May managed to hold herself together as she walked through her building lobby, waving hello to Joe behind the doorman’s desk and wishing him a good night. When she opened the apartment door, Gomez was waiting for her. He always seemed to know if she was the one who’d stepped off the elevator.
“You’re back?” Josh said, hitting pause on the Yankees game on the television. “I was just telling Gomez that it wasn’t Momma in the hallway no matter what his nose was telling him.”
“I got you, baby.” She placed her purse on the cabinet beside the door and scooped the ecstatic pug into her arms before accepting a peck on the lips from Josh.
“What are you doing home?” he asked, rolling her bag toward the bedroom. “I thought you guys were having a good time.”
She shook her head, not knowing where to begin.
“Tapped out? Can I remind you again that you did say in New Orleans that I was the only human being you could tolerate for more than two straight days?”
She wanted to laugh but was afraid she might burst into tears instead.
He stopped and turned to face her. “Hey, what’s wrong? You look really upset. Was it something with Nate?”
She kept shaking her head. “It was something…with everyone. But it’s Kelsey. She was lying, and I figured it out. But they turned it all around on me, and they all hate me now. I blew it.”
Except for Nate trying to tell her that he was sure everything would work out in a few days, no one had even said goodbye to her as she carried her bag to the driveway, only to remember that she had taken the train to East Hampton. She bit the bullet and took an Uber back to the city so she could get home as quickly as possible.
She had spent the entire ride trying to decide whether she could bring herself to believe Kelsey’s side of the story after all her lies. In the end, it wouldn’t even matter. She knew Lauren would never forgive her.
Josh was reaching to give her a hug when her phone rang. She pulled away from him to get to her purse, letting Gomez jump to the floor. Maybe it was Lauren.
The 631 number was familiar. Detective Decker.
“This is May.” She mouthed an I’m sorry to Josh, but he scoffed and shook his head, his eyes widening in astonishment that she’d cut him off so abruptly.
Decker didn’t even bother with a greeting. “You left your friends awful suddenly. What’s up?”
“You’re watching the house?” she asked. “Wait, did you follow me home?”
“A white Toyota Camry with Florida plates was called in as suspicious this afternoon, parked there for nearly four days without moving. The responding patrol officer found the driver’s-side seat fully reclined. Two gunshots, right in the face. So yeah, this is a homicide investigation now, May. You knew that when you convinced your friend Kelsey to clam up, didn’t you? And now you’re right in the middle of it.”
“I told you before I’m not talking to you without a lawyer.”
“No, you told me Kelsey wasn’t talking to me. And then an hour later, you cut your trip short. The officer sitting on the house said it looked like you might have been crying while you waited alone for your Uber. That sounds to me like you may have gotten into an argument with your friends right after you kicked me out of the house, and then decided to leave too.”
She knew she should hang up, but she needed to find out what else he knew.
“Your friend from the DA’s Office told me you’re a true crime junkie. Says you’re obsessed with that case where the lawyer was killed while visiting three of his friends. Pretty obvious at least one of them did it. The cops sweated them for hours. Even charged them all with obstruction, sure one of them would break. The odds of two people going down together? Very low. But three? It’s so easy to pit three people against each other. Isn’t someone always the third wheel? That’s the person to peel away.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“So what caused the breakup? One possibility is that they figured out you were having an affair with David Smith and lied to them about it.”
She said nothing. Josh was gesturing at her from the sofa, telling her to get off the phone and tell him what was going on. She held up a finger to buy more time.
“I called that investigator from the DA’s Office again to see if he knew you well enough to have a read on that. Turns out he knew you were engaged—to Josh, he said, last name unknown. For what it’s worth, he says there’s no way you’d cheat while you’re engaged. Or get wrapped up in a homicide for that matter. So that leaves me with another theory. Maybe the woman who would never cheat and would never find herself in the middle of a murder case—the law professor and former prosecutor—realized someone else in that house is a killer and got out of Dodge.”
She watched as Josh marched to the kitchen, shaking his head in frustration as he jotted a note on a Post-it before pushing the pad in her direction across the island. WTF?!
May pressed her eyes shut to focus. “I’ve got nothing to say to you, Detective.”
“You went back to that strip of Sag Harbor where you first saw David Smith. No reason to do that if you were the one who killed him. You went because you cared, May. You knew your friend Kelsey had left that note and you thought there could be a connection. I couldn’t figure out why you’d be willing to lie about that. But I see it now. You all have something to lose. You don’t want to be DA Karen again. Your friend Lauren has a fancy job with people who wouldn’t approve of drunken practical jokes in the Hamptons. And don’t get me started on Kelsey. But David Smith was only missing then, May. There are things more important than your privacy or reputation.”
“You are completely off base,” she said.
She made out the words “un-fucking-believable” as Josh muttered under his breath on his way to the bedroom.
“One thing I’m not wrong about? That video from the subway. You had no idea who said what. You were scared. Justifiably. I don’t know you, but I don’t think you’re a bad person. That guy Brennan told me as much. And when you watch that video with the assumption you’re not a bad person, it’s pretty obvious. So I’m sorry other people judged you for something you didn’t actually do, but I just had to ask David Smith’s mother to identify him from a tattoo on his ankle because the gunshots to his face made him unrecognizable. We only knew it was him because the killer left his driver’s license on his lap before taking his wallet, watch, and shoes.”
“That sounds like a robbery,” she said.
“Or a jealous girlfriend making it look that way.”
“I can’t help you. And stop following me,” she added, before hanging up.
She found Josh sitting against the headboard of their bed, his phone in one hand as he popped in a second AirPod.
“I’m sorry about that. I had to talk to him.”
He didn’t respond, and she could hear the faint sound of whatever song he was blasting. She leaned forward and waved, and he freed up one ear.
“I said I’m sorry about that. I really had to talk to him.”
“So I gathered. A detective? He’s watching you? What the hell is going on, May?”
“Just give me a second, okay?”
When she turned to walk away, he rose to follow her. “It’s not okay to shut me out like this.”
She pulled an open bottle of chardonnay from the refrigerator and tipped herself a big pour before going to the sofa. She hugged Gomez on her lap as she told Josh everything.