Chapter Twenty-Seven

Avi stared at me, mouth agape. "Wait. I was murdered ?"

I winced. Shit . We hadn't really talked about Avi's death, had we? This probably wasn't the best way to break the news. "Maybe?"

Oren's either, other than he was gone, and when I came to think about it, I'd never asked about Oren's manner of death either. I made a mental note to ask Taryn, if only so I could share that information with Avi. When he was ready. When he asked .

Which wasn't right now.

I hunkered down, putting myself on his eye level, wondering briefly whether he could float. Not relevant now, Maz.

"Hey. I'm sorry. I should have broken that to you a little better. But to be honest, I assumed you knew."

His face bunched as though he were trying to peer through fog. "Why?"

"Because I like you, of course. I don't want to make you unhappy. More unhappy."

He made an impatient gesture with one hand. "I'm not talking about your tact or lack of it. Why would you assume I knew I was murdered?"

I blinked at that. "Because you were there?"

His expression morphed into one of clear exasperation. "Maz. I haven't remembered the most important things in my life "—his gaze cut to the bowl—"until they're right in front of me. I didn't even know I was dead until you told me. Why would you think I could remember anything about how I got…" He flailed. " Here ? Like this?"

"Okay. Then let's think about that." I folded my legs under me and sat facing him. "What's the last thing you remember?"

He gnawed on his lower lip, squinting at the ceiling. "I only really remember… waiting. For Oren to come back, like he promised." He met my eyes, smiling crookedly. "You probably know more about it than I do, since you have the benefit of the police investigation."

I scratched the back of my head. "Weeelll…"

His smile faded and his eyes narrowed. "Didn't they find the perpetrator?"

"They sort of… didn't look."

"Didn't look? I was killed and they didn't even…" His face crumpled. "Not even Oren?"

I reached out, but of course my hand passed right through his arm, so I drew back. "They didn't look because they didn't know. The cause of death was a subdural hematoma, and you collapsed in the backyard during the party, in front of practically the whole town. As far as anybody knew, it was from natural causes." I gripped a handful of my curls and yanked. "Jeez, I'm not handling this well at all."

"No. No, it's all right." Avi straightened his shoulders, making an obvious attempt to pull himself together. "As long as it wasn't just indifference. As long as Oren wasn't… Oh, god. Oren. He must have been—"

"Devastated. That's why he never came back to the house. He couldn't face the place without you. He had Saul lock it up."

"Then why do you think I was murdered?"

"Jerry was suspicious. He's the one who thought you might have been subject to prior head trauma."

"You'd think I'd remember getting hit in the head hard enough to kill me," Avi said tartly. I looked pointedly at the bowl. "Yeah, yeah. Memory not firing on all cylinders, so maybe I wouldn't."

"Do you remember anything more about the day of the party? After you stuffed the Lang in the window seat?"

"I remember…" His gaze turned distant. "Oh! I remember I had a headache, because I promised myself I'd take a couple of ibuprofen before the party, as soon as I finished the chapter."

"Were you writing on a laptop?"

He shook his head. "I didn't have a laptop, just a monitor and an internet-connected keyboard."

I'd seen those tucked into a closet upstairs, along with a printer, and had wondered about the absence of a CPU. "Ah."

"At the time, though, I was using the typewriter, because the change in haptics, the typebars hitting the paper? Well, it was better for releasing aggression when I was blocked." He huffed a little laugh. "Although I'm surprised I'm here now instead of the circle of hell reserved for environmental destroyers because I'd filled the wastebasket with page after page of junk. I'd just dumped all four completed chapters in there too because it clearly wasn't working."

Hmmm … Although the floor was awash in paper—Oren's papers, this time—the black mesh trash basket was empty. Avi seemed to have a certain… affinity with paper, bringing the total of things he could manipulate to three, along with dust and sawdust, so I had to ask.

"Did you, um, poof the trash like you did the dust?"

"What, with a wiggle of my nose or a wave of my wand? I was planning to give everyone a tour of the completed renovations during the party. I wouldn't have wanted the evidence of my failure there for all to see. I probably emptied it beforehand."

"Do you remember if it was full?"

He glared at me irritably. "Maz, I never remembered ordinary housework when I was alive. What makes you think I can remember it now? All I know is that the book wasn't working. Now that I'm thinking about it, that was probably because I was mad at Oren, so even though Harcourt and Corchran were supposed to be cooperating to track down a serial kidnapper, they kept bickering like a couple of Real Housewives ."

I practically choked on my own spit. After I stopped coughing, I wheezed, "Wait. What?"

Avi shrugged. "I know. Totally out of character for them." While I was still trying to catch my breath, he turned his head and ran a finger along the edge of the bowl again. "I never expected Corchran to have such a big a footprint in the series, but then I met Oren and he sort of became Corchran in Behind Time just because I wanted to spend more time with him, even if only on paper."

"Uh…"

"My agent was in talks with HBO on a Harcourt series. If it had ever gone forward, my dream casting for Corchran was John Barrowman."

I managed to find my voice. "Good choice. And he turned into the most drool-worthy silver fox you've ever seen."

Avi's eyes practically lit up. "Really? That would have been even more perfect, since Oren was already starting to go prematurely gray. People had been talking about the unresolved sexual tension between Harcourt and Corchran since Bullseye , and I was determined to finally let them bang it out in this book. But"—he spread his hands, palms up—"bickering. Petty on-page bickering. Not something befitting a tough-as-nails PI and reformed master thief."

"Yeah, I can see that. But getting them together would have been impossible, anyway. Hell, the bickering was impossible."

He rolled his eyes. "I know . That's not how they operate. Either of them."

"Not because it's out of character." I forced a breath into my leaden lungs. "Because Corchran is dead."

Avi stared at me, open-mouthed, for a good ten seconds. "What are you talking about? Corchran isn't dead."

I nodded slowly. "Sorry, but he is. Don't you remember? You killed him in the last book."