“Iwas,” Raina insisted. “I’d waited that long, I knew I could wait a little longer. Try to buy it off of the next owner. I could be patient. But then I found out that she was considering selling to Madeline. That wasn’t gonna work.”
“Because she was going to combine the businesses,” Amie said. “You’d never have a chance of buying it in the future.”
“Right.”
They stopped at an intersection, waiting for a break in the foot traffic.
“But if you didn’t want the store to go to Madeline, why were you pushing her to talk to Andrew after … oh.” Realization hit Amie like a truck. “You wanted her to upset Andrew so that he wouldn’t sell to her.”
“You got it.” Raina pushed Amie through the intersection. “I knew it was too soon for her to bring it up at the memorial. She knew, too. Luckily, it didn’t take much work, especially when I kept validating Andrew’s suspicion of her over the next few days. He was grieving, and he needed someone to blame. I just offered him Madeline.”
“And then you offered him Jonathan Oakland,” Amie said. “You gave him Oakland’s business card and told him you thought Savannah would’ve wanted to sell the store to him. Did you know that wasn’t true?”
“Oh, yeah,” Raina said. “She was trying to figure out if she could sue him for giving her bad advice. But I knew she hadn’t told Andrew. I think she was embarrassed.”
As they turned a corner, Amie suddenly noticed that they were, in fact, heading for the Ferris wheel. Before she could submit a formal complaint, Raina spoke again:
“I figured the old guy was better for my long-term plan than Madeline. He’d told Savannah he’d be willing to sell the store backto her at a higher price once it began making money again. I knew Andrew wouldn’t take that offer, so I thought maybe Oakland would sell to me instead. I was willing to wait. But then Savannah said she was going to sell to Madeline. That was a problem.”
“So you came up with a plan to kill her.” Amie watched the Ferris wheel appear to grow in size as they approached. “And found a scapegoat for your crime.”
Raina huffed. “I knew nothing was going to happen to David,” she said, as if annoyed Amie had even implied such a thing. “There wasn’t enough evidence against him. I just needed someone for the police to put their attention on long enough for my trail to cool. I’d see David walking to and from the grocery store every Monday morning, so I knew he’d be there. I just needed to set Savannah off about something and send her in his direction.”
“So you canceled the flower order,” Amie said. “And after she rescheduled, you rescheduled itagainso it’d be delivered that night, to make her go back to the bookstore, where you were waiting.”
Raina actually looked surprised. “You reallyhavebeen investigating,” she said, sounding impressed. “Yeah. I convinced Savannah to wait when the flowers didn’t arrive first thing Monday, but as soon as I saw David go by, I told her they must have canceled the order. That was enough to get her going.”
They stopped at the end of the Ferris wheel’s line, which was shorter than Amie would’ve liked.
“What are we doing here?” Amie asked, as if there was a chance they were going swimming in the lake beyond instead of getting on the very obvious ride in front of them.
“I need time to think without worrying about you running away.” Raina dug into her windbreaker pocket with her free hand, pulling out an accordion of tickets. “Rip off two.”
Amie obliged, ripping off the tickets from the end. Raina returned the rest to her pocket.
“Why David?” Amie asked as Raina took the tickets from her. “Savannah was literally blackmailing Benny. He had a motive.Youwere even trying to get me to suspect him.” Another truck of realization struck her (by this point, Amie was wishing the realizations would come to her a little less violently).
“Did you send me those photos?” Amie asked. “The ones of Benny going into my apartment. You left the threatening note. You set that all up.”
“Yup.” Raina didn’t sound particularly proud or ashamed of herself. She was just stating facts. “I left the bar right after you. My friends were pissed, but I wanted to give you more motivation to look into Benny. Or to scare you away. Either one would’ve worked for me.
“I knew you lived in Savannah’s building, so that was easy. Your name and apartment number were on the buzzers outside; that was easy, too. Benny had given his number for the updates thing we have for the store, so I called him and said your bathroom was flooding. Photographed him entering, emailed them to you.”
“Which you also got from the updates thing,” Amie said, making a mental note to never give out her contact info to anyone ever again. Assuming she survived the night.
“Mhm. Then I slipped the note under your door after he left.”
“But still, why David? Why not Benny from the start? Savannah was blackmailing him—”
“Iwas blackmailing him,” Raina said, sounding tired. “Savannah had no idea it was happening.”
“What?” Amie struggled to make sense of that. “Then why did you tell me about it?”
“I wasn’t going to,” Raina explained. “But then you guys told me he and his girlfriend broke up, so I knew I couldn’t blackmail him any more after that. I figured if you were already suspecting him, I might as well lean into it.”
Amie was still working to catch up. “So everything about the rent, that was all made up?”
“No, that was true. I wasn’t ready to buy the store yet, but I knew the Harlows were struggling with money, so I was hopinghaving their rent lowered would keep her going longer. Covering the whole floor wasn’t Savannah trying to throw off Benny, it was—”
