Pretty as a Picture

by Elizabeth Little

  Shit.

  I grab the jar of peanut butter, twist off the top, and scoop out a generous fingerful. I suck it into my mouth and smash it between my tongue and my palate so that I can draw out as much sweetness as possible before the peanut butter melts. This was the only way my mom could get me to eat any protein as a kid. I preferred Skippy back then, but my tastes have broadened over the years. Now I’ll eat Jif and Peter Pan, too.

  Is this the worst idea in the world or the best idea in the world?

  It’s obviously the former, right? I’d be potentially putting my job at risk to help a couple of teenagers play Nancy Drew. Worst idea.

  Then again, the whole point of Nancy Drew is that adults aren’t very good at solving mysteries. What if these girls really do know something Tony doesn’t? What if he’s genuinely going down the wrong path here? And what if this is our one chance to stop him?

  So—best idea?

  I swallow the peanut butter and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

  I turn to Grace and Suzy.

  “Okay. Tell me everything you know.”

  * * *

  —

  “So it’s a pretty classic setup,” Suzy says, splaying her palms on the counter. “Caitlyn Kelly, a rich girl from Philadelphia, comes to Kickout Island every summer with her family. Somewhere along the line, she falls in love with a good-looking boy who works at the hotel. Very Dirty Dancing—but without the dancing.”

  “Or the illegal abortions,” Grace points out.

  “Or Patrick Swayze,” Suzy allows.

  I drop my face into my hands, feeling very tired all of a sudden. “So, not like Dirty Dancing at all, really.”

  Suzy ignores this and continues with her story. “But then, plot twist, one day—just, like, out of nowhere—Caitlyn’s dead body shows up on the beach, and no one knows how she got there. No one knows exactly how she died. And no one has any idea why anyone would have wanted to kill her. Everyone loved this girl, right?”

  I reach for the bag of bread. “They always do, once they’re dead.”

  “But eventually word gets around that the weird loner kid who worked in the boathouse was totally obsessed with her. The cops raid his boat, find serial killer collages, creepshot photos, the whole nine yards. Everyone on Kickout is sure he did it.” She pauses. “I’m talking about Billy here.”

  “I figured, but thanks for the clarification.” I take a slice of bread and tear it in half. “Why wasn’t he arrested?”

  “He was,” Grace says, “but they didn’t prosecute. They didn’t have enough evidence. Billy, like most loners, did not have an alibi.”

  I tear the bread in half again. “It’s the only good reason to go to a party.”

  “But they also couldn’t prove he was anywhere near Caitlyn at the time of her death. And, yes, she might have been killed with one of the oars from the boathouse, but, apparently, head trauma can be caused by all sorts of things. It also sounds like the police messed up pretty bad, procedurally speaking. So at the end of the day, they just weren’t able to make a case against him. Not in court, anyway.”

  “Who do you think did it?” I ask. “Assuming it wasn’t Billy, that is.”

  “Well,” Grace says, “everyone in Caitlyn’s family was cleared, so smart money’s on the boyfriend.”

  I look up from my pile of bread. “Why’s that?”

  Suzy’s eyebrows pinch together. “He’s the boyfriend.”

  “And what happened to him?”

  “We’re still working on that. There are three hundred people on this island, and none of them will talk to us about anything but Billy.”

  “We actually started keeping track,” Grace says. “Seeing how long it takes a local to tell us Billy did it. The average time is twelve seconds. We say ‘Caitlyn,’ they say ‘Billy.’ It’s kind of like being a cheerleader, but, you know—for the miscarriage of justice.”

  “So do you know anything about this boyfriend?”

  Grace shakes her head. “Just that his name was Tom.”

  “And there are no other suspects?”

  Suzy makes an equivocating gesture. “I mean, kinda? There’s Francie’s grandma. She was some sort of movie star back in the day. Married the heir to the hotel.”

  “Oh right,” I say. “Rebecca.”

