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“What?” they all say again.
Vera sighs. “I come down one morning and I see that things have been move around. Some jars go missing.”
“Which jars?” Riki asks. “I mean, are you sure?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. I know how I arrange my shop, don’t be silly. But I think to myself, would the police take me seriously? They don’t take Marshall’s death seriously, why would they take me seriously when I tell them that someone steal into my shop? They will ask, how much did the thief take? Well, no money is missing. What was taken? I don’t know, I just know that my jars are moved. And I am sure it’s the killer come back to look for the flash drive. So I decide, okay, I will take control of situation. The killer is too cunning to make it obvious, so I will make it obvious. Make it clear that someone break in, keep all of us working on a common goal: solving Marshall murder. So I do that.”
“You smashed up your own shop to make it look more obvious that someone broke in?” Sana says, her eyes as round as dinner plates. “All those jars—”
“It hurt me to break them all like that,” Vera says, “but I am willing to do anything to find killer.”
“Wait,” Julia says, “hold on. What do you mean, the killer would come back to look for the flash drive? What flash drive?”
At this, Vera looks strangely guilty.
“Vera,” Julia says in a warning tone. “What flash drive?”
Vera releases a long, tired breath. “When I find Marshall’s body, he holding a flash drive in his hand.”
“What. The. Fuck?” Julia doesn’t even know who said it. It could’ve been her, it could’ve been any of the others.
“And you just took it?” Oliver says.
“My god, Vera,” Riki cries. “You—that’s tampering with a crime scene! You could go to prison for that.”
“I just know, you see, that police won’t take case seriously.” Vera looks so tiny and helpless, her cloud of hair waving this way and that as she shakes her head.
“Well, maybe they would’ve if you hadn’t taken away evidence!” Oliver says. He rakes his fingers through his hair. “So what was on the drive?”
“Well, it turns out the drive is a key to unlock his computer. And the computer has these NFT and, oh yes, the bot that Riki make.”
“Wait, what bot did you make?” Sana stares at Riki, who looks like he has half a mind to run away.
“Uh...” He glances guiltily at Sana. “Um. Marshall asked me to build a program. Um, and then he didn’t pay me.” For a moment, it seems like he’s done talking, but then he takes a breathand blurts out, “It was a scalping bot. He wanted me to make a bot to scam people on the NFT marketplace.” He turns to Sana, taking her hands. “I didn’t want to—I felt so shitty the whole time I did it, and I didn’t know he was stealing art at the time, I just thought—”
“You were part of his scam?” Sana says. Her words are hissed with such acidity that even Julia feels the sting.
“No!” Riki says. “No, I swear I didn’t—it was the first time I had met Marshall, I didn’t know—”
“You didn’t know because you chose not to know,” Sana says. “Did you ask him what his freaking NFTs were? No. Did you think about all the people being scammed by this bot you were building? No! People like you and Marshall are the reason I couldn’t even stand to look at a canvas!” With that, Sana wrenches her hands out of Riki’s and runs out, slamming the door behind her.
“Sana, wait!” Riki shouts, going after her.
Julia stares at the door, everything inside her a screaming mess. She makes an effort to sort through what she’s just learned. “Where’s the flash drive now? And the laptop? We should—ah, we should probably hand that over to the police—”
Vera shakes her head. “I been looking for it since yesterday and both of them are gone.”
For a moment, Julia and Oliver are speechless. Then the enormity of the situation crashes down on Julia. This woman, this stranger, found her husband dead in her shop, and the first thing she did was to swipe the very piece of evidence that might have led the cops to his killer. And then this very same woman smashed up her own shop to make it look like a break-in has happened, all so that she could come and live with Julia and her small child.
It’s a struggle for Julia to keep from screaming. She meets Vera’s eye and points at the door. “Get out now.”
For a moment, she thinks Vera is about to protest, but then Vera sees the look on Julia’s face and simply nods. Lowering her head, Vera heads toward the door. She seems to have shrunk over the last few minutes, her shoulders drooping, her head wilted. The sight of it tugs at Julia’s heartstrings, but her rage still burns over everything else. Vera stops long enough to take her purse, then she walks out and closes the door gently behind her, leaving behind a cavernous silence that Julia is sure will never be filled.
THIRTY-FIVE
VERA
Get out now.