I liked the pink flamingo in the front yard. It gave the house, a squat brick box, some personality that was much needed. I emerged from Gamma’s sea-green Mini-Cooper and dusted off my jeans, studying Noah Braxton’s house and the others in the street.
It was a quiet area. Not particularly well-to-do, lower middle class at best, but safe. Most of Gossip was safe, apart from when there was a murderer on the loose, of course.
A door slammed somewhere nearby, and a car started. A silver sedan cruised by, the woman behind the wheel raising her fingers as she drove by. I had no clue who she was, but this was Gossip. Everybody greeted in Gossip.
I waved back before setting off up the front path and past the pink flamingo that had been stuck in the long grass beside it.
A quick knock on the front door later, and a tall, handsome man met me, smiling broadly. He had perfectly even white teeth, so even, in fact, that it was kind of unsettling.
“Hello,” I said, presenting a hand. “My name is Charlotte Smith.” I still had to stop myself from saying “Mission” instead of “Smith.” Another reason I hadn’t been a particularly good spy.
“Noah Braxton.” He shook my hand, delicately. His palm was clammy, and I resisted the urge to wipe my hands on my jeans, afterward.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Sure.” He frowned, and the already pronounced wrinkles furrowed even more. “Is there a reason we’re meeting?”
“Sorry,” I laughed. “Yeah. I’m here because I’ve been trying to figure out who harmed your brother.” Harmed was less visceral than the word “murdered.”
Noah’s face fell, his eyes grew watery, and he swallowed audibly. “Right,” he said. “Donny. Our Donny.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
He exhaled, releasing the breath in a long, low stream. “Thank you. It’s been a difficult past few days.”
“I can only imagine,” I replied. “I was hired by a close friend of Donny’s to find out who could’ve done this.”
“Excuse me for asking,” Noah said, “but why would they have hired you?”
“I’m a fixer. Kind of like a private investigator.” The difference was, private investigators usually didn’t have experience as spies. “And I’m trying to get to the bottom of what happened. I had a couple of specific questions for you, if you have the time to answer them? I understand this is a difficult time…”
Noah sighed, glancing over his shoulder. He exited onto the porch and shut the door, favoring his left leg a little. He had a limp. That was interesting. Was there a story behind that?
Noah gestured for me to sit down on the front step with him.
It wasn’t the most orthodox place I’d interviewed a suspect, but it also wasn’t the weirdest. I sat down, pressing my back into the railing so I could study the side of Noah’s face while he talked.
“I haven’t talked to anyone about Donny except the police,” Noah said.
“Do you feel comfortable talking to me?”
“I’m curious,” Noah said. “Not comfortable. You see, I’m a novelist. A romance novelist most specifically, and I’m always looking to experience new things. A fixer? That’s interesting to me. I’ll answer your questions if you answer some of mine.”
An information trade. This guy was decidedly strange, but I’d go with it if it meant getting answers.
“OK, sure,” I said. “You go first.”
“So, what does a fixer do, exactly?” he asked.
“I fix problems. It can be anything from a small problem to a big one, but I always operate within the confines of the law.” Man, that was a lie. Just last month I’d been arrested for interfering in one of Goode’s investigations.
“Interesting. And do you usually fix the problems successfully?”
“I have a one hundred percent success rate so far.”
Noah smiled. “Cool. You can ask me your questions now.”
“That’s all you wanted to know?” I asked.
“Uh-huh, yeah.”
This guy didn’t give me the creeps or anything, but there was something off about him. Maybe it was just because he was one of those creative types. You never knew with them. Head always in the clouds, floating along with no real concept of the world happening around them. Of course, they were a necessary part of society, but I preferred practical people like Gamma or Lauren.
“I’ve been told that your brother bought a box of shortcake at The Little Cake Shop every Monday. Is that correct?” Will Noah even know this information?
“Yeah, actually,” Noah said. “Donny lived with me, and he used to dip out every Monday to go grab that cake. It was how I found out about Emmy.”
“Emmy?”
“Emmy Scott,” Noah said. “Donny’s fiancee.”
I kept my expression impassive. Goodness. Donny was a player, all right. “He bought the cake for her every Monday?” I asked.
“Every Monday evening. He would grab the cake then head on over to see her.”
OK, so he’d bought the cake to take to his fiancee, but he’d stopped at his girlfriend’s house first. Where someone had murdered him.
“Did you see Donny on Monday?”
“Only before he left the house,” Noah said. “I had a big deadline to meet for my book, so I was in all day.”
“What about in the evening?”
“Unfortunately, no. You see, I was at a party with Emmy.”
I rubbed my brow. “Wait, you were at a party with Emmy? Your brother’s fiancee?”
“Yeah. We were all in the same friend group, you see. So we were hanging out on Monday night, waiting for Donny to come over. We were playing cards and watching TV, listening to music, that kind of thing.”
“What time?” I asked. “As in, what time did you arrive at Emmy’s house and when did you leave?”
Noah shrugged. “Oh, that’s tricky. I think I got there at like six in the evening? Left at eleven, maybe. I really didn’t make much note of the time. It was nice to get out, though, after a long day of writing. It’s so easy to just lock myself away indoors for long periods of time. I have to force myself to be social.”
I absorbed the information.
I had another suspect to add to my list. The fiancee, Emmy Scott. She could’ve easily found out about Mia, the girlfriend, and planned to get rid of Donny. But why not just leave him? Dump him? Surely, murdering him was too risky and kind of pointless?
And hadn’t Josie told me about Noah, the brother, for a reason?
“Did you and Donny get on?” I asked. “Were you close? Ever get into fights or anything like that”
“Fights? Nothing beyond the normal sibling stuff. We were very close,” Noah said, and those tears welled again, shimmering in his dark eyes. “We were… friends and brothers. Donny was a romantic, just like me, except he acted out his romantic aspirations whereas I prefer to write about them. Do you really think you can find out who did this?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to try my level best.” And so far, my level best had proved very effective. But I needed to think about my leads and plan my next steps.
If what Noah had said was true, he had an alibi, as did Emmy, if he’d only left the friend get-together at 11:00 p.m.. Donny had been stabbed around 10:00 p.m..
“Do you need anything else from me?” Noah asked. “I don’t mean to be rude but there’s a lot to organize now that Donny’s gone. We don’t have… parents anymore. No close relatives. I’m all he had.”
“That’s all,” I said. “Thank you for your help, Noah.”