  “No, Violet. She and Caitlyn were close—she was the last person to see Caitlyn alive. They were rehearsing in the movie theater the night Caitlyn was murdered. I guess Caitlyn wanted to be an actress or something. But according to Violet, Caitlyn went back to her room at the usual time. She was never considered a suspect.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Suzy reaches over and steals a scoop of peanut butter. “The internet. Also we stole a shooting script from Anjali’s bag—God, this stuff is disgusting. How do you eat it?”

  I frown down at the Suzy-shaped indentation in the peanut butter. “Anjali told me that everyone loved Violet. Could they have been covering for her? Like, a conspiracy?”

  Grace and Suzy blink.

  “Huh,” Suzy says. “That’s not bad.”

  “I don’t know,” Grace says. “You really think a grandma could have done it?”

  I hold out my hand. “Suzy, give me your phone.”

  “You’re not gonna call my grandma, are you?”

  “Just—give it.”

  She unlocks it and passes it to me. I thumb three keywords into Google and hand it back.

  She looks down and reads the first search result out loud. “‘Seventeen little old ladies who were actually unspeakably brutal murderers.’”

  “It still seems unlikely,” Grace insists. “Violet’s tiny. And the coroner was pretty clear there was no way a woman her size would have been able to inflict that kind of head trauma.”

  “What about the other hotel guests?”

  “Also cleared.”

  I set my chin on the heel of my hand. “So that’s it? There are no wild, outlandish theories? Like that the real killer was, I don’t know—Santa Claus? An owl? Christopher Walken?”

  “Nope,” Suzy says. “There are really only two options. Either Billy killed her—because he was in love with her and she turned him down. Or the boyfriend killed her—because he was in love with her and she turned him down. Tale as old as time.”

  I scoop out another bite of peanut butter and swirl it around in my mouth. It seems so ordinary to me. Maybe Tony is, like the girls say, setting out to prove Billy’s guilt. But what’s the story there? Would a studio really invest millions of dollars in a movie that gives us an obvious answer? I sure wouldn’t. But maybe I’m just naïve. Maybe there’s big money to be made in telling people they were right all along.

  It would really help to have a script.

  “Okay,” I say. “What do you need from me?”

  Grace’s smile is so wide it nearly splits her face. “Well, right now we’re trying to get our hands on the actual police report—”

  I let my hands fall to the counter. “To be clear, I’m definitely not breaking into a police station for you.”

  “—but in the meantime, maybe you could, you know, find out if Tony has any research of his own? I mean, he probably hired detectives and fact-checkers and stuff, right?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’ll see what I can find.” I cross my arms and consider the two of them. “I have one condition, though.”

  “Is it peanut butter?” Grace asks.

  “From now on, stay away from Billy, would you? Just in case. Let’s not be Janet Leigh in Psycho—let’s be John Gavin in Psycho.”

  Suzy shakes her head. “I only understood half that reference.”

  I reach across the table and set my finger against the back of her hand. I want to make absolutely sure she’s paying attention to what I say next.

  “I mean
it. Be careful, okay? The last thing this place needs is another dead girl.”

  SUZY KOH: So what made you think you could be a detective?

  MARISSA DAHL: What made you think you could be a detective?

  GRACE PORTILLO: Harsh. But fair.

  SUZY KOH: You still have to answer.

  MARISSA DAHL: [sighs] When you think about it, an editor—that is to say, a film editor—isn’t really so different from a detective. We’re both presented with an incomplete collection of imperfect information and tasked with piecing together a coherent narrative.

  SUZY KOH: You could almost say—every film is a puzzle, really.

  MARISSA DAHL: Suzy. Are you quoting Walter Murch at me?

  GRACE PORTILLO: Walter Murch, for those of you who don’t know, is an acclaimed editor and sound designer—

  SUZY KOH: And beekeeper!

  GRACE PORTILLO:—who has won three Academy Awards—

  SUZY KOH:—for Apocalypse Now and The English Patient. Guy’s got range.

