Chapter Eleven Harriet
Chapter Eleven
Harriet
I’m drunk when I get home. Drunk enough that it takes me three tries to get the front door unlocked, the key heavy in my hand. Inside, the house is dark, my mom probably passed out upstairs from her sleeping pills.
Back in the city, I’d still be at work. Here, it’s so quiet I can hear the hum of the fridge.
Work.
Frankie.
What if she wrote back?
I dig my phone out of my bag and click my mail, holding my breath as I watch new emails load. But apart from a few marketing emails, there’s nothing new.
When I first saw that email I’d sent to Frankie, I was appalled. But maybe I was onto something. Nic’s right: Publishing an article in Humans really could help Sara.
Maybe I should email Frankie again. Call her even. Harass her until she agrees to give me a platform to tell this story. There’s so much I could say. I overheard Sharkey plotting something. I was there when George was murdered! It happened at my birthday party, for fuck’s sake!
Screw Frankie and her silence.
I open a new message and start typing furiously, mostly using my pointer fingers.
As I write, Steven’s voice loops through my head. He reminds me how horrible Frankie was to me, how she completely screwed me over, how depressed I was in the aftermath. I shove those thoughts away again and again.
Sara needs this. Nic needs this.
I need this.
I can’t live under the same roof as my mother for much longer without losing my mind.
By the time I sign the message, I’m sweating and a little nauseous.
I straighten from my hunch, close my eyes, and press Send.
My phone buzzes with an incoming call approximately thirty seconds later. A number with a New York area code. I don’t have it saved anymore, but I’m pretty sure it’s Frankie’s direct line at the office.
Holy shit! She’s actually calling me.
It’s nearly midnight, but I guess some things never change. She always was a workaholic.
I swipe to answer and press the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Surprise!” Frankie purrs, like the last time we spoke was ten minutes ago, not almost six months. “I bet you never thought you’d hear from me again, did you, Baker?”
The sound of her voice makes the muscles in my throat contract. She’s the person who hired me fresh out of NYU. Who taught me the ropes, introduced me to the right people…
And who unceremoniously fired me four years later like a shot through the heart.
“Hello, Frankie,” I reply, unwilling to match her familiarity. “I hope you’re well. I assume you received my emails about the situation in my hometown?”
She laughs. “The situation in my hometown,” she mimics. “No, Baker. I’m calling you to have a nice little catch-up.”
God, she’s an asshole. I struggle against my instinct to hang up. “Right.”
“So,” she continues. “That video of the person flying across the beach was recorded at your birthday party, huh? What a small world. It’s hilarious stuff and matched to the perfect song.
Wish my social media team was that savvy.
After watching it, I told the head of that department they better step it the fuck up. Do you know the person who posted it?”
This has absolutely nothing to do with my email. I answer through gritted teeth. “I don’t.”
“Wait. Seriously? How? Weren’t they at your party?”
“Yeah. But there were people there I didn’t really know.”
“Are you…are you actually saying that you didn’t know all the guests at your own party? Wow.” She lets out a mean little laugh.
I hate her. I think again about hanging up even if that would mean blowing my one chance to help Nic and Sara. It’s important, but is it worth dealing with this bullshit?
Then my eyes land on my mom’s oversize purse splayed on the counter, the plastic prescription pills bottles that belonged to George.
Their crap is everywhere in this too-quiet kitchen.
Even my bedroom is crammed with boxes of their old clothes, discarded electronics, random junk they never use but won’t throw away.
Nothing here is mine.
And I want something that is. Even if it means dealing with the likes of Frankie.
Plus, Nic will shit himself when I tell him I made it happen.
“About my emails,” I say, trying to steer her back on track.
“Right,” she says. “Your emails. Lucky that I unblocked your address a few weeks ago so I got them. When I read your first one, I have to admit: I was skeptical. You were ranting about corruption, using a lot of misspelled words. I thought maybe you’d gone off the deep end since you got yourself fired.
But the one tonight? Now that piqued my interest. You overheard the police chief talking about shady stuff on the beach?
Tell me more. Pitch it to me, Baker. But do it well this time. ”
My eye twitches. “Right, that conversation,” I say. “Well. It was between the chief of police, Sharkey, and…”
And who? I have no real idea who he was talking to, but I can’t say that to Frankie. She’d eviscerate me.
“…and the mayor,” I say, lying a little. Sometimes lying is necessary though, for the greater good. I warm to the idea taking shape in my head. “They said they were going to pin it on someone.”
