by Tina Whittle
Trey put a hand on the back of my neck. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a rumble of thunder layered with Rico’s words, the cadences repeating, sing-song and hypnotic.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I mumbled.
Rico put his phone away. “Take your pills. Go to sleep.”
“I can’t. We still don’t know why.”
“Yes, we do. She was a homicidal, self-obsessed psychopath. Lex crossed her. Debbie too. End of story.”
I pushed myself upright, and a wave of dizziness assaulted me. The room swam a little, as bendy and melting as a Dali painting.
Trey frowned. “You shouldn’t—”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. Lie back down.”
I reached over and took him by the shoulders. He flinched, but didn’t pull away. Or smack me. Both good outcomes.
“You can’t stand it either, I know you can’t. I can feel it rattling around in your head too. It doesn’t make sense yet. Lex felt threatened enough to pull a knife on Frankie. Why was she that infuriated? What did she think was in that box?”
Trey didn’t reply. But I saw his index finger start that restless rhythm.
“It had to be something tangible. Lex didn’t fly without a net. He always had something solid to match his threats.” I ticked off on my fingers. “A switchblade in the pocket, an ankh in the desk, money under the mattress. He wouldn’t have just thrown words at her, he would have…oh god.”
And then suddenly it made sense. I got light-headed with understanding. Trey leaned closer, perturbed.
“Tai?”
“I was wrong, that’s exactly what he threw at her.”
“What?”
“Words!” I slumped forward and put my head in my hands. “Damn it! Why couldn’t I have figured this out before the cops took the box!”
“What’s so important about the box?”
“Not the box, the words! I need those words!”
Trey pointed toward his office. “The words are right there. In the file cabinet.”
I stared at him, baffled. “The cops took all that as evidence.”
“They took the originals. But I made copies the night you went to Java Java.”
It took a second for what he was saying to dawn on me, but when it did, I grinned so wide the corners of my mouth ached. Of course he made copies.
I grabbed his face and kissed him. “You are absolutely perfect, did I ever tell you that?”
He looked a little stunned. “I…no.”
I pushed myself to standing, still wobbly, but determined now. Rico jumped up as I hopped toward Trey’s work station, Trey following at my heels.
I steadied myself against the file cabinet. “Where?”
Trey pulled open the top drawer and ran his fingers along the indexes. It took him two seconds to find a folder labeled Lex Anderson/ Box Contents/ Miscellaneous Writings/ Duplicates.
He handed it to me. “Here.”
I plopped myself on the floor and pulled out the photocopies, sorted chronologically. I ran my finger along the handwritten lines. “I thought these were keepsakes, but they’re not. They’re evidence.”
Rico looked confused. “Of what? My apartment is filled with poem-covered trash too.”
“I know! That’s why I didn’t get it at first. I thought it was about the words—and it is—but not only the words.” I waved frantically at the bedroom. “Go play the DVD, the team retrospective.”
“The one Padre brought?”
“Yes, yes, that one! Fast forward to Frankie’s part.”
Rico did as I asked. I gave one paper to Trey. “Read this one, the one written on the takeout menu. And listen.”
He did. Frankie’s rich alto washed into the living room, a little halting, a little unsure. Trey read. Suddenly his eyes flashed my way.
“It’s the same poem.”
I smacked the floor. “Now look at the date on it.”
“Over a year ago.”
Rico came out of the bedroom and stood in the doorway. “That’s the threat he made up against Frankie, that she stole his poems?”
I shook my head. “This wasn’t like all his other threats—those were manufactured. This one was real. And it would have destroyed her reputation as a poet, probably gotten her kicked off the circuit forever.”
“Yes, it would have.” Rico didn’t seem convinced. “But Frankie wasn’t stupid enough to steal from a teammate. He was bound to notice.”
“She didn’t steal from Lex. She stole from Kyle.” I waved the papers. “Amber told me all about it in the hospital. Kyle made the rounds during the auditions—Jacksonville, Miami, Savannah…and Atlanta. Frankie was on the team then. She judged the auditions.”
Trey still looked puzzled. “But she had her own poems. And they were successful ones.”
“Not poems like these. Padre said she sucked at the sweet emotional stuff, but you’ve gotta have that in your repertoire if you want to compete, you told me so yourself. So imagine, one day Frankie’s judging this out-of-town newbie…”
I paused to let this scenario sink in. Kyle—hopeful, inexpert, a nobody—with his collection of sad sweet poems. Frankie—mercenary, blocked, opportunistic—with the poems she needed right in front of her, ripe for the taking.
“All she had to do was write them down and send Kyle packing. Which she did. I’m sure she never expected him to turn up again. And Kyle didn’t. But Lex did.” I looked at Rico. “You know as well as I do that this kind of plagiarism is the devil to prove. But Kyle had these scraps, dated scraps. So when he found out—”
“But how did he find out?”
“Amber said he studied poets obsessively, like you do. He must have seen one of her videos and recognized his words coming out of her mouth.”
“But what’s Debbie got to do with it?”
“Nothing! She stumbled into the argument, that’s all.”
“So why didn’t Frankie kill her on the spot?”
