Chapter 25

25

Tom, huh? Funny, I didn't know who had done all this, but my gut hadn't been with him. He was simply too... meaty. But there he was, about to pulverize us in a burning basement with a sledgehammer.

"No!" Riki, to my amazement, jumped, webbing her tiny body in front of mine. I was about to die, probably, but Riki was going to go down with me, defending me.

"Move!" Tom yelled.

Or not.

Riki grabbed my arm and we skittered out of the way. Tom swung back and landed the sledgehammer into the wall. It didn't precisely fall down, but it made a sound like a bowling ball hitting some pins. There was a dent where some of the bricks had been loosened. He struck again, then once more, and a portion gave way, making a gaping black hole.

The smell hit in earnest. Tom had to step back and cover his nose and mouth with his shirt. Riki reeled. I told myself to ignore it, and for some reason, my brain obliged. I turned my flashlight into the hole. I was staring into a space maybe six feet deep, with some broken bits of wooden crates and glass.

Off in the corner, there was a large bundle of blue tarp.

I had the presence of mind to take a few quick pictures on my phone, before jumping back to allow Tom to move in with the sledgehammer and knock a bigger opening into the wall.

"Oh my god," he said. "Oh shit..."

Riki had gotten one of the wheeled standing carts used to move stacks of chairs. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough. Tom and I each took a side of the bundle and hauled it onto the cart. The stench was almost unbearable now, tearing at the lining of my nose. What was inside was heavy and felt far too fluid for my liking. We ran out into the driving rain with our lumpy bundle juddering on the cart. In the process of running down the lawn, the tarp package came off the cart and started to roll. It had opened slightly.

Out flopped a purple-green human hand.

"What the actual fuck is that?" Van said as we dragged the horrible bag, slick with rainwater and possible other liquids, into the entryway of the playhouse. He, Liani, and April came to the door to greet us, and all reeled from the stench.

Dr. Henson may have been a bit squishy and stomach-churning in odor, but that was not her fault. It's only right to address the body in the tarp properly. I tried to think of a delicate way to explain what was going on, but Riki simply said, "Dr. Henson. Mushy. Bad." She punctuated this by stepping back into the rain to dry heave for a moment.

We put Dr. Henson in the common room in the playhouse and shut the door. Liani shoved a towel under the crack of the door, but that didn't help much.

We went to the second floor, to the large open studio where Liani and April slept, and opened all the windows. There was no escaping that odor, though. It was on our clothes, our hair. I could taste it. Luckily, we had an entire burning building to factor into the mix. It was a real feast for the senses.

The mood, to put it as mildly as possible, changed.

Now that Dr. Henson had been deposited, Tom's body gave up the effort of holding back the sickness. He threw up outside for five minutes, before staggering back inside and collapsing on Liani's bed.

"How did you know where we were?" I said to him. "What we were doing?"

"I didn't know what you were doing," he said, his voice raspy. "I heard some of what you were saying, something about knowing where the passage was. Then you came out and I saw you go down into the tunnel. I didn't know you were looking for..."

"So why did you follow us?" Riki said.

"The treasure," he said, rubbing his brow. "That first night Marlowe was here, Dr. Henson mentioned some secret place in the house—and it sounded like it was in the basement—I went looking for it."

"I heard someone," I said. "I called out. You didn't answer."

"I didn't want anyone else looking."

"You ran back into a burning building looking for a treasure ?" Liani asked. "An imaginary treasure?"

"Well, they went back in. The fire is still on the higher floors..."

"Seriously?"

"Okay," Riki said. "Forget the treasure. No one gives a fuck about the treasure."

"Clearly, someone gives a lot of fucks about the treasure," Van pointed out. His voice utterly sober, not a hint of a joke.

"Are we safe in here?" April asked. "How long before the fire spreads to us? The fireboat can't come out during a storm like this."

Last Chance would be here long after our chances were gone.

"Forget that too," Liani said. "We'll stay here as long as we can, and the rain may hold off the spread. If not, we can go to the boathouse. We need to talk about what you just brought in."

"What we brought in," I said, "is Dr. Henson."

It would have sounded better if I didn't let out a loud belch to punctuate that statement. Liani had given me a can of sparkling peach water when we came in. My mouth was so dry and tacky and my throat so sore that I'd pounded it.

"So," Van said. "We have Dr. Henson's body in a tarp and the building is on fire."

"Correct."

"But why is the building on fire?" April cried.

"Because someone set it on fire," I said. "Not me. Most likely the person who put Dr. Henson in the tarp, and who decided to use the fact that I accidentally set a fire as a good way of covering her up. Literally. With an entire building. And taking Riki and me out with her. Also, the same person who dosed me."