“Pin what on someone?”
“The murder, I assume.”
“You assume?” Frankie says. “What did you hear exactly, Baker? Are you wasting my time here?”
I rub the bridge of my nose, but it does nothing to ease the headache roaring into my skull.
It doesn’t seem much of a leap to assume their conversation was about pinning George’s murder on Sara. Sure, I didn’t actually hear them say her name, but that’s what’s happening, isn’t it?
If another teeny tiny lie gets this article green-lit, so be it. That way, I’ll have time to investigate and prove it. Frankie will never be the wiser.
I clear my throat. “Sorry, I probably should have added—they explicitly mentioned Sara Allbright by name. That’s the woman from the viral video, the one they arrested.
The police chief said to the mayor that they needed to pin the murder on her so they could close the case.
They’re worried about…about an open murder investigation tanking next summer’s tourism. ”
Frankie lets out a low whistle. “Jesus, Baker. I really do not understand how your brain works. Talk about burying the lede. You should have put that in your first fucking email!”
Finally, I have her on the hook. “Well. Yeah. Probably. And listen to this—I actually know Sara from high school. I bet I could get some face time with her in jail and include her perspective in the article. That would be a big draw for readers, right?”
“Really?” Frankie sounds skeptical. “Why would she talk to you? You’re the stepdaughter of the guy she’s accused of murdering.”
She makes a decent point, but I bet Nic could help on that front. He doesn’t exactly, you know, like me much, but he wants me to write this article. The least he could do is get me in front of his sister.
“I know her brother. Well, actually”—I cringe—“we, um, we dated. Back in the day.”
Dated is stretching the truth (again), but it sounds better than banged for two weeks at which point I stopped calling him back.
“Did you now?” Frankie says.
“Yeah. He’d make sure I get in front of Sara.
Also, I could dig into whether the cops even bothered looking at other suspects.
If they ignored leads, that’d help prove my theory.
And!” I add, because knowing Frankie, she’ll need even more convincing.
“What if I figure out who actually did it? Remember that case in Maine? The Instagram wellness influencer accused of killing her boyfriend? How her best friend set out to prove her innocence and documented the whole thing on social media? People ate that shit up! She was on the Today show, even got a book deal! If I solve this, think of the traffic Humans would get.”
She’s quiet for a long moment, and the future flashes before my eyes.
Me, stuck in this godforsaken house for the rest of my life.
Nic, glowering whenever I run into him at the grocery store.
My mom wearing the same white nightgown for months on end.
Me, taking up crochet and adopting five to seven stray cats. A modern-day Grey Gardens.
“Hmm. All right, I’ll bite,” Frankie finally says, bursting the picture growing in my mind of my mom and I dressed in oversize fur coats and headscarves.
“Go for it, Baker. Write the story. Figure out if that little island of yours has a corrupt underbelly. Do it well, and this could be enough to make us forget about the Belinda incident. I’m thinking a lead time of a month. ”
A month? Shit. “Of course,” I say, swallowing my anxiety.
“I also want to make sure you to understand a few things. Should your investigation cross into less than legal territory—or even less than ethical territory—and you find yourself in trouble, Humans will not indemnify you for any legal costs incurred. In other words: You’ll have to handle that shit on your own dime. ”
I squint at my reflection in the darkened computer screen. It’s not a huge surprise they’re willing to throw me under the bus, but did she have to put it quite so bluntly?
“Also,” she continues, “you won’t be paid until I approve the article for publication. And on the very, very off chance it ends up going viral, Humans owns the rights. Any book deals, movie deals, whatever—they go through us. Got it? It’ll all be outlined in the paperwork I send over.”
I had not in fact understood any of that. “Right. Yeah. Of course,” I say.
“Good,” Frankie says. “I’m curious to see what you come up with. And Baker—don’t make me regret giving you another opportunity.”
Oh my god. Is this actually happening?
This is actually happening.
I’ll need to avoid defaming anyone, which means spending time verifying sources and fact-checking on my own—I know better than to think Humans will do it on their end.
With the trial still pending, I won’t even be able to access police records—unless I can convince Kozel to leak them to me, which is unlikely given our past.
Every doubt I’ve been shoving down springs to the surface: I’m not a detective.
I’m not even an investigative journalist—I wrote articles about celebrity gossip, for fuck’s sake.
Do I really think I can single-handedly uncover the dark underbelly of our quaint little vacation town? I don’t know how to solve a murder.
Someone killed George in cold blood. If they find out what I’m doing…I’ll be next.