Page 62 of A Murder is Going Down

I’m not sure how to say the next bit, so I blunder in before I can overthink it into the ground. ‘Patrick, did something happen? This morning you were into this investigation like a disgruntled cop in a Nordic crime drama. Now you want to drop it like you’re that disgruntled cop’s boss.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘Was it something that Adam said or is there something else?’

Patrick doesn’t quite meet my eyes. ‘Nothing happened,’ he says. ‘I don’t want you to waste your time with this stuff. I made a mistake: I was bored and let my imagination run away with me. It’s only stressing Elena out and the whole point was to help her. Plus, now we know she’ll get somemoney from the house even if she misses out on the life insurance.’

‘What about your missing phone? You didn’t imagine that.’

‘Someone probably picked it up, thinking it was theirs.’

‘That doesn’t even make sense.’

‘I don’t know, Heidi, maybe I lost it.’

‘Oh, you lost it a long time ago.’ He grins at that one and I know he’s not completely done with me. ‘Can we do a deal?’ I ask, probably pushing my luck.

‘Depends.’

‘Will you come with me to talk to Jade and Haruto? They’re the only ones we haven’t spoken to who were there that night.’

‘That doesn’t sound like you’re dropping it.’

‘I’m going with or without you.’

‘Okay, okay,’ he says. ‘We can see Jade and Haruto. Then will you let it go?’

‘Sure,’ I lie.

We pause in the doorway of the kitchen.

‘I’m sorry about the movie,’ Patrick says quietly. ‘I would have invited you, but it’s kind of a sibling bonding thing.’

‘Don’t even worry about it.’

‘I would have liked you to come.’

There’s no opportunity for me to respond to that (which is good – I have nothing), because Michael comes along thehallway, accusing Patrick of having misplaced something from his half of the room, and whatever moment there was between me and Patrick disappears.

I go to my room and do something even sillier than everything else I’ve done: I text Lilia everything Aunty Sam said about not being at Elena and Felix’s house the night Felix diedandask her what she thinks it means.

Now

Marianne is still listening.

She’s not interrupting.

She’s not shouting at some person she’s never seen to let us out of here.

It’s making me nervous.

Then

Let me skip ahead two days, because nothing really happens. That’s not true, plenty happens: Aunty Sam goes on a Bumble date with a guy called Sadat who looks like Dev Patel (and by that, Idomean he’s too young for her), an exciting new cluster of pimples takes up residence on my chin, and Patrick continues to ignore every single attempt I make to engage him in the mystery of Felix’s death. I replay the moment he said he wished I could go to the movie with him so many times that I start to think it never happened.

Aunty Sam institutes family movie nights, and we watch an old musical together. (People really went nuts for tap-dancing for a while there, didn’t they?)

But two days is how long it takes me to get hold of Jade and Haruto and set up a time for us to meet.