Not Quite Dead Yet, page 26
“Oh my god.” Florence Chu laughed so hard she had to wipe her eyes.
“I’m afraid it looks like you have some kind of filter on,” Gerry continued. “Has one of your grandchildren been playing on your computer, Ms. Duffy?” His voice broke, more laughter, high and tuneful before he wiped it away. “Is there anyone there who can help you turn it off?”
The cat blinked slowly.
Opened its mouth, a flash of human teeth.
An awful, inhuman sound rattled against the laptop speakers.
Gerry Clay covered his ears; so did the old chief of police, and Billy.
“I don’t want to turn it off,” the cat said, its voice terrible and deep, from another world, reverberating on each word. Some kind of voice-changing software. “I don’t want you to know who I am.”
The hair rose up the back of Jet’s neck now. Billy pressed closer.
Gerry lowered his hands, the smile still on his face, flickering at the edges, like he didn’t know whether to laugh or…
“Who are you?” he said, deciding to go with the smile, but the laughter was gone, almost all trace of it.
Dianne’s hand was still in front of her mouth.
“I’m a citizen of Woodstock,” the cat answered in its dark and dreadful voice. “And I have a comment. For Dianne Mason.”
Jet’s mom lowered her hand, uncovering her mouth.
“About Mason Construction,” the cat added.
Dianne found her voice, an audible clack from her tongue. “Well, I don’t actually work there. That’s my husband’s company. Do you have a comment about—”
“—I want to know, how you sleep at night?” the cat asked, tilting its head the other way.
“Excuse me?” Dianne’s voice rose.
“How do you sleep at night?” the cat repeated, voice growling, filling Town Hall, and Billy’s apartment one year later. “Stealing people’s homes so you can build mansions and vacation homes for people who don’t even live here.”
Dianne shook her head, sharing a glance with Gerry.
“Mason Construction does not steal homes,” Dianne replied. “And if you don’t mind, we—”
“—offering too much money to people who are too weak to say no. What’s the difference between that and stealing? You’re still predators.”
“Milly,” Gerry called, “I think we should—”
“—Pull out of the sale,” the cat barked over him. “You know which one. It’s not too late.”
Dianne shook her head, almost rolled her eyes too; Jet knew that look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she sniffed.
“Houses aren’t just four walls and a roof.” The cat flashed its teeth. “They are important to people. And they are not yours to take.”
“If you have an issue with Mason Construction, I’m afraid you’ll have to take it up with my husband—”
“—I’m taking it up with you,” the cat spat, shaking the room. “Because you can do something about it.” Tilted its head the other way, blinked its strange, empty eyes. “And because I know your secret.”
Dianne went back to laughing, a hollow sound, looking around at her fellow trustees.
“I don’t have any secrets,” she said. “Other than my apple pie recipe.”
A spatter of polite laughter from the others.
“OK,” Gerry said, his smile back. “Milly, let’s move o—”
“—You do have a secret, Dianne,” the cat cut him off. “The one your family doesn’t know. Except Emily. She knew.”
Dianne’s eyes snapped wide, and so did Jet’s, behind the screen. A gasp went around the room, because name-dropping Dianne’s dead daughter was a step too far, and no one was laughing now, or even pretending to. Jet gripped the edge of the laptop, leaned even closer.
“The fuck,” she muttered.
“Milly, get rid of them,” Dianne barked.
“I’m trying,” came the voice. “Sorry, I…”
The cat smiled, its awful human-hybrid smile.
“Do you know that Emily knew?” it asked. “She told me, before she died.”
“Milly!” Dianne shouted, pushing up to her feet.
The fast clip of her heels as she ran alongside the table, toward the edge of the frame, her face and the panic in her eyes growing clearer the closer she got to Jet’s screen.
“Actually,” the cat added, “it was right before she died.”
“Milly, what are you doing?!”
Dianne disappeared off frame. “Move, Milly. I’ll do it myself.”
