Page 22

TWENTY

SANA

The entire way to Marshall and Julia’s house, Sana wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s different, coming here again without Vera striding ahead of her, conveniently giving her a legit excuse for coming by. Now she’s here on her own, and, well, she definitely was not expecting to see the pile of artwork just left in the hallway like that. The entire pile looks so pathetic somehow, a little graveyard of stolen art, and hers probably hidden inside it.

She hadn’t ever thought of the possibility that she hadn’t been Marshall’s only victim. In hindsight, she realizes of course she’s not his only victim. Why the hell would she be? Of course he was preying on multiple artists, selling them hope before betraying them and then ghosting them. The discovery that there seem to be dozens of artists in the same position as Sana should comfort her. She’s not alone. She’s not the world’s most gullible idiot for falling for Marshall’s ruse. But it doesn’t make her feel comforted at all. In fact, she feels even worse. The knowledge that she’s nothing special, that her art wasn’t even that unique, as it turns out. That she was caught up in nothing more than one of Marshall’s many, many scams. It makes her pain feel ridiculous.

Stop that , Sana scolds herself as she follows Julia into the house. Just freaking let it go already. Enough moping around, feeling sorry for yourself. I bet none of these artists are still hung up on their precious stolen art.

Still, Sana can’t quite shake it off, that heaviness settling on her shoulders like a weighted blanket. Part of her wants to sift through the canvases and find her paintings. She wants to grab them and run away. But she can’t. If she did that, Julia would know that Sana had a connection to Marshall, that Sana isn’t just a random true crime podcaster here to research a story. That Sana very much had motive to kill Marshall. And worse, that Sana had been tracking him down for months—some might say she was stalking him. He was certainly horrified when she’d shown up that day and confronted him. Crazy bitch , he’d spat at her . Get the fuck away from me before I report you for harassment and stalking. And now here she is, in his freaking house, under some ridiculous, flimsy guise that would fall to pieces as soon as anyone even breathed on it.

When they get to the living room, Sana is surprised to see Oliver there. She doesn’t like Oliver, although it doesn’t have much to do with his personality, which for the record seems decent. But he looks so much like Marshall that Sana can’t quite bury her hatred deep enough.

“Hey, Sana,” Oliver says, and Sana has to stop herself from shuddering. Even his voice is like Marshall’s.

“Hey.” What the hell are you doing here? she wants to say to him.

As though reading her mind, Oliver clears his throat. “I was just here dropping off some of Marshall’s stuff. I think you might have seen some of it in the hallway?”

It feels as though her skin has shrunk two sizes too small for her body. She can see Julia and Oliver looking at her, so she forces herself to nod in what she thinks is a casual way. “Cool.” Belatedly, Sana realizes that as a podcaster looking into Marshall’s death, she can actually be a bit nosier. It’s only natural for her to be curious. God, this whole pretending to be someone you’re not is so hard. How the hell did Marshall do it so effortlessly? Sana quickly sifts through what she’s about to ask, looking for anything that might give her away; then she says cautiously, “It looks like there’s a lot of artwork? Was Marshall an art collector?” The questions fight her, every word struggling not to come out, because hah! An art collector? More like an art thief.

Julia and Oliver exchange a glance that sends another electric tingle down Sana’s spine. Something’s off here. The two of them look shifty as hell. Were they in on it too? Was Marshall working together with his wife and twin brother to steal art from starry-eyed college students? The thought sits in Sana’s stomach like a lump of burning coal.

Julia gestures at them to take a seat, probably to buy herself some time to consider her answer. She takes a deep breath and sighs. “Honestly, I don’t know—I didn’t know anything about the artwork until...” She checks her watch. “About an hour ago, when Oliver brought them over.”

“I found them in an apartment he was renting downtown,” Oliver says.

