24 Marley
Marley
Having just heard the description of what Marshall and the others had found, Marley found herself on her back on one of the couches, across from the twins, who watched with interest. She was trying to breathe evenly. Trying to keep from passing out. Or from losing her mind entirely.
Trevor was dead. There was a murderer in the house.
But who would have wanted to kill Trevor?
What was the motive? None of them knew him well enough to want to hurt him.
Most of them had met the man yesterday. And none of them had exchanged more than two words with him.
Other than to Candice, Magdelena, and Hazel, he was a stranger.
And none of them had a reason to kill Lincoln.
The room was so dark. At some point in the last hour, the sky outside had gone almost as black as night, and no one had turned on any lights.
They should probably use them while they could.
Certainly, this storm was going to take out the power eventually.
Marley had the stray thought that she should plug in her phone, but she couldn’t make herself move.
A flash of lightning illuminated things for half a second and left a pulse of color behind her eyelids.
The boom of thunder that followed shook the house.
She was going to die here. Marshall was going to die here.
How could this be happening? These people were her friends.
Practically like family. There was no way Sean or Suzy or Juliet or Josh or Marshall could kill someone.
It had to be that Cole person. Or whoever he was with.
But Cole had seemed so normal. Bumbling and not bright, but normal.
Was that just her being naive? Marley had always been quick to trust people, something her uncle used to say would get her in trouble one day. Was this that day?
“Marls? Are you okay?” Marshall asked, coming over to crouch next to her. “Do you need anything?”
A time machine, maybe?
“Water?” she said.
He jumped up to get it for her. She couldn’t stop seeing Candice covered in blood.
Lincoln’s limp body. Suzy’s gray face when she’d reentered the room with Grant and Marshall.
And now she was imagining Trevor with his skull flattened.
She couldn’t believe her husband had had to see something like that. Or Suzy. How were they still vertical?
“We really need to find Cole. And whoever else is hiding out in this house,” Grant said grimly from somewhere behind her.
Before anyone could respond, the lights flicked on, blazing as a summer day, and Hazel appeared wearing a black cotton minidress, ruched at the waist, and a pair of kitten-heeled sandals.
Her wet hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, and she’d taken the time to apply mascara and eyeliner, lipstick, and rouge.
It was a complete one-eighty from the woman who had shouted at Marley to leave her alone less than an hour ago.
The one Marley had left curled up on her side on her bed, sobbing her eyes out and cursing the world.
She looked pale and skittish, though, as put together as her clothes were. Like someone who had just proverbially seen a ghost.
“Hazel . . . are you okay?” Marley asked, scooching up on the couch as Marshall returned with her ice water. It was a dumb question. How could she possibly be okay?
“Not really.” Her eyes darted around the room. “I need you all to come with me.”
“What? Why?” Juliet said. “What’s going on?”
Hazel narrowed her eyes at Juliet in a way that made Marley’s already pounding heart quicken.
“I just found something on Lincoln’s body.”
Marley sent out a text to the group, and they all gathered in the billiards room—Marley, Marshall, Hazel, Suzy, Sean, Juliet, Grant, and Gemma.
They left Magdelena, Tini, and Candice out of it this time.
The relatively small room was subzero freezing.
If air-conditioning could work like this, Marley had never experienced it before.
Someone had removed the sheet from over Lincoln’s body.
Marley had to swallow repeatedly and breathe through her mouth to keep from throwing up at the sight of him under the bright pot lights.
His cheeks were sunken and gray, and his mouth yawned open like a fish on the deck of a boat, gasping for its last breath.
Except that Lincoln had already gasped his last. Her brother-in-law. Her energetic, funny, warm, infuriating, horrible, heartbreaking, larger-than-life brother-in-law, who had just welcomed them to his home yesterday, was dead. She wondered how long it was going to take her brain to accept it.
“What is it?” Suzy said, her voice piercing in the quiet. Even the wind and rain weren’t as loud in this internal room. “What did you find?”
Hazel, whose eyes looked somehow wild and exhausted at the same time, leaned over and opened Lincoln’s hand, flattening it against the couch.
It was only then that Marley realized someone had removed the ridiculous yellow gloves.
They were in a pile on the floor. If those had been evidence of some kind, they’d be useless now.
Hazel looked up at all of them as if she’d just proved something.
“What am I looking at?” Sean asked, leaning in slightly.
Hazel lifted Lincoln’s arm to bring the hand closer to all of them. Marley had to close her eyes to keep from fainting. How could she handle a corpse that cavalierly? Her husband’s corpse?
“Oh, that’s not good.” Sean—who was closest to Hazel and Lincoln—turned around and looked at Juliet.
“What?” Juliet said. “What is it?”
Marley took a step forward and peered down, holding her breath. Embedded in the folds of Lincoln’s dead, bloated hand were dozens of tiny, colorful beads.