“Who says we have to keep him here?” Vero plucked the motel key from her pocket and dangled it in front of me. “It’s already paid for. Cam isn’t using it. Silly to let it go to waste.”
CHAPTER 36
I sat on the garage floor, hunched over Steven’s phone as Vero hauled Steven onto his back and unzipped his coat. Frowning down at him, she lifted one lifeless arm above his head and bent one of his legs at an odd angle. “What are you doing?”
“Staging a crime scene.” She opened a bottle of raspberry syrup and squirted a puddle of it in the middle of Steven’s sweatshirt. Then she doused the end of a long screwdriver and dotted some syrup around him on the floor, leaving sticky fingerprints on its handle. She dropped the murder weapon beside him. “There!” She licked her thumb with a satisfied grin and got busy snapping pictures of our victim. “Grab the tape. I think he’s coming to.”
I set Steven’s phone on the workbench and tore a long strip of duct tape from the roll. Vero and I worked fast as Steven began to stir, taping his wrists together behind his back and securing a few feet of the stuff around his ankles. The last piece I slapped over his mouth, which felt better than it probably should have. Together, we hauled him into the rear of my minivan and shut the door.
I rested against it, wiping sweat from my brow. The van shuddered with Steven’s furious thumps as he fully awoke. A muffled shout penetrated the door. “He’s going to kill me when this is over.”
“I don’t think so.” Vero panted beside me. “I’m pretty sure Bree was right. He’s crazy about you.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Think about it, Finn. The guy thinks you beat him over the head, burned down his office, flooded his house with gas, and slashed his tires, and he still hasn’t gone to the cops. He let Bree spend an entire day in custody for a crime heknewshe didn’t commit, all because he didn’t want the person in those handcuffs to be you.”
“But you saw him just now. He was ready to drag me kicking and screaming to the police station.”
“A, he wasn’t going to drag you anywhere, because there’s no way I’d let him take you. And B, the only reason he was trying to make you go to the station is because he didn’t want to be the bad guy who called the cops and turned you in. He wantedyouto do it yourself. And he was planning to take you straight to Nick and your sister, because he knew they wouldn’t arrest you if he didn’t press charges.”
The van had gone still, and I wondered if Steven could hear us.
“Come on,” Vero said, pushing off the door, “we should email these pictures toFedUpand get Sleeping Beauty to the motel before anyone comes looking for him.” A series of thumps shook the van. “Any luck with the app on Steven’s phone?”
I trudged to the workbench to find it. “No, it’s one of those tracking apps parents use to spy on their teenagers. You need a password to disable it.EasyCleanmust have installed it after mugging Steven for his phone.”
“The phone can’t send a signal without power. Turn it off. We’ll figure it out later.”
Steven’s screen lit with a message as I picked it up.
“That’s weird,” I said. Vero came up behind me, watching overmy shoulder as I tapped the notification. “It’s a meeting reminder. But that can’t be right. Steven’s calendar says he’s scheduled to attend a Fourth Quarter Profit and Loss Meeting two hours from now.”
“With who?”
“Ted Fuller and Carl.” Our eyes locked over the phone. I lowered my voice. “How can Steven have a meeting with his silent partners if one of them is dead?”
“They must have scheduled the meeting before Carl was murdered.”
“No. The meeting invitation just went out this morning.”
“Ted must have scheduled it. It’s the only explanation. Maybe Theresa was telling the truth and Ted doesn’t know about Carl.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, holding the phone between us so she could see what I was seeing. “Ted isn’t listed as the event organizer. He hasn’t even confirmed he’ll attend yet. The invitation was sent by Carl’s assistant.”
“Carl’s assistant?” Vero took the phone from me to see for herself. “If Carl had an employee, why wouldn’t this person have told anyone their boss was missing, especially if said boss wasn’t around for months to cut them a paycheck?” Vero narrowed her eyes at the screen. “And why would they schedule the meeting at Carl’s house? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“That whoever sent this invitation already knows Carl is dead.” This sounded too much like a setup. And besides us, there were only three people alive who knew what had happened to Carl—Theresa, Aimee, and Feliks. “What if Aimee set up a dummy account, posing as Carl’s assistant? Maybe she andEasyCleanare working together; she lures him to the scene, andEasyCleantakes him out.”
“Or maybe she figured she could do it quicker and cheaper on her own. Think about it… She posted the job to the forum whileTheresa was in jail, and she responded to both offers while Theresa was stuck at home with an ankle monitor. But now Aimee has her wingman back. What does she needEasyCleanfor? She’s not exactly squeamish when it comes to blood. AndEasyClean’s already botched three attempts.” Vero shook her head. “I think Aimee got spooked when we showed up with Carl and she wants Steven handled fast. And if she and Theresa take him out, she doesn’t have to pay anyone.”
“Then why include Ted in the meeting? If she intends to murder Steven, why invite a witness?”
“Ted hasn’t confirmed he’ll be there. What if she never really sent him an invitation? Maybe this is all just staging. You know, part of the ruse. Maybe Aimee set up the e-vite to make it look like it was a meeting of the partners, so Steven wouldn’t suspect anything was out of the ordinary.”
The more I thought about it, the more it all made sense.
“I’m sending those pics toFedUpbefore she weasels her way out of paying us.”
