Page 33 of A Murder is Going Down

‘I’m a fast walker. You’ll dawdle. It’s fine.’

The front door to the doctor’s office opens as Patrick and I start walking, and Ben jogs out, holding up his hand to stop us.

‘Hold on,’ he says. ‘I should have asked – what’s our next move?’

‘Ournext move?’ Patrick asks.

‘Yeah. To figure out what happened to Felix. What do we do next?’

‘There’s noour, cupcake,’ Patrick says. ‘There’s ame. At most, maybe there’s awe.’ He nods at me. ‘This was your chance to make it up with Heidi, and I think you made things worse, which before today I would have said was impossible.’ He brightens. ‘Unless you’ve come out here to tell us what that message between you and Felix meant?’

‘I told Heidi already. It’snothing.’

‘Thenbye.’ Patrick starts to walk off down the street, only stopping when he realises I’m not next to him.

He hasn’t noticed Lilia in the doorway to the surgery.

‘If you really are, um, investigating Felix’s death,’ – she says the wordinvestigatinglike she’s embarrassed for me (fair enough, honestly) – ‘I might be able to help.’

‘Like I said to your boyfriend, there’s—’ Patrick starts to say, but I cut him off.

‘How?’ I can still read Lilia. I know she’s got something to say.

‘I know one of Elena’s friends, one of the women who was there the night he died,’ she says. ‘I could introduce you.’

Dammit. ‘How do you know her?’

‘Sarah’s my piano teacher.’

‘And yet you’ve never mentioned it.’ I don’t really think Lilia would lie about this just to get back in with me, but I never thought she’d steal my boyfriend either.

‘I didn’t know she knew Elena and Felix until my last lesson when I mentioned going to the funeral. Apparently, she didn’t even know it was happening.’

I look at Patrick, who will never win even a single hand at poker based on his utter inability to conceal the way he feels about this development.

‘What do you think, Patrick?’ I ask him, like I don’t know.

‘It’s an idea,’ he says with more restraint than I was expecting. Then he cracks and grins. I take only some comfort in the fact that the grin is directed my way, not at Lilia. ‘Come on, this is what we need, right?’

I nod and smile in a way that I hope conveys to Lilia and Ben that they’re still excluded from thewehere.

‘You’d introduce us to this Sarah?’ Patrick asks Lilia.

She nods like maybe she regrets this already. (Letting Patrick loose on her piano teacher, who is also a suspect in a death that Patrick desperately wants to be murder? I’d be regretting it too.) ‘Yeah. But—’

‘Of course there’s a but,’ I say.

‘Butyou have to let me help you,’ Lilia says.

‘Help us with what?’ Patrick asks, but he knows.

‘This … whatever you’re doing. Felix’s death.’

Patrick looks at me and he must know that I hate this idea, but maybe he also knows me well enough to realise I’m not going to throw away a chance to help Elena because of my friendship drama. I offer the tiniest of shrugs.

‘Okay,’ he says.

‘Me too,’ Ben says, looking smugly at Patrick. Some of the smugness evaporates when nobody responds. Ben looks at Lilia, who’s frowning. ‘Lilia,’ he says.