Dig Two Graves, page 24
Neve snorted. “I tried. They didn’t believe me.”
“What we need,” Javier continued, his face more pensive than despairing, “is a confession.”
“Good luck,” Neve said with a shake of her head. “I tried that twice, and she definitely sniffed me out. Didn’t slip up once.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“Inara,” Neve said. “My roommate from camp.”
“Did she believe you?”
“Yeah, she did.” Neve smiled at the thought of Inara. “Even though she had no reason to. I wasn’t very nice to her at GLAM.”
Javier rolled his eyes slightly—enough that Neve noticed, but with a subtlety that hinted he was trying to hide the reaction.
“I know, I know. The camp name is awful.” She paused, thinking of her time at GLAM. Even with Diane’s betrayal, she remembered those two weeks fondly. Which was not something she had expected. “But the people were all right.”
“Even though my stepsister tried to Svengali you into murdering a total stranger?”
Neve’s smile faded. She might remember GLAM fondly, but her presence there had led directly to the deaths of two people. “Even though Yasmin and Charlotte are dead.”
“Yeah.” Javier let out a heavy breath. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make a joke of it.”
Was this guy’s sensitivity for real? Yasmin could never have deserved him. “It’s not your fault. I’m the one to blame.”
He gripped her arm lightly. “No, Diane is the one to blame. You’re trying to fix things.”
Neve met his eyes and for one exhilarating moment she had the urge to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him close. Instead she turned toward the window and gazed out onto the darkened street while she tried to hide the hot blush racing up her neck to her face. “We’ve got to stop her.”
“Well . . .” Javier cleared his throat. “You’ve got this gun here.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, worried he actually meant that she could take vengeance into her own hands. Instead of murderous resolve etched into his features, he flashed Neve a sheepish grin.
“I’m kidding,” he said. “I know you’re not a killer.”
“Thanks?”
“But maybe we could use the gun to force a confession out of her?”
Neve shook her head. Diane wouldn’t have given her the gun if she didn’t have a contingency plan for Neve using it against her. “She’s planned for that. I can guarantee it.”
“You’re right, I’m sure.” Then he laughed. “That’s life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you.”
Neve gasped. The line was familiar. “Is that from Detour?” It was a deep cut, a creepy dark noir from the midforties that had become more of a cult film in recent years.
Javier’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Yeah. How did you know?”
“Heh.” Neve pushed back the hood of her sweatshirt and motioned to her pin curls. “I, uh, have a thing for film noir.”
“Me too.” He smiled warmly and Neve felt herself drawn toward him. She’d never met anyone else who appreciated Detour.
“Funny, huh?” Neve said. “That Diane would come up with this Strangers on a Train murder plot having never watched the movie.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Javier shook his head. “And she’s such a Bruno Antony.”
“Spoiled, egotistical, single-minded.”
“Single-minded on me.” He laughed again, only this time it was sharp and devoid of amusement. “The only way we’d get her to admit to anything is if she thought I was already dead.”
Already dead . . . Neve’s eyes grew wide as she spun back toward Javier. “That’s it!”
“Whoa.” Javier held his hands up in front of him defensively, his eyes darting toward the gun. “I thought you weren’t going to kill me.”
“Not actually kill you.”
Javier lifted his left eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure it’s either dead or not dead. Nothing in between.”
“Murdering you is not on the table.”
“Thanks.”
Neve’s lips parted in excitement as a plan started to form in her mind. “But we’ll have to make Diane believe that she watched you die.”
“A faked death.” Javier looked at her sidelong. “Just like The Third Man.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Of course,” Javier said with a casual shrug. “It’s the greatest crime movie of all time.”
Why was Javier so perfect?
“Do you think we can pull it off?” he asked.
Neve nodded, suddenly excited. Diane thought Neve was a horrible actress, so she wouldn’t believe for one red-hot second that Neve would be capable of faking her way through a murder. But Neve could. She knew she could. Kellie had told her that she had real talent.
