Heads You Lose - Lisa Lutz [99]
Hey 0.5 bro,
Where are you? Haven’t heard from you in a while. I hope you know I’m not mad at you. Just let me know you’re OK if you get a chance. Love, B
Paul checked the time stamp: 2:33 a.m. Brandy had been home when Hart’s body was moved, and apparently had no idea he was already dead. Then the monitor’s reflection darkened.
“Find what you were looking for?” Brandy said.
Paul swiveled on her chair to face her.
“I guess you’re also wondering,” she continued, “whether your fiancée also killed your best friend and his cousin. And then, just because she was getting a taste for it, took a knife to the new doctor.”
“Brandy—”
“Let me break it down for you, Paul. The Wednesday when Harry Lakes was shot I was with your sister. Then this Monday, when Doc Egan was killed, I was at the monthly Quorum Group meeting over in Easternville.” Quorum was her brainiac club—a fact Paul had discovered, he realized with shame, during an earlier snooping session.
She went to her desk and showed him the flyer.
“I can download the meeting minutes if you like,” she continued coolly. “You can read all about my ideas on autopoiesis. As for Terry’s tower, I have no alibi beyond my utter uselessness with tools. So I guess I must have done that one.”
“I’m so sorry,” Paul said. “I’m just . . . everything might be so perfect, I guess it almost feels too good to be true. Maybe I don’t feel like I deserve all this.”
“You do,” Brandy said.
Paul had expected a more sustained tongue-lashing. “Uh, you’re not mad?” he asked.
“Well, I did pretend to be a low-mental throughout the beginning of our relationship. Maybe now we can call it even?”
Paul wasn’t buying it. “You’re not miffed that your fiancé figured out your password and went through your e-mail?”
Brandy sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands.
“Oh shit,” said Paul.
“I do have a confession to make,” she said to the floor. Her voice was shaking. “I can’t marry you until you know the truth. And you probably won’t want to marry me after you do.”
“What is it? We can work it out, no matter what it is. Please, talk to me.”
“I want you to know I had the best possible reasons for killing them,” she said. “You have to believe that.”
Paul managed two words: “Killing who?”
She was sobbing now. “Your plants.”
When he’d recovered, Paul got up and embraced her.
“I just want better things for you,” she said into his chest. “I don’t want us to have to lie to anyone about anything.”
“Funny way to go about it,” said Paul, trying to muster some indignation. He failed.
“It’s just a job,” he said. “We’ll figure it out. We have plenty of time, plenty of money, plenty of options. For now, how about this: Next time you want me to do something, tell me.”
“And the next time you want to know something about me,” Brandy said, “ask me.”
“Deal.”
“You know, it’s strange,” Brandy said. “When Lacey was grilling me about my alibis, she didn’t seem to realize that she and I were actually together during the Harry Lakes killing.”
“She’s not the investigator she thinks she is.” Paul replied.
Later they went to work on the guest list for the wedding. It was shaping up to be a paltry collection of locals, some of whom were probably too freaked out by now to even leave their houses. Both Paul and Brandy started wondering whether a visit to a courthouse with a witness or two was a better idea. Their planning was interrupted by the telephone.
Brandy picked up. “Hello? That was fast. Give it to me. No, you don’t need to explain variable number tandem repeats. Just give me the results. Really? Are you sure? No, I don’t know what it means. Thanks, Max. I’ll be in touch.”
She hung up the phone and jotted down a sequence of numbers below their wedding list.
“Who was that?” Paul asked.
“Max,” Brandy replied. “A friend from Quorum Group. He’s the guy from the crime lab.”
“What’s going on?”
“Call Lacey. She’s going to want to hear this.