Twenty-Eight

“You left the sliding door in the living room unlocked,” Toni said, coming onto the porch as Aubrey slipped past her inside the house. “And who was that?”

I glanced at Nat. Her head was bobbing back and forth between the two of them as if wondering which was real and which was Memorex. I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t sure myself.

I turned around in time to see Toni give her sister a once-over, no doubt realizing Emme was wearing her dress, her makeup, and her best pushup bra. She opened her mouth to speak but I didn’t give her the chance. “Emme!” I pulled Toni into a hug, pressing her face against my chest and hoping silicone muted any attempts to talk. “Didn’t know you’d be here! That guy was Toni’s new bodyguard, Aubrey! You haven’t met him because he’s been with her in Antarctica!”

I sounded way too hyper, but I couldn’t stop speaking in exclamation points. I could practically see them at the end of each sentence. “Toni just got into town! We would’ve invited you to dinner, but you would’ve been bored! It was a business dinner about the girl who died in the hit-and-run! Haley Joseph! We’re pitching her story to Paramount tomorrow!”

Out the corner of my eye, I looked at Nat, who still wore her confusion like an ill-fitting Oscar dress. Finally letting Toni breathe, I held her at arm’s length. “Toni”—I gestured to Emme with a nod of my head—“wanted to take Haley’s good friend Nat to dinner at Chow House! Since Toni”—another exaggerated gesture on my end—“is only in town for a day, we went straight to the restaurant from the airport! You know Toni hasn’t been home in months! And no one’s stepped foot in Toni’s house, not even you.”

A screenwriter would groan and settle into some diatribe about my dialogue being too “on the nose” and over-explanatory, but they weren’t trying to catch a killer by tricking her into thinking one of the world’s most recognizable actresses was actually her sister. I had to make sure Toni, the real one, knew exactly what was going on.

I finally managed to shut myself up and we all stared at Toni. I willed her to get the point and play along. After what felt like an eternity, she turned to Nat. She opened her mouth and my breath caught. “Hi,” she finally said. “I’m Emme. Toni’s sister.”

Then she walked over and stuck out her hand. Thank. The. Lord.

Nat gave Toni a quick dismissive handshake before turning all her attention back to Emme. “I knew you had a sister, but I didn’t realize how much you two looked alike.”

Yes! “How was your flight?” Toni asked, getting into it now. Her voice had even taken on the remnants of the Valley accent Emme still carried.

“Flight was great,” Emme said. “It was dinner that sucked. I ran into Luke.”

My high plummeted at 10,000 miles per hour and crash-landed next to me. It was not the time or place to chastise your sister about her poor choice in men. Used to it, Toni took it in stride. “You two talk?”

“Yep. About how we’ve been sexting twenty times a day.” Emme’s eye narrowed with accusation.

Toni didn’t even blink. “TMI.”

We needed to get back on track. Pronto. I turned to Toni. “You said a door was unlocked?”

Toni nodded, still looking at Emme. “Yep. No alarm, either. I tried calling you. Went straight to voicemail, and you didn’t answer any of my texts. WTF?”

“Sorry,” Emme said. “I do that all the time even though I know how much it annoys you.”

“NAA,” Toni said. Not at all. “You can’t always answer your phone just because I want to talk to you. Sometimes you have two hundred people waiting to film a scene.”

“Or I just say that to get you off my back for having crappy manners.”

It was Toni’s turn to glare. “How about you KMPPA. Kiss my pale pink a—”

“We need to call the police, Ms. Abrams. There may have been a break-in.”

Talk about saved by the Aubrey. He arrived just in time to remind us we had parts to play. Our faces all morphed into horrified expressions, except for Nat. Her face was blank, then she saw me looking at her and tried her best to look as shocked as the rest of us. “Are they gone?” she asked Aubrey.

Yeah, for two months now. “I think they have left, but I would like to check a few more rooms.”

We all followed him inside. Emme turned to Toni. “You didn’t notice anything strange when you were traipsing around?”

“Besides mentioning the door was unlocked and the alarm was off?”

Emme stopped and looked around the foyer as if searching for telltale signs of a robbery. At least she was following that part of the plan. “Everything looks fine,” she said. “They didn’t take my Banksy.”

She was right. Banksy was a well-known graffiti artist whose original works went for thousands. Toni’s had been a gift from a particularly aggressive producer who’d wanted her for his film. She’d turned down the part yet kept the painting.

I turned to the family room right off the foyer. “TV’s also still here.”

We continued like this, going from room to room doing a quick visual inventory for Nat’s sake. The cars and bike were still in the garage. The computer was still in the office. The People’s Choice award was still in the den.

Nat didn’t say much, probably because she didn’t need a spoiler alert to know none of the big stuff would be gone. Then we got to Toni’s closet, where she’d actually had done some damage. When we first walked in, she had no reaction. That alone was suspicious. I’d yet to meet a woman who didn’t gasp in awe upon entering Toni’s closet. Sienna had even cried. Nat, however, didn’t even glance at the shoe department.

“Crap. I was robbed,” Emme said right on cue. “I definitely am missing some clothes.”

“We need to call the police,” Aubrey said.

At the word police, Nat suddenly perked up. “How do you even know there’s been a robbery?” she asked. “There’s so much stuff. How can you tell if anything’s missing?” She had a point. It really was impossible to tell at first glance. The closet was packed tighter than a Beverly Hills housewife’s face fresh from her plastic surgeon’s office. “Maybe she just left the door unlocked before her trip,” Nat continued.