  SUZY KOH: Of course not, that’s just something I found when I was googling memes for our Instagram.

  MARISSA DAHL: [inaudible]

  SUZY KOH: There’s another one I liked . . . hold on . . . here it is. “The whole eloquence of cinema—

  MARISSA DAHL: —is achieved in the editing room.” Yeah. Same guy.

  SUZY KOH: Cool. Has he worked on any movies I’ve heard of?

  MARISSA DAHL: I think we’re done for the day.

  FOURTEEN

  As soon as I get back to my room, I turn off the overhead lights, yank back the bedspread, and fall face-first onto the mattress. I kick my legs out over the edge of the bed, and I bounce them up and down, my shins springing against the mattress in a steady rhythm, building up a bright, fizzy feeling in my bones that zips all the way up to the top of my skull.

  I breathe in.

  I breathe out.

  And I keep doing that until my body releases the tension it has been holding on to for—rough estimate—the past thirty-six hours or so.

  When I’m feeling like myself again, I grab my toiletries and pajamas and head for the bathroom. I shower, floss, brush my teeth, floss again. Wash my face, comb my hair, check under my nails to make sure I didn’t miss anything, scrub them with a nail brush anyway. Put on pajamas. Climb into bed.

  Then I tune the clock radio to static and close my eyes. Under the covers, I rub my feet together. Right over left, left over right.

  I do all this every night, without exception.

  It’s cute when some people do it. Like—remember that speech in High Fidelity? Not the one about what you like and what you are like—that one’s awful—this is later, when John Cusack’s finally realizing how badly he messed up with the Danish actress who was given so much more to do in Mifune.

  “Top Five Things I Miss about Laura,” it’s called.

  “Number five,” John says, “She does this thing in bed when she can’t get to sleep. She kinda half moans and then rubs her feet together an equal number of times. It just kills me.”

  What I wouldn’t give to be granted one-tenth the behavioral leeway a man allows a leggy Scandinavian by default.

  It’s been a year since I last spent the night with someone and two years since I’ve really wanted to. The most recent guy was a barista who’s trying to make it as a comedian. I didn’t really like him, but he laughed at one of my jokes, and I was lonely enough to be flattered, so I talked myself into going through the motions.

  He asked if he could stay over, and I said sure—because that’s what Amy and my therapist and my mother are always telling me to do, to give people a chance, because who knows? They might surprise you.

  But then I saw the way he looked at me as I went through my nighttime routine, so I wasn’t surprised at all when his next questions were, Do you have to listen to that horrible noise? and Does it have to be so cold? and Why do you have a sandbag for a comforter? and Do you really have to keep doing that thing with your feet?

  When I told him to leave, he announced he’d only come home with me because he was angling for an audition with Amy.

  Then he told me I was the worst lay he’d ever had.

  I bet five years from now he’s a huge star.

  I didn’t exactly enjoy the experience myself. Touching the wrong person—well, it’s hard for me to explain exactly how it feels. The best way I can think to describe it is that there’s a beehive in my chest, and most people upset the bees. The nearer they get, the worse it is—and direct contact makes them swarm. I can feel them massing even now, in the knob of my clavicle, behind my triceps, along the tendon on the right side of my neck. Just the thought of being back in bed with that guy sets them scrabbling beneath my skin.

  Love is a many-splendored thing. Anxiety, I suppose, is a many-legged creature.

  I sigh and roll over onto my back. I should think about something else—something cheerful, something uplifting.

  Murder works.

  Cautiously, I invite in the thought I’ve been fighting back. Someone killed Caitlyn Kelly. That someone was never caught. So there’s a very real chance they’re watching now as a bunch of Hollywood doofuses meticulously re-create what was either their greatest triumph or their worst mistake. They might even still work at this hotel. It’s possible I’ve already met them without realizing it.

