CHAPTER 23 #3
“You’re here because Malcolm recorded you badly enough to scare you.”
His face tightens.
Good.
“You came to move the copy before police found it. You didn’t expect me this fast.”
“I expected you exactly this fast.”
“Then you would’ve picked better shoes.”
Kiki makes a strangled sound that may be terror or agreement.
Gavin glances at my wet shoes.
Mistake.
Alvarez moves half an inch.
Gavin catches it and lifts the device.
“No.”
The room stops.
The neon coffee cup buzzes in the window. Grease pops faintly in the kitchen. The pie sits there, obscene and bright, beside the place Laurel may have hidden truth before dying.
My throat aches.
Not smoke now.
Memory.
“Laurel hid the first copy,” I say.
Gavin’s smile returns. “Maybe.”
“She didn’t tell me because she knew I’d try to fix it out loud.”
“Maybe.”
“She didn’t tell Malcolm because she didn’t know if he’d choose her or production.”
Gavin’s smile thins.
I look at the compartment.
Then at him.
“She told Marla.”
Kiki inhales sharply behind the counter.
Not fear this time.
Recognition.
The bell above the door rings.
A woman’s voice, older and rough from cigarettes or years of coffee steam, cuts through the room.
“She didn’t tell me anything.”
Marla stands in the doorway wearing a purple cardigan, orthopedic shoes, and the expression of a woman who has served breakfast to enough hungover actors to fear no man with glasses.
Gavin turns his head.
Alvarez moves.
Fast.
Not a shot.
A tackle.
The device hits the floor.
Kiki screams.
I dive for it because my body is a bad committee and apparently I chair the disaster subcommittee.
My fingers close over plastic.
No button pressed.
No explosion.
No gas.
Just a garage remote with black tape wrapped around it.
Gavin lied.
Of course he lied.
Alvarez drives him to the floor. The plainclothes detective cuffs him. Gavin fights once, badly, then gives up with a sound like laughter swallowed wrong.
Marla looks down at all of us.
“At least nobody touched the pie,” she says.
I start laughing.
It is not funny.
That does not stop it.
The laugh comes out rough, wet, half cough, half something uglier. Kiki starts crying. Marla steps around Gavin like he is a spill someone else should mop and looks at me.
“You’re Clara,” she says.
“I’ve been told.”
“You look terrible.”
“People keep reviewing me today.”
Marla points at the booth. “Laurel didn’t tell me. But she left something.”
The laughter dies.
Alvarez hauls Gavin upright. “What?”
Marla folds her arms. “Eleven years ago. Back of that booth came loose. I found a film canister behind it while cleaning after close. Had a note on it.”
“What did the note say?” I ask.
Marla looks at me, and for the first time, her hard face softens into something I can barely stand.
“It said, ‘If Clara comes back, give this to her. If she doesn’t, keep it where doors can’t get it.’”
The diner goes quiet.
No coffee sound. No fryer. No reporter. No tram.
Only the bell above the door settling from Marla’s entrance.
I grip the fake remote until the tape creases under my thumb.
“Where is it?” I ask.
Marla looks toward the kitchen.
“Freezer,” she says. “Behind the pies.”
Of course.
Laurel would have loved that.
Or hated it.
Or both.
Alvarez says, “No one moves until evidence gets—”
“No,” Gavin says from the plainclothes detective’s grip.
Not calm now.
Not thin.
Afraid.
Real fear.
I look at him.
His eyes are on the kitchen.
Not the booth.
The freezer.
“You never found it,” I say.
Gavin’s mouth works once.
Nothing comes out.
Power changes rooms quietly sometimes.
Not with a gunshot.
Not with a kiss.
Sometimes with a dead girl’s hiding place and a freezer full of terrible pie.
Marla looks at Alvarez. “Detective, if your evidence people ruin my inventory, the city is paying.”
Alvarez lowers his weapon slowly. “Ma’am, if there’s evidence in your freezer, the city will discuss pie.”
“Good.”
Kiki wipes her face with the back of her hand. “The cherry is still bad.”
“Not the point, Kiki.”
I look at the booth.
The wall.
The place where Laurel sat shaking and joking after the first scream.
She hid something before she died.
She left it for me.
And I stayed away for eleven years while it sat behind pies and freezer frost, waiting with more patience than the living deserve from the dead.
My knees threaten to stop being symbolic and become structural failures.
I put one hand on the table.
Sticky surface. Sugar grain under my palm. Coffee ring dried near the pie plate.
Real.
I am here.
Not the headline.
Not the room.
Not the final girl.
Here.
Then Alvarez’s radio crackles.
“Detective, be advised. Entertainment Wire just updated. Source claims Clara Vane fled studio custody and took hostage-related evidence.”
I look at Gavin.
He smiles through blood.
Even cuffed, he has one more door.
The public one.
My laugh does not come back.
Good.
I am done giving this room extra sound.
“Get the canister,” I say.
Alvarez looks at me.
I look back.
“Then we stop letting them write first.”