This Story Might Save Your Life(69)

“But did you know?” When she looks away, I press harder. “Did you? Did Quinn?” I glance around, realizing belatedly that she might be here too.

“Quinn’s at work,” Mallory says, answering my unasked question.

At work. One day after learning her wife’s brother is dead. I make a mental note to mull this over later. “If you knew, then why would you help him? Why would you spy on us? Did you actually think I was some sort of threat? Because you heard the recording. I made a fool of myself. And then—” I feel sick mentioning it in light of what happened. “What I said about Xander. Why would you give that to Keller?”

“What else was I supposed to do with it?”

“Maybe not give it to her?”

“They were asking a lot of questions. And anyway, why did you give her the memoir? It’s not like that makes me look good.” To her credit, she looks pretty miserable.

Still, I’m not letting her get off this easy. “I don’t understand why you hid the recording from me. You knew I was looking for it. Why didn’t you tell me you had it?”

“Maybe I’m not sure who I can trust right now, all right?”

We stand in suffocating silence. She reaches for her mug again. “If you didn’t do anything, you should have nothing to worry about.”

“Wow.” I press my fingers to my eyelids. I don’t know what I expected, but this isn’t helping.

My pocket starts buzzing. I pull out my phone. Hold it up for Mallory to see.

“Answer it,” she says.

I put it on speaker. Keller’s voice comes through on a staticky connection. “I’m outside the gate. You want to let me in?”

“Right now?”

“No,” Keller says. “In an hour.”

Mallory gestures for me to go. The cameramen try to get in a few shots as Keller slides through the gate in a gray dress shirt and black pants, cross-body satchel hanging at her hip. Voices call out to us through the bougainvillea, but we ignore them.

Keller follows me inside and glances around. “House cleaned up well.”

She takes a chair in the living room and waits for us to join her on the opposite couch. The same seats we took when Joy and Xander first went missing four days ago.

“I’ll get right to it.” Keller removes her notepad from her satchel. “Preliminary autopsy came in.”

My heart judders. “Already?”

Mallory makes a strangled sound beside me.

“I’m sorry, this must be difficult. I’ll be as fast as I can.” Keller fans herself, revealing a sweat patch beneath her arm. Nothing about her actions screams fast as I can. “According to initial reports”—she scans her notes—“it appears Xander’s death was caused by a traumatic closed head injury. Brain bleed.”

“So…” I say after a pause. “From the crash? He died in the crash?”

“Based on the angle and location of the injury, it’s unlikely.”

My vision clouds as I recall what I learned in the interview room. Found deep in the forest. Location not visible from the road. “And … there’s still no sign of Joy? Do we still not know if she was in the car with him?”

Mallory widens her eyes at me, and I realize I’ve unintentionally implicated my best friend. If Joy was in the car, that leaves open the prospect that it was she who killed Xander. The possibility has fleetingly crossed my mind, I will admit. But there’s no way to know how many people were in the car to begin with. And anyway, if she did kill Xander, it would obviously have been in self-defense. In which case, she’d have come to me for help, wouldn’t she? She’d have known I would help her fix it.

Likely, Keller knows this too.

“You mentioned fire extinguishers last time,” I continue, needing more but also needing to deflect. “Did the car catch on fire?”

“That’s one reason I’m here. You said Joy and Xander keep a fire extinguisher in the office downstairs. Do you want to show me where?”

I do not, in fact, want to show her where, but I do it anyway, Mallory trailing us down the stairs. When the three of us reach Joy’s office, I search for the canister where I last saw it, hanging in Joy’s swag closet beside a pyramid of TSMSYL hats and mugs. It’s not there.

Keller doesn’t seem surprised. “Is there another?”

I take her back upstairs to the kitchen pantry. The other canister is in its usual spot beside the charging hand vac. Untouched to the extent that it bears a slight film of dust.

“You still haven’t explained,” I say. “Was there or was there not a fire?”

“Large enough to ignite the entire forest in flames,” Keller says. Her expression is wooden. “Luckily, someone had the foresight to bring along a ten-pound extinguisher.”

“Someone … as in Xander?” It would make sense. Like Emil said, it’s not improbable the MG was having issues. Xander might’ve noticed the smoke, pulled over, put out the fire, and then … I’m beginning to understand exactly how complicated this is. Why was he driving through Angeles National Forest in the first place? And why would he bring the office fire extinguisher with him? And at what point then does the brain bleed come in? This is worse than I thought. Keller is studying me. Eventually, I manage, “What aren’t you telling us?”