honest and say something gay. Frankie, on the other hand, jumped right in. She was normal old Frankie but dialed down. Maybe it’s the same for Marcus. All the edges get smoothed off and it’s just calm Marcus who sits quietly, studying the room.
Miles hands the key over to me and I put everything back the way it was and lock up while he goes out to the storage room at the end of the hall. I poke my head in to find him looking at boxes of holiday decor and old clothes. When he realizes there’s nothing else there, we go back downstairs—returning the key where Miles found it—and go to the kitchen.
“You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” Miles asks.
“For what? Saying I’m unreliable? Because I’m a liar who can’t be trusted?”
“Youarea liar, and yes.”
I lied to the Beaumonts. It doesn’t make me aliar. It’s not like it’s a habit. Right? Though I’m lying right now, aren’t I? To myself, but still, it’s a lie. Almost everything I’ve said to the Beaumonts has been untrue, so yes, I guess that does make me a liar.
Miles lets out a frustrated sigh. “Look, I have to live next to thesepeople. You’re getting out of here soon, never to look back. I have to walk out the door every morning and see Marcus and Valencia driving to work. I’m back there picking up Chardonnay turds while Marcus cuts the grass.”
I can’t help it; I snort.
Miles softens and shrugs. “If I’m going to call one of them Jeffrey Dahmer, I want to be sure about it. Okay? And it’s not that I don’t trust you—”
“Bullshit.”
“You’re a liar, what do you want?” He grins.
