Chapter 23 #2
My heart seizes and goose bumps burst across my arms. “Wait, what date was that court order declaring Nate dead?”
Miles hums as he flips through documents. “August twenty-seventh, two years ago.”
“Holy shit. Do you remember them building that boathouse?” I point out the window at it, then go back into the files for the
boathouse invoices.
Miles catches on and his eyes go wide. “Yes. I think they finished it like a year ago?”
“After Nate was declared dead.” I put the final invoice on the desk. And yes, the total costs almost half of Nate’s five-hundred-grand policy.
Something changes on Miles’s face. Uncertainty. “I think a boathouse is an extreme reason to kill your own kid. And they had
to wait eight years for the payout.”
“You said—”
“I was being flippant. Unless he’s an absolute psychopath, I don’t think that was the reason. Maybe it was the reason they
filed the paperwork to have you officially declared dead, yes. But people don’t buy toys with murder money, they pay off debts or mob bosses. Or politicians maybe. Plus, now that you’re not dead, he’s going to
have to pay it all back.”
If I thought I had chills before, they get even more intense now. “What?”
“I mean, they don’t get to keep the money. You’re alive, so the insurance company is going to come knocking for it. And they
definitely won’t accept it in installments.”
The conversation I overheard on Saturday. I update Miles, telling him what I heard Valencia and Marcus discussing. “I didn’t
realize at the time that they were talking about life insurance, but it must be, right?”
“Definitely.” He chews on his lip as he thinks something over. I ask him what it is, and he tilts his head. “It sounds like
Valencia really thinks you’re Nate. Or she’s trying hard to keep up the delusion. Marcus was probably trying to convince her
to finally do the DNA test.”
“Why wouldn’t he do it without her permission?”
“Because he can’t just take your hair and prove you’re not his kid.
First off, DNA is flimsy and never exact.
It’s not like it is on TV, where you put it in a machine and it says it’s a ninety-nine-percent match.
You need samples from both parents, but maternal samples will give the highest markers.
“Those mail-order DNA kits, forensics, even paternity tests compare the child’s DNA to the mother’s first, then cross-reference the father’s markers. You should really pay better attention in biology.”
“Yeah, I’ll make sure I get on that when I’m enrolled in school and not homeless.” Miles laughs, and I feel a teeny bit of
pride. “Okay, so he wants to test me so he can keep his pretty boathouse—without a boat, by the way.”
“Well, you wouldn’t buy a car without a garage!” he says with faux shock.
“You’re so right.” I flop down into Marcus’s chair. “So he wants the test because he doesn’t want to pay back the insurance
money. And he’s very sure that he won’t have to pay if they do the test.”
Miles nods, picking up on what I’m saying. “Because he knows the test will prove you’re not Nate.”
“Oh my God.” Again my body tingles, only this time it’s more from fear than shock. Miles asks me what’s wrong. I tell him
what happened this morning with the paint. And our conversation yesterday while painting Nate’s room.
He has a thoughtful expression on his face that turns skeptical when he speaks. “You think he’s trying to set you up so Valencia
finally starts to wonder if you’re not the real Nate? I mean, you’re sure you put the paint on the ground, right?”
“Positive like a mitochondrial DNA test.”
“Terrible example, but I understand the sentiment.”
“So it’s him. He killed Nate.”
Miles holds up his hands. “Hold on. That’s still a leap. It could just be that he knows you’re an imposter and wants you out
of his house.”
“We have the insurance payouts, and he’s not just trying to prove I’m not Nate, he’s trying to make it look like I’m a psycho
who throws paint on his expensive car.”
Miles sighs. “He’s also a criminal defense attorney who all but told you that without a body or some kind of compelling evidence,
he can get away with murder.”
He says it like he’s telling me what he had for dinner last night.
“How can you be so calm about this? I’m the one who’s stuck here. Can you at least pretend to be concerned?”
“I am! I swear, but . . .” He shakes his head as he looks over the documents, putting them back together in order and closing
the folders. “It feels too easy. And, look, I know you’re going to be pissed when I say this, but are you absolutely sure
you put the paint on the ground?”
“Are you serious right now?” The whole point of Miles coming over today was for him to find evidence—evidence that is in his hands—and he suddenly becomes a skeptic?
“I don’t want to jump the gun.”
“You were the one who said you thought they killed him!”
Now Miles looks like he’s the one who got caught in a lie. “I said . . . what . . . I thought would make an interesting story.”
I stare at him, trying to figure out if he’s joking or not—and, honestly, given the situation, even our queer-based gallows-humor-laugh-because-if-you-don’t-you’ll-cry coping mechanism isn’t appropriate.
“Are you for real right now?” I ask. “You came here to—” But then a thought jumps out. “You only came here for your podcast.
Something you can throw in around the midway point to either heighten the stakes or throw people off.”
“That’s not true. I do want to find out what really happened to Nate.”
“This!” I pick up the papers on the desk and hold them up to him. “This is what happened!”
“Stop yelling at me.”
“No! You told me to help you; I’m helping you.”
“But you’re also lying!”
One of the papers falls out of my hand but I don’t bother picking it up. I thought—and I don’t know why—but I thought Miles
really did care about all this. Nate, me, maybe the Beaumonts. But he doesn’t. He cares about his podcast with twenty listeners.
Once the silence between us goes on for too long, he shrugs. “I’m sorry. But . . . I’m not going to jump to conclusions based
on everything we found here.”
“You mean the stuff you snooped out with an imposter.”
Miles has the decency not to lie and say that wasn’t what he was thinking. “I’m sorry. I trust you, because you told me the
truth. But I’m not sure how far that truth goes yet.”
