“I guess great minds think alike. We’re just out for a bit of family fun. I can’t believe how amazing this wheel looks in person. I used to ride the old one all the time when I was a little girl.”
Wyatt tips a wave to Ron and Jake. Lover boy looks a little less haunted than he did the other night, but sunglasses obscure his eyes. The scratches have mostly faded, though there are still a couple on his neck. Nadia likes to think of them as Phoebe’s contribution to the discussion. Watch him.
“Well, it’s worth the wait in line,” Nadia says. “The weather is perfect for it too.”
Vicki’s eyes widen like she just had a brilliant idea. “Oh, you should come up with us! My treat. These gondolas seat like eight people.” She’s the only one who looks remotely interested in this idea.
Wyatt squeezes Nadia’s hand. Hard. But she isn’t going to pass this up. In fact, she was hoping for just such an invite. Time to be proactive. “We’d love that.” She looks up at Wyatt with her sunniest grin. “Come on, babe. You’re not that afraid of heights.”
“Sounds like I don’t have a choice.” The daggers in his eyes could cut glass.
“We’re in!” Nadia says.
Vicki makes an amusing raise-the-roof gesture. “Woot! Let’s do this.”
Ron mumbles something that sounds like “The more the merrier,” and Jake is still looking at his phone. Vicki seems to be the only one in the family with a pulse. But she also seems a little too cheerful, like she’s trying to compensate for her husband and son. Is she always so “on” like this? It must be exhausting.
Once they have their tickets, along with a pass to skip the long line, they head over to the much smaller queue of people who paid for the privilege of a shorter wait. The sign says the ride is only ten to fifteen minutes long. Nadia wonders how long it’s going to actually feel under the circumstances. As she gazes up at the towering structure, a bit of regret begins to seep into her guts. That’s a long way up to be trapped with three people who might have an agenda.
Their gondola arrives and the five of them get on. The Napiers and the Millers sit on opposing sides, as the universe would seem to have it. Wyatt takes her hand again. It isn’t a romantic gesture but more like he’s maintaining a conduit of quiet communication between them.
Vicki looks all around the inside of the car and rubs the back of her seat. “Gosh, this is really nice, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Nadia says. “Cozy.” A bit like an isolation chamber. Will anyone hear their screams if one of them decides to attack? You didn’t really think this through, did you? But you’ve always been too impulsive for your own good. Foolish girl.
Ron grunts. “For eighteen bucks a person, it should have come with a free beer or something.”
Vicki rolls her eyes. “Don’t listen to the cheapskate. This view is worth every penny.”
Ron looks out the window next to him as they ascend. “One of the most violent cities in the country, but everything looks so small and peaceful from up here, doesn’t it?”
“Too bad we can’t just stay in here,” Vicki says. “Above it all.”
Nadia can’t think of a worse hell, but she affects a sigh of agreement and focuses on the sailboats cruising the gleaming water below. “That would be nice.”
Nobody says anything for a few seconds until Jake blurts out, almost absently, “Too bad you can never really run away from anything.” He doesn’t look up from his phone.
“Uh, rude?” Vicki points to the device.
“I just want to get a few pictures. Is that okay with you?”
A moment ago, the gondola was spacious enough. Now it feels like a coffin with five people crammed inside. “Come on, Vic,” Ron says. “Let the kid take a few pictures. What’s the point of being up here if you can’t bring some of the view home with you?”
Vicki looks like she’s biting the inside of her cheek to keep from saying what she’s really thinking. Finally, she sits back. “Have at it. Just try to actually, you know, enjoy the view with your own eyes too, and not through a screen.” She looks at Nadia. “People are obsessed with filters these days, aren’t they? It’s like reality isn’t good enough.”
“Reality isn’t good enough for most people,” Wyatt remarks. He’s been so quiet, Nadia was starting to wonder if he’d join the conversation at all. “It’s what keeps me in business.”
