Chapter Fifteen #3
“They didn’t find a blood-soaked dress.”
“That’s a detail,” Rhodes said gently. “A bloody knife in her bag is fact.”
I blew out a hard breath, frustration strangling me.
I knew there wasn’t any point in them filling my head with fantasies, but right then, I needed someone to say Detective Balogun would call in ten seconds, apologizing for arresting the wrong best friend and announcing she caught, arrested, and was already giving the lethal injection to the real killer.
I waited—counting the seconds to ten... but no call came.
Fine, I thought, sitting up. If that’s how she wants to play it.
“I have no choice,” I rasped. “I told her to find the killer. I wanted her to find the killer. But she bungled it like the lazy dumbass everyone called her and her partner. She’s left me no choice.”
“Uhh, excuse me?” Alex drew out. “What does that mean?”
Red descended on my vision—exploding the white-hot heat of the bursting pit within my soul.
“It means I’m going to find that fucker.
I’m going to make him confess, and I am going to get Courtney out of jail and back with her daughter.
And when I’m done,” I forced through clenched and cracking teeth, “Balogun can have whatever’s left of him. ”
The three of them traded looks.
“Sue?” Rhodes knelt in front of me. “I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now. You want justice for your mother, and she deserves that, but you have to know that you can’t go charging after a violent, psychopathic killer. It’s too dangerous. Plus, where would you even start?”
The hard set to my chin didn’t go away. “I’ll start in the same place the detectives did—with the nine other people who were in the ballroom this morning.”
“I was kinda hoping you’d say six,” Micah deadpanned, pointing to himself and his fellow husbands. “Because we sure as fuck didn’t do it.”
“Those six might not have done it either,” Alex spoke up, stealing our attention. “I was thinking about that this morning, but those six people weren’t the only people upstairs during the time... it happened.”
“What?” Rhodes stood up. “What are you talking about? Who else was there?”
Alex gave a long, serious look. “About half a dozen cops.”
“You’re not saying...” I trailed off, body chilling. “You think a cop... did that to my mother?”
“I’m not saying one of them did for sure, but just think about it.
” He leaned off the chair, his hands out to me.
“They arranged their shifts and their placements among themselves. We just opened the door and let them in—we didn’t even know who the fuck half of them were.
If one of them did come here with a plan, and they put themselves in charge of guarding the hall to Omma’s room, then who would’ve noticed them slipping away? ”
I shuddered, bile rising up my throat. “That’s horrible. That’s so h-horrible, I can’t— I can’t even—” Rage squeezed my throat closed.
“I’m not saying that’s what happened,” Alex continued, finally coming over to me and taking my hands. “But if your friend is innocent, it means someone planted that knife in her bag. And who would’ve had the best opportunity to do that?”
“A cop.” I know I spoke, but the voice sounded nothing like mine. “How do I prove it?”
“Sue,” Rhodes began. “We don’t know—”
“How do I prove it?” I barked.
The guys shared another fucking look.
“We need a reason,” Micah finally said. “A motive. I mean, you know that Omma pretty much shut herself away from the world when she started losing her hair. This is an old grudge because she wasn’t making any new ones while she was locked in her room ignoring everyone.
Do you know who she may have gotten into it with before she started isolating?
You got any other best friends who pelted her with cupcakes? ”
I appreciated his attempt to make me smile, but my lips didn’t move a millimeter. “I don’t know, but I do know people who might,” I replied. “I need the AGN.”
THAT WAS HOW I ENDED up at the Bluebell Café two days later, sipping tea with Mrs. Choi.
Mrs. Choi was the first friend my mother made when she and my father moved to Lantana, and she was a good friend to have. Not only was she a member of one of the richest families in the whole town, she was also the leader of the Korean American clique.
I wish I could say Lantana’s diversity was reflected in the friendships made and the groups formed, but that’d be a lie.
There were four distinct charity cliques in Lantana, and the charity cliques were everything.
Pretty much the entire social and networking calendar of the community revolved around them.