“Make it stop, Dianne,” the cat said, an amused half-smile, watching the chaos unfold with those blank eyes. “Or I’ll tell—”
The cat disappeared.
Town Hall stretched back out, everyone doubling in size, taking over the whole screen.
“The fuck,” Jet said again, watching her mom reappear, walking back to her place at the table, straightening her jacket, running a hand through her mussed-up hair.
She sat, her face cracking, an empty smile that showed too many teeth, didn’t reach her troubled eyes. “Teenagers and their pranks,” she laughed, picking up her papers, banging them against the table. “Well, that certainly livened up the meeting, didn’t it?”
Gerry took her lead, a sigh that stretched into a laugh. But his heart wasn’t really in it, echoing strangely around the room. “That was crazy,” he said.
“Yes, absolutely ridiculous,” Dianne agreed. “Complete nonsense.” Doubled down. “OK, everyone ready to discuss banner permits?”
Jet clicked pause, freezing her mom, shoulders too rigid and back too straight.
Billy didn’t say anything; neither did Jet. She dragged the cursor back and pressed play again.
“You do have a secret, Dianne.” That hellish voice, rattling against the speakers. “The one your family doesn’t know. Except Emily. She knew.”
“Jet?”
She spooled forward, the cat jerking silently, coming alive again when she stopped.
“She told me before she died.”
Yelling, heels rushing on a polished floor, in a race against the pounding of Jet’s heart.
“Actually, it was right before she died.”
“Jet?”
“What?” She paused the video, back in the room.
Billy touched the screen. “Who is this?”
“I don’t know.”
Jet stared at the cat, into its half-human eyes.
“Is it true?” Billy frowned. “About Emily telling them a secret?”
“Emily died seventeen years ago,” Jet replied, not really an answer.
“So this is someone who knew your family back then?”
Jet shrugged, but something else had caught her eye behind the cat. A window visible in the background of the darkened room. Jet swiped her fingers on the trackpad to zoom into it. Zoomed again. A silver glare in the dark, pixelated window, turning it into a mirror.
“That’s the reflection of the laptop screen.” Jet zoomed in again on the hazy silver shape, her arrow tracing a pinkish blur around it.
“Pink?” Billy said.
“Rose gold,” Jet corrected him. “And a black keyboard. Looks like a MacBook Air to me.”
“OK.” Billy chewed his lip. “And how does that help us identify the cat?”
Jet shot him a look. “I mean, I don’t know a man who would buy a rose gold MacBook, do you?”
Billy shrugged. “It’s a bit of a leap.”
“You’re a bit of a leap,” Jet muttered.
“Can we see what’s outside the window?” Billy leaned closer, propped his chin up on his knuckles.
“No, it’s night outside and the laptop’s too bright,” Jet said.
Billy thought about that for a moment, chewing his cheek.
“Does the cat ever move in front of the laptop, blocking the screen’s reflection? Then maybe we can—”
Jet was already doing it, pressing play on this zoomed-in view, focused on the window.
“Make it stop, Dianne,” the cat voice said, just a reflection from this angle, an unknown person. “Or I’ll—”
The cat shifted and Jet paused. Its human shoulders blocked the light from the laptop, the silver rectangle gone from the glass of the window, just the darkness beyond and a pinprick of orange.
“Hold on,” Jet said.
“Holding.”
She turned up her laptop’s brightness, and again, shapes emerging in the darkness outside the window.
“That orange thing is a streetlamp.” Billy pointed. “So we’re on a second floor. A bedroom?”
But Jet was looking at something else behind it. A blurry white square. A house. Faint little lines for the panel siding, the windows arranged almost like a face. A little triangle roof above the front porch and a red car parked outside. Did Jet know that house?
“Do I know that house?” she said aloud this time.
“I don’t know, do you?”
She did. Her heart got there first, climbing her ribs, making itself at home in her throat.
“Shit,” she hissed. “That’s the house on River Street. Right on the corner, where my phone’s last known location was.”
Billy’s eyes widened. “You sure?”