“Hear hear,” Ron interjects. “Capitalism thrives on existential misery.”
“That explains your scotch budget,” Vicki quips. It doesn’t quite play like a joke.
“Don’t worry, Ron,” Nadia says. “You probably have nothing on my wine cellar.” An obliging chuckle passes among them, easing some of the tension. He glances at her for half a second before turning back to his window. It’s a bitter acknowledgment of her presence, but unlike the other night, an acknowledgment nonetheless.
Jake snaps a few shots from various vantage points while the gondola is at the very top of the wheel. Ironically, for all her berating about phones, it’s Vicki who insists on his taking a selfie of them together, and then asks him to message it to her. It’s like she can’t decide from one moment to the next what kind of mom she wants to be. Nadia’s hip vibrates with a text message. Jake is no longer looking at his phone; despite the darkness of his sunglasses, she senses he’s looking directly at her.
As much as she wants to grab her phone now, it seems safer to wait until they’re off the ride, which will be over in a few minutes, anyway. Jake finally turns to look out his window, and Ron asks Wyatt about what the mental health business is like. Vicki grins at Nadia, who feels like she has to say something to make this whole exercise in discomfort worth it. “So I’m thinking you three should come over for dinner tomorrow night.” The invitation is as spontaneous as her decision to greet the Napiers in the first place, but already she’s forming a plan for what she can do once she gets the Napiers out of their house for a bit. “That is, if you’re available.”
“Hey, guys,” Vicki says. “Dinner with the Millers tomorrow?” As the three of them confer only with their eyes, Wyatt’s fingernails dig briefly into the palm of Nadia’s hand. He’s not happy, but he’ll deal with it, just like he’s dealing with the ride. When no one voices any objections, though Ron and Jake don’t exactly come off as enthusiastic, Vicki says, “Sounds like it’s on. What can we bring?”
When they finally step off the gondola, Nadia takes a deep breath of fresh air. There is very little relief in it, though, as the reality of her plan settles in. After they part ways, Wyatt continues holding her hand until they’re nearly at the car, and then he flings it away. Nadia can’t help but feel a little hurt, but he looks furious. “Dinner at our place, huh? Are you crazy?”
Once they’re in the car, Nadia faces him. “Your fear is again duly noted, but I have a reason for inviting them over.” She tells him what it is.
He leans his head back and closes his eyes. “You’re going to get yourself or both of us killed. You do know that, right?”
“Then at least we’ll die knowing who killed Phoebe.”
“I sincerely hope that was a joke.”
She shrugs. “It’s funny because it’s true, right?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, will you just stop being so impetuous? Maybe I’m being a bit of a wuss here, but you could at least pretend like caution matters to you. And I’d like the chance to have a little input before you go inviting three potential murderers into my house.”
She folds her arms and tries not to sulk. He might have a tiny point. She could have consulted him first on the dinner idea after the ride was over, sold him on it, and then made the invite later. “I did jump the gun. When I get nervous, I tend to act without thinking first. I’ll try harder not to do that.”
“Thank you.” They sit quietly for a minute, and then he says: “Another five minutes in that gondola and Ja
ke probably would have puked. Guilty or not, the kid is not taking this well.”
“Put yourself in his shoes. Even if he didn’t kill her, he’s stuck watching his girlfriend hold hands with her husband while she pretends not to know him. It has to be a mind fuck.” This reminds her of something. Nadia pulls her phone, or rather Phoebe’s phone, out of her pocket. As expected, there’s a text message from Jake. She opens it and finds a picture of herself in the gondola, with the pier and the vast blue of Lake Michigan stretching off behind her. Her eyes are focused on something off-camera, likely Vicki. The caption is only three words, and they’re icicles in her spine. You’re not Phoebe.
“Well, that’s one question answered,” she says, showing Wyatt the picture.