Stay-at-home moms or working moms, it was considered gauche in the extreme to flaunt the kind of wealth Lantanans did, but not give to charity. So almost everyone did so—which was good—but it was mostly so they’d have an excuse to throw huge, gaudy parties and flaunt more wealth—not so good.
Either way, instead of joining together, the middle-aged and elderly white, Hispanic, Black, and Korean members of the community split the four main causes: health, education, environment, and human services.
One clique got one cause. Of course, everyone was invited to every party, but all the chatting, dining, befriending, and planning of said parties only happened with their own kind.
Balogun was right, I thought, sweeping the café and all the Asian patrons just like me and Choi. This community is horribly exclusionary.
Despite that, the Bluebell Café was a cute little spot with fresh flowers on every table, and all the specialty teas and coffees anyone could think of.
“Oh, Soo Min.” Mrs. Choi took my hand across the table. “I’m so sorry, dear. I can’t believe this happened. Ha-eun was one of my closest friends. I’m utterly devastated.”
Mrs. Choi wasn’t just saying that because it’s what you’re supposed to say.
Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, and not even the heavy makeup was hiding it.
Like my mother, Mrs. Choi was pushing against her seventies, but you wouldn’t know it from the expertly dyed black hair, and wrinkle-repelling eyes and cheeks.
“What can I do for you, sweetheart? Anything you ask, it’s yours,” she said. “Do you need help organizing the funeral? Contacting and flying your extended family over? Do—” She looked around, then leaned in. “Do you need me to track down Sarang again?”
I froze. Again?
“I don’t care what was said and done in the past,” she went on. “She must come back for her mother’s funeral. Anything else would be obscene.”
“I...” Everything I walked in here prepared to say flew out of my head. Of course, Mrs. Choi and the AGN had known my mother for over thirty years. They damn sure knew she had twins, but what they’d never known, was how to tell us apart.
She doesn’t know she’s already talking to Sarang. And I didn’t know she was the reason Sue found me in Willingsworth. There’s just no such thing as privacy or secrecy in the AGN—
—which is what I’m counting on.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Choi. This isn’t about Sarang, and it’s not about the funeral,” I said. “It can’t be when the investigation into my mother’s murder isn’t over.”
She frowned. “Oh?”
“The person they’ve arrested, Courtney Thorne, didn’t do it. The police have the wrong person, and I need to make them see that.”
Her frown deepened. “But how can you say that, Soo? She was found with the murder weapon. Also, your mother told me all about that Courtney girl.” She tsked.
“Did you know she was a friend of Sarang’s when she went to that fancy prep school on the other side of town?
I say friend,” she whispered, dropping her voice as gossip mode activated.
“But her bad influence would be a more appropriate description.
“Your mother was certain that girl led your sister astray—dragging Sarang into parties, drugs, and boys until her grades fell.”
Grades fell? I had a 4.2 GPA!
“She turned Sarang all the way around until when she finally tried to get on the right track, it was too late and that boy had already stolen the valedictorian spot from her. And then...” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Well, you know what she did to try to get it back.”
My free hand tightened under the table, gripping my recording phone hard. So this was the lie my mother spread through the network? Blaming everything on my best friend in the world because she refused to believe the real monster was right under her roof.
“Well, it turned out it wasn’t like that,” I said when my anger cooled. “Courtney was and is a good person—”
“No, no, no,” she hissed, leaning in and patting my hand with a get this?
look on her face. “You know that Melinda Thorne—a complete gossip and whore till the bitter end. She was forever bragging about her perfect, wonderful daughter, Courtney, who got into Princeton while Sarang was expelled, and you went to community college. Heavens, she was so nasty with those ‘where did your daughters go to school again? Oh, that’s right, nowhere’ comments.
All because your mother held the Coats for Kids charity dinner on the same night as her Save the Owls auction—and everyone went to our event instead of hers. ”
My brows popped. “Yikes. I had no idea things used to be so bad between Omma and Mrs. Thorne.”