“And then you helped him fake his death,” Charlie said. “You got a body out of the hospital, is that it?”
“No!” Liam half stood before realizing how many people had turned to look at him. He sat back down, even angrier. “No, of course not. I had nothing to do with that. Any of it.”
“What did he say happened to him?”
He shrugged. “He didn’t. What I worry is that he came from killing someone and got rid of his clothes because they were covered in blood. But back then, I figured his grandfather had thrown him out after he discovered Remy had a plane ticket booked for Atlanta.”
Something drove Vince away from that house, after years of going along with whatever monstrous business his grandfather was engaged in. On his own, he’d be broke, after more than a decade of living like a prince. And he’d been poor enough that he wouldn’t have had any illusions about what that would be like—or how quickly a couple of grand of stolen money could get spent. “What was in Georgia?”
Liam nodded, rubbed his face. “His mother. She was the one whose letters he was trying to hide from his grandfather. She died of an overdose the night before he showed up at the apartment. It must have pushed him over the edge.”
“Did he seem like the kind of person who could kill someone?” Charlie knew the way she was asking was wrong, that it was giving him cover to deny it. She wanted him to deny it.
Liam considered the question. “Remy had a morbid sense of humor, but I’ve heard worse. I’m a doctor. Gallows humor is our thing.”
She smiled encouragingly.
“Anyone can do anything under the right circumstances,” he went on. “And look—one of the doctors that works here is known for being generous with prescriptions. I saw Remy’s cousin Adeline buy some ketamine off him. Rich partiers like prescription drugs. They’re more expensive than street drugs but come in safer formulations, and you’re dealing with people unlikely to roll you. Who knows what Remy was into when he wasn’t around me.”
“Ketamine?” Charlie’s friends were more a weed-and-oxy crowd.
“It makes you dissociative,” Liam said. “In lower doses, it confers feelings of euphoria. In higher doses, people enter a state not unlike a coma, except they’re partially conscious. Sometimes unable to speak, they can have hallucinations, and memory loss.”
Charlie wondered what had been in her drink, all that time ago.
“And that’s enough from me,” Liam said, moving to stand. “I don’t know where he is, and I don’t know where the book is either. Okay?”
“The book?” Charlie echoed.
Liam snorted. “You think you’re the first person to come around looking for it, or him? Two months after Remy showed up half naked, this young guy comes by, muttering to himself. Never taking his hands out of his pockets. Threatening me. There have been other visits since too. If I knew where Remy was, I would tell the police, not any of you.”
Charlie took out her phone and flipped to a photo of her with Vince. They were at the Loews in Hadley on Throwback Friday, waiting to see The Bride of Frankenstein. It wasn’t a great picture; he was a little blurry, but it was still obviously him. “I was his friend. See?”
Liam appeared visibly relieved. “I still don’t know anything. Remy’s gone.”
“He mailed me something.” Charlie reached into her pocket and took out a tiny key. It was actually to a music box their mother had given Posey, but it was small and silver and might have gone to anything. “And said that if anything happened to him, I’d know where to look. But I have no idea where to even start. He insisted it was important, that it had something important in it. I was hoping it would prove he was innocent. If you can’t help me find him, you can help me find that.”
It wasn’t the worst story Charlie had ever come up with.
Liam frowned, considering. “Back in college, Remy’s grandfather would yank him out for weeks at a time, on a whim. And when Remy came back, he’d be a mess.”
“What kind of mess?” Charlie asked.
“Angry,” Liam said. “But because he didn’t know when it was going to happen, he hid stuff, even back then. He used to talk about how there are places rich people will never see, even if they’re staring right at them. If he really hid something, he would hide it in a place like that.”
Charlie wondered if, when Liam was a surgeon, and rich, he would look past those places too. Wondered if that was the dream.