Diane was about to witness the performance of a lifetime.
THIRTY-NINE
NEVE SLEPT LATE MONDAY MORNING. IT WAS A HOLIDAY weekend, so no alarm to wake her up, plus Deirdre being at Aunt Connie’s cut the noise quotient in half. Even though the relative silence made it feel like the early hours, the sunlight slicing through a gap in her black-velvet curtains was robust and intense, a clue that it was well past morning.
It had been almost four a.m. the last time Neve had looked at her phone while tossing and turning in bed as the details she and Javier hashed out swirled in her mind. Four o’clock and her mom still hadn’t come home.
Neve pictured her spending the night at the police station. She was that stubborn—the kind of woman who might refuse to leave until she had answers. Neve tried to suppress the anger and resentment bubbling up inside her as she pictured her mom’s face last night, telling her daughter that this was all her fault.
Angry, hurt, scared . . . whatever. In that moment, her mom truly believed that Neve had killed those girls, and that her dad was taking the fall.
Neve knew that she wasn’t always the easiest kid. She was angry a lot. She and her mom fought like crazy over everything from how Neve did her makeup to how she refused to fit in at LCC. Refused. As if it was somehow perfectly okay to ask your daughter to change the way she dressed and did her hair just so she’d meet the social standards of her new school. It was her mom’s fault, after all, that they’d ended up in the closed-minded suburban hellhole of Carlsbad in the first place. She’d moved them there. She’d insisted they live in Grandma K’s house. She’d uprooted everyone’s lives.
No, she didn’t.
The voice of logic overwhelmed the voice of emotion, drowning out the latter’s high-pitched squeal with a paced, booming tone in Neve’s head. The new voice was right. Neve’s mom hadn’t been selfish or arbitrary when she’d moved the entire family from the Bay Area to the San Diego suburbs. She’d been trying to protect her husband and his precarious mental health. By living rent-free in Carlsbad, he wouldn’t have to go back to work.
If anyone is to blame, it’s your dad.
Tears welled up in Neve’s eyes. She’d been blaming her mom for so long. For the family’s problems. For her dad’s problems. But deep down, she’d always known her anger was misplaced. Her dad had refused help, refused treatment, refused to even acknowledge that he had a problem even after he’d lost his job, a promising IT career flushed down the toilet by his inability to admit he needed help. Neve’s mom had kept the family from completely falling apart.
“I am such an asshole,” she said out loud.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” Javier’s voice drifted through the shared bathroom. She heard a loud thud. “Shit,” he said under his breath.
She pictured Javier trying to get his pants on in Deirdre’s cluttered room plastered with posters of YouTube stars and some video game she was obsessed with. “You okay?”
“Great.” Another thud and then some shuffling before Javier’s disheveled face appeared in the doorway to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom. “What time is it?”
Neve checked her phone and saw that she had a missed call from Inara. “Eleven thirty.”
Javier groaned, leaning against the doorframe. “Damn. Missed my Sunday workout.”
“It’s Monday.”
He groaned deeper. “Then I’m really late for school.”
Neve laughed. “It’s a holiday.”
“Oh.” He straightened up and shrugged. “Then fuck it.”
Neve had felt a mix of teen rebellion and parental concern when she offered to let Javier spend the night. His parents were out of town for the weekend and he hadn’t wanted to go home, figuring it was best not to be alone with Diane, and he was going to sleep in his car. For a brief second, she thought about offering him the other side of her full bed but decided that was too much of a leap for their—well, whatever it was that was going on between them. So she offered Deirdre’s room instead.
Neve swung her feet onto the floor and padded over to the bathroom door. “Towels are in the cupboard.” She pointed. “You want some coffee?”
