The Foxglove Killings

by Tara Kelly

  Megan took it with hesitance, as if she thought it would explode in her hand. “What am I supposed to say?”

  “Tell her I was hoping I could talk to her about Brandon—keep it vague,” I said.

  Her face scrunched up in confusion. “And when she asks why you can’t talk on the phone?”

  “This is gonna go well,” Matt muttered, fishing a cigarette out of his pocket and sticking it behind his ear.

  “How about we just show up?” Jenika asked. “Problem solved.”

  “Tell her it’s something I’d rather do in person,” I said to Megan.

  She blew out a breath and started dialing. I crossed my fingers hard enough to make my knuckles ache.

  “Hey, it’s me,” Megan said, her eyes meeting mine. “Where are you right now?” Her voice sounded too high to be natural, but I gave her an encouraging nod. “So, I’m with Nova and she wants to talk to you about Brandon. She was hop—” The tinny sound of Gabi’s voice interrupted her, but I couldn’t make out what she said.

  “I don’t know,” Megan answered. “She saw this drawing…”

  I stood and waved furiously for her to stop, reaching for the phone. I’d get into the details once I got Gabi to meet me.

  “Jesus,” Jenika mumbled.

  “Is it okay if she talks to you?” Megan asked. She passed it to me a second later.

  “Hi, Gabi,” I said, trying to sound casual but not overly friendly.

  “Hey…” she answered.

  “I know this is out of the blue, but can we come over for a few minutes? It’s important.”

  “We can talk now, if you want.”

  “Well, I’m on a friend’s phone, and I don’t want to tie it up. And this is really a conversation I want to have in private.”

  She paused for a few seconds. “Okay. I guess.”

  I remembered Megan saying they had a security gate. “Is there a code we need to know?”

  “Megan knows it,” she said.

  I thanked her and hung up before she could change her mind.

  Megan told Cindy the two of us were heading to the Beach Bum across the street, a pit with really bad burgers and great milkshakes. Then we all piled into Matt’s car, after he wrestled with getting the baby seat out.

  “We need to be back by two,” I told them, wiping away probably a year’s worth of baby food crumbs off the seat.

  Jenika rolled down the front passenger window, lighting a cigarette. “Let’s drive by Brandon’s first.”

  “It’s a cop’s house, Jenika,” I said. “I’m sure they have—”

  “You deaf? I said drive by. I wanna see if they have a pickup.”

  I knew his mom drove a blue SUV when she was off duty. I wasn’t sure about his dad. I’d seen his smiling face on ads for his vet office, but I never really saw him around town.

  “Would you use a family car?” I asked.

  “I’d have no choice,” Matt answered.

  Matt slowed to a crawl after we turned down Brandon’s gravel street. It was a narrow lane with houses on each side. Brandon’s house belonged on a bed-and-breakfast brochure, a pale yellow Victorian-style cottage with a white porch and blue flowers in the yard. The driveway was empty, but it led to a separate garage with a couple windows on the side.

  “Stop,” Jenika said, slipping on a black hoodie. She opened the door and jumped out before Matt came to a complete stop.

  He let out a sigh and cussed under his breath.

  Jenika walked in front of the house and disappeared around the side that didn’t have a driveway. She didn’t reemerge for what felt like minutes. Part of my view of the garage was obstructed, but I didn’t see her peeking in the windows.

  “What if someone comes home?” Megan muttered.

  A minute later, Jenika reappeared, sprinting across the street. She dived back into the seat with a huff. “It’s empty.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was disappointed or relieved to hear that. It wasn’t like I expected there to be a shiny dark pickup in the garage. That would’ve been too easy.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The De Lucas didn’t just live in a mansion; they lived on a plantation. The driveway led us uphill, winding through tall grass and lurching Douglas fir trees. Their redwood house was even larger than I’d imagined, sitting in a tamed meadow overlooking miles of the Pacific. The sun bounced off the rows of windows, making blobs of color dance in my vision.

