Chapter 84
APRIL
There was going to be no fucking San Francisco. There was going to be no fucking San Jose. There was going to be no fucking San Diego.
Instead, there was only fucking Lucy Sykes.
I recognized her the moment she walked into the coffee shop, and it’s not because she’d been on the news lately. When Eddie had concocted his plan and told me about Lucy’s parents, I’d spent an afternoon reading up on the family, which included finding pictures of Lucy and her parents.
I’d only have been slightly less shocked if her husband had walked into the coffee shop—and he was dead.
I tried to keep my cool and managed to do a good job for about the first ten seconds. Then my inner devil took over.
Curiosity got the best of me, and I had to poke the bear a few times. It didn’t take me long to figure out that Lucy knew who I was as well. Her replies gave her away, especially the way she accentuated my name just like I’d done hers. I guess I can’t blame her. I’d started it.
I guess it would have been more surprising if she hadn’t recognized me. Any Angeleno who had been watching the news the last six weeks or so had seen my face many, many times. But this felt different. This recognition wasn’t because I’d been on TV. Something more was at play.
The irony of it all is that, hypothetically, we should have been partners in grief. We’d both had husbands killed in what were currently unsolved homicides. We should have been friends, or at least in a support group together.
Not that I foresaw either of those two things happening. We’d already drawn lines in the sand, without explicitly stating it. That’s what our little dance at the coffee shop had been.
And then there was the elephant in the room. Well, at least for me. How had she ended up at my coffee shop?
She was “in the area.” Bullshit.
But I really couldn’t figure out how the hell she had managed to find out who I was.
Eddie had insisted that he never paid at Hotel Pico by credit card.
Could Harry Shoe have reached out to Lucy?
Possible, I guess, but if he kept planning to blackmail me, you’d think he wouldn’t want to involve any more people.
Not that Harry Shoe was brilliant, but I doubt he was that stupid.
How else? I had no idea. Eddie and I had dotted every i and crossed every t. Or so I thought.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I remembered thinking that when I killed Eddie, I was tying up all the loose ends.
Unclustering the fuck I think I said.
I was wrong.
I’d just killed Harry Shoe, and now I was probably going to have to kill Lucy Sykes.
It was still a clusterfuck.
Moreso than ever.