  How often does that happen? How many times in our lives have we met a murderer? Greeted a murderer? Slept with a murderer?

  I consider googling but think better of it.

  I slide my hands under my thighs and adjust my shoulders. It isn’t always easy to fall asleep in a new bed, but I think I’m tired enough to make it work.

  It’s been a such long day.

  I’m so glad it’s over.

  Thump.

  My eyelids fly open. I sit up.

  Thump.

  Is someone at the door? At this hour? But that’s not a knock. It’s more like a—

  Thump.

  Oh my God, is someone trying to get in?

  I scramble out from under the covers. What do I do? Should I say something? Should I ask who’s there? Is it smarter to let them know I’m here or to pretend I’m not? I mean—I guess the answer to that would depend on whether they’re trying to kill me, right?

  I give my hands a rough shake, then another. Then another.

  It’s probably just a crew member heading back to their room—drunk, maybe. And they just bumped into my door by accident.

  Thump.

  Bumped into my door by accident four successive times.

  Shit. I creep over to the door and go up on my toes, craning my neck until I can look into the peephole. I don’t see anything. Did they leave? I don’t hear anything, either. Was I just imagining it?

  I check that the security bar is engaged and ease the door open.

  And I come face to face with the culprit.

  “You.”

  The cat blinks once, lazily, then returns her attention to the abandoned room service tray next to the door opposite mine. She’s trying desperately to jimmy her nose underneath a stainless-steel cloche, but all she’s managing to do is knock the tray into the wall.

  Thump.

  “If I lift the lid, will you stop making that noise?” I ask.

  Thump.

  I prop my door open and step out into the hall. I’m just reaching down when the door across the hall opens, too. I freeze, my hand hovering over someone else’s leftovers, and look up into the face of one of the brightest young stars in Hollywood.

  Like most white actresses, Liza May is startlingly narrow, her body a straight line from armpit to ankle. She’s wearing a tank top and yoga pants, and her hair’s bundled back into a messy ponytail, and if I feel any envy in this moment it isn’t because she’s prettier or sexier or mo
re talented than I am. No. I hate her—just a little—because I know, deep in my heart, that she’ll never get shit for walking around in yoga pants. She gets to wear whatever she wants. She’s the kind of person who can only ever be dressed down, never underdressed.

  “It wasn’t me, it was the cat,” I say, all eloquence.

  “Oh,” she says after a moment, equally nonplussed. “Is that—yours?”

  “I think she lives here. I met her in the lobby this evening when I checked in.”

  She looks up. “You’re the new editor?”

  I take a step back, wiping my hand on my pajama pants. “Was there an all-hands about me or something?”

  She pulls her door closed behind her and glances to either side. Then she leans in and says, “You should quit.”

  I draw back. “But I just got here.”

  Her hand curls around my shoulder, and I’m too shocked to shimmy free.

  “Seriously,” she says, “woman to woman, you want no part of this. I’d be out of here in a hot second if I thought I could.” She pauses. “Did they have you sign anything?”

  I nod, speechless.

  Her hand falls to her side. “Shit. Well—whatever, that’s why we have lawyers, right? Break the contract. Go back to LA. Thank me later.”

  “Wait, I don’t—”

  But it’s too late. She’s already slipped back into her room. I almost make a move to follow her, to ask her just what she’s talking about—because come on, you can’t just say something like that and leave—but there’s no misinterpreting the sound of the deadbolt sliding into place.

  After a moment, the cat pads over to weave figure-eights around my ankles. I look down at her.

  “Well, that was disconcerting.”

  She lifts her chin and chirrups.

  “No, I don’t suppose Liza helped.”

  She meows again, insistent.

  “Fine. But I’m going to have to insist that you gorge in private, like the rest of us.”

  I reach for the plate.

  * * *

  —

  There’s no way I’m going to be able to fall asleep now, so once we’re back in my room, the cat tearing happily into her hunk of half-eaten steak, I pull out my computer.