  We pulled up next to Gabi’s Honda in front of the detached garage, which appeared to be bigger than my house.

  Matt glanced over his shoulder at Megan. “Can we park here or is there a lot for commoners?”

  “Here’s fine,” she answered, undoing her seat belt.

  “One of you should probably stay in the car,” I said to Matt and Jenika. “All of us at her door will be too much.”

  “Oh, no. We don’t want to scare the princess.” Jenika flicked her still-lit cigarette butt out the window. “That should be our top concern right now.”

  “I’m just saying—” I began.

  “I know what you’re saying,” Jenika snapped, looking over at Matt. “You mind waiting out here?”

  “Fine by me,” he said, turning up what I’d assumed was a Dropkick Murphys song because it had bagpipes, and they kept singing about whiskey.

  A stone path, lined with brightly colored flowers and shrubs shaped like mushroom tops, led to the De Lucas’ entrance. A statue of a black panther glared at us from their porch, its eyes a supernatural shade of green.

  “Gabi got that after she found the raccoon,” Megan said. “Pretty creepy, huh?”

  “Yeah…” It fit Steve De Luca, his cold, regal presence.

  There was a camera next to the front door, a red light glowing underneath the lens. I was guessing that was installed after the raccoon, too.

  Megan rang the bell, and I kept my head down instinctively, feeling watched. We waited in silence, the hiss of Matt’s music in the distance.

  After about thirty seconds, I looked at Megan, a question in my eyes. She shrugged, winding her blond hair around her finger again and again.

  “Is she—” Jenika was interrupted by the front door swinging open and Gabi staring at us. I’d expected to at least hear her approach, especially since she was wearing heeled sandals.

  “Hey,” she said, her dark eyes lingering on Jenika.

  “She’s staying with me,” I told Gabi. “My mom doesn’t want us going anywhere alone, so…”

  Gabi nodded, her lips tugging up at the corners. “I get it. My dad doesn’t want me to leave the house…”

  Nobody said anything for a few too many seconds. And she didn’t invite us in.

  “We’re parked in front of your garage,” I said, just to say something. “Is that okay?”

  “It’s fine. My dad practically lives at the hotel in the summer, especially now. With…everything.”

  “So, can we come in?” Jenika asked, motioning at the camera. “You’ve got our close-ups, in case we decide to rob the place.”

  Gabi let out a laugh that cut off almost as soon as it began and opened the door wide, waving us in. I was surprised by the gesture. If I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t let us in.

  Walking into their house was more like entering the lobby of a fancy hotel, the kind that had rooms starting at five hundred a night. The downstairs was all wide-open spaces, archways, and polished cherry hardwood floors. Paintings of old brick buildings, cathedrals, tundra landscapes, and abstract portraits covered the pale brown walls. They must’ve had the air-conditioning on full blast, because goose bumps traveled down my arms and legs.

  I couldn’t imagine having a house like this to myself. Too many rooms. Too much empty space.

  Gabi led us to the living room, which had a massive gray couch and views of the ocean out every window. That was when I saw the deer. It was mounted above their stone fireplace, staring at us with empty brown eyes. Icy fingers moved underneath my skin as I sat down on the couch.
>
  I’d always thought that mutilated deer in the park might’ve been directed at the De Lucas. And if Brandon was behind this, it made even more sense.

  Gabi took a seat on the pale green love seat across from us, her hands gripping the cushion, as if she was ready to jump up at a moment’s notice. With her dark hair twisted up in a messy bun, hardly any makeup, and a red tee with “feisty” spelled across the front, she looked younger than she normally did. Megan’s age, even.

  “I’m sorry about your…friends,” I said.

  She let go of her grip on the cushion and clasped her hands in her lap. “We weren’t super close, but… It’s pretty hard to process right now.”

  I glanced over at Megan, who was staring at her lap, not blinking.

  “Thanks for talking to us,” I said, trying to ease the tension. “I know it’s weird.”

  “Yeah, I won’t lie.” Gabi shifted back a little, crossing her legs. “It seems like you have bigger things to worry about? With Alex, I mean.”

