“She wouldn’t answer my calls, and now her phone is out of service. Never replied to my emails either. I tried going by the house a couple times, and after a year, she rented it out. So I guess that means she isn’t coming back.”
“The house on Long Island?”
“Yeah, used to belong to her parents. Look, I’ve moved on. I’m dating again. I’ll never forgive Rayna for what she did, but I hope Mari’s happy, wherever she is. And now I got a customer to serve.”
“If you remember anything else, could you call me?”
“Gimme your number.”
Ari gave Angelo her number, then hung up.
“He’s not a man I’d swipe right on, but I don’t think he’s lying,” she said.
“Agreed. So we’re back to the house, aren’t we? It must have been listed for rental, so I’ll find out who listed it.”
“Probably an agent.”
“Do you need to go to New York?”
“No, not yet anyway. Didn’t you say you had access to Rayna’s bank accounts?”
“All the ones I know about.”
“She stole Marielle’s life, so why not the rent money too? Ten bucks says there’s a monthly payment going in.”
There was. Over five thousand bucks a month. Rayna could have taken the cash and lived quietly in Mason’s Hill, no questions asked, no need to decorate anything. But staying under the radar was impossible for her—she needed the attention like a fire needed oxygen. That was the moment we knew Jez was right. That Marielle was dead. Because no way would she knowingly allow a two-faced schemer like Rayna to collect rent from her property while she was getting away from it all in South America. No, she’d have rented the place to a tenant herself and used the income to buy school supplies or something.
Which left one big question… “So, where’s the body?”
“Can you find me a picture of the house?”
Of course. Marielle’s family home was a four-bedroom, two-bath detached property with a wraparound porch, a good-sized yard—good for Long Island, at any rate—and a pool. Not exactly the Hamptons, but it was within walking distance of a LIRR stop, which was probably more of a priority for Marielle if she didn’t drive. I found an archived version of the rental listing that included photos and a video tour, plus several satellite photos, three of which were hi-res and of dubious origin. That was where things got interesting.
“The most likely scenario is that she was killed in the house,” Ari said. “If you were going to dispose of a body, how would you do it?”
“I’d call the Cleaners.”
“Okay, let’s suppose you didn’t have a connection to a team of covert operators.”
“Jez said she’d drop the corpse in the ocean.”
“Do that close to shore, and you risk the body washing up on a beach somewhere. Which means you need to beg, borrow, or steal a boat to get out to deeper water. Jez could steal a boat, no problem, but could Rayna? I don’t think she planned the murder in advance—she doesn’t seem the type. She tried to strangle you in Nolan’s study, for Pete’s sake.”
“What if I dressed the body in a bathing suit? A little misdirection?”
“Marielle never learned to drive because her parents died in a car wreck. After her best friend drowned, nobody’s going to believe she went out for a swim.”
That was a reasonable point.
“She could have dumped the body on land,” Ari continued. “Driven along Ocean Parkway at night, or paid a visit to the Pine Barrens… But there’s still the risk of discovery. And we don’t know if Rayna even owned a vehicle back then.”
“I can find out.”
“I’m not sure we need to.” Ari tapped one of my screens. “What’s this?”
I peered closer. Ari was pointing to a brown triangle sticking out from under a tree canopy in Marielle’s yard.
“A shed? A summerhouse?”
