Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Voicemail
Amie sat on the floor in the corner of the lobby, waiting for David to finish talking to the police. Her clothes had gone from uncomfortably wet to uncomfortably damp, and the ends of her hair had begun to curl up as they dried.
“I think he’s dead!” The memory of Madeline’s screams still gave Amie goosebumps.
She’d been hoping someone might give her one of those shock blankets when the EMTs arrived to take Andrew (who was not dead) to the hospital, but none was offered.
In fairness, she wasn’t really in shock. Just cold. And damp.
The lobby was full of building residents milling around, exchanging information and shooting concerned looks at the cops as they interviewed Amie, David, and a few other neighbors who had heard raised voices from the Harlows’ apartment prior to Madeline’s dramatic exit.
Amie had told the police what she’d encountered—Madeline running out of the apartment, blood on her hands.
Madeline screaming and pointing into the apartment.
How Amie and David had looked inside to see Andrew lying unconscious on the floor, a fresh wound on his head.
David ordering her not to touch anything as he checked Andrew’s pulse, then telling her to call an ambulance.
Running downstairs to wait for the ambulance. The ambulance arriving with the police—
That was when the officer interviewing her said she could stop narrating what had happened. Then he’d asked if she’d noticed anything unusual in the apartment.
“Other than the unconscious, bleeding man?”
“Yes.”
Amie had shaken her head. It was true. Not so much because there wasn’t anything unusual to notice, but between worrying that Andrew was dead or that Madeline might pass out, she hadn’t left much time in her schedule for calmly investigating the apartment.
Madeline had been briefly interviewed by the police before being escorted away—to the hospital or the police station, Amie wasn’t sure.
She stared at Benny, who was standing in one corner of the lobby, typing on his phone.
Amie hadn’t encountered her landlord since receiving the photos of him entering her apartment the other night.
Since she’d convinced herself of his innocence, it had become a tiny mystery that felt like a distraction from the bigger, more important one at hand.
She was tempted to just walk up to Benny and ask him about it, but if there was still even a small chance he’d been the one to leave the threatening note, Amie felt safer with him not knowing she suspected him.
Catching sight of a familiar multicolored poncho, Amie raised a hand, attempting to get Elena’s attention. The older woman hurried over as soon as she saw her.
“How’re you holding up, sweetheart?” she asked, brows knit with sympathy.
Amie started to get up, but her neighbor waved her back down as she eased herself onto the floor.
“I’m all right,” Amie said. “Better than Andrew. Or Madeline.” She cast a sideways look at Elena. “Do you know what happened?”
“The police were very adamant about people keeping their distance while they conducted their interviews,” Elena said.
“But …”
Elena straightened her glasses. “I might have overheard a few things.” She leaned in to Amie, who met her halfway. “According to Madeline, Andrew invited her over to ‘talk business.’ Did you know Savannah had just sold the bookshop to Madeline?”
“Yeah, Madeline told me. Did she say that to the police?”
Elena nodded. “But I also had a feeling. The last time Savannah came over to have me read her cards, there was a recurring message about new beginnings that seemed to resonate with her. I sensed that the time might have finally come for her to sell.”
She stretched her legs out, flexing her feet in her sneakers. “So, Madeline thought Andrew wanted to talk about her taking over the store. But when she arrived, he began filming her, and told her to admit that she’d killed Savannah.”
Amie’s stomach dropped. “What?”
Elena seemed pleased by her reaction. “Mhm. Madeline denied it, of course. Wouldn’t you?”
“Sure, I guess,” Amie said. “Mainly because I didn’t kill Savannah, but—”
“Well, I don’t know what Andrew had been expecting.” Elena sniffed, as if unimpressed by Andrew’s approach to his interrogation of Madeline. “Guilty or not, anyone would be an idiot to admit it under those circumstances.”
“So then what happened?”
“Andrew got angrier,” Elena reported. “According to Madeline, she tried running away. For some reason, Andrew had a wire strung out across his front hall. She said he’d had her step over it when she first arrived.
Madeline remembered to avoid it, but Andrew tripped and slammed his head on the floor. ”
Amie winced. Andrew’s attempt to protect his own life had ended up endangering it.
“Madeline tried to stop the bleeding. She thought he was dead, so she screamed and ran out. It’s all very strange.
” Elena folded her hands in her lap to conclude her story.
