I head straight for Lemon & Fig, not bothering to call Marcus and announce I’m inbound and Beau’s in jail.
Some news is better delivered in person.
The storm’s wreckage is everywhere—branches and leaves are strewn across the sidewalks and roads—but at least the streets are passable. Most of the windows of the homes and retail spaces are darkened without power. But pulling onto Park Avenue, I spot a lone light on in the back of Lemon & Fig.
I’m pounding on the front door before I can remember parking.
“Hey,” Marcus says, cracking the door open, his face pulled taut with concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Beau’s in jail.” I rip the Band-Aid off quickly. “Simon Avery died in my pool last night and they think Beau did it. And I think it’s my fault. I am in hell. And I’m a selfish kind of person, because I don’t want to be in hell alone.”
Marcus takes it all in with a kind of patience that endears him to me more. He doesn’t cause a scene or throw up his hands in shock. He nods.
“Okay,” he says as he eases the door wider for me to comein.
I brush past him into the dining room, lit by daylight and the lights in the back of the house.
“Do you need a lawyer, Este?”
“We’ve actually already had to cross that threshold, I’m afraid. When the security footage leaked.”
“Right.” Marcus has the decency to look like he regrets not telling me the whole story about the footage before it leaked.
“It’s fine,” I say. “But whatever happened between Beau and Simon, I think it has something to do with Gemma.”
Then, my thoughts circle back to the surveillance video Marcus showed me yesterday.
“Can I use your computer?” I ask. “You have power, right?”
“Yeah…” He trails off, like he knows there’s nothing that’s going to slow me down. “In the back.”
But I’m already on my way. “I need to see that security footage again.”
Marcus cues up the footage from the night Gemma died, and I drop into his desk chair. I stare at the last frame—that moment when a shadow in the alcove reaches out to grab Gemma—for what feels like too long. Long enough for my eyes to burn from the blue-light exposure.
I zoom and zoom until the white toe box of the shoe stops looking like a shoe at all.
Marcus is standing over my shoulder as the pixelated shoe swims in and out of focus on the screen. But the memory stays maddeningly out of reach.
“Este,” Marcus says. “The police have had this for two weeks. I don’t think—”
“Do you recognize that shoe?”
Marcus steps closer, eyes narrowed. “How do you even know that’s a shoe? It kind of looks like a paper cup. Like trash or something.”
Now, we’re both leaning toward the screen as if we can fit inside the frame to look around the corner hidden from view.
But he’s right. I’m reaching. The police have had ample time to dissect the video for leads.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that Ardell isn’t stopping anyone fromthinkingit’s Beau when the video footage clearly proves it’s not?”
Marcus clears his throat and looks away from the screen. “What?”
“Why didn’t he say something about that surveillance leak? And why is it that the part most incriminating to Beau is the only part that leaked?”
“I don’t think Ardell can comment on an ongoing investigation,” Marcus offers. “This is evidence. We’re not supposed to have it.”
Right. Evidence.
