“In Marielle’s car. You want some breakfast?”
Nolan groaned. How could Alexa even think about food at a time like this? “No, I don’t want breakfast. I want you to start from the beginning and tell me what happened yesterday.”
He’d killed a woman, hadn’t he? Fuck, he was turning into Eddie Calder, mark two. His father’s son. Was this how it started? An accidental slipup, and then he developed a taste for the unconscionable?
“I’ll tell you everything—well, almost everything—but I need coffee first.” Alexa felt for her phone on the nightstand and checked the screen. “I’ve only had two hours’ sleep. You want coffee?”
“I want Xanax.”
“Okay, so the doctor gave you something even better than Xanax last night. I’ll have to check whether it’s safe to mix the two.”
“Alexa, what the hell happened?”
She was serious about the coffee. Nolan had to wait for a full five minutes before she came back with two cappuccinos and no Xanax.
“You need to wait another couple of hours before you take more meds. The doctor suggested breathing exercises.”
“Are you kidding me?”
At least it wasn’t an outright no. Ruby had hated his drug habit, as she’d called it, and she’d kept trying to convince him that meditation was the answer. After her death, he’d doubled the dose.
“I told him you’d say that.”
“Look, just tell me where the body is. Are the cops involved?”
“I actually did consider calling them because it was a clear-cut case of self-defence, but I don’t like answering questions. And your name would have gotten raked over the coals too. This isn’t New York or LA—a dead body is a big deal in a small town, especially one where a serial killer spent his childhood—and the media would have dredged up all the Blackstone House drama too. Picture it: your name splashed across the papers with your dad’s, I’d be outed as the ‘unidentified minor’… No, it was easier to keep things quiet.”
“What did you do? Bury Marielle in the forest?”
“Of course not; we’re not amateurs. The cleanup team took her with them when they left.”
“The cleanup team? Damn, Alexa, how many people are involved?”
“The Choir, the Cleaners, obviously Chase knows…”
“You know what one of my dad’s convictions was for? Tampering with a corpse. They’ll bring cadaver dogs to the house, spray that luminous stuff everywhere… Haven’t you ever watched CSI?”
“You should try the breathing exercises.”
“What are the symptoms of a heart attack?”
Nolan’s chest was tight, and when he tried to suck in air, his lungs wouldn’t cooperate. Blood whooshed in his ears, and if he hadn’t been sitting already, he’d probably have fallen down.
“The body’s gone; I told you that. The house has been deep-cleaned. I have a replacement interior designer arriving tomorrow, and it turns out that Marielle wasn’t actually Marielle, so what would the cops even do? Accuse us of killing a ghost?”
“What are you talking about?”
Alexa detailed her call with a friend, the confusion over a photograph, and her sudden realisation that the woman they knew as Marielle Marten was in fact her old friend Rayna Bishop.
“So you think she tried to kill you to keep her stolen identity a secret?”
“Yup. I’m telling you, she was crazy. Not just mad that she got fired, but heading straight for the asylum, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred bucks. She hid it behind a layer of bitchiness for ages, but when she snapped… Whoa. She saw my notes in the kitchen and came right for me.”
“But…but where’s the real Marielle?”
“An excellent question. Ari—you know, Zach’s girlfriend?—is a PI, and she’s going to take a look at the case.”
“People will start asking questions. It’s not too late to report this.”
