Chapter 29
The smell of bacon, eggs, and coffee woke me the following morning, but I remained in bed, tucked beneath the blankets with my eyes closed, considering the day ahead of me.
I was running out of suspects to question, and the thought of circling back to those I’d already talked to seemed counterproductive unless I was given a good reason to do so.
As I contemplated that thought, there was a soft thump on the side of the bed. I opened my eyes and peeked over the side to find Luka staring up at me. He tilted his head as if wondering why I was still lying there when bacon was on the menu.
“All right,” I said, reaching down and giving him a pat. “I’ll get up.”
He smiled when he saw me and said, “Good morning.”
“Morning. Is Mia up yet?”
“I passed by her room earlier and heard her moving around, so I made her a cup of coffee and brought it to her. She said she was going to take a shower and then join us.”
A few minutes later, Mia entered the room wearing black leggings and an oversized sweater. Her dog was by her side, and the moment Coco spotted Luka and the bacon sprinkled over the dog food in his bowl, she headed straight over to him.
Mia pressed a hand to her forehead, her head shaking as she said, “I’m sorry I drank so much last night. Do you have any ibuprofen?”
I grabbed a bottle out of the cabinet and handed it to her. “There’s no need to apologize. You’re going through a lot right now. How much do you remember?”
“Bits and pieces. You showed up at my house, and I was drinking wine and something else, I think.”
“Tequila.”
She rolled her eyes, burying her face in her hands. “That explains the hangover. I never want to touch a drink again.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself.”
She shuffled toward the counter, sliding onto a barstool, and I offered her a second cup of coffee, which she accepted.
“Before we talk about anything else, how bad was I last night?” she asked. “And before you tell me we don’t need to talk about it, I’d feel a lot better if we did.”
She was right.
I didn’t want to talk about it.
I wanted to move on.
But she seemed insistent.
“How much do you want to know?” I asked.
“Everything.”
Everything didn’t seem necessary. The last thing I wanted was to make her feel worse than she already did, so I chose my words with caution. “You shed a few tears, which is normal, given the circumstances.”
“I’ve been a lot more emotional these past several weeks. What made you ask me to stay the night? I don’t remember much about how I ended up here.”
“You made a comment about standing on your front lawn and inviting your sister’s killer to come and get you too.”
“I said that out loud?”
“I never thought you’d do it, though. You were just frustrated.”
“What I learned about Jeremy yesterday hit me harder than I expected. I suppose that says something about how much I liked him. I can’t remember the last time I connected with someone so strongly. Too bad none of it was real.”
“It’s hard to say whether it was real or not,” I said.
“He lied to me. He pretended to be someone else. How can I believe anything I experienced with that man?”
I sat beside her. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, and it doesn’t mean I’ve ruled him out as a suspect or that I think what he did is okay, but it is possible to lie about one thing and still tell the truth about another.”
“Even if I believe you, it doesn’t make it right.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Giovanni removed a few plates from the cabinet, spooning eggs, bacon, and potatoes onto each, and then he took them to the table and set them down.
“Let’s eat while it’s still hot,” he said.
Mia stared at the plate as though Giovanni’s breakfast was the first decent thing to happen to her in days.
“Is everything all right?” Giovanni asked.
“Are you always like this in the morning?” she asked.
“I find it calming and rewarding to prepare a nice dish for someone.”
“You realize normal people are okay to just eat cereal, right?”
“Yes,” he replied. “But why would you when you can have something far superior?”
She smiled, and as we settled in, she returned to our previous conversation, making it clear it was still weighing on her.
“I’ve started to question my own judgment,” she said. “I don’t trust it anymore.”
Giovanni looked up from his coffee. “What do you mean?”
“Someone has it out for me, and I can’t even figure out who or why.”
“You’re carrying a blame that doesn’t belong to you.”
She stabbed a fork into the potatoes. “Doesn’t it?”
“No,” I said.
She shifted in the chair and then she said something unexpected. “I’ve been thinking about something since this morning, and the more I think about it, the more I feel like I should have mentioned it before.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Adrian Webb, my neighbor across the street. He helped you pick up everything you dropped the other day.”
“I remember. Tell me about him.”
“He lives alone as far as I know, and for the most part, he keeps to himself, but he does have an annoying dog … or had.”
“Annoying in what way?”
“Ever since Adrian moved in, his dog has been pooping on my lawn.”
“Are you certain his dog is to blame?”
“Positive. I’ve caught him in the act on more than one occasion. It was enough for me to want to smack that guy right across the face.”
Giovanni looked away, as if he was trying not to laugh.
“I’m serious,” Mia said.
“I don’t doubt it,” I said.
“At first I tried being polite, and I told Adrian what happened. He apologized and promised it wouldn’t happen again, and then it did.”
I took a sip of my coffee. “Go on.”
“One morning, I walked outside barefoot.”
Realizing where the story was headed, Giovanni lost his battle for composure and burst out laughing.
“Once I stepped in … well, you know what, that was it,” she said. “I lost it.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I scooped it into a bag and left it on Adrian’s doorstep.”
Now Giovanni and I were both laughing.
“You two are enjoying this too much,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What happened next?”
“We exchanged more words, and then something strange happened. His dog disappeared, and he blamed me.”
“What did he say?”
“He came over and pounded on my door. He was furious, and he accused me of taking revenge by getting rid of his dog, which is absurd.”
“How long has the dog been missing?”
“Six weeks, maybe longer.”
“How did the conversation with Adrian end?”
“I slammed the door in his face, and things have been tense ever since. I didn’t mention it before because, even though the guy’s a jerk, I never thought him capable of committing murder.”
Sometimes that was how murderers escaped suspicion, by blending into the background and presenting themselves as harmless when they were anything but.
“And now, do you think he’s capable of violence?” I asked.
She hesitated. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m going crazy. Like I said before, I’m suspicious of everyone at this point.”
I was too, but somewhere in the mix of scattered pieces in this investigation was the truth, and I needed to find it.