“He’s my fiancé,” Lara says, like that’s all the explanation I should require.
“So you—what? Just decided to go along with it?”
She makes an impatient noise in her throat. “I don’t have time for this, Cal. Tom is framing me, don’t you see that?”
My jaw drops, because I absolutely do not. “He is? Why?”
Despite the total lack of accountability she’s shown so far, I’m hoping she’ll tell me that she was about to go to the police. But she purses her lips and says, “If I had to hazard a guess, it’s probably because my indiscretions caught up with me.”
“Your indiscretions?” I repeat. “Do you mean…”
I’m about to finish that sentence with “me,” but Lara cuts me off with a sigh. “I’ve been involved on and off with someone else, and it’s possible Tom saw some texts he shouldn’t have.”
I stare at her suitcase. “So are you running away with—that guy?” I ask. I almost say D, but I’d rather not explain how I know the initial.
She wrinkles her nose. “God, no. It’s not like I was serious about him. Ultimately, he was just another distraction.”
Just another distraction. That would probably hurt if I had time to think about it, but follow-up questions are piling up too fast for me to dwell. “So how was Coach Kendall framing you? Did he put that list in your day planner?”
Lara heaves a sigh. “Probably, but that’s the first I’ve known about that. Things started feeling strange a couple days ago, when Tom kept asking me if I was going to be at the studio this morning, at ten o’clock like usual. It was weird, how insistent he was about the time.” She twists the engagement ring on her finger, and for the first time, I notice how big the diamond is. “I thought he was trying to spy on me. So I decided I wouldn’t show up, even though all I was planning to do there was sketch. I actually did go to that ceramics class. I kept waiting for Tom to check in, to follow up with more questions about the studio since he’d been so goddamn interested, but he didn’t.” She cocks her head at me, appraising. “You did.”
“So…” I think back to sitting across from her at Second Street Café this morning. “So you really didn’t know about Boney?”
“I had no idea,” Lara said. “I couldn’t put any of it together at first. I didn’t understand why Brian was there, or why he’d died. I even wondered if Tom might’ve meant to kill me instead, and Brian became collateral damage when I didn’t show up. But then I talked to Dominick, who’d heard from a reporter friend that the police found drugs all over the studio. Dom was half-hysterical, wanting to know why I’d left them there. And, of course, I hadn’t.”
Her lips twist in a bitter smile. “Then I couldn’t stop thinking about the anonymous tip about the blond woman. At first I thought it must’ve been Ivy, but the timing was too convenient. The whole thing felt like a circus. A performance. So I asked myself: If I’d shown up like I was supposed to—like Tom wanted me to—what would the police have found? Me crouching over the body of a student in a room full of Oxy. With my fingerprints all over the murder weapon, I’m sure, since Tom asked for my help sorting syringes last week.”
“Sorting syringes,” I echo, my voice dull with disbelief. I can’t believe how casual she is about all this; like running a drug ring is just some weird hobby of her fiancé’s that she stumbled across and decided to support. “That’s a thing you guys do together, huh?”
Lara keeps going like I haven’t spoken, sweeping her hand toward me. “And now you come in here telling me there are more drugs stashed in my classroom, and a—what did you call it?—a kill list in my day planner. That’s a lot of evidence, isn’t it? I’d say that’s more than circumstantial. And there’s probably plenty we haven’t seen yet.”
“So Boney…” I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
“Tom must have killed Brian,” Lara says simply. “Or more likely, ordered somebody who works for him to do it, then made sure he was at school all day to keep his hands clean. I don’t know why Brian—he must have done something to make Tom angry—”
“He stole a bunch of his drugs,” I interrupt. “He found them in a shed last month and started selling them.”
“Ahhhh, okay. That makes sense,” Lara says. Her voice is matter-of-fact, like Boney is just another item on her Why My Fiancé Framed Me checklist. “Tom freaked out when the Oxy disappeared, and he almost lost his mind when Carlton College declared a war on drugs three weeks later. Your father doesn’t waste any time, does he, Cal?” I feel a quick burst of pride, because he sure as hell does not, and she adds, “That’s exactly the kind of spotlight Tom doesn’t want. He’s always been so careful to keep his home and his business separate. He even has a guy whose entire job is keeping an eye on drug activity around town, so Tom can shut it down before anyone official gets involved. But this time, everything happened too fast.”