Javier reached up under his shirt to scratch his chest, exposing the cut lines of his abdomen. It was what she expected from an athlete who took his physical conditioning very seriously, and though Neve had never been the kind of girl who was impressed by the traditional six-pack, she found herself staring distractedly at the bulging diagonal line of his obliques as they disappeared down into his pants.
“That would be great,” he said, jarring Neve back to reality. She prayed he didn’t notice her perving.
“Okay.” She closed the door on her side as Javier began to strip. “Meet me in the kitchen when you’re done.”
She leaned back against the door, taking a deep breath to steady the weird fluttering in her stomach, and noticed that Javier didn’t lock the door before he turned on the hot water. Neve laughed to herself. Javier Flores, apparently the most drooled-after high school senior in the greater San Diego area, was naked in her bathroom. What would Marisol and Luna think? Judging by some of his playful touching last night while they were hashing out their plan, she could probably have waltzed into that bathroom and been welcomed into the shower with him.
Instead, she picked up her phone.
The camera app was still open from last night when Neve had recorded her car ride with Diane, and before she called Inara, she uploaded the long video to a share link and sent it to Inara’s email. Someone needed to keep that video safe. Just in case. Then she called Inara.
“ ’Sup?” Inara said, answering within two seconds of the ring on Neve’s end. “Found out anything else about—”
Before Inara could finish her sentence, the sound of a rich baritone singing voice filtered through the bathroom door, filling Neve’s room. She recognized the song right away: “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond.
“Um, who is that?” Inara asked.
“Javier.” She immediately felt this odd panicky feeling in her gut and word-vomited an explanation. “He was here late because we were coming up with a plan to get Diane to confess, and he didn’t want to go home to face her since their parents are in Cabo, so I offered him my sister’s room because she’s staying with my aunt who’s not really my aunt, because my dad got arrested yesterday.”
“Wow.” Inara paused for a moment while Neve felt herself blushing with embarrassment for her incoherent verbal diarrhea. Just like she’d done with Javier last night. What was wrong with her? “Sorry about Mr. Lanier.”
“Thanks.”
“Have some info that might help,” Inara said quickly, getting down to business. “On that Mitchell person.”
Neve fought back an irrational annoyance at Inara’s all-business tone shift. “Oh yeah?”
“Internet was no help,” Inara continued, speaking quickly. “But Gina was pretty sure Pamela submitted a photo of Mitchell along with an original short story in creative writing class.”
“Okay. Cool.” Neve wasn’t exactly sure how that would help her right now.
“Figured since Diane probably tried to run this Mitchell down the same as Mr. Neil Diamond Sleepover . . .” She paused, waiting for Neve to jump in with something, but Neve wasn’t sure what she was expected to say, so she remained silent. “If Diane tried to run Mitchell down, maybe Mitchell could identify the driver. That’s all.”
She sounded annoyed and Neve wasn’t sure why. “I really appreciate that,” she said quickly. “But how can the photo help?”
Inara sighed loud enough for Neve to hear. “There are literally no photos of Mitchell on the internet. All social media on lockdown. Can’t even find an email address. Thought maybe the photo could lead to more information.”
“Awesome!” Neve said, trying to sound more enthusiastic than she felt. It was super sweet of Inara to go through all this trouble, but she and Javier had a pretty tight plan lined up for later in the day. “Maybe once we get a confession from Diane, Mitchell can help testify at her trial.”
“Confession?”
“Long story,” Neve said. She heard the water turn off in the shower, so she spoke quickly while dropping her voice. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t want to explain to Javier who she’d been talking to. “Javier and I have a plan to get a confession out of Diane. This afternoon at her house, so I have to go. But the photo thing really is awesome and I appreciate it.”
“Yeah.” Another pause. “Gina’s going to dig up the photo from the creative writing teacher. Forward it on.”
“Thanks. Oh, and I emailed you a video I shot last night. Nothing earth-shattering, but it might help us later.”
“Okay.” Inara dropped the gruffness in her voice. “Hey, Neve?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
Neve smiled. It was the second time Inara had said it. “I will. Promise.”