“Marshall hid the artwork from you?” Sana says. She has no idea what to make of this. As much as she hates to admit it, she likes Julia. Something about the woman feels sad. Even the way Julia stands is somehow sad, like a flower that’s drooping gently. Sana doesn’t want to suspect Julia, and yet. And yet, how could Julia possibly not know all the shady shit Marshall had been up to? At best, maybe she had an inkling that he’d been up to no good and had decided to turn a blind eye to it.

Julia shakes her head. “I know it sounds pathetic.” Her voice wobbles. “But I’m just a stay-at-home mom. My world revolves around cooking and cleaning and looking after Emma.”

There is so much apology in Julia’s voice that Sana almost reaches out to hold her hand. Focus , she scolds herself. “So... you guys probably don’t know what Marshall was doing with the artwork?” Where’s the money? her mind screams. The money from all the stolen art, where the fuck is it?

Again, that shifty look between Julia and Oliver. What are they hiding? They know something, Sana is sure of it.

“I have no idea,” Oliver says.

Julia nods. “Yeah, I’m the same. I had no idea he was even venturing into art. Marshall was... he was always having one bright idea after another. He was into apps for a while, you know, back when apps just started being a thing, then he went into crypto... he never quite caught the trends in time to make it big, but he made enough for us to get by.” Again, her voice wobbles, almost breaking this time. “Sorry, I just—I have no idea how I’m going to make the mortgage payments now that he’s gone.”

Oliver reaches out and pats Julia’s shoulder. “What about your parents?” he says gently.

Julia sniffles, shakes her head. “I haven’t talked to them in years. Marshall never got along with them, and over time it just became easier not to deal with all that stuff...”

Red flags aren’t just going up in Sana’s mind, they’re waving and flapping madly, her gut churning at every little detail that Julia is revealing. She knows firsthand what a manipulative person Marshall was, and now she’s imagining all too easily Marshall slowly, subtly isolating Julia from her family, making sure that at the end of the day, she only had Marshall to lean on.

It. Does. Not. Matter.

Right. It’s not her business. She’s not here to fix Julia’s problems. She can’t even fix her own. She’s here for closure.

But what would it take to bring her closure? Well, first of all, she would like her paintings back. But she knows that isn’t enough, because having the physical paintings themselves is only one part of the equation. She needs their digital rights back too. Well, or something similar. Sana’s not quite sure how the whole thing works, but she knows that owning the physical object doesn’t necessarily mean she owns the virtual part of it. Which sounds so freaking ridiculous it’s hard for her to wrap her head around the whole concept. That she, the artist, might not even own the rights to her own work. If it had been an IP project, that would’ve made some sense, at least, and is the sole reason why Sana’s mother had always advised her against doing IP work.

IP work is only ever worth it if they are going to pay you oodles of money, my darling , her mom would say. Money up front. Because you don’t own the IP, so always demand money up front. Know your worth.

It’s her own fault. She’d been so eager to make a name for herself. This is the problem with creative people; their self-image is divided into two parts—one thinks that they’re a genius who will one day create a masterpiece of such breathtaking brilliance that it will still be discussed with reverence hundreds of years later; the other part thinks they are trash raccoons rooting around in the dark and coming up with nothing but more trash. There is no in-between. It’s either “super genius” or “trash raccoon,” and somehow these parts coexist within the head of one very tortured artist.

So when Marshall approached her and told her that her art would make the perfect NFTs, Sana had been both wildly grateful and also smug. She’d thought: Yes, someone is finally recognizing my talent and is about to make me rich! Simultaneously, she’d also thought: I’d better agree real fast before he finds out I’m a talentless hack! And of course she’d jumped at the chance without really researching what the hell NFTs even are, and how she should protect her own work. Although, to be honest, even if someone had sat Sana down and told her how to protect her work, Sana would’ve cringed and refused to take the steps to protect herself, because it would’ve made her feel ridiculous and arrogant when she should just be grateful that Marshall had picked her out of all the other hopeful artists in her year.

Okay, focus. Sana knows she needs to set aside every distraction—god, there are so many of them—and concentrate on why she came here. “It’s funny that you mentioned crypto, because—” Lord, is she making any sense? Does she sound casual enough? “—I recently read about this stuff called NFTs?”

