Page 109 of Without a Clue

She laughs. “Only everyone else here? Neena was jilted at the altar, and between you and me, I think she’s been a little cuckoo since. And of course Jackie . . . well, you know.”

I raise a brow. “What do you know?”

“Let’s just say, Jackie hated when I found out she didn’t write her own stuff. Hated me enough to try to frame me with that knife you found in my dresser. Yeah, I know you found it. Welcome to my world. I found it there too and didn’t know what to do.”

“So you did nothing?”

“Should I have put it somewhere else and gotten myself caught?” She shrugs. “The reality is, just because it was found in my room doesn’t mean I put it there.” She looks me up and down. “We all clearly can get into each other’s rooms if we want to badly enough. At any rate, if Jackie would frame me for knowing, I can’t imagine what she actually did to the man who said he was going to tell the world. Oh wait. I can.”

I raise a finger. “So . . . you think Jackie killed Hugh for letting out her secret, and you think Jackie is trying to frame you for knowing as well? What does that make me then? Now that I know?”

“Easy, I should think,” she says. She pops a ball down the line. “Her next target.”

Chapter 21

There’s no way Jackie is that crazy.

To murder one person is undeniably insane.

But to proceed to go on a rampage trying to knock off every. Single. Person who ends up hearing her little secret?

Absolutely unhinged.

Beyond unhinged.

Impossible.

I shake my head. No. It can’t be.

It just . . . can’t . . . be.

Crystal spouts out other names and dates and facts as I ask about them, but nothing is quite so interesting, or confusing, as her announcement at the very beginning of our conversation. And she was so lackadaisical about it. That’s what was so concerning.

And so . . . so full of hate.

Crystal—or Mary, I should say—once brought me a crazily mangled croissant from my favorite bakery. It was awful. The elaborate story of how the croissant traveled via electric scooter through wind and rain and passing taxis—even lore of a snatching tourist she beat down to get it back—became famously known in our little group.

Hugh laughed and laughed and made her tell it to us all again. I’ll never forget the boom of his laugh as it rattled through the chambers of his belly and filled the room.

I can still hear it now.

It’s just so wild to imagine her as anything but precisely that—and yet the woman I saw today—she delighted in showing off her true self.

She delighted in hurting me.

Even down to the Michael comment.

It was a side of her I’d never seen, and yet another fact to chuck into the bucket to make me realize: It’s really possible you don’t know anyone.

People who choose to lie, can lie fabulously.

People who choose to deceive, can deceive famously.

For long periods of time.

There’s never any true way to know who and when to trust, is there? Both in love and in hate.

“Well, that was . . . enlightening,” Nash says, standing in the doorway.