So he, like Valencia, probably doesn’t even believe me about the paint. Or the gas leak, both of which I’m now convinced were Marcus.
“So because I’m lying about who I say I am, you ignore evidence.”
Miles picks up the paper on the ground and takes the rest from me. “It’s circumstantial evidence. If it was something tangible, he would have thrown it out or found a way to destroy it so it couldn’t come back
to him. This wasn’t even in the locked drawer.”
“Then what are we doing here?”
“Information gathering. Getting something the police don’t have and tying their investigation and ours together.”
I’m not sure why I thought this day would go any different. I already learned this lesson months ago: the only person you
can rely on is yourself. Guess I needed a reminder.
Miles holds the key he found in Marcus’s room. “Should we see if there’s anything else?”
I shrug. “Go for it. I’m sure if you found Nate’s severed head in there, you’d say it doesn’t prove anything.”
He ignores the jab and unlocks the top drawer, but it holds only a couple of phone chargers, batteries, and key chains without
keys attached to them.
“Phone chargers!” Miles gasps. “Now it all makes sense!”
I shoot him an annoyed look and pull open the drawer beneath it. Maybe that’s the one Marcus wanted to lock. You can’t lock one without locking the other.
And yes. It’s definitely the one he wanted to lock.
Inside is a blue glass pipe with a Philadelphia Flyers logo stenciled on it. It’s a bowl to smoke weed out of. My laughter
breaks the room’s silence.
“So Marcus is a stoner,” Miles says. “Surprising.” He takes out a black glass jar and holds it out to me.
Sure enough, when I open it up, there are four ziplock bags of dried bud.
Each bag has the strain written on it in Sharpie—Slapz, Green Line OG, Motorbreath #15, and Blue Zushi.
He even has a grinder and pipe cleaners.
But that’s it. It’s only his weed stash. The fact that Marcus Beaumont is apparently a stoner doesn’t add suspicion. If anything,
maybe being a stoner improved his “short temper.” I’ve never smoked weed. Frankie and I were offered it at a party once and
I was afraid I would get too honest and say something gay. Frankie, on the other hand, jumped right in. She was normal old
Frankie but dialed down. Maybe it’s the same for Marcus. All the edges get smoothed off and it’s just calm Marcus who sits
quietly, studying the room.
Miles hands the key over to me and I put everything back the way it was and lock up while he goes out to the storage room
at the end of the hall. I poke my head in to find him looking at boxes of holiday decor and old clothes. When he realizes
there’s nothing else there, we go back downstairs—returning the key where Miles found it—and go to the kitchen.
“You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” Miles asks.
“For what? Saying I’m unreliable? Because I’m a liar who can’t be trusted?”
“You are a liar, and yes.”
I lied to the Beaumonts. It doesn’t make me a liar. It’s not like it’s a habit. Right? Though I’m lying right now, aren’t I? To myself, but still, it’s a lie. Almost everything
I’ve said to the Beaumonts has been untrue, so yes, I guess that does make me a liar.
Miles lets out a frustrated sigh. “Look, I have to live next to these people. You’re getting out of here soon, never to look back. I have to walk out the door every morning and see Marcus and Valencia driving to work. I’m back there picking up Chardonnay turds while Marcus cuts the grass.”
I can’t help it; I snort.
Miles softens and shrugs. “If I’m going to call one of them Jeffrey Dahmer, I want to be sure about it. Okay? And it’s not
that I don’t trust you—”
“Bullshit.”
“You’re a liar, what do you want?” He grins.
And again, I laugh. I should be mad at Miles. He doesn’t believe me and calls me a liar. And this was all very clearly filler information for his podcast—though
he was kind of upfront about that with me.
He is the only person who knows the real me, though. And he’s now the second kid my age I’ve met who is out and queer. Though if
my friendship with Frankie is anything to go by, I shouldn’t trust him. And yet . . .
“So?” I ask, leaning against the island. “Still think it’s all too simple?”
“I think we’re on the right track, but we’ll have to find something more substantial if we want to go to the police.”
We. I have no intention of going to the police.
Or helping Miles anymore. But he is right.
Marcus has gotten away with it this long.
He’s several steps ahead of us. That also means I have a target on my back.
He wants me out of their lives before he’s out half a million dollars.
Though Miles doesn’t seem to care about that, because all he cares about is getting an interesting story for his podcast. But murder isn’t always complicated, with dozens of suspects.
He even said most murders are done by people close to the victim.
“Fine, so it’s not enough to go to the police, but is it enough for you?”
He flinches. “What do you mean?”
“You said you’d help me get away if I got you stuff for your podcast. There’s your compelling theory or whatever. You have
plenty to start with; you can figure out the rest on your own. When do I get out of here?” As much as I want to rely only
on myself, I need a way to get somewhere fast.
“Oh.” He looks like he’s not sure what to say. “I mean, do you know where you’re going when you leave?”
“I’ll get on a train and go . . . somewhere.”
“You might not want to go to a train station nearby. It’s easy for the police to go with a picture and ask if they’ve seen
you. And do you have money?”
Shit. I don’t. I’ve been so desperate to get out of this situation, I didn’t even think about needing money to buy a train or bus ticket.
Miles takes the look on my face as confirmation. “I’ll buy you a ticket, but we can’t get you out of here until the weekend.
I can tell my parents I’m going out with another friend and drive you somewhere a couple hours away. Maybe Virginia. Or Philly.”
My heart sinks. So I’m stuck here for a few more days. With Marcus trying to expose who I really am.