Page 127 of The Lies I Told
His brow furrowed. “That was a mistake. I just wanted you to relax.”
“There were at least six unaccounted hours. Plenty of time for you to drive to Jo-Jo’s party and kill Clare.”
“I didn’t go to the party. And I didn’t kill Clare.”
“Where did you go while I was passed out?” I calculated the distance to the door behind me. Or if I screamed, would someone on the floor below hear me? The cameras in my apartment weren’t recording, and there was no alarm system to trigger. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“First, I need us both to take a shot for Clare.”
He might have lured me with drugs once, but not again. I wasn’t that stupid, desperate kid anymore. “I’m not fucking drinking it.”
His eyes darkening, he held up a glass and gently swirled it. “You want to drink it. I know that beast inside of you is growling with thirst.”
I took a step back. I had a lock and chain on the door. How fast could I unscramble them? “You strangled Clare, didn’t you?”
The lines around his eyes and mouth deepened. “I really didn’t. I liked Clare. I had nothing to do with her death.”
“Then why’re you here? Why do you want me to drink? You know I went to see David, and you’ve clearly put pieces of the puzzle together.”
“I’ll admit I wasn’t happy to hear you went to see David.”
“Why not? He’s engaged to my sister. We could have been talking about engagement pictures.”
“Come on, Marisa, you didn’t see him about pictures. Jo-Jo told me she gave you Clare’s camera. You looked at the pictures and figured it out.”
“You know about the camera?”
He searched my face intently. “Jo-Jo told me about it when she called me in a panic ten minutes ago. She’s really worried about you. Jo-Jo can be an airhead, but she was always so loyal to you and Clare.”
My stomach tumbled, and I wanted to throw up. “Jo-Jo told you I was going to see David, didn’t she?”
“She did.”
“And now you’re here. Why would you care about me seeing David unless you know that David killed Clare?”
He drained one of the shot glasses and refilled it.
My heart hammered against my chest. “Did David kill my sister?”
“Yes, he did.”
His words triggered a horrific but very fleeting sense of relief. A truth that had eluded me for thirteen years had been told, but the knot always balled in my belly wouldn’t release. “Because of the baby.”
“That’s right. He saw you first at college when you were visiting Brit. When you passed out at the party, he took you back to his dorm room and, like the good gentleman he is, let you sleep it off. He found the flyer in your pants pocket when you were passed out. You left while he was out getting breakfast for you both. He didn’t have your name but wanted to see you again. He went to the art show in Richmond. He saw you coming out of the art show.”
“I never made it to the show. I drove with Brit to Charlottesville to shop. He saw Clare coming out of the show.”
“David didn’t realize you were a twin. Common mistake. You two were always one of a kind.”
“What happened?”
“He struck up a conversation with her. Found his attraction growing. And David, being David, started following her. They ran into each other again, and he coaxed her into bed. He was certain he was in love.”
“He told you this?”
“Later. After it all fell apart.”
My stomach tumbled. “After he killed Clare.”
