Chapter 19
Well, she got what she said she wanted.
She didn’t have to downsize and give up her perfect little bungalow.
Claudia died in her house.
I want to throw up. I can’t believe I’ve been so self-involved, so worried about my own ass that I didn’t see the truth right
in front of my face.
When the unknown mastermind/Funeral Deep Throat said “take care of her,” her didn’t mean me.
“Her” meant Claudia.
Oh god.
And Claudia’s text: It’s murder
That wasn’t a passive-aggressive snark attack at me for taking so long to figure it out. She was telling me that she was going to be murdered.
Hot tears spring to my eyes. None of this makes sense. Why wasn’t she more specific with her cry for help? If only she’d texted “it’s murder now, for me” I would have run straight to her house. Maybe I could have saved her.
Holy shit. I could have saved her.
I’ve gone from a zero-murder life to having two back-to-back murders weighing on my conscience. First Cran, and now—
“Claudia? When? How?” I can barely get the words out.
“There was a gas leak sometime this weekend,” Marlowe says, wiping her nose with her whole arm. “That’s what the firefighters
said.”
A gas leak. If Claudia was suffocating on gas, she probably couldn’t have been more specific in her text. It probably took all her energy just to get those two words out.
Impossibly, I feel even worse knowing that.
“They said the whole house could’ve blown up if she’d even switched a light on, but she must’ve been asleep, so she asphyxiated instead,” Marlowe says.
“The firefighters said this to you?” I say, horrified.
She shakes her head angrily. “I’m really good at lipreading.”
Suddenly she tackles me with a hug and starts sobbing.
Sometimes I forget, but Marlowe’s just a kid. And this kid deserved to have her Claudia around for a lot longer. I pet her streaky pink hair. This is bigger than me and
my guilt. There are consequences to murder. You can’t kill a niceish old lady, make a scary tween cry, and get away with it.
Not on my watch.
“Do you want me to walk you to class?” I say. “I’m going to call out for the rest of the day anyway.”
“Why?”
“I, uh, have some errands to run,” I say, looking very innocent.
She lasers in on me. “I’m coming with you.”
Shit.
“What? No. I’m going to, uh, make those dog videos we talked about.”
“No you aren’t. You think this was murder. You’re going to investigate.”
Okay, can she read my mind? How does she know that?
Marlowe fiddles with her phone for a second. “Claudia wants me to help you solve the case,” Marlowe says. “Avenge her death,
et cetera.”
Okay I’m sorry, what?
“See?” Marlowe thrusts the phone in my face. Sure enough, it’s a text from Claudia, from Sunday night. Marlowe frowns. “I’m
just not totally sure what the second half means yet.”
Claudia: Hells no apple the cat invite affluent odor
Oh good lord.
“Okay, so this is all incredibly awful and traumatic, but Marlowe . . .” I put a hand on her shoulder, “that is definitely
the gas leak speaking.”
She narrows her eyes at me, no doubt coming up with some devastating insult. “And,” I continue quickly, “even if it wasn’t, you can’t investigate with me. I draw the line at a kid sidekick. School. Now.”
The first bell rings, right on cue.
She folds her arms over her chest and juts her chin out. “You need me.”
“I do not.”
Actually, I definitely do.
She holds her phone out again. “Too late, things are already in motion.”
There’s a sound file on-screen. Marlowe presses play. A woman’s voice says: “Hey, Sue, it’s Shoshanna Golden. Marlowe woke
up with a fever today, so we’re keeping her home—”
Marlowe presses stop. “Gonna deploy one of my deepfakes,” she says.
“One of—? How do you—?”
“—send it while making it look like it’s coming from her phone?”
Oh for sure, that was exactly what I was going to ask.
“Easy. I set up a partition.” She boop-boops on the phone then holds it back up to me. Now there’s a profile photo of a middle-aged
woman with short gray hair and blue eyes behind funky thick-rimmed glasses. Under the photo it says “Shoshanna’s phone.” She
dials a number, waits for the voicemail line, taps the screen, and lets the recording play out.
Okay, color me impressed.
I sigh and silently apologize to Claudia, the universe, and Marlowe’s hopefully not litigious lawyer mom.
“Fine. And only because I do, actually, need your help,” I admit.
I’m acting on pure feral instinct here, but if Claudia was butt-texting Marlowe and murder-texting me, she clearly had access
to her phone. Maybe ours weren’t the only messages she sent. And maybe we can figure out who else she was in contact with.
And then there’s the doorbell camera. That’s probably on her phone, too, right? Claudia must’ve had an app or something that
showed her the footage. So if someone came to the door, or near the door, or pulled up in a car around the time she was killed,
well, that’s a clue, isn’t it?
“Her phone,” I say. “We need to figure out how to get into Claudia’s house and find her phone.”
“Way ahead of you,” Marlowe says, typing away at her own phone. “And I know just who can help us.”
At this point, I’m fully expecting this kid to be best buds with a cat burglar, or maybe a mob boss, but instead she shows me a YouTube video.
It’s titled Impersonate to Infiltrate and it features an old guy with a little mustache and a big bulbous nose trying on different hats and saying: “Nobody pays attention to your face, all they see is hat. Trust me, it works,” in a Chicago accent that gives Claudia’s a run for its money.
“Rodney O’Malley, PI. Best in the biz,” Marlowe says.
“What biz is that, exactly?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes so hard I’m worried they’re going to pop. “Um, private investigator?”
PI, right.
I scroll his account, and there are like a thousand videos with titles like Tailing Suspects 101, Whose Clues?, Red Herrings
= Indegestion, and You Can Pick Your Friends, You Can Pick Your Nose, You Can Pick That Lock: A Six-Week Course. Each one
has over a million views.
“I did his lockpicking course. You got a door? I can get in it.” She tries on this guy’s Chicago accent, and I snort.
“That’s great that you’re becoming a tween criminal,” I say, handing the phone back. “But I’m not letting you pick Claudia’s
locks.”
“We don’t have to,” she says. “See? The door’s wide open.”
Sure enough, they must be airing out Claudia’s house because the doors and windows are flung wide.
There are also several firefighters, a couple cops and EMTs, and a whole passel of gas company workers milling around outside
and chatting like it’s an emergency barbecue.
Marlowe sees my concern and pats my arm. “We just have to get you the right hat.”