“Ah, Jesus. Monica, what did you do?”
There on the floor was another body, this one a man who was also naked with a glassy-eyed stare. Unlike the woman, who looked as though she was asleep with her eyes open, the man had a knife in the center of his chest, the handle pointed toward the sky.
“I had to,” my mother pleaded. “I had to, Laiky. He was going to kill me. When we realized she was dead, he went berserk.”
When theyrealized? Good God, I didnotwant to know how that realization came about.
“Who ishe?” More importantly, why did she have a knife in her bedroom?
“The place … the party!” she cried out.
“Who. Is. He. Monica?”
“Lawrence Pierce,” she said, her eyes wide.
“Oh, my God!” I stepped back. “You killed a world-famous director?”
Yes, that was my voice screeching, but I couldn’t help it. Lawrence Pierce was the man responsible for directing some of the biggest box office hits of the decade.
“I only met him tonight.”
“That doesn’t make him anylessfamous,” I said snidely.
“He wanted me for a role.”
“And what? A simple no wouldn’t suffice?”
She squared her shoulders. “It was an accident.”
“What? You were holding the knife, and he justranright into it?”
She was something else.
“I had to,” she said softly.
“And her?” I asked, unable to point at the dead woman.
“His wife.”
Oh, fucking hell. The husbandandwife were dead? In my mother’s bedroom, of all places.
This was bad. So very, very bad.
“Those—” Monica’s arm snapped up, finger pointed toward the dresser. More panic escaped as her breaths raced in and out. “Those are their drugs. Not mine. They arenotmine, Laiky.”
I glanced at the dresser and noticed the plate of cheese, crackers, and grapes—probably the explanation for the knife. Beside it, white powder and a rolled-up C-note. I wish I could’ve been surprised to find drugs in the house. I wasn’t. Unfortunately, with glamor came drugs of all sorts, and my mother had a penchant for them. Probably the reason I steered clear of them at all costs.
“Did you kill them, Monica?”
Her dramatic panic instantly disappeared. Like a curtain pulled down on her emotions, blocking them.
“That’s a ridiculous question, Laikyn.”
Was it?
While she was no longer panicked, I still was, and I wanted to be anywhere but there. I backed out of the room, my heart racing. “We have to call the police.”
“No!”