“He was fucking my wife. He would notice if a strand of her hair was out of place.” He grips the wheel tight enough to make the leather creak, and Nadia thinks of the mug that broke in his grip. He seems to realize this himself and lets go. “Maybe Phoebe had the right idea. Run away. We could hit the road right now, never look back.”
She touches his shoulder. “If that was the right idea, I don’t think she’d be dead right now.”
He doesn’t seem to have an argument for that.
■■■
INTERLUDE
I KNOW NONE of this is funny, but sometimes I want to laugh when I think of how ridiculous things have become since you died. But when I’ve tried to let it out, hoping it would make me feel better, like a big sneeze does when there’s a tickle in my nose, it sounds more like a bunch of short screams strung together. Then I stop, because I’m scared that if I keep going, it will just become one long, endless shriek. Even in the quiet, I can still feel that scream trapped inside my body with nowhere to go. It makes me feel constantly like I’m going to throw up, but that doesn’t help. Believe me, I’ve tried.
But I bet you’re getting a kick out of this. I can imagine you right now, sitting on a cloud with a bucket of popcorn, laugh-screaming too. Are you rooting for me? I don’t think I’m even rooting for myself at this point. I’ll just be glad when this whole game is done.
CHAPTER 20
NOTHING EVER COMES easy to people like us.
Her mother used to say that a lot, and it always drove Nadia crazy. What a bunch of fatalistic bullshit, she would think. Make your own luck. Never crown a champion before you play a game, and if you’re in a roomful of losers, then find another room.
But as Nadia hunkers down at the Napiers’ back door, staring at her third broken tension wrench of the evening, and time falls through her fingers like talcum powder, she realizes Vera might have had a point. When has anything ever come easily to her? It’s always been a fight to keep moving forward. No greased rails on which to glide but a slog through muddy wheel ruts. She’s finally willing to admit exhaustion.
But she still has one wrench left. It isn’t over yet.
Using a nifty, and highly illegal, remote gadget she purchased a lifetime ago when it looked like the breaking-and-entering thing might become more than a passing interest, she already disabled the rudimentary commercial security system. Only this one tiny task stands in her way. She can do this! The lock isn’t even very good. The old ducks who lived here before probably hadn’t upgraded anything since the eighties. She’s just gotten a little rusty, that’s all. And she’s never had so much riding on getting it right.
Nadia gives the wrench a mean glare. “This is all on you.” If this one breaks, she’ll surrender and smash the damn window. No time for any of her other, subtler tricks. Placing the wrench into the top of the lock, she inserts her pick, being very careful not to add too much torque as she lifts each of the pins, remembering to breathe.
An agonizing fraction of a second occurs when she’s sure she dropped the last pin right as she turned the wrench, which would have resulted in an immediate snap, but the lock turns freely and she hears the satisfying click of entry. She checks the time and sends Wyatt a quick status update: I’m in.
His response comes a few seconds later: Hurry.
Because of the time she lost on the lock, she can’t search the house as thoroughly as she planned, but that’s okay. There isn’t much stuff here to sift through, anyway, and she really only needs to find something that can prove a link between the Napiers and Phoebe. Luckily, she’s broken into enough houses over the years to become adept at finding people’s secrets, many of them surprisingly left right out in the open.
She scans the kitchen. Counters are bare, save for a coffeemaker and toaster. A few dishes in the sink. There’s a stack of papers on the breakfast bar. Nadia starts there. Know the bills, know the person.
There are a lot of them too. Phone, electric, internet, all of them either past due or threatening cancellation. Three credit cards, maxed or nearly so. There are several envelopes from a place called Wood Glenn, a nursing home in California. Nadia doesn’t have the time to read them in the detail she would like, but a quick scan of them gives her enough of a gist. Someone hasn’t been paying the rent for a resident named Donna Parker, and they’re threatening eviction. Nadia recognizes Parker as Vicki’s maiden name, which she combed up in her background search. Donna could be her mother. “Well that sucks,” she whispers, putting down the stack of papers and moving up the hallway.