  I ignored the judgment in her tone—there wasn’t time to get angry. “That’s why we’re here. We think Alex is innocent.”

  “We know he is,” Jenika added.

  “Sure.” Gabi’s gaze shifted to Megan and back to me. “I mean, you guys have been best friends forever.”

  “You think he’s guilty,” Jenika said.

  “I don’t know what to think. People are saying a lot of things.” Her manicured brows pinched together. “What does this have to do with Brandon?”

  “He talks about you all the time,” I said. Realization flashed across Gabi’s face as I spoke about his feelings toward her and the cakes. “Anyway, I saw these drawings in his sketch pad—”

  “Wait,” she broke in. “He showed you his sketches? He never shows people his sketches…”

  Instinct told me not to admit I’d snooped through his backpack. “He accidently left them at the diner, and I got curious. I flipped through it.” Gabi nodded, her brows still pinched together. “Have you ever seen inside it?”

  “Just a picture he showed me…” she trailed off.

  “Well, it’s filled with drawings of you.”

  “What kind of drawings?”

  I described the one with the bloody tears and “Pull the trigger” written underneath. “Any idea what that means?”

  “No. I…” Her lips parted and closed again.

  I looked over at Jenika. She kept her focus on Gabi, her eyes narrowed.

  “Brandon said you stopped talking to him,” I said. “That you didn’t give a reason…”

  “That’s not true. I said I wanted space, but he kept calling and calling.” Gabi rubbed her palms against her legs. “He’d show up at my house, wait outside the gate in his car. I figured responding to him would make it worse. So I cut him off—completely. Told people I knew about it in case he…took it further.”

  That would make sense if she’d stayed away from him. But she didn’t. “You come into the diner all the time. That’s not really cutting him off, is it?”

  Her expression tensed, as if she was offended. “No. It’s not. But I wasn’t going there to see him.” She let out a breath. “I mean, I wanted to see if he was okay. We’ve been friends for a long time. And Christian and some of his friends gave Brandon a hard time after I told people what happened—called him up, threatened him. I felt bad, you know?”

  She never appeared to feel all that bad, but I let it go.

  “Did Christian and his friends ever attack Brandon?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rip off his clothes,” Jenika said. “Jump him. Torch his house. You know. Shit like that.”

  Gabi’s gaze went from me to Jenika, her lips parted. “You guys think Brandon might’ve killed Amber and Christian.”

  “Nothing gets past you,” Jenika said.

  Gabi’s eyes widened, and her lips turned up at the corners, as if she didn’t quite know how to react.

  “Sorry,” I said. “We’re all pretty worked up right now.”

  “I’m not sorry,” Jenika said. “I’m waiting for you to cut the dumb Bambi act and tell us what you actually know.”

  Gabi stared at her, her forehead crinkling. “What is it you think I know?”

  I tried to think of a way to diffuse the situation, even though Jenika was right. Gabi had to know more about Brandon than she was letting on—they’d been friends way too long for her to be so clueless about his sketches.

  But then I kept going back to Alex. How clueless I was.

  A cell phone alert dinged, echoing through the living room. Gabi reached into her pocket, pulling out her phone, and Jenika folded her arms. The air in the room felt like it was moving again.

  Megan leaned into me, her arm pressing against mine. “We should go,” she mumbled.

  Gabi stared at her display, her mouth tensing. “Excuse me,” she said, getting up and disappearing down their long hallway.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed at Jenika. “She’s not going to tell us anything now.”

  “Wake the hell up,” Jenika said, not bothering to lower her voice. “She wasn’t going to tell us anything.”

  “I was getting somewhere before—”

  “No. You weren’t.” She looked over her shoulder at the hallway before continuing. “That chick is sketchy, just like her dad. She’ll say anything to come out smelling like roses. If there’s even a small part of her that thinks Brandon is behind this, she’s going to say”—Jenika crossed her hands over her chest, batting her eyelashes—“I had no idea he was capable of such things.”

