Chapter 69
The house was too quiet. Livvy had been asleep since they’d gotten home from the hospital. Shannon opened her daughter’s bedroom door and peeked inside.
She found her daughter sitting up in bed, scrolling on her phone. “Moooom,” Livvy groaned. “I’m alive, okay?” She held out her wrist. “Here. Take my pulse if you don’t believe me.”
“Can you blame me? You scared the living daylights out of me today. You could have been burned alive in that damn dorm.”
“But I’m okay. Can you please just chill?”
“Rude!” Shannon said, and she slammed the door and stomped out to the kitchen. The next thing she knew, she was calling Traci.
“Hey!” Traci said. “So weird. I was about to call you. How’s Livvy?”
“Rude and annoying. Why don’t you come by and see for yourself?”
“I’m just leaving the jail. I can be there in fifteen, if that works.”
“The jail?”
“I’ll fill you in when I get there.”
Shannon sped around the house, looking for something to dust or neaten up, but the place was already spotless. She chewed on her lower lip, thinking of what Traci’s reaction would be to her modest-at-best residence.
She vacuumed the living room rug anyway, and was in the process of using the Swiffer on the terrazzo floors in the entryway when Livvy emerged from her room.
“What the heck are you doing? Are you on meth or something?”
“Is it a crime for me to want my house to look nice? As it happens, Traci is going to drop by. I don’t want her to think we’re some kind of poor white trash.”
“Poor white trash? Who says that anymore?” Livvy shook her head and started to say something, but the doorbell rang.
“Act nice,” Shannon warned.
She ushered Traci out to the kitchen and they sat at the dinette. Shannon sat opposite her, and Livvy slid into the chair beside her mother’s.
“Oh, Shan,” Traci said, running her hand over the green Formica tabletop. “How many times did we sit at this table, doing homework?”
“A million times, give or take,” Shannon said. “You want some coffee or something?”
“I’m good, thanks. How are you feeling, Livvy?” Traci asked.
“Fine! Except I wish you’d tell my mom to stop hovering over me.” Livvy pried one of her own eyeballs open with her fingers. “See? Awake, alert, and healthy as shit.”
“She slept the whole afternoon,” Shannon said.
Livvy rolled her eyes. “How’s Felice? Is she feeling okay?”
“Amazingly, yes. She was resting when I left the house.”
“What were you doing at the jail?” Shannon asked.
“I went because KJ refused to talk to the cops. He insisted that he’d only talk to me.”
“What, did he expect you to wave your wand and forgive him?” Shannon asked.
“He confessed to helping Garrett start the fire,” Traci said. She repeated KJ’s account of that night, how they’d put roofies in the girls’ drinks and waited until they’d both passed out before reentering the house to turn the clothes dryer into a firebomb.
“Garrett probably got the hookup for the fentanyl,” Livvy said. “He always had drugs.”
Shannon wrapped a protective arm around her daughter as they listened to Traci’s narrative. Her face paled and then twisted in fury as she heard how the two roommates had waited in the woods, getting stoned while waiting for the fire to start.
“But what about Parrish? Did he admit they killed her?” Livvy asked.
“KJ said he and Garrett were stealing from the hotel, and that Charlie was the boss. He refused to talk about Parrish. Insisted it was a mistake, and he wanted his dad. And a lawyer.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Shannon said.
“I knew it!” Livvy exclaimed. “She’d made notes about all that stuff in the bitch book.”
“Oh!” Livvy clapped a hand over her mouth and she looked sheepishly at Traci. “I found the bitch book hidden in a pillow, in Parrish’s room. I should have given it to you, but I had this stupid idea that we could prove what those guys were up to.”
Her face fell. “But maybe it burned up in the fire?”
“Felice told me about how you two found Parrish’s notebook,” Traci said.
“I miss Parrish,” Livvy said, her lower lip trembling. “And I can’t believe they’d kill her over some stinking mattresses and televisions. We were having so much fun that night. Until, you know…” She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and scrolled through her camera roll.
“Look,” she said, holding up the phone. “That’s us, in the golf cart, on the way to the afterparty. Parrish didn’t even want to go, but I talked her into it…”
Shannon studied the photo. “Geez, side by side, the two of you in those same Hawaiian dresses, same goofy smiles…”
“Let me see that,” Traci said, taking the phone. “You look almost like twins,” she murmured.
“Not really,” Livvy said. “Parrish was taller and so much prettier.”
“A mistake,” Traci said slowly. “KJ said it was all a big mistake.”
“Of course he’d claim that,” Shannon said impatiently.
“What if it really was a mistake?” Traci said, her eyes riveted to the photo. “Whelan saw some of the investigator’s notes. More than one person at the party said that the last time they saw Parrish she was talking to Cedric, the lead singer from the band.”
“I saw them together too,” Livvy said. “He handed her a Solo cup of the punch. And a joint.”
“Which was probably what killed her,” Traci said. “But what if they didn’t mean to kill Parrish at all? What if…”
She stood abruptly. “Text me that picture, please, Livvy. I’ve gotta go.”
“Go where?” Shannon asked.
“Back to the island.”