“Thank—” But he’d already disappeared.
“Did Jo say anything about the investigation?” Morrie asked.
“Only that the force of the stabbing suggested a male assailant, but the Chief Inspector still considered me a suspect.”
Quoth returned and handed me a selection of books. “These were my favorites.”
I came back down the stairs just as Jo picked up a black hoodie from behind a bookcase. I handed her the books. “These are all true crime stories and grisly things you’ll like. This one’s on the history of poison and this is about the H. H. Holmes murders in Chicago…”
“Hey, thanks.” Jo studied the cover of the poison book. “This looks perfect. I’ll take it.”
“Awesome. I’ll ring it up for you.” I led her over to the counter and punched the total into the ancient till. “Just do me a favor and tell me about it when you get back. The book, not the course. I don’t want to hear anything about eyeballs and syringes, but I want to read this.”
“Will do. Maybe we could have coffee and I could tell you all about the poison cases I’ve worked on over the years. Did you know that strychnine poisoning is often mistaken for tetanus until the postmortem toxicology reports otherwise?” Jo slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that weird? It’s totally weird, right? I don’t mean to talk your ear off about eyeballs and poisons.”
“Just weird enough for me.” I grinned, noticing the Misfits logo on the front of her hoodie as I scribbled out her receipt. Heathcliff still kept handwritten records because he was a crazy person who seemed determined to remain stuck in the imaginary time period from whence he came. “You into punk?”
“Hell yeah. Especially stuff that’s about horror and blood and guts.” Jo dictated her number to me and I sent her a text message with a smiley face. She held up her phone with my number. “I’ve got you now. We can talk more about poison and punk when we get that coffee. And now I’m certain you can’t have written that text—”
“What text?”
“Oh,” Jo clapped her hands over her mouth. “I’m not supposed to say anything. You’ll be hearing about it from the police soon. But don’t worry about it – they’ll see it doesn’t match your usual diction and look elsewhere.”
That doesn’t sound promising.
I escorted Jo back to the window. She climbed out and sprinted around the corner, her poison book tucked under her arm. I already liked Jo. Anyone who crawled in a window because they desperately needed a book to read was okay by me. The thought of meeting her for coffee made my stomach flip with excitement. I wanted her to be my friend, but it was hard to start a friendship with a person who might end up convicting you for murder.
As soon as Jo was out of sight, I raced back upstairs. Morrie was already at his computer, and Quoth and Heathcliff faced each other in front of the fire, a chessboard between them. Quoth had returned to his bird form, and he trotted across the board to move the pieces with his beak.
“The police found a text on Ashley phone,” I exclaimed. “Jo seemed to imply it implicated me.”
Heathcliff’s glower could freeze a volcano.
Morrie pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. “Correct. They found a message from a burner phone, sent thirty-three minutes before we found the body. It reads, ‘Can we meet n person? It safe. No1 watchin shop.’”
I peered over his shoulder. “Anyone who knows me knows I’d never send a text with incorrect spelling or numbers instead of words. But how did you find that text? Did they release that to the papers? What have they said about me? Did they at least get a picture where I look good?”
“You’re not in the papers yet, gorgeous.”
“Then where’d you get that text?”
“The police file.”
“But… police files aren’t public.”
“Nope.” Morrie opened up an app on his phone, his finger paused over a large red button. “Do you want me to corrupt the file, lose all their info?”
Given that I now knew who Morrie really was, I shouldn’t have been surprised. “No. I want them to catch Ashley’s killer, and besides, that’ll be even more suspicious. We have to wait and hope they don’t bollocks it all up. But that text means Ashley didn’t just follow me in here. Someonewantedher to come. But why? Who would be meeting Ashley?”
Chapter Fifteen
After a couple of hours, when they realized we weren’t going to open the shop to allow them their gleeful rubbernecking, the gossips dispersed and Mrs. Ellis returned to her flat. Heathcliff, Quoth, and I drank the shop out of tea and held a chess tournament. Heathcliff refused to let Morrie play, (“He cheats.” “I do not. I simply predict the outcome of the game based on known tells and probability.” “Same bloody thing.”) so he sat on his phone and hacked more police files. We tossed around theories about Ashley’s murder and what she might’ve been involved in, but none of them rang true.
The thing was, I didn’t know what was going on in Ashley’s life. Not really. Even though we lived together in New York City, we’d been growing apart even since our internship started. She’d made friends with a bunch of fashion influencers from old American money. She’d go out drinking after work and I’d stay at the studio finishing details for the next day’s shoot. When Ashley wasn’t partying on her friends’ yachts, she fiddled with her Instagram account, taking pictures, answering comments, and nebulous ‘networking.’ Companies had even started sending her free makeup and clothing. Ashley’s Instagram read like a comic strip for the dream life I’d always imagined back in ___field – pictures of the two of us smiling in front of the office, on the red carpet, or front row at Fashion Week. But behind those smiles was a tension pulling us apart. I didn’t know Ashley at all anymore.
But I knew someone who might.
I left Nevermore by the back entrance and slipped through the narrow lane at the back of the shop onto Donahue Road, where a tiny cottage covered in wisteria sat at the end of the row. I leaned against the white gate and sucked in deep breaths, letting the scent of wisteria and roses wash over me, carrying memories like leaves tossed on the breeze. Ashley and I sitting on the porch swing, smoking ciggies and drinking rum and Coke and talking about boys we liked. Me standing beside the gate every morning before school waiting for Ashley to come out, swinging her backpack and bitching about her mother. Ashley and I helping her younger sisters make a fairy garden by the front step, sculpting tiny doors and toadstools out of modeling clay to hide amongst the flowers, and stringing fairy lights around the balustrade. My throat closed as I noticed the lights sagging around the iron railing.
