Chapter 7 #3
“Why don’t you want me to read them?” Amie asked, turning her head to look at him. “They can’t be that bad.”
“No,” David acquiesced. “They’re fine. I just don’t particularly care for them. I’m sure you wouldn’t either, but I knew you’d think you were being supportive by reading them. I didn’t want you to waste your time.”
“Too bad you didn’t tell me on Monday,” Amie said wryly. “I had a good amount of free time on my hands. Can’t tell you how many times a librarian watched me pick up a book and start reading it from the middle.”
“Ha.”
“I might enjoy them.” Amie propped herself up on her forearm. “If they’re bestsellers, that must mean a lot of people like them.”
“You sound like my editor.” David finished taping the last section of the track, crawling out from under the table. “She keeps asking me to write another one.”
“How have we never talked about this?” Amie asked in disbelief. “Do I talk about my own issues too much?”
“No, no.” She heard him rummaging through a box on top of the table. “I don’t like to talk about it. I already know what you’d say.”
“What would I say?”
David pitched up his voice. “ ‘You should do it! You’d make so many people happy, and it’d give you something to do other than building machines and haunting local yard sales! Hee hee!’ ”
“ ‘Hee hee’?” Amie asked, indignant. “When have I ever said ‘hee hee’? Is that really how I sound to you?”
David dropped the voice. “For the most part, yes.”
Amie lay back down on the floor. “That’s not what I’d say.”
“What would you say, then?” David returned to the underside of the table, holding a Ping-Pong ball.
“I’d ask if you want to write another book.”
Amie looked over after a few moments of silence. David was turning the ball over in his hand, his thoughts elsewhere.
“Possibly,” he finally said. “When my niece was little, I thought I might like to write a children’s book for her.”
Amie gasped. “That’d be so cute!” she squealed.
David gave her a sideways look.
“Yeah, okay, I hear it now, I understand the voice. But if that’s what you want to do, you should do it.”
“Elle’s starting high school next year. She’s too old for children’s books now.” David released the Ping-Pong ball at the top of the ramp. It picked up speed as it rolled down, flying off the end and bouncing across the floor to the other side of the room.
“Too fast,” he muttered to himself. “Need to adjust the angle.” He began peeling tape off the ramp.
“I’m sure she’d still appreciate it.” Amie stared at the ceiling. “I know you don’t get to see her a lot. This could be a way to show you’re thinking of her.”
“I might’ve been able to pull it off several years ago,” David said. “But nowadays I don’t think Harry Jenkins would be able to sell anything other than a new Detective Richards mystery. Elle’s going to have to settle for the usual fifty-dollar bill on her birthday.”
“Fifty dollars? Pretty cheap for a bestselling author.”
“I spend a lot of money on duct tape.” Ramp adjusted, David went to retrieve the runaway Ping-Pong ball.
“You know you just told me your pen name, right?” Amie said.
“I’ve given up on the secret.” David grunted as he reached under the couch to grab the ball. “Read the books if you want; I don’t care.”
“Yay. I will. Thanks, Harry.” Amie sat up. “Maybe I’ll learn something from your detective that’ll help me figure out who killed Savannah.”
David gave her a strange look as he returned to the table. “Why would you want to figure that out?”
“Aren’t you curious?” Amie asked. “Especially since you might be a suspect. Don’t you want to clear your name?”
“Unless they take me away in handcuffs, I’m staying as far away from the situation as I can.” David sat on the table. “I’ve read—and written—enough mysteries to know that a suspect getting involved in a case only lands them in more trouble than they were already in.”
“Well, it’d be pretty hard for you to figure out who did it if you got arrested,” Amie pointed out.
“That’s why I keep you around. My girl Friday, working on the outside.” David tossed her the Ping-Pong ball, standing. “Drop that on the ramp, will you?”
Amie leaned over to deposit the ball. It descended the ramp at a much more leisurely rate than it had during the first trial. David stopped it with his foot as it reached the end of the ramp.
“Excellent.” He bent over to pick up the ball.
“Elena thinks Benny did it,” Amie said.
“Elena also thinks she can predict the future based on the phase of the moon,” David countered, sitting on the table again. “She’s a nice woman, but I wouldn’t put my money where her mouth is.”
“Okay, but listen to this.” Amie told him about what Elena had observed, as well as Benny’s interaction with Andrew at the memorial.
When she finished, David was scratching his chin, which Amie took as a sign that she was onto something.
“I wonder why he gave up when Elena arrived,” David mused. “He could’ve just shut the door on her.”
“Maybe he couldn’t find what he was looking for,” Amie suggested. “Or maybe he decided to go back when Elena wasn’t hanging around, in case she’d see him leaving with whatever it was.”
“But if he was just looking for his package, he’d have no reason to hide that.”
“So what if it wasn’t a package?” Amie posited. “What if it was something that would have pointed to him as the murderer? If he couldn’t look for it at the bookshop, maybe he found it at the apartment.”
“Then it’d probably be back at his place now,” David said mildly. “Not for long, I’d assume, if it’s incriminating evidence. He’d probably want to get rid of that as soon as possible.”
A sense of urgency shot through Amie. “I need to search his apartment,” she said, scrambling to her feet.
David laughed.
“I’m not joking.” Amie crossed her arms. “Are you gonna help me?”
David’s expression was frozen at the crossroads of amused and appalled. Finally, he rubbed his face. “Okay, sit down.”
“There’s no—”
“Sit.”
In a tiny act of rebellion, Amie squatted instead.
“What’s this about, really?” David asked. “It can’t just be that you want to clear my name. There isn’t enough evidence against me; I’m not in any imminent danger. Why are you so determined to get mixed up in this?”
Amie looked at the floor. She didn’t want to tell David about her guilt. She knew what he’d say—they’d already had this conversation. He couldn’t understand.
“Ziya seemed excited by the prospect of solving the mystery,” she said instead. “I … I want to impress her.”
Amie was almost insulted at how readily David seemed to accept this excuse. She wasn’t that pathetic about her ex-girlfriend, was she?
“Fine.” He heaved himself up off the table, sighing heavily. “For young love, I’ll help you.” He snapped his fingers. “And now you have something to text her about!”
“Maybe I should wait to see how successful we are,” Amie said hesitantly.
“No, text her now.” David headed for the door. “If you get us arrested for this, we’ll need her to bail us out.”