Holly dropped her bag to the floor and looked around the hotel room. Her suitcase from earlier still sat on the luggage rack. Unpacking felt like making the arrangement unwelcomingly permanent. Living out of her suitcase made the horrible experience seem a lot more temporary.
The hotel was nice, a four-star in Manhattan. It was close to the Upper West Side house she shared with Victoria, but it felt like a million miles away. She trudged farther into the room and stared at the coffeemaker on the desk.
It was midnight, but she knew sleep wouldn’t be coming anytime soon. Exhaustion played with her eyelids, but she knew her brain was too busy with questions. Rest wouldn’t come to her until she had at least started to work on the problem of who was behind the images.
She grabbed a coffee pod and angrily shoved it into the top of the machine. She placed a cup under the spout and pressed the button. The machine sprang to life, whirring and vibrating as if it were about to take off into the air.
Moving out may have been Holly’s idea, but that didn’t mean she liked it. In fact, she hated every second of it. She was away from her home, her family, her lover.
She closed her eyes and pictured Victoria lying in their bed at home. She knew sleep wouldn’t come easily for Victoria that night either.
Holly picked up her bag and pulled out her laptop, a fresh notepad, and some pens. She placed them on the desk and stared at her reflection in the mirror.
“Who would do this?” she asked herself. “And why?”
She shook her head. It was too broad a question. Knowing why someone would do something was a tremendous undertaking; it often involved a deep personal knowledge of that person—impossible when she was confronted with a list of everyone they’d ever spoken to as suspects.
No, the real question in a case such as this was who could do this?
She sat down, opened her journal and started writing a list. People Victoria worked with, people Holly worked with. Friends and family. Everyone went on the list, in no particular order and with no immediate passes.
Holly knew she needed to approach this as she would any other news article. She couldn’t let her personal feelings get in the way. She wrote until she developed a cramp in her right hand. Four pages of names sat in front of her as well as a big question mark which indicated the big unknown, the person they didn’t know but who knew them.
That one frightened Holly the most.
She picked up the coffee mug, the machine having stopped its dramatic display a while ago. Sipping on the drink, she picked up a highlighter pen and ran it through the people she knew the least. The people who Victoria mentioned but Holly had yet to meet.
To eliminate those people, Holly would have to rely on Victoria’s ability to read their behaviour. A tall order.
“What do we know?” Holly asked her reflection. “They know my email address, they can create elaborate hoaxes, they want to frame Victoria, possibly Ashley… or maybe she was just a convenient fall guy. They know about the power of attorney. And, most of all, they want us apart.”
She tapped the pen against her lip.
“They want us apart. Or at least for me to doubt Victoria.” She stood up and paced. “But that could have been achieved another way. This much effort is bizarre. It can’t just be someone who is romantically interested in either of us.”
She stood in front of the ceiling-to-floor window and looked out at the sparkling lights of New York. She tossed the conundrum over and over in her mind, trying to figure out the angle.
Someone wanted her to doubt Victoria. If she hadn’t known Victoria so well, she might have fallen for it. An involuntary shiver rushed up her spine. If they’d picked something else, something less radical, she might very well have fought with Victoria for real.
She spun away from the view and shook her head. Thinking like that wouldn’t help her at all; she needed to be detached and objective. She needed to think about what steps to take to unravel the mystery.
She needed to look deeper into the faked images and see where they led. She needed an expert.