“I saw it a million times on Google Street View, drove past a million times too. I’m sure it’s that house. It’s River Street.”
Billy’s eyes darkened, another storm. “But if we can see that corner of River Street from this window, that means we’re on—”
“—North Street,” Jet finished for him, throat tightening around the words and around her heart, her head not too far behind, filling in the gaps. “We’re in Andrew Smith’s house. Before it got knocked down. This house, again. I swear, if houses could be prime suspects.”
Billy glanced over at his front door. “So…it’s Andrew?” he asked, still a few seconds behind.
“No.” Jet lifted Billy’s chin so he’d look at her. “It’s his daughter.”
“Nina?”
“Remember what the cat said.” But Jet couldn’t remember exactly, so she dragged the cursor back, pressed play, and let it run, that dark demonic voice vibrating the laptop and the table.
“—offering too much money to people who are too weak to say no. What’s the difference between that and stealing? You’re still predators.”
Gerry next: “Milly, I think we should—”
“—Pull out of the sale. You know which one. It’s not too late.”
Jet paused it.
“Andrew told us Nina was devastated when he sold their family house to Luke. This was her, trying to stop that sale. Too much money to people who are too weak to say no. She’s talking about her dad.” She swallowed. “It was Nina.”
Billy nodded, seeing it now. “But Nina, she’s…when did she—”
“—She shot herself last Christmas, a few weeks after this.” Jet zoomed back out, stared at the cat face, into those fake green eyes, trying to picture Nina’s real ones beneath, all that pain she was hiding under a filter.
Billy sniffed, deflated. “But Nina’s been dead for eleven months, so she can’t be the one who burned down Mason Construction last night, or who attacked you on Halloween. So this is a dead end.”
“I don’t know,” Jet said, following a new train of thought, past all the broken bits. “It’s Nina.” She leaned on the name, as though that explained it. “Nina was Emily’s best friend. And what do best friends tell each other?”
“Secrets?” Billy guessed.
“Right.” She hooked her arm through his. “And something else Andrew said. That Mom got Nina fired from her job at the hotel. We didn’t know why my mom would do that. But now…”
She left it open for Billy. He pointed to the cat.
“Dianne figured out that this was Nina, the one threatening her? And then she got her fired to punish her?”
“Or silence her,” Jet said. “This was not just a prank, and my mom knew it. Look at her face, Billy. She’s scared. And if she really did get Nina fired, that means whatever Nina was threatening to tell, it was true. Doesn’t it?”
Billy nodded, eyes ahead, circling little pixelated Dianne.
“And if it was something bad enough for her to do that to Nina…” he set Jet up.
“Then maybe it’s something bad enough for someone to kill me over, seventeen years later.”
“Well, shit.” Billy slumped back.
“Well, shit indeed.” Jet joined him.
“You think your mom will tell you what it is?”
“I’m not going to give her much choice,” Jet said. “She already lied her ass off, tried to stop us finding this video. I’d like more evidence before we go to her so she can’t just deny it, like she’ll try. It’s always someone else’s fault with my mom.”
“What evidence?”
“Emily’s secret,” Jet said. “At least some idea of what it could be.”
She laughed to herself then—short, just a sniff.
“What?” Billy turned to her.
“Just. I never could get out of Emily’s shadow. And now, with this last thing I’ll ever do…here we are again. Always comes back to her.”
Billy clapped his hands, bringing her out of that particular hole.
“So how are we going to figure out Emily’s secret?” he said. “A little tricky, considering both people who knew the secret are now gone. Do your parents still have any of Emily’s stuff? Her old phone?”
Jet shook her head. “She died seventeen years ago. And as much as they love to bring her up all the time, they also really wanted a big guest bedroom. There’s nothing left.”
“OK. A little trickier, then.” Billy pressed his fingers to his lips, splitting them into little pink quarters. “What year did she die?”
“2008.” That date seared into Jet’s brain, the day she won the regional spelling bee and life changed forever.