“If Savannah had already sold the store to Madeline, why would Andrew think Madeline had killed her? What reason would she have had to kill Savannah?”
“I lied to the man for nothing. Strange he didn’t know …”
“Andrew still doesn’t know Savannah sold the store to Madeline,” Amie said. She was sitting on the couch in David’s apartment, once again hugging her favorite plastic flamingo while David prepared the leftover lasagna she’d decided she was in fact hungry for.
“Oakland told me and Z—” Ow. “Oakland said he lied and told Andrew that Savannah had been planning on selling the bookstore to him. If Andrew believed him, he might have also believed that Madeline killed Savannah to try to get him to sell the store to her instead.”
“This is assuming Madeline was telling the truth,” David said over the beeping of the oven as he preheated it. “Or, for that matter, Elena.”
“Why would Elena lie?” Amie asked.
“I don’t think she’d lie. I just wouldn’t put it past her to stretch the truth in pursuit of a juicier story.”
“Did you see a shattered vase on the floor of the apartment when we were in there?” Amie looked over the back of the couch at David.
“Sure did. I had a look around while you went to meet the ambulance. Seemed like the table it was sitting on got tipped over. Was that what the wire was attached to?”
“Yeah.” Amie turned back around. “Andrew rigged up the trip wire to the vase as an alarm system.” She used the flamingo to gesture across the room at the finished (she assumed it was finished, though she could never really tell) machine that covered the surface of David’s work table. “I think you two would get along.”
He snorted. “I’ll make sure to schedule a play date if he survives that head smash.”
There was a pause. Then:
“Sorry. You’ve had a long day.”
Amie shrugged. “Not my longest.”
She braced herself as David went to sit in his armchair, not knowing how to answer if he asked what had happened with her and Ziya.
“How’s the adjustment going?”
Amie frowned, confused. “The what?”
“To post-time-loop life.”
“Oh!” She hadn’t expected that question. “It’s … fine. I tried some memory exercises yesterday. And your method of doing things differently has been working well. I moved my bed today because the only way I could fall asleep last night was by sleeping upside down.”
“Like a bat?”
“Horizontally. Feet where my head was, and vice versa.”
“Ah. Interesting.”
Amie traced the plastic feathers of the flamingo’s wing with her finger. “It’s strange how leaving the time loop made everything that felt comfortable uncomfortable. Now I have to do things differently to avoid the discomfort. But I assume that’ll go away with time.”
She glanced at David. “Do you think I don’t do anything?”
“What do you mean?”
“I … guess I don’t really know.” Amie hugged the flamingo closer, sighing. “How do you know if you’re happy enough with your life to not want anything more?”
David shifted forward in his chair. “I feel like these questions are all connected to one thing.”
“They are, but I’m not ready to talk about that.”
“Okay.” David got to his feet, crossing the room to fidget with his machine. “I guess I don’t know. Can’t imagine anyone’s happy one hundred percent of the time. I think anyone who’d claim that would be lying to themselves.”
“But how—” Amie rubbed her face, feeling her frustration mounting. “How do you know you’re spending your time in a way that will give you the best version of your life? How do you know that the choices you’re making now are going to pay off later?”
“Kid.” David pulled a silver concierge bell out of a box. “I think you know the answer to that.”
“You don’t?” Amie asked miserably.
David tapped the bell, then scowled at it as it failed to let out the ding he’d apparently been hoping for. “Piece of junk,” he muttered, tossing it back into the box.
“That sucks.” Amie flopped over onto the couch, flamingo still in her arms.
“That’s life,” David said. “Look, you know I love to haggle. Got that bell down to fifty cents from the original two-dollar asking price. But if you treat your time like money, and are always trying to haggle to get the most for it, you’re gonna leave the yard sale with nothing.”
“Hm.”
“I lost you with the metaphor, didn’t I?”
“A little, yeah. It sounded nice, though.” Amie sat up. “You spend a lot of your time building these machines that you just take down a day or two later. Do you feel like that’s a worthwhile use of your time?”
David narrowed his eyes. “Is this an intervention?”
“No! Sorry, that sounded harsh.” Amie gestured to his machine. “I just mean, you seem pretty happy. But you spend most of your time doing this, over and over again. You don’t even film it and put it online or anything.”
“Would it be more worthwhile if I put videos online?”
“I dunno. Maybe? Don’t you ever want to share your creativity with the world?”
“Been there, done that. It was fine. Speaking of, have you started my books yet?”