Page 52 of Murder on the Upper East Side

The two detectives looked at one another.

‘Madison doesn’t look happy,’ Detective Wellesley said. ‘Was she upset about you and Sebastian?’

‘What? No. Like I said, nothing happened with Bash.’Jesus, would these two drop it?

‘What about after that night?’ Detective Crews asked. ‘You and Sebastian were at Prescott together for five more months, until the seniors graduated.’

She frowned. The detectives were asking all the wrong questions, but if they kept pressing, they were likely to get dangerously close to the truth.

‘We never got together,’ she said flatly.

Detective Wellesley tapped at the Madison photosagain. ‘She’s upset about something here. It looks like she’s upset with you.’

Ami crossed and recrossed her legs. ‘She called me a baby. She thought I was making the Fitzgeralds look bad, which I guess I was, since someone sent photo evidence to a public gossip site.’

Detective Crews tapped a pen against the desk.Tap tap tap.‘Why do you think the photos were sent to thePost? Didn’t Prescott have its own gossip account?’

Ami straightened, sensing the opportunity to shift the focus of their questioning. ‘You’d have to ask whoever took the pictures. Maybe they thought they could get wider coverage, since they were taken at an exclusive event, not some Prescott party.’

Both detectives stared at her in silence. Ami’s skin crawled.Why weren’t they taking the bait?

‘You should ask Beatrice Whitmore,’ she went on. ‘She was at the top of the stairs, with her phone out.’

An instant stab of guilt.You shouldn’t have dropped Beatrice’s name.But she didn’t have any reason to think it was Beatrice who had killed Madison, and she needed to dosomethingto send the detectives far away from herself and her high school relationship drama, before they began asking the right questions. The ones Ami was scared to answer.

‘Mmm.’ Detective Crews turned his notebook to a fresh page and scribbled something illegible.

‘Can I go now?’ Ami asked.

Detective Crews switched off the recorder.

One week ago

Ami’s mom, Yoko Hiroto-Miller, had spent a month in Kyoto every summer since her parents returned to Japan twenty years ago. This year, after saving up two years of vacation time, Ami had flown out to join her mother and grandparents.

She’d been in the city for three weeks when the letter arrived. By postal mail, so old fashioned, but that suited the sensibilities of many of her former classmates – and with no advance warning. It had sent Ami careening into the past, harder than she’d thought possible. She’d remained in touch with a good number of students from her class; unlike Hannah, whose time at Prescott had been so brief, Ami had spent most of her high school career haunting its halls. Her one year of high school in Pittsburgh was a blip; Prescott had consumed her adolescence. But Hannah’s crowd had largely dropped out of Ami’s life after that first year. Most were off to college, and the juniors who remained had faded into the background without Madison and Elle around to stir up daily drama.

She hadn’t been planning to attend the gala. For one thing, most of her close friends from her own class weren’t going. Jobs in California, Colorado, Washington DC. Her best friend had settled down in France with a Parisian cyclist last year. Another woman from their group was doing aid work in the Middle East. It seemed like everyone except Ami hadlives too important for Prescott now. Besides, the gala conflicted with her big Japan trip. But most of all, the one person she was dying to see – who hadn’t graduated in the same class, meaning they’d never run into one another at reunions, who she’d lost touch with entirely with so much unfinished business between them – hadn’t responded to her drunken, emotionally raw two am text this spring, when the gala invitations had first gone out. And when he had responded, days later, the reply had been brisk, formal, and vague.

So good to hear from you, Ami! Not sure of my plans yet. I will certainly keep you posted.

The temptation to curl into the foetal position beneath her cubicle at work had been almost overpowering. She hadn’t written back. It was far too embarrassing.

But then, the letter, sent all the way to her grandparents’ home in Kyoto. Handwritten and brimming with the old feelings they’d never had the chance to properly explore – so different from the curt text.

Please come to the gala. If I’m honest, I’m only going for you. Let’s give it another shot – like we should have done ten years ago. I understand why you turned me down back then, but your text this spring… I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

The thing is, we’re all adults now. Madison doesn’t get to control what we do. I won’t let her.

Along with the letter was a ticket to the gala, purchased in Ami’s name, and details for a return flight to New York, pre-paid.

It was an offer too tempting to refuse. But at what cost? Ami knew, deep in her gut, who had killed Madison DuPont. And she’d been avoiding him all night.

9 February 2017

Instagram

Image: Ethan Astor and Bruno Alvarez wrapped in cashmere scarves and wool overcoats, stealing a kiss in front of the Prescott fountain, which has been strung with red-and-white fairy lights.