“Because Debbie made the perfect scapegoat. She herself was convinced she’d killed Lex. It wasn’t until she decided to throw the blame back on Frankie that she became dangerous. Until then, she’d been desperate to avoid the cops, with good reason, and Frankie could use that.”
We all went quiet. The puzzle pieces maneuvered themselves into place, the truth becoming clear. I spread the poems on the floor, a carpet of verse, a blackmailer’s tool, a poet’s secret history.
I shook my head. “One thing I don’t get—why didn’t Kyle turn Frankie in to the PPI committee the second he found out? Why create Lex?”
Rico came and stood beside me, his eyes on Lex’s words. “Because he was desperate to show her that he was the better poet, on stage, where it counted. But Frankie was gonna yank him from the team. These poems were Lex’s big gun. He pulled it.”
I sat there silently, surrounded by Lex’s words. In the end it hadn’t been vengeance that fueled him. Once he’d tasted the spotlight, Lex had been so desperate to stay on the team that he’d betrayed his teammates one by one. All for three minutes and nineteen seconds behind the mike.
“He fell in love,” I said.
“With who?”
“With Lex. In the end, he was willing to keep the whole thing a secret if he could have his moment on the stage.” I remembered his body, crumpled on the floor of the bathroom. “It didn’t turn out that way.”
The three of us were silent, Frankie’s words washing over us, Kyle’s words spread on the floor before us. But Lex himself remained a phantom—intangible, incorporeal—even in the end. I knew the rest of us were no different. Some of us used words, some used Armani, but we all hid our soft true parts under masks and layers. We were all masters of illusion.
Trey surveyed the living room. It still smelled like soup, and there was a bullet hole in the wall, scuff marks on the floor. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly.
“I’m going to make tea,” he said. And then he went into the kitchen.
I looked at Rico, but before I could say a word, his phone rang. He looked at it, looked at me. “It’s Padre.”
I held my breath and crossed my fingers.
He put it to his ear. “Hey, man, what’s the news?”
And then he smiled, really big. Tears welled in his eyes, and I started crying too, finally overwhelmed by the whole of my day. Which was, without a doubt, finally over.
I hobbled myself up and rested my head against his chest, my big beefy best friend. His arms went around me. Behind me, I heard the kettle in the kitchen, the quiet sounds of tea-making. When Trey came back in, he had a mug of oolong cooling in his hands.
“Do you want to call Cummings or should I?” he said. And then he waited for my answer.
Chapter Forty-eight
The rain started late that evening, and by nightfall, it was a deluge. The apartment was finally empty except for Trey and me. Once we’d called Cummings with the information about the poems, it had been a deluge of a different sort.
“Is this it, Ms. Randolph?” he’d said as he’d walked out the door.
“I hope to God it is.”
“I hope to God you’re right.” He’d touched his temple in a mock salute. “May our paths never cross again.”
“Amen to that.”
I’d closed the door on him, relieved but unsatisfied. It hadn’t been messing with the mafia that got Lex killed. Or shoplifting. Or threatening an entire poetry team. Or dealing in black market reptiles. Or creating a fake identity. Or pissing off a serial killer.
No, someone had stolen his words, and he hadn’t been able to let it go. End of story.
After our finale with Cummings, the chastened concierge had made a pharmacy trip for me, returning home with new meds and a real ice pack to replace the bag of peas. Home, I’d said to myself, testing the word on my tongue. For the first time, Trey’s place felt like home, like I’d earned my place in it, having beaten back the barbarian hordes with my own two hands. Which meant I certainly deserved another drawer or two for my very own, maybe even half the closet.
Trey put me to bed and brought me soup. Not miso. Chicken and stars from a can with cheap saltine crackers, exactly like I asked for.
He stood at the window, watching the rain. He’d triple-checked every person-sized space in the apartment before engaging all the locks. So now we had another wrinkle in the nightly security procedure. But he knew it wasn’t a guarantee. He’d said it himself—there is no such thing as one hundred percent safe. Moats and gates and double-deadbolts only kept out the dangerous strangers. Once you let people in—once you opened the doors from the inside—the guarantees vanished.
“I’m sorry I took your cigarettes,” he said. “And your keys. And called Gabriella without asking.”
I put down the spoon. “Trey—”
“No, let me finish.” He sat on the edge of the bed. He kept his eyes on the floor. “I know that I’m not very good at being a boyfriend. I say the wrong things. I do the wrong things. But the one thing I can do right is show up. And I always will, for as long as you want me to. I promise.”
I sat there quietly stunned. Then I reached over and got his ubiquitous yellow pad and drew a circle with my name in it. Then I drew another circle with his name in it. Then I drew a line between the two, back and forth, heavy and undeniable.
I showed it to Trey. “You got it?”
He nodded. “I got it.”
And then the quirk at the corner of his mouth deepened and curved. It was shy and slight and hesitant, but it was unmistakable—a smile. The dimples proved it, deep ones like someone had knuckled them into his cheeks as a baby. I kissed him then, kissed him good, good enough to taste that smile in my own mouth.
“You’re the best damn boyfriend ever.”
He shook his head. “Probably not.”
“Shut up and kiss me again.”
So he did.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Table of Contents
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
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