“Right. I forgot—you’re still doing the poor little rich girl act.”
“We’re doing that again, Erin? At least I know you were genuinely upset about your phone not recording his confession.”
She finally stopped, turned around. Held her hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry. How about we do this? You still need to find the laptop. We can look together. Give it to the police.”
“Or they can help us look.” I meant to dial 911, but it was awkward trying to do it with one hand, holding the bottle in the other.
“Need help?” Erin stepped closer.
“No—”
She pushed past me, knocking me over, and headed up the stairs before I even realized what was going on. I didn’t just lose my balance. I lost the phone and the vodka bottle too. It didn’t help she’d turned the light out on her way. I didn’t waste time looking for them, just ran back up too. By the time I got outside, the Caddy was turning the corner.
Shitnuts.
I needed to call the police, but my phone was still inside—somewhere. Hopefully my bag and keys too. I rushed back in, shutting the door behind me and heading down to the basement again. It was useless. I might as well have lost my phone in the Atlantic. The room was huge, the entire length of the house, and packed to the gills. I started in the direction I thought I’d heard it fall, where Gram and Aunt E had left a dining room table covered in Mel’s old records. They were spread on every surface, including the floor. I started low and made my way up. I didn’t find the phone—or what I really was looking for.
The laptop.
I continued through Mel’s record collection, holding my breath, hoping not to find it. And I didn’t. But I still had an entire basement to go. There were millions of places for Desiree to have hidden it. A cursory glance counted two dressers, yet another dining room table, and every toy Desiree had received in her lifetime.
She’d have to be able to remember where, so Gram’s nondescript furniture was out. It’d have to be something we wouldn’t stumble upon but she could get to easily, which meant it was nothing on the back wall. And it had to be something that could conceal a laptop, even one as slim and sleek as a MacBook.
I was betting on the Barbie Dream House. Technically it had been Desiree’s, but we shared toys as kids. I loved playing with them all—except the Dream House. It was one of those three-story numbers you opened up like a cabinet door, fully furnished and with its own happy family. Barbie, Ken, and two kids living happily ever after—the picture of domestic bliss. I’d wanted to burn it with the rest of the Pierce family photos Gram had kept in her living room. The ones that didn’t include me.
It was a few feet away from the record collection, weathered but looking better than a lot of houses in the neighborhood. If Desiree had evicted Ken and gotten rid of the master bedroom set, there’d be enough room in there for a laptop. I walked over, then bent down to pry it open, causing dust to fall like snow.
No laptop.
Thank God. I realized then that it was silly to even look. It probably wasn’t here. I needed to find my phone and call the police. As I headed to the stairs, I saw Houdini’s box, open and empty. Desiree had known how much I loved it, though she had never understood why. She’d never been one for sentimental value. She didn’t even like vintage.
The box was big enough to hold a laptop. I bent down and pressed the button to open the secret compartment.
There it was.
Desiree had been the one to break in. And she’d left this here—for me to find.
She’d come to the Bronx because she had needed my help.
I sat on the stairs and opened it. There was a note inside. Desiree’s handwriting. If I’d been expecting some final message from my sister, I would’ve been disappointed. The only thing I saw was a series of numbers and letters and the word “Objective.”
When the laptop turned on, I realized the first part of the note was Naut’s complicated password. His wallpaper was as clean as his place. Not a single app. I clicked the folder, and there everything was. File after file after file. It’d take me forever to find the video. I glanced at the paper again.
“Objective.”
I typed it in. A folder popped up. When I clicked, there was just one file inside. The video’s dimensions meant it had to have been taken with a laptop. It was too square for a phone. Naut was on camera but not looking at it. The angle was horrible, slanted upward like your uncle’s first attempt at video chatting. All neck and nostrils. There was a glass in front of him with nothing but tinted ice blocking the left quarter of the frame. I had been expecting reality TV confessional, but he was actually talking to someone.
“I got you. Didn’t I keep your name out of it before?” The voice that responded was muffled, as if from across the room. I saw the back of some couch, a wall, half a painting in the frame—it could have been someone’s place. It could’ve been a hotel.
“Yes. But you don’t get it. You don’t…”
Naut trailed off. Took a drink.
“Get what?”
Muffled.
“I hit some homeless guy. Think he was Black. I didn’t even see the light, didn’t even see him. I heard him, though. Kept going. Straight down 64th Street…Why are you looking at me like that?”
The response was muffled. I couldn’t make it out. But I could tell from Naut’s expression, he didn’t like what’d been said. “It does matter.”
“It was just some homeless guy. It was years ago.” This time the voice was stronger.
Naut grabbed the glass, nervously moving it so the ice clinked inside. It was so close to the speaker it blocked out the conversation. I strained to hear, only succeeding in picking out stray words. “Police.” “Don’t care.” “Dead Black guy.”
Even though I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying, I could see Naut’s expression. He was believing whatever he was hearing. He only stopped shaking his glass when a new one slid into frame, this one filled practically to capacity with a deep brown liquid. He brought it to his mouth.
The second voice was much clearer now. “The police haven’t linked that man’s death to the accident. And if they do? So what? Let her rich ass continue to take the fall. Her daddy can get her out of it just like he got her out of the DUI. There’s nothing to connect you to it.”
My breath caught, and I fell back onto the dirty basement floor. Now that it was up close and not being drowned out by ice cubes, the voice was familiar. Too familiar. Deep and melodic even when discussing something as horrible as murder. To think I’d considered it comforting.
Naut hesitated.
The voice again. “You didn’t get rid of the key fob like I told you to?”
Stuart’s brown hand finally came into the frame, taking the quickly emptied glass away.
He’d known the truth the entire time. About Desiree. About Kevin House. About it all. And instead of reporting it to the police, he’d encouraged Naut to cover it up. But why?
There was a beep upstairs, the sound so faint I wouldn’t have recognized it if I didn’t already know what it was. My front door. Erin had picked a hell of a time to come back. I quickly paused the video, closed the laptop, and returned it to Desiree’s hiding spot. I tried to cram the fifteen minutes I should’ve been looking for my phone into the fifteen seconds it took for Erin’s footsteps to reach the basement door. I would’ve had better luck finding Waldo. I finally gave up. If I played it right, I’d have the element of surprise. Let her come down to me. Then I’d knock her out as soon as she hit the bottom stair.