FORTY
“YOU TALKING TO SOMEONE?” JAVIER CALLED THROUGH THE closed door. “I don’t want your mom to get the wrong idea.”
Neve rolled her eyes. Her mom would do backflips of joy if she found a boy in Neve’s bathroom. Anything that might indicate her daughter wasn’t totally and completely antisocial. “The cat,” she lied.
“Tell him to stop shedding all over the beds.” Javier sneezed. “I give this Airbnb a six out of ten for pet hair.”
“Bed-and-breakfast,” Neve said, correcting him. “I’m going to the kitchen to scrounge up some food.”
He cracked the door, poking out a head of wet hair. “And coffee. You promised.”
Neve smiled. “Freeloader.”
She continued smiling all the way down the hall and into the kitchen until she heard a familiar voice say her name.
“Neevy.”
Her mom stood at the kitchen island, slowly stirring protein powder into a glass of almond milk.
Neve felt simultaneously relieved and guilty. Relieved that her mom was home from the police station and guilty that Neve had spent the first half hour of her day thinking of everything but her parents. She needed to stay focused on why she was doing all of this: to exonerate her father.
“How’s Dad?”
Her mom’s bloodshot eyes welled up with tears and the spoon fell to the bottom of the glass with a dull clank. Without a word, she rounded the island, stumbling over her own feet. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she cupped Neve’s face.
Neve wanted to say something, to reassure her mom that she was going to fix everything, but the words caught in her throat. Instead, she felt tears forming in her own eyes as she watched her mom’s silent weeping, streams tracing a path through the maze of freckles on her pale face. They held each other’s gaze for a moment; then Neve’s mom threw her arms around her daughter and hugged her tightly.
Neve wasn’t entirely sure how long it had been since she and her mom had hugged it out. Months? Definitely. Years? Possibly. It might have been the one thing she and her mom had in common: a reluctance to initiate displays of affection. There were no words attached to the embrace—no apologies, no explanations—but the hug itself spoke volumes.
“About what I said yesterday,” her mom said, wiping her cheek with her fingers as she broke away, “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay.” Neve’s voice was shaky. “It’s okay.”
“Officer Lee mentioned Charlotte’s last texts from her phone were to you, and then after what he did with Yasmin . . .” She took a steadying breath. “I thought maybe your father was trying to protect you again.”
Other way around, Mom. “Neither of us is a murderer.”
“I know.” Neve’s mom pulled away, reaching for a paper towel to wipe her nose. “Aunt Connie’s neighbor is a trial attorney. She mostly does real estate disputes, but she came to the station this morning and said that once the coroner’s report comes in, she’s going to ask for a dismissal. Seems that the girl—”
“Charlotte,” Neve said, correcting her. It felt disrespectful not to name her.
“Sorry. It seems Charlotte had been dead at least four hours when you found her, but your father was with Deirdre at Maddox Malone’s birthday pool party all afternoon, so there is no way he could have killed her.”
Neve wasn’t particularly religious, but she silently thanked God, the Virgin Mary, the saints, and anyone else with celestial powers who might have been looking out for her dad yesterday, making sure that he actually chaperoned Deirdre to the birthday party and wasn’t home, alone, in bed all day per usual. “Why did they even arrest him if he has an alibi?”
“It appears that there is some DNA evidence in Yasmin’s case,” her mom said, shaking her head. “That led them to your father.”
Fucking Diane.
“That’s all we know. Hopefully not enough to prolong this beyond tomorrow when the courts reopen.”
Neve prayed that her mom was right, but she couldn’t get Diane’s words from last night out of her mind. Things could always get worse. Did that mean she had another surprise in store?
Her mom took a deep breath, exhaling quickly, then she smiled, big and bright. “Enough. Everything is going to be okay. Now, there’s practically no food in the house, so do you want me to run out and get some bagels and—”
