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70Sure, Eleanor. SURE.

71I do talk out loud sometimes. It’s like an odd kind of sleep-talking except I’m awake. Other writers I know suffer from it, too. Maybe it’s because we live in our heads and we forget which is real. Not sure. But it’snota good trait for someone trying to act like a detective.

72I stopped counting the number of Champagnes I drank when it got to four.

Sunday

CHAPTER 22

Is It Wrong to Pretend This Never Happened?

Okay, Eleanor, you’ve been here before.

Literally and figuratively.

You need to breathe.

But when I breathe, all I can smell isblood. Fresh in the air like the abattoir I visited once for research.73But this isn’t my next steak dinner.74

It’sFred.

I fall to my knees, the edge of my gown just missing the spreading pool on the floor. I want to look away from him, but I can’t.

Emma, poor Emma. She’s going to be devastated. How is she going to recover from this?

But also—now it definitely can’t be Tyler who killed José.

Because Tyler’s locked up in Avalon.

No. It’s someonehere, at this party.

Because of course it is.

We should’ve seen this coming.

You should’ve, too. In fact, why didn’t you warn me?

Sorry. I’m tired and a bit drunk, and also, there’s a dead body a few feet from me.

This isn’t your fault.

I lean my back against the wall. The smell of blood is mingling with the whiff of bleach that hangs in the air. There’s a bucket and a mop next to me, and part of me wants to clean this mess up and hide the body and go back to the party like nothing happened because that way I won’t have to tell Emma she’s a widow before she ever had a chance to be a wife.

But I know that’s not realistic.

Instead, and even though I know I shouldn’t, and even though I wasjustwarned not to do this very thing by Officer Anderson, I force myself to stand. I slip off my shoes, then walk around the body slowly, looking for clues.

Fred is face down in his tux with a knife sticking out of his back. His feet are toward the door, his arms extended toward the far wall like he was briefly in flight before he landed.

I bend over him to get a better look at the weapon. I don’t know for sure, but the knife looks an awful lot like the one they used to cut the cake.

Is that a message? Or convenience?

Come on, El. Someone used the cake-cutting knife to knife the groom at his wedding.

It’s a message.

Nothing else seems out of place. So how did he get in here? Who did he come to meet? Why are there no signs of a struggle? His back is to the door, so he could’ve been taken by surprise. But who would he let surprise him in here?