Chapter 14 #2
“Well—” Amie huffed. “Hallie didn’t always leave at the same exact time, depending on how fast I ‘found’ her ring.
But I never let it go on for more than, like, five minutes.
So at the latest, she was leaving at … four fifty-two.
And I only talked to Benny that one time, so I can’t get more exact about that timing. May I continue?”
“Please.”
Amie inhaled deeply. “Hallie had food she was bringing to her boyfriend’s place,” she said, “so let’s assume she went straight there after the park. It’s a five-minute walk from the park to our building, so she’d get there at four fifty-seven at the latest. How did she get in?”
David’s brow furrowed. “She had a key?”
Amie shook her head. “Nope. Hallie told me she didn’t. She’d say, ‘He’s such a commitment-phobe—I gave him a key to my place and keep dropping hints that he should give me a key to his. But so far he has not taken the hint.’ ”
“Is that a direct quote?”
Amie pointed to herself. “Time loop.”
“Right.”
“And why would he give her a key?” she continued.
“I remember he’d said something about having close calls when Hallie almost discovered his cheating before.
Giving her a key would just make it easier for her to surprise him.
Without a key, she’d have had to buzz Benny’s apartment for him to let her in, which would have given him time to evacuate the other woman before Hallie arrived upstairs.
So, again I ask: How did she get in undetected by Benny? ”
“Someone was walking in or out of the building when she arrived?” David suggested.
“Very possible. The thing is, like I said, Hallie didn’t always leave the park at the same exact time. So what are the chances that every time she left the park, no matter the time, she managed to arrive at the same moment someone was coming in or out of our building?”
“You’re suggesting there were versions of the day when Hallie didn’t catch Benny cheating on her.”
“Yes.” Amie folded her hands on the table. She began speaking slower, worried the thoughts that had made sense in her head wouldn’t make as much sense when put into words. “Like I said: I didn’t help Hallie find her ring every day.”
“Riiight.”
“After I’d gotten into the habit of helping her look for the ring, the first day I didn’t help her was on this day that I tried not doing a bunch of stuff, just to see what would happen.”
“One of your wildest days,” David deadpanned.
“Sure,” Amie begrudged. “Anyway, I went to the park to watch Hallie, but didn’t help look for the ring.
I just wanted to see if she could find it without me.
And she did, but it took her more than twenty minutes.
Brutal to watch, but it was nice to know that she wouldn’t leave the park without it if there was ever a day I didn’t go to help her. ”
“Even though it was likely the day would just reset and none of that would matter anyway,” David pointed out.
“Yeah, whatever. So, on the days that Hallie had to find the ring herself, she would’ve gotten to our building around five fifteen.”
“Okay …”
“On Monday, the door to our building was propped open from five ten to five fifty-five.”
David’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?”
“Someone was moving in,” Amie said. “Movers were going back and forth for forty-five minutes. They made the stairs a nightmare, so I learned to avoid the main stairwell during that time. You didn’t know?”
“No.” David shook his head. “I would’ve been napping.”
“You didn’t hear the movers, or anything else?”
David thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Don’t think so.”
Amie corralled her thoughts again.
“So that’s how she got in,” David said before she could speak. “Movers had the door propped open.”
“Except the timing doesn’t work for the days I helped her,” Amie pointed out. “Remember? At the latest, she’d arrive at the building before five. The door would have still been closed.”
“Maybe she made another stop on the way,” David suggested.
Amie hesitated. “That’s possible,” she said, frowning. Her growing theory was seeming a lot less airtight.
Seeming to clock the doubt in her face, David offered, “There aren’t many places to stop at between the park and our building, though. It’s mostly residential. So that’s not very likely.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.” Amie shook away her doubts, deciding she might as well lay everything out before completely writing the theory off as a stretch.
“Okay, so, yeah. She would have always arrived too early for the propped door. Except for the days that I didn’t help her look for the ring.
Those days, she would have arrived during the window of time when the door was propped open, making it easy for her to surprise Benny. ”
“Fascinating.” David dusted crumbs off his hands. “So it’s more likely she caught Benny cheating on the days when you didn’t assist her with searching for her ring. Not sure what kind of message that sends to the kids, but it’s interesting all the same.”
“It also means that there were probably days she didn’t catch him cheating,” Amie said.