  “She wouldn’t do that,” Megan said.

  “I know you think you’re supertight,” Jenika said to her. “But—”

  “Stop,” I said, lowering my voice. “We can have this conversation later.”

  “She doesn’t know you,” Megan spoke over me. “Why should she trust you?”

  We went silent then, waiting with nothing but the hum of the air-conditioning keeping us company. Jenika paced the length of the couch, her arms folded. Megan sat at the edge of the cushion, drumming her fingers on her knees.

  I couldn’t take another dead end. Another question mark. Who knew when I could get out like this again?

  “I’m going to check on her,” Megan said, getting up and heading in the direction Gabi went.

  “Look at this place,” Jenika said after a minute, motioning around us. “How easy would it be to hide someone away?”

  Too easy. They probably had rooms they didn’t even use. Not to mention all the acreage. “What—you think she’s involved somehow?” I whispered.

  She huffed. “No. I don’t know. I’m thinking all kinds of crazy right now.”

  “Me, too…”

  Quick footsteps echoed down the hall, getting louder. Megan appeared, panic on her face.

  I stood, chills rushing to my hands and feet. “What’s wrong?”

  “We need to go,” Megan said. “Right now.”

  “Why?” I asked, peering into the hallway. All I could see were shadows and picture frames lining the walls.

  “Gabi’s freaked out,” Megan said, looking at Jenika. “Like, actually scared to come back out here. She thinks you’re…going to do something to her.”

  “Oh, fuck that,” Jenika said, loud enough for Gabi to hear. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Knock it off,” I said.

  “She said if I can’t get you to leave,” Megan continued, “she’s calling the cops.”

  It seemed like an extreme reaction, but I couldn’t exactly blame her. She was outnumbered in her own house, and Megan was right—she had no reason to trust us.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Jenika stayed next to the couch, shaking her head. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care if I’ve gotta go back there and beat some truth out of her.” She lowered her voice. “I know she at least knows who torched my house.”

  My fingers curled into my palms. “And then we’ll ge
t locked up. Where we can’t do anything. Use your head for once.”

  “Grow a pair,” she answered, a challenge in her eyes. “For once. My mom could’ve died. And what about Alex?”

  “We’re going to figure something out,” I said, willing myself to believe my own words.

  “You guys,” Megan whispered, her expression pleading.

  I wrapped my arm around Megan’s shoulders, leading her toward the front door.

  “We’re leaving, princess!” Jenika’s voice bounced off the walls. “You’re safe now.”

  I went for the door, clenching my teeth. She couldn’t resist making a bad situation worse.

  When we got outside, Matt was standing next to his car, puffing on a cigarette. His dark eyes widened when he saw us, and he flicked his cigarette onto the driveway.

  “You guys need to see something,” he said, scanning our surroundings as if he’d heard a noise.

  “We need to go,” Megan said. “Gabi’s going to call the cops.”

  “Let her,” Jenika said, catching up to us. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Matt looked toward Gabi’s house again and motioned for us to follow him. He jogged toward a dirt path that cut between the towering trees all over their property.

  “See what?” I called after him.

  “Just come on!” he said, disappearing into the shadows of the trees.

  Jenika followed without looking back.

  I hesitated, that heavy feeling of dread swelling inside me. The breeze was still enough to hear the roar of the ocean below and the call of the gulls.

  “What’s down there?” I asked Megan.

  “I don’t know.” She folded her arms across her stomach like she was cold. “I’ve only ever been in the house.”

  I tried the passenger door handle of Matt’s car—luckily it was open. “Get in. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  “Nova.” Megan’s voice was urgent. “Let’s get out of here. We can walk back.”

  “Get in,” I repeated, heading toward the path Matt and Jenika went down. The rational part of me knew this was a bad idea, running blindly into acres of woods on private property. But my legs kept moving, propelling me faster into the darkness. I couldn’t sit around and wonder anymore. I couldn’t wait for the next shoe to drop.