Chapter Seven
CHAPTER
Seven
Gabe did not mean it figuratively. As it turned out, he had purchased us actual detective hats. Fedoras. Light brown fedoras, the kind a detective in an old black-and-white noir film would look sharp in.
I did not look sharp in it. For one, it clashed with my hair. For two, it clashed with the darling pink wallpaper in our living room that I’d sourced from the elite wallpaperers of Slovakia (if you know, you know). For three, I’d never had the face for a fedora. Too long.
Gabe did, though to be fair, he had the face for every kind of hat. Also for going without a hat. He just had a great face.
“I didn’t buy them thinking we were going to be solving another murder,” he said, when I gave him the questioning look that meant exactly that. “They were supposed to be a surprise for the one-year anniversary of when we solved the last one.”
“What, so we could relive the highlights?”
“I mean, there were some highlights,” Gabe said defensively. “We did fall in love.”
“True.” We were currently not reliving any highlights; we were reliving the most tedious part, aka when we sat on Gabe’s couch and made lists of all possible suspects.
At least this time we weren’t confined to Gabe’s terrible lumpy old three-seater he’d actually gotten used from a stranger without even thinking about how many people had probably had sex on it.
Our new couch was the softest suede in ivory, a color I’d purchased without considering that we owned a black cat.
Like I said, I made most of my decisions on vibes.
“Okay, so Caleb confirmed that all the people working the event had alibis, which means that the murderer has to be someone who was attending the gala. Is there any way we can narrow it down?”
Gabe bit his lower lip as he thought. “Was anyone taking photos at the time?”
“I assume everyone. Let’s check the feed.” Within minutes, I had a time-stamped feed of photos from the gala. “Okay, these here are all from the five minutes before the murder. If we compile everyone we see in the background, we should be able to cross a bunch of people off our list.”
I wished I still had an assistant who could do this for me. Plan B: I stood and smiled angelically at my beloved boyfriend. “Should I run to the bakery and pick up some fuel for the task?”
“Let me guess,” Gabe said. “I might as well get started while you’re gone and, ideally, will be done by the time you get back.”
“I love you so much,” I said.
“I love you too,” he said. “But you’re forgetting that I have no idea who most of these people are.”
I moaned, flopping back down on the couch.
The sunlight streaming over Central Park and into our windows suddenly seemed to mock me.
I’d been so close to getting out of this.
So close. I gazed longingly out the window, envying the tiny passersby below their freedom, their carefreeness, their social circles that were probably murderer-free.
Several hours later, I stared up at the ceiling, blinking hard, afterimages of guests permanently tattooed beneath my eyelids. “Okay. Is that all?”
“I think so,” Gabe said, comparing the list we’d made with the zoomed-in images on my laptop.
There had been several people who’d been too blurry or obscured to confidently identify, and of course there were people who’d been there out of anybody’s frame, but we’d prepared a list that counted out a bunch of my guests.
Which left a bunch more under suspicion, but it was a start.
“Okay, so we’ve got our list to make now.
Let’s start with people who have motive and who aren’t on the list.”
“Murder Artist has to be on there,” I said immediately.
“Not only did he tell us explicitly that he was a murder fan, his peacock took part in the crime. I forget his name, but let me check with Li—oh.” Couldn’t do that.
I turned to the guest list. “I’ll probably recognize it when I—okay, Isaiah Franklin. Make him number one.”
“Done,” Gabe said. “And Conrad Phlume’s wife has to be on there, too, right? After that outburst.”
“Don’t they say it’s always the spouse?” I added her to the list. “Who else?”
We stared at the list for another few minutes. Gabe finally said hesitantly, “Do you think there’s even a chance it might be—”
“No,” I said immediately. “No way.”
“But she seems to have—”
“It wasn’t Vienna,” I interrupted. “It’s not possible.
” Before he could argue with me, I clicked back to the feed and refreshed.
The hashtag reloaded. I cringed at the top photo: a very unflattering photo of me, one taken from the under-chin angle (why did that angle even exist?) with my mouth half open and nose pores on full display.
The cringe only lasted a second, though.
It didn’t faze me that much. The world had seen way worse of me.
See: the paparazzi competition over who could get the “best” upskirt photo after I turned eighteen.