She had, but still. “What about the Rack Pack?” I paused long enough to gauge her reaction. Nada. “Everyone knows Toni’s been out the country for months. It’s not like it would be so out there for someone to break into the house while she was gone.”

“In a gated community?” Nat asked. “People can’t just walk in here.”

Unless they’re you. “There is one way to find out for sure,” Aubrey said. “The video. We can check from the time Ms. Abrams left town.”

I was banking on Nat not knowing whether or not she was on tape and figuring the last thing she’d want was to find out. The plan was for Aubrey to pretend to watch the tape, then come back and tell Nat she’d been caught on camera. Then we would get to the part of the program where she’d freak the heck out.

I glanced at her. I don’t know what I was expecting, but a smile was not it. “Great,” she said “Let’s watch it.”

Fudge. She either knew she wasn’t on tape or was curious enough to find out. That tape was the last bit of leverage I had. No way could she see it, but I hadn’t the slightest clue how to stop her. I couldn’t ask if she wanted to play a quick game of Yahtzee. Panicked, I looked at Sienna. Her face only mirrored my own. We were screwed.

We trooped back to the office, each step taking me farther from my goal: Nat’s confession. Emme sat at the desk as we crowded around her. She hesitated before hitting the power button and finally spoke. “You guys can at least put your stuff down.”

Everyone was still holding their purses. “You sure we don’t have to worry about anyone stealing it?” I said in a lame attempt at a joke. I was more nervous than I thought.

We set our things down in quick succession. My purse went next to where Sienna left her cell and the keys to Toni’s car.

It took less than a minute for the computer to boot up and Emme to load up the video program. Ten screens appeared with the word “Standby” written in the upper left corner of each. We were looking at the live feed from the cameras outside. Since it was motion-controlled and no one was out there, the screens were black. “I should cue up the video,” Emme said, sounding like that was the last thing she wanted
to do.

I needed to stall her, but how? I was considering pretending like my left implant had suddenly burst when we were saved—by Nat of all people. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Down the hall to your right,” Toni said.

Behind me, I heard Nat grab her purse. As soon as she was gone, we spoke in rushed tones. “Ms. Peters knows she is not on tape,” Aubrey said.

“Maybe one of us can go stall her while the rest of us pretend like we watched it?” I suggested.

Toni, Emme, and Sienna all looked at one another, no one eager to be alone with a murderer. “It won’t take us long to pretend to watch it,” I continued, not wanting to volunteer myself, either.

I was about to suggest Aubrey go stand outside the bathroom door like some perv when Sienna spoke up. “It doesn’t matter. She can still demand to see it.”

“Then we tell Ms. Peters that will not be possible until she explains what she was doing at Ms. Abrams’ house,” Aubrey said.

“And if she doesn’t?” Sienna asked.

“We’re in trouble,” I said. “We have nothing to connect her to the robbery.”

Emme pointed to the computer. “Except one thing.”

A camera had come to life. Nat hadn’t gone to the bathroom after all. She’d snuck outside.

“She’s looking for the hat! We catch her and we could force a confession!” I sounded overly excited but then again, I had a right to be.

“Once she finds it, she will leave,” Aubrey said. “We need to guard the exits. How many are there?”

“Three sliding glass doors,” Toni said. It was her house, after all. “She can’t get to the front from the left side, but she can from the right. The doors are all locked except the one she went out of in the living room.”

That was the middle of the house. Of course, we were on the left side. “Ms. Peters has only two possible exit strategies,” Aubrey said. “We need to force her to come back inside.”

He pointed at me and Emme. “Ms. Anderson and Ms. Abrams, head to the nearest door. I want you to scare her into going back into the house, where I will be waiting.”

“What if she goes around the other side?” I asked.

“Ms. Hayes and the other Ms. Abrams can handle it. Do not try to stop her. I just want you to scare her into running back inside. Do you understand?”

We nodded and took off to our respective destinations. Emme and I ran to the nearest exit, which was Toni’s bedroom. Emme slid the glass door open and we ran out. Nat was about twenty-five yards to our right. The hat was in her hand. “Nat, stop! You won’t get away with it!”

I sounded pretty sure of myself because I was. We were to her left. Aubrey was waiting inside. Sienna and Toni were at the side exit to her right, or would be soon. Nat was stuck. I expected her to head back inside as we’d planned. Once again, Nat didn’t do what was expected. It was getting kind of annoying. She headed for the right-side exit.

Unfortunately, I knew Toni and Sienna weren’t there yet. Without even as much of a glance at each other, Emme and I took off after her. Though I could run in heels, I couldn’t run fast and I didn’t have the time to kick my shoes off. Emme, practically a heel virgin, wasn’t doing any better. We didn’t make up any ground.

Nat was about ten feet from rounding the corner to freedom, but she still had to run past the final set of sliding glass doors. I could hear the door being yanked open. Toni tumbled out.

I figured Nat would turn around when she saw Toni and the four of us could play a nice game of tag until Aubrey got there. Instead, she kept going. Toni planted her feet, figuring it was easier to let Nat come to her. And Nat sure was coming. She was almost at the sliding door when Sienna appeared out of nowhere from inside, flying through the air like a bird, a plane, or Superman himself.

Her intention was to take Nat down in a move worthy of WWE. Or it would’ve been if she hadn’t missed. She was about five seconds too early. Nat saw her coming and slowed down. Sienna sailed right on past her like a ship in the night before belly-flopping smack-dab onto the cold concrete.