“Not well,” I say. She doesn’t respond, instead focusing on the TV, where a blond woman is wrestling a fake octopus. “We don’t know Jake and Jen at all, and we only met the others last week. I got a bad vibe from Jake after I caught him smoking weed with Scarlett and Ford outside.” A memory stirs. “Jake knows Ford, you know. He greeted him like an old friend.”
“I didn’t think Ford was from Blackwood.” Izzy frowns.
“Apparently they went to school together?”
“Huh. Small world.”
“Iz, do you actually know anything about Ford?”
She opens her mouth to argue and then closes it again. “Well, no. He doesn’t talk much, he just listens mostly.”
“Jake called Ford by his last name, Heywood. He never said he was connected to the Heywood Gallery, did he?”
Izzy puts her drink on the table. “No! You don’t think he is? He would be loaded if he was part of that family. It makes sense, though…He totally dresses like a trust-fund baby.”
“One of the articles I read this week said the Heywoods basically paid for that whole place, artwork and everything.” A connection would also mean Ford has links to The Four and hasn’t told us, but I don’t mention that now. “Why wouldn’t he tell us?”
“Maybe he doesn’t want his private life gossiped about,” Izzy says, but I can already see her daydreaming about Ford in the role of Rich Boyfriend.
“I guess. I won’t lie—if he is, then that makes me a bit wary of him. What if he’s hiding other things…?”
“Like what, drugging me?” Izzy says softly, reading between the lines of my comment. “Fliss, you need to stop profiling everyone.”
“I’m not!” I protest, my appetite dwindling. I put my muffin down, half eaten. “I’m just worried about you. You didn’t see the state you were in.”
“I know,” she says, looking down at her lap. “I’m so sorry, Fliss. I feel really horrible about it. I could smell the sick from your dad’s room when I got up, so I washed the bedsheets and cleaned up in there, and I’ll do whatever else I need to do to make it up to you.”
“Thank you. But you don’t need to apologize, Iz. You did nothing wrong. Whoever did that to you is the one who should be feeling bad.”
“Fliss, no onedidanything. I hadn’t eaten dinner, and we’d had an emotionally turbulent week, so it just all went to my head. I probably drank more than I realized, and you know I don’t drink wine successfully.” She grabs the remote as the octopus reappears on screen. “I can’t handle whatever this show is.” She turns the channel to the local news, where a woman stands in front of a cordoned-off street. “Hey, that’s where I just was…”
“Shush.” I grab the remote and turn the volume up as I see police tape.
“—the body of a young female was found by a dog walker in the early hours of Saturday morning. Police have yet to comment on whether they suspect foul play, but the deceased’s family has been notified.”
“Another murder?” Izzy’s eyes widen as she grips my forearm. “Since when did Blackwood get so dangerous?”
“They said it might not be foul play,” I reassure her, but my brain is already processing the scant information. Is this death linked to Helen? God, I just told Dad not to worry about getting home. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty.
My phone buzzes against the coffee table, and Izzy and I both look at it.
“Noah’s texting you,” Izzy says, but then her eyes light up as she forgets the TV and remembers what she saw in the kitchen last night. “Noah’stextingyou.”
“And?” I grab my phone before she can, trying to keep the smile from my face.
“Come on, what does it say?” She leans over when I don’t answer, mainly because the air has been sucked out of my lungs.“Fliss?” I hand her the phone, and she glances at the message that’s been sent to the group chat. The cheeky smile fades from her face. “Is this for real?”
“I don’t know.” I look at it again, to make sure I’m not imagining it, but the words are the same.
Noah:Did you see the news? Jake just called me. The body they found was Jen’s. She was murdered.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I hang back as Izzyraces to Noah and wraps him in a hug in the middle of the Heywood Gallery café. She offered to meet him after he told us about Jen. Most public places in Blackwood are busy on a Saturday, especially during the summer, so we settled for here, hoping it would be fairly quiet and we wouldn’t get kicked out if we overstayed our welcome.
I stand aside to let an elderly couple pass me as they leave, and then I slowly walk to Noah’s table, smiling hello over Izzy’s shoulder and wondering if I should actually be the one greeting him. Izzy is the natural hugger, though, not me, so I let her do it and hang back awkwardly instead.
“I’ll get us some coffee,” I announce, looking down at Noah’s almost empty mug. “You want another?”