" Dosed you?" Liani said.

"Someone gave me an edible," I said. "I have been out of it for most of the night. I think it helped me, though, because I stayed calm."

"I didn't give you anything," Van said, holding up his hands. "Anyone's welcome, but I never give anyone anything they didn't ask for."

"Well, it got in me. But the only thing I ate was..."

Of course. The Moose Tracks, the one with all the extra chocolate in it.

"Do you have weed chocolate?" I asked Van.

"Yeah?"

"Well, that's how they did it. In the ice cream."

"Yes, but why..."

"Because we found a goddamn tooth , is why," Riki snapped.

"I found it," I corrected her in a soft voice. I didn't want ownership of the tooth—I just like to be accurate.

I pulled the Midnight Rose lipstick from my pocket and twisted it up.

"Tooth," I said.

Five faces peered through the glow of a battery-powered lamp, looking at the grisly nub of lipsticky bone.

"I found it in the rubble under the patio when I was putting stuff away before the storm. But let's take this story in order. The prom party on Mulligan Island, somewhere around dawn, Chris Nelson falls off the cliff face into the water. No one sees it happen—or so everyone thought. Because someone did. Dr. Henson is here, on Ralston Island, doing morning yoga on the balcony that overlooks the river. She has a camera with a high-powered lens. She sees something , but she's not sure what. She hints at this a few times. She keeps mentioning things happening right out in the open, that she's seen things from that balcony. She talks about evil happening in the open. No one pays any attention to this except the person who killed Chris Nelson. But the night before she disappeared, when we were all swimming, I mentioned that she'd told me that she wanted me to spy on all of you, kind of. The next morning, she went over the edge of the balcony. So if we know who pushed Chris, we'll know who pushed her. The truth is somewhere in your drama. Let's start with you, Tom. Chris was in the River Rescue and targeting your family."

"I literally just helped you," he said.

"You helped us because you thought there was treasure, but you could have hit us instead. You helped us get the body out. I'm not sure why you would do that, since she's technically evidence, and for all we know there's DNA all over her that would have been burned up in the fire. But hey, who knows? So in my mind, it's Liani, or April, or Van."

"This isn't funny," April said.

"No," I replied. "It's really not. Chris cheated on you, Liani. And you, Van. And April, he never cheated on you exactly, but I'm guessing he kind of let you down? He didn't break up with you, but he broke up all of you, as a friend group. So you're not out of the mix."

"I tried to save him," Liani said, her voice brittle.

"You got him out of the water," I countered. "Doesn't mean you didn't put him in there. But Van—you were really the closest to the action. You fought that night."

"We fought a lot of nights, because we liked making up," he said. I couldn't read his expression because he was leaning back.

"If you're right," Tom said, "and Dr. Henson saw someone kill Chris, she would have done something about it. She wouldn't keep it to herself."

"Not if she didn't know what she saw," I said. "She said it herself—she'd had eye surgery recently. She couldn't tell if the mirror in the dining room was crooked. And what must that be like? Thinking you saw someone push another person to their death? What if you really weren't sure? You'd think about it. Turn it over in your head. What if she just didn't know? I mean, if I saw something in the distance that might have looked like a murder, I'd doubt myself. I'd talk myself out of it."

"None of us knew where that hidden room was," April added.

"Clearly, someone did," I said, thinking out loud. "She gave us a hint my first night here, and it didn't take me too long to work out where it was. It was hidden but it wasn't secret. It wasn't impossible to find."

They were really trying to poke holes in my story, but I was not for poking, not that night. I am a patient person, but I have limits.

"The thing about this is that it was personal," I said. "Right? This had something to do with all of you, some grievance, some petty thing that got blown up. And maybe whoever it was did it by accident—lashed out and he fell. You didn't mean to do it. But once you did, you had to keep yourself safe. You killed Dr. Henson to stay safe and set the fire. But..."

My brain caught up with one outstanding fact.

"... you also did something else—you put Dr. Henson's camera in Riki's room. That was weird of you if you were just going to set us on fire. That's petty. You've had that for days. I guess you found nothing on it, or you erased the pictures. It would have been enough to leave the camera. Riki would have gotten the blame. No. You had to go and set a fire because I'm the one with the fire and you thought it wasn't good enough until we died . Because all of this—all of it—has been about you."

Van leaned forward suddenly.

"Something occurs to me," he said. "That night, at the party, you know how I found out about Chris cheating on me that time?"

