Page 187 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

“Shut up, Connor!” It’s our chorus now—we all say it together.

“Please go on, Inspector,” I say.

“He was upset at Mr. Smith for many reasons,” he says. “Once we had access to his phone… There was a script that didn’t work out, I believe. And then Mr. Smith encouraged him to invest in that cryptocurrency scheme. The final straw seemed to be when it all fell apart and Mr. Smith helped the CEO escape…”

“I didn’t do that—”

“Let him finish, Connor. You’re not on trial.”

“Not yet,” Harper murmurs.

“This is what he thought you did, you understand?”

Connor nods.

“And then using the plot of one of his books to cover it up…”

“Go on.”

“Marta used of all that to get him to participate.”

“Did he know about killing me?”

“I think he only wanted to scare Mr. Smith. And to get his money back.”

“What did he do?”

“The car brakes, we think… if that happened.”

Connor scoffs. “It did.”

“If it happened,” Inspector Tucci repeats, “he might’ve been involved. The messages we found are suspicious but not as clear as the others.”

“Wait… the car brakes,” Allison says. “Didn’t he kill someone that way in Whisper of Iron?”224, 225

We all look at her.

“What?”

“You read that?”

“Didn’t everyone?”

No one wants to admit to the sin of reading (or not reading) Shek, so the silence rests there for a moment.

“Is that everything?” I ask.

“We might never know all of it,” Inspector Tucci says, looking at us like we might have the missing answers.

“Some mysteries are never solved,” Oliver says, and I love him for it.

“Yes, that is true. Speaking of which… What is this I’ve heard about you and Mr. Smith being behind the robberies in Roma?”

Uh-oh.226, 227

EPILOGUEThree Months Later

In the end, I don’t kill Connor off.