The door at the end is the only one with glass panels she can look through. The small computer desk, the stacks of books and papers on the floor, and the orange medical bag she saw the other night while Wyatt got his stitches all point to this being Ron’s office, but the door is locked, and she has no desire to test her luck with picking again. Reluctantly, she moves on.
The next two rooms she checks are completely empty. They’re paying for so much unused space. The next one at least looks like someone lives in it. Hideous wallpaper of giant pink roses, little Imelda Johnson’s taste, no doubt. King-size bed with a plain white duvet, small dresser against one wall with a few perfume bottles and bras slung on top. A pair of men’s slippers rest on the floor next to the bed. This has to be the master bedroom. She moves through it quickly enough, checking all the usual spaces: closet (mostly empty, but for some hanging shirts and men’s jackets), dresser drawers (also no surprises), under the bed (not even a dust bunny), and her favorite spot for hidden items: between the mattresses. Nothing.
Disappointed, she moves on, past a guest bathroom she has no time to search, to a bedroom immediately adjacent. This one is free of wallpaper, thank goodness. Only dark blue paint with white trim. She imagines it must have had a nautical theme in a previous life. The unmade twin bed and piles of clothes on the floor scream “young dude.” Definitely Jake’s room. She notes a picture hanging on the wall above the bed that looks an awful lot like an artist’s rendering of the Ferrari in Phoebe’s garage. A possible gift from his lady friend? “Aw, sis, that was sweet of you,” Nadia murmurs.
She sifts through the clothes on the floor and then searches for a dresser. No such luck. All his folded garments are in a series of laundry baskets against the wall. His other belongings are in the boxes they likely arrived here in, most of them containing athletic trophies, books, video games, tangles of electronics cables, and other odds and ends.
She would look under the bed, but she realizes the mattress and box spring are on the floor and not a frame, so she checks underneath the top mattress. It takes her a moment to register what she sees. Her knees begin to feel a little wobbly.
It’s a long butcher knife, with a handle very similar to the ones in the Miller knife block. She’ll need to compare it to be sure, but she’s already certain this is it, because neither she nor Wyatt was able to turn it up when they looked for it, and the blade has that unique pounded-steel look that the others in the set have. The look of a lot of money to burn.
She turns on the phone’s flashlight and examines the knife for any visible blood. There appears to be a tiny brownish speck where the blade meets the handle but no
way to tell for sure if it’s blood, rust, or dirt. Otherwise, it looks clean, at least to the naked eye. Gingerly gripping the knife by the very end of its handle, she places it in her tool bag.
Phoebe’s phone, which has become Nadia’s main mobile device, buzzes, and she jumps, dropping the mattress. It lands with a heavy foof but looks no more disheveled than before. Wyatt: They’re getting antsy. Won’t eat w/o you.
Nadia grimaces. She still hasn’t found anything linking the Napiers to Phoebe, or even Daniel, but the knife is a big score. The biggest score, if the goal is only to prove guilt. What she plans to do with that information is a whole other dirty can of worms she isn’t prepared to open just yet. Right now, she just needs to get out of here. Turning off the flashlight, she crosses the living room at a quick clip.
She doesn’t see the folding chair adjacent to the love seat until it trips her. In stumbling to catch herself, her phone slips from her hand and slides across the bare wooden floor like a glass hockey puck and into a darkened area of the room, beyond the reach of the dim lamplight. “Stupid!” she cries.
After placing the chair back where she thinks it was before, she goes looking for the phone. There aren’t any pieces of furniture for it to hide under, but that doesn’t mean she has even a second to look for something she shouldn’t have dropped in the first place. Like a blessing in the dark, the phone lights up and begins to vibrate as a call comes in, about five feet away from where she’s been looking.
She runs over, sees it’s Wyatt, swoops down, and answers it.
“I’m okay,” she says.
“What are you doing?” His voice is a whispered shriek.
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