Remember a while back, I told you about how I could do brainteasers in my head? Check back. I said it. Well, my brain must have been working on this one—moving the camera and the fire and the tarp and the tooth and all of it—and so far I had no answer. But I had a feeling. A vibe. Because I knew what he was going to say next.

"April," he said. "You told me. Why?"

"What do you mean?" she said, her voice sharp.

"Why tell me?"

"Because—"

"Because why? Because you stir shit? I mean, I've always known that about you. It's what I like about you. Chris didn't like it, though. He knew you were in love with him. He used to joke about it. He said you needed to be at the center of everything, and that people always got into fights after talking to you. He called you an underminer. I mean, what he said was you were full of shit."

Liani sat up straighter.

"You told me about Riki and Chris," she said. "You showed me the video."

"Wait," Riki said. "What? You were the one who told me that she shouldn't see the video. You said the sound was bad and it came off like I was coming on to Chris, not trying to trap him."

"I didn't think it was true," Liani added. "All that shit you were saying Marlowe said."

She had turned on April, who was coiled in on herself, legs tucked up to her chest.

"What did she say I said?" I asked.

"Basically that you thought I was a bitch for being mean to Riki. That Van was burned out. Things like that. I didn't get that vibe from you, but she was repeating entire conversations."

"I never said any of those things."

"I told you," Van said. "This is why we like her. Seriously, was I the only one who knew this? Why did you guys hang out with her?"

A warm tingle of annoyance crawled over my skin. She had been saying things about me, making me seem untrustworthy, backbiting. The April I saw now was the same in all physical ways as the one I had known since I had gotten here—same long red hair, round, open face. But there was a lock in her jaw and a set focus in her eyes that was cold. Maybe it was the edible, or the storm, or the dead body downstairs—but this was a scary face. The face of someone who might lash out and push you to your death.

"That night," I said, "it was prom. It was almost the end of everything you'd ever known. You had one summer with everyone, and you were all going to be together here. Chris was going away after that. It was the last chance. You'd made sure Chris and Liani were broken up. And now Van and Chris were fighting. This was your moment. Van ran off, and then you appear, ready to help."

"You're listening to some drugged-out person who literally burned a house down ," she said.

"Yeah," Tom said. "We are."

"Based on what? Nothing. This is insane. You are my friends . And this is based on nothing."

She had a point there. This was just a story I was telling about her. A story that made sense, considering the facts. None of it was proof. None of it would hold up.

I went back into my mind and ran the footage again. I replayed that whole morning, when Dr. Henson first disappeared, looking for anything at all that stood out. One thing did.

"The morning Dr. Henson vanished was hot," I said. "Sticky. Remember?"

"It's summer," she said.

"Hotter than usual. And you were wearing your fleece."

"So?"

"So what I'm thinking," I said, "is that knocking someone off a balcony is pretty direct, but what if that person lashes out. Someone strong, who does yoga every day. What if they reach for you, scratch you? What if they rip off your necklace."

"I lost my necklace looking for her," she snapped.

"No, you said you lost it looking for her. Riki and I saw you take off your fleece and jump in. Neither of us were looking too closely. You said you got stuck."

"You saw me bleeding when I came out," she said.

"That's not hard to do. You scrape yourself alongside a rock, flail around, say you got stuck. Nothing to it."

"What are you doing?" April said. "How high are you?"

"I have no idea," I replied. "You tell me."

April must have realized, just as I did, that it was over. She tried to protest, tried to explain, but her voice seemed more and more distant. The others let her talk, and I drifted away on my own thoughts. It was only when I burst out laughing that everyone else stopped talking and turned to me.

"It... doesn't... matter..."

"Marlowe?" Riki said. "You okay?"

I got myself under control enough to speak.

"It doesn't matter if Dr. Henson saw who killed Chris. Let's say she didn't. What matters is— it sounded like she could have . Think about it. Say you get here and you realize that Dr. Henson has a dead-on view of Mulligan Island and this camera with an amazing zoom. You find out she wakes up early and does yoga here. She says a bunch of stuff that sounds like she saw something, but maybe she didn't! Maybe she meant exactly what she said when she told me she wanted to keep an eye on everyone—she wanted someone from the outside to read the room because you'd all just had a friend die . Maybe she just wanted to know if you were all okay . When she said that stuff about evil things happening out in the open, she was talking about this house, about eugenics. In other words, maybe she meant exactly what it sounded like and what we all thought she meant in the first place. What if you killed her for nothing , you paranoid freak ?"

"This is bullshit!" April screamed. "Why are you letting her do this? She's a pyro . You are my friends ."

"We're not letting anyone do anything," Liani said, standing up. "If you didn't do this, fine. But if that necklace is out there somewhere, we're going to find it."