“2008,” Billy repeated. “And how would two sixteen-year-old girls have communicated in 2008?”
Jet sat up. “Facebook?” She searched his eyes.
“Facebook,” Billy confirmed. “Do you think you could get into Emily’s account?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe I could find out the email address, but the password? And it’s not like we have one of her devices that might still be logged in after all this time. Seventeen years.”
Jet followed that thought—her eyes too—over to the front door of Billy’s apartment, and beyond. “But Nina died only a year ago…” she said, left it hanging there for Billy to pick up. He didn’t. “Do you think Andrew still has her belongings? Her phone, or her laptop? Her rose gold MacBook?”
Now Billy picked it up, his eyes shifting, joining hers at the door.
He turned back. “What are you thinking?”
“Oh, come on, Billy.” Jet grinned. “You’re thinking the same thing.”
“No, I am not.”
Jet stood up, winked at him.
“What am I thinking, Jet? What are we thinking?”
“Andrew will be downstairs in the bar, won’t he?”
“Oh no,” Billy said, deflating. “I know what we’re thinking.”
Twenty-Six
“Here,” Billy hissed, wide-eyed, standing by the glass door into Dr. Mandrake’s Dive Bar, half in, half out.
Jet was waiting outside, hiding from the orange pool of the streetlamp, fading into the darkness.
She hurried toward him, held out her left hand.
Billy dropped a set of keys into it.
“Had to wait for him to go take a leak,” he whispered. “Those were in his jacket pocket.”
“Good job.” Jet closed her fingers around the keys. “Now you’ve just got to distract him. Make sure he doesn’t come upstairs while I’m in there.”
“Distract him?” Billy’s eyes widened even more, endless pools.
“Be neighborly. Buy him more beer.”
“He’s an alcoholic,” Billy hissed.
Jet shrugged. “So it’s the perfect distraction.”
Billy groaned, blew out a mouthful of uneasy air.
“Just buy me ten minutes to find the laptop, then I’ll meet you in your apartment.” She pulled herself out of Billy’s eyes, through the open doorway behind him, watching as a hunched figure slumped down at the table in the farthest, darkest corner.
“Andrew’s back,” she hissed. “Go.”
He went, the door swinging shut behind him.
Jet turned the corner and watched Billy through the windows, walking with the same pace, matching each other, one inside, one out. Billy awkwardly stuffed his hands into his pockets as he approached Andrew’s table, opening his mouth to say something, anything.
Jet ran out of windows, wished him luck and kept going, to the outdoor stairs just beyond the bar, leading to the apartments above.
She tripped, the steps doubling before her, feet falling between the cracks, a new stab of pain behind her eye. Nothing she couldn’t handle, testing her weight on each step to check it was real first, turning left at the top instead of right, toward 1A instead of home.
Jet gripped the key, pushed it into the lock, missed, blinked, tried again, and turned it.
Andrew Smith’s front door sighed as it opened for her, like it knew, an apology before Jet could take it all in.
Empty bottles everywhere.
Piles of unfolded clothes.
Balled-up tissues.
Food wrappers.
A couch that was too big for the room, half blocking the door to the bathroom.
The same layout as Billy’s apartment, just reversed. And no Cedar Delight in here. It smelled musty, too lived in, rebreathed air.
Jet flicked on the lights and that only made it worse.
She let the door shut her in, picked her way through the trash.
There was a framed photograph on the wall, not quite straight. Nina grinned out of it, in a graduation cap and gown, standing between her parents. She and her mom looked so similar, the two of them standing side by side like this, same light brown skin and dark oval eyes. Andrew actually looked happy, a light behind his smile and behind his eyes that was gone now, dulled by the years of drinking. The Andrew in this photograph didn’t know anything about what was to come; he just smiled, happy, proud, forever frozen that way. Nina’s mom might have already been sick, and none of them knew it. They probably all went home to their house on North Street after this photograph, had a celebratory dinner. That house was gone now. And so was Andrew’s family.
