Page 31

Jet waved to the doorbell camera, waved to her laptop back at Billy’s apartment, waved to whoever might watch this footage after the end of this week, waved beyond the grave and even farther than that.

She slotted her keys in and pushed open the front door. It still smelled too clean in here, a chemical bite to the air even after three days. Billy coughed behind her.

A skittering of claws on the polished wood and Reggie rounded the corner.

He yipped when he saw Jet, speaking to her, yelling. Something like: Where the fuck have you been, hi, hi, hi, I forgive you already.

He jumped up, scrabbled at her legs.

‘Hello handsome Sir Reginald the Woof.’ Jet dropped to her knees, left hand scratching behind Reggie’s ear. ‘Who’s a good boy, huh?’

His tail wagged his whole body, climbing up on her thighs to reach her face, nudging her lifeless arm with his nose.

‘I can’t do the double scritches anymore, bud, I’m sorry.’ Jet scratched even harder with one hand, Reggie leaning his head into it, eyes hooked on hers, almost the same shade of hazel. ‘You’ll have to ask Billy very nicely.’ The dog squeaked. ‘But Billy is nice, so he’ll say yes.’

Reggie looked up at Billy, tail smacking Jet as he rested his head on her shoulder. She hugged the dog with one arm.

‘It’s better this way,’ she said quietly, resting her chin on the dog’s fur. ‘I thought I was going to have to watch you die someday, after I stole you from Mom and Dad, obviously. Now I’ll be the one checking out first. Sorry, bud. I would’ve missed you, and I know you’ll miss me.’

Billy bent over them, cupped both hands behind Reggie’s ears and scratched away, his knuckles grazing Jet’s neck.

Reggie closed his eyes and groaned.

‘Yeah.’ Jet smiled. ‘That’s the good stuff, huh? Told you Billy will look after you. He’s good at that, huh? Better than me?’

‘Could never be better than you.’ Billy smiled too, drew back.

‘OK.’ Jet’s knees cracked as she straightened up, Reggie circling between their legs. ‘Come on, Reg. We’re on a mission, to see if my sister-in-law has been poisoning me for months.’

She headed toward the stairs, Billy and Reggie following closely behind.

‘You really think Sophia’s been trying to kill you?’ Billy asked, still taller than her, even though Jet was two steps up.

‘Well, someone tried to kill me.’ Jet gestured to her messed-up head. ‘Maybe there was a first plan, to do it slowly. Then it got ex-exp-ex – fuck. You know that word, when something needs to happen sooner.’

‘Sped up?’ he guessed.

‘No, smarter than that.’

‘Accelerated?’

Jet pursed her lips, reached the landing. ‘No, but that will do. Then the plan got accelerated, swapped pills for a hammer.’

Jet paused outside her bedroom, the door shut. It was never normally shut.

‘But why would Sophia want to kill you?’

Jet grabbed the handle. No, thought about grabbing the handle, with the arm that no longer worked, still dominant even though it was gone. Used her left hand instead, overriding instinct, scolding herself.

‘I can think of a reason,’ Jet said darkly, ushering the two boys into her bedroom.

‘Sophia cares about money, always has. When you’re fifteen, you tell each other everything; she grew up with parents who couldn’t afford much, always argued about money, and she said she would never live like that.

She wanted to be like us, the Masons. I always thought that’s why she really went for Luke.

But, hey, I’m no romantic.’ She paused. ‘Maybe Sophia found out that Dad wasn’t going to leave the company to Luke, because it wasn’t fair on me.

Well, if you get rid of me, you get rid of that problem. ’

‘That’s dark,’ Billy said, looking around.

‘I think motives for murder usually are pretty dark. But it is my first time.’

‘Looks different in here.’ Billy gestured toward the bed, and the walls. Plain walls with dark baseboards, light cotton sheets, and neutral-patterned cushions.

‘Yeah.’ Jet followed his eyes. ‘I guess you haven’t been in here in like –’

‘– Fourteen years,’ Billy finished.

‘No more frog wallpaper.’ Jet clicked her tongue. ‘And the green bed is gone.’

‘Don’t tell me you got rid of Mr Rabbitson, the Fifth Earl of Woodstock?’

‘I’m not a monster,’ Jet scoffed, heading for the bathroom. ‘He’s in the closet. One of his arms fell off, though. Ooh, foreshadowing.’

Jet pushed the bathroom door open with her shoe, flicked on the light.

‘OK. They’re in here.’

She approached the mirrored cabinet above the sink, her reflection drawing closer, that strange dilated eye, like it was lost in terror, always ready in fight-or-flight. Billy watched her face too, not his own – she caught him.