Julia and Oliver stare at Sana, confused.

“It stands for non-fungible tokens, and it’s basically like... something you can own and trade online?” She really needs to stop ending everything with a question mark. “I wonder if maybe...” Tread carefully. “Maybe that was what Marshall was doing with the artwork? Selling them as NFTs online.”

“How does that work?” Julia says. “So it’s like online rights? But what about the actual physical art? Does that matter?”

“Yes and no,” Sana says. “The physical art itself could come with it, or it could be a separate entity, but there is virtual ownership as well. NFTs can sell for up to hundreds of millions of dollars.”

“Wow,” Oliver says. “I’m kind of having a difficult time wrapping my head around it, but... it does sound like the kind of thing Marshall would’ve been into, yeah.”

“Yes,” Julia agrees. “Like I said, he was always into these kinds of things.”

The tip of Sana’s tongue darts out and licks her dry lips. “If he was doing that, then he’d probably have all the information on his computer, maybe on a cloud, or in a physical drive, or...”

Julia frowns. “I wouldn’t know. And I don’t think I’d be comfortable looking through his computer. It’s just so much.”

“Oh yeah, of course,” Sana says quickly. Shit, shit! She scrambles to find a way around it. She needs to get into Marshall’s computer. She must. “Could I...”

But already, Julia is shaking her head. “I don’t think so, I don’t like the thought of it. It’s kind of violating.”

Oliver, looking more wary than ever before, leans forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees. “What did you say the name of your podcast was again?”

“Oh, it’s...” Oh god, she’s blanking out now, of all times? “ Murder or Accident? ” Sana’s insides shrivel up with a painful squeak. Murder or Accident? What the hell kind of a name is that?

Julia is nodding with a highly skeptical expression, and Sana can’t blame her. “I’m going to check it out now; it sounds so interesting.”

Oh god. Entire star systems are exploding inside Sana. She needs to come up with an excuse to stop Julia, but she can’t, her mind is a complete blank, she’s not a writer like her mother, who by now would’ve come up with at least five different legit excuses as to why Julia won’t find her nonexistent podcast online. Powerless, Sana watches as Julia takes out her phone and swipes to unlock it. Here it comes, she’s going to be exposed as a complete fraud, and then the suspicion will come, and maybe then they’ll even find out how she’s been following Marshall for weeks.

All these thoughts bubble inside her until they surge out of her with too much urgency. “Wait—”

There’s too much panic in Sana’s voice. She hears it even as she says it, and she catches the surprise in both Oliver’s and Julia’s eyes, but she can’t stop it, it’s too late, she’s going to reveal everything—

And that’s when Julia’s phone rings.

The words that are already halfway out of Sana’s mouth die and she forces herself to sit back down.

“It’s Vera,” Julia says, obviously surprised.

Anxiety leaps up in Sana’s chest once again. She has no idea how to feel about Vera. She likes Vera, despite everything, but she is also terrifying. But everything’s fine, Sana reminds herself, because Vera told everyone that Marshall’s death isn’t murder after all, it’s an allergic reaction to a duck, right? Right. She’s probably calling to ask about Emma or something.

Julia stands up and walks to the far side of the room as she answers the phone. “Hi, Vera, how’s it— Oh, Vera, are you okay?” She glances behind her shoulder, and she looks so worried that Sana’s panic spikes and she wonders if she’s about to throw up right here in Julia’s living room. Her hands are gripping her knees so tightly that they’ve gone numb. “Oh, Vera,” Julia cries. “That’s awful. Have you called the police? Okay, you just sit tight, Vera. We’ll be right over. Yes. I’ll see you in a bit.” By the time Julia hangs up, both Sana and Oliver are on their feet.

“What happened?” Oliver says.

Julia’s face is pale, her eyes wide with fear. “Vera’s shop has been broken into.”

None of them says it, but Sana knows they’re all thinking the same thing: first, Marshall’s death, and now a break-in? What are the chances that the two are unrelated?