There was nothing like the entire world getting to see the red, inflamed evidence of your very first bikini wax.
It took me another second to realize that I wasn’t the only person in that photo: Vienna was there too.
It was an old one, back from when we were doing the reality show; her arm was wrapped over my shoulder, clearly relying on me to hold her up.
We were probably drunk or high (we were drunk or high a lot of the time those days).
Unfairly, she looked way better than me—she’d had the foresight to tilt her chin down, and her hair was messy in a way that looked like it was on purpose even though it most likely wasn’t.
Gabe, looking over my shoulder, sucked in a breath through his teeth. “The caption,” he clarified, so that I wouldn’t think he was wincing at my face.
I leaned in. The words seemed awfully small.
Did I need glasses? Maybe I was being punished by the universe for convincing Coriander to wear those hideous frames, for which she’d already featured in, according to the group chat, at least two “Worst Dressed at the Murder Scene” compilations, which really should not be a thing.
Pomona Afton’s grand entrance into the do-gooder scene was supposed to be akin to a butterfly emerging from a cocoon: wasted party girl caterpillar to saintly butterfly.
Saints don’t get their biggest donors killed, though.
Pom, maybe you should hop back up on a table, where you belong.
Better to get attention by flashing your underwear at cameras than helping your fellow fake-do-gooder friend kill someone who only wanted to do good for real.
“Wow, okay,” I said. Not going to lie, reading that made me feel a little nauseous, and the thought of all the people I wanted so badly to impress reading it made me feel like I might actually vomit.
I was used to bad press—but not when I was actually trying to do something good.
Part of me wanted to listen to whoever this anonymous asshole with no profile picture but a mastery of the hashtags was.
Just admit defeat. Go back to doing what was easy.
No. I couldn’t do that. My eyes flicked toward Gabe. For one, Gabe didn’t love Old Pom. Right?
I thrust my shoulders back. I would be strong. I’d get through this.
My phone buzzed. The unflattering picture of me disappeared from the screen and was replaced with a picture of my mother. Suddenly I wanted the unflattering photo back.
Maybe I’d be lucky and she was accidentally butt-dialing me. I hit the green button. “Hello?” I said quietly, so that I wouldn’t alert her head in the event I was indeed talking to her butt.
“Pom? You sound exhausted,” she said. I was not lucky today. To be fair, she’d been extra cautious about butt-dialing people since her old habit had exposed the fact that her shoe had been my grandma’s murder weapon.
“That’s funny, because I’m the opposite of exhausted,” I said. “There’s nothing that makes you sleep soundly like someone getting murdered at your very first gala. It’s so calming.”
I could practically hear her rolling her eyes through the phone. She said, “I hope this call isn’t being recorded, because you know everyone would have those words plastered all over the headlines without any regard to your supposed ‘sarcasm.’ ”
If the paparazzi had managed to tap into my phone, they already would’ve plastered the headlines with quotes from my debate with Vienna about whether it was unethical to try out one of those spas where they use blood diamond dust in their massages. “Mom, why are you calling?”
She sniffed into the phone. “My goodness, Pom. Can a mother not call her daughter to see how she’s doing the morning after a horrific event?”
“I’m here too,” said my dad. She must have me on speakerphone.
I could picture them in the living room of their Afton penthouse, my grandmother’s old apartment, my mom in her tight black workout clothes all sweaty on my grandma’s white couch (just because she could); my dad kind of hovering in the background, stubble on his cheeks, wearing khaki shorts that exposed knobby knees.
“How are you doing, Pom? I’ve been worried about you. ”
I knew better than to let myself relax whenever my mom was involved, but I let my shoulders fall a fraction anyway.
Gabe got up from the table with the crumb-covered dishes in hand to take to the sink.
“Oh. Well, I can’t say I’m doing great. It’s so hard to know that someone wasn’t only hurt at an event I’d hoped would be a good thing, but—”
“Richard, don’t get blood on the couch,” she snapped. “I heard your friend was arrested?”
“Why is Dad getting blood on the couch?” I asked. “Is he okay?” It would be so like my mom to call for a chat while my dad was bleeding out in the background.
“Another nosebleed. He always gets them,” my mom said. “Anyway, Vienna was arrested? Is that true?”