Jet opened the cabinet and banished both of them, reaching for the white pill bottle on the bottom shelf, her left arm getting tired, doing all this extra work.

‘Here we go.’

The pill bottle rattled as she carried it over to the toilet. She flipped the lid closed and sat on the floor, resting her elbows on top of the closed toilet.

Billy joined her, sitting on the opposite side, his knees grazing hers around the toilet bowl.

Reggie settled himself across the threshold, giving them some space, standing guard … lying guard. Facing the wrong way, actually.

Jet clenched the pill bottle in her fist, stared down at the childproof top. A push-down-and-twist kind of lid. She blew out her cheeks.

‘Need me to open it?’ Billy asked.

‘Kind of feels anti-feminist if I let you do that.’

‘No one’s watching.’

‘Apart from Reggie.’

‘He won’t tell,’ Billy said, leaning forward, placing one hand over Jet’s on the bottle, the other on the lid, pressing down and twisting it off. ‘There, you did most of the work. I just finished it off.’

‘Don’t humor me.’ Jet looked inside the bottle.

‘Yeah, you humor yourself too much already.’

Jet tipped the bottle and poured the contents out against the white toilet lid. Little yellow capsules rolled everywhere, a small mountain gathering together in the center. Tiny black writing printed on each one: Lotrel 2260.

‘What do these pills actually do?’ Billy asked, picking one up to study it.

Jet did the same, pinching it in her left hand.

‘It’s a calcium-channel blocker ,’ Jet said, quoting from the packaging, long ago memorized from the times she’d forgotten to bring her phone to the bathroom with her, had to find something else to read.

Shampoo bottle also worked in a pinch. ‘Treats high blood pressure, a side effect of PKD, which can make our kidneys worse, me and my dad. That’s why we gotta take these.

See anything strange?’ Jet brought the capsule closer to her eye, picked up another one instead.

They both looked normal, no dents, the top half aligned with the bottom.

‘Not really,’ Billy said. ‘But you’re the one who’s taken them every day for years. You see anything strange?’

‘Not really,’ Jet repeated him. ‘Can you open one up, pour out the powder?’

Billy screwed one of the small capsules between his fingers, working one end away from the other, splitting it into two halves, the powder sitting inside the bottom part. He bent forward and tapped the white powder out onto the toilet seat.

‘Is that what it’s supposed to look like?’ Billy asked, his breath tickling the powder, scattering some.

Jet lowered her head, bringing her eyes down to the level of the powder, studied it. ‘Don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve never opened one before. What does it taste like?’

Jet licked her left index finger and pressed it to the pile, the powder clinging to her damp skin. She stuck out her tongue and swiped her finger across, tasting it.

Her mouth filled with saliva to wash out the sharp taste.

‘Not good?’ Billy watched her face, tasting some too.

‘I don’t know,’ Jet said. ‘Tastes chemically. Chalky. Tastes like medicine, really.’

‘So maybe they aren’t tampered with?’ Billy pulled the same face, retracting his tongue.

‘Well, I don’t actually know what poison tastes like either. Probably chemically and chalky too.’

‘They don’t look tampered with.’ Billy picked up another one.

He unscrewed the two halves and then tucked them back together into a whole.

‘See, it doesn’t look perfect now. There’s a dent there, and that line isn’t exactly aligned.

It’s hard to make it right again without denting it more.

’ He tried. ‘I think we’d be able to tell if she’d opened every one and replaced the medicine with something else. ’

He held out the evidence to Jet and she picked up the slightly deformed capsule. He wasn’t wrong.

‘But we literally saw her taking my pills away, then coming back to plant them an hour later. What was she –’ Jet’s mind got there before her words did, not even a close race.

At least that part of her brain still worked.

‘Not my pills,’ she hissed, scattering more powder, capsules rolling away from her.

‘My dad takes the same ones. It was his pills Sophia took. Come on. Can you –?’

Jet gestured to the mess on the toilet seat.

Billy understood perfectly, scooping the capsules with both hands, sliding them into the open bottle. He blew to clear away the last of the powder, re-screwing the lid and handing the bottle to Jet. Wrong hand. He blushed. Jet didn’t.

‘Come on.’

Jet rattled as she left the bathroom, pill bottle swaying at her side, stepping over Reggie. He got up to follow immediately as they headed out of Jet’s room, down the hallway toward her parents’ bedroom.

The bed was immaculately made, always was. Old hardcover books on the wall-mounted shelves that weren’t actually for reading, display only. The large French double doors leading to the balcony that looked out over the garden, over the pool.

Jet veered left, toward their en suite bathroom.

‘His and hers sinks,’ Billy muttered. ‘Nice.’