“Days when she got to the building before the movers arrived and buzzed his apartment to be let in, warning him of her arrival. Which means that she wouldn’t have broken up with him, which means that she probably would have been with him that evening, which means that he probably wouldn’t have gone to murder Savannah. ”
“That’s a lot of probablys,” David said doubtfully. “Hallie could have still figured out he’d just had someone over. If she smelled perfume, or spotted lipstick on a glass—”
“Sure, maybe,” Amie said, interrupting before David could come up with more examples.
“But here’s the thing: That day I talked to Benny and gave him my pasta?
That was the ‘wild day.’ It was the first time in a while I wasn’t there to help Hallie find the ring, and more importantly, it was the first time I didn’t help her since I started visiting you in the time loop.
“Up until that day, you’d always be napping from four thirty-ish to six thirty-ish. I never got an exact start and end time, didn’t want to disturb you. But on the wild day, you were up and about. You said you were woken up from your nap by someone yelling.”
If David had been intrigued before, now he was truly fascinated. “You think the yelling was Hallie breaking up with Benny.”
“At the time I wasn’t sure what it meant.
I knew it had to have been because of something I’d done—or didn’t do—but I’d done so many different things that day I wasn’t sure which caused the change.
I never tried to have a day like that again, I was so freaked out afterward.
Which was why I left my date with Ziya early that night, leading me to run into Benny when I got home.
That was all the same day. I think that any time your nap went uninterrupted, that meant Hallie didn’t catch the cheating and didn’t break up with Benny that day. ”
David pondered that, then shook his head. “That doesn’t work, though. My nap went uninterrupted on Monday—the last Monday, in your experience—but we know she broke up with him.”
“Correct,” Amie said, her words speeding up again as she approached the final stretch of her theory. “But I think she might have broken up with him after Monday. Wednesday morning, to be more exact.
“Elena heard someone yelling late Wednesday morning, and found Benny sitting in the Harlows’ apartment, looking upset. She said all she had been able to make out from the yelling was ‘You did it.’ Ominous, right?”
“Very.”
“But,” Amie continued, “Elena also admitted that her hearing isn’t very good. Maybe she misheard it as ‘you did it’ from the start, or maybe her brain filled in the blank once she’d seen Benny in the Harlows’ apartment, making her suspicious of him.”
“What else could it have been?” David asked.
“When you were complai—talking about being woken from your nap—”
“I’m sure I was complaining, I don’t take offense to that.”
“You said the person yelling called the other person a dipshit.” Amie nodded, reassuring herself. “I remember, because after that I started using the word when that guy on the bus would listen to his podcast on full blast. In my head, of course.”
David had rested his elbows on the table, templing his fingers in front of his face. “Dipshit … did it …”
Leaning back in her chair, Amie covered her mouth with both hands. “You dipshit,” she said, her voice muffled. “You dipshit.”
“Okay, enough, I’m sensitive.” David scraped his teeth along his bottom lip, thinking. “Sure,” he finally said. “I hear it. And like you said, if Elena already had her suspicions about Benny, ‘you did it’ is a lot juicier than ‘you dipshit.’ ”
“So I think the yelling on Wednesday was the same breakup that would wake you up from your nap when I didn’t help Hallie look for the ring on Monday,” Amie said. “Only delayed a couple of days.”
“Okay,” David said. After a pause, he added, “Is that all?”
Amie frowned. “Yeah. Why? You don’t buy it?”
“I can definitely buy it.” David grimaced. “But I’m still not sure if it exonerates Benny from having possibly killed Savannah.”
Amie’s shoulders slumped with disappointment. “Why?”
“You’re saying that on the last day of the time loop, Hallie didn’t catch Benny cheating, didn’t break up with him, and was with him all evening, if not all night. But you don’t know that. He could have still ducked out to kill Savannah. You’d have to talk to Hallie to get a firm alibi for Benny.”
“I guess I could try to do that …” Amie pressed her hands on the table. “But, wait. Why would he kill Savannah Monday night if his girlfriend hadn’t broken up with him yet?”
“Because she was blackmailing him?” David suggested. “It’s possible he didn’t want to wait around for his girlfriend to discover the cheating before exacting revenge on the woman who was extorting him.”