Page 122 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

Allison looks unperturbed. “You remember? I’m flattered.”

“Please, I was worried for myself.”

“Didn’t keep you away.”

“I think everyone in this room knows I don’t always make the best decisions.”

Allison stares at him with an amused glint in her eye. Or maybe she’s gloating?

“She was always saying back then that there were poisons all around us. All you had to do was know where to look.”

“We don’t even know what killed Shek,” I say.

“Mark my words, it will be something she could’ve made once she got here that looks innocuous.”

“So you think I brought a beaker and a Bunsen burner with me?” Allison drawls.

“I know what I know. And I bet that jellyfish was only a diversion.”

“Now I stung myself with a jellyfish on purpose?”

“You needed a reason to stay on the boat.”

“Couldn’t I have simply feigned seasickness? Why go to the trouble of something so elaborate?”

“You always did have a flair for the dramatic.”

“As I think we’ve already established, that’s you.”

I listen to the ping-pong of their conversation while staring at the columns and rows on the easel. There’s a lot more information that could be filled out, but for now, I want to understand what Connor’s getting at. “What does ‘mechanic’ mean?”

He glances at me. “Allison’s father was a car mechanic. He taught Allison everything about cars when she was a kid.”

“So, she’d know how to cut your brakes.”

“Anyone can google that on the internet,” Allison says.

“How do you know?”

“Because you can google anything on the internet.”

“It still would take some expertise to do it so that it didn’t give out right away, though… What about the attempt on my life? And the second attempt on yours?” I think back to last night. All that wine in my system. The booms of the fireworks. The hand on my back. “I don’t know if it was a man that pushed me. But I don’t remember Allison being near me on the veranda.”

“I saw her outside the Vatican,” Connor says. “Half an hour before I almost died. And we were all near you on the veranda. You were just too wrapped up in Oliver to notice.”

Oh my God. We’d had an audience for that? That’s embarrassing.

Oliver coughs discreetly. “What about the accomplice?”

“Which accomplice?” Guy asks.

“The one who mugged Harper.”

Harper stirs next to me. “Oh!”

“What is it?”

“Remember after I tackled Allison? She said she had the same bag as me. But maybe it was her, and I chased after the right person.”