Chapters (47)
He snatches it from my thigh, and I lean my forehead against the steering wheel and try to breathe around the panic. What if Sienna came here looking into Katherine’s death? What if when I found them, she was asking Paul about his swimmer wife who slipped under the waves and drowned? The doubts rise, pouring up and out of me, filling the air in the car with a sweet, sickly dread.
Chet yammers away, oblivious to my distress. He scrolls through her Tweets, reading them aloud with a running commentary. An expensive yoga retreat in Florida. Restaurants she’s tried. Books she’s read. Nonsense about the Kardashians. I hear him, but he’s miles away. Right now, it’s just me and Paul in this car, a man with six million dollars’ worth of motive and no real alibi.
“Hey, listen to this one,” Chet says, twisting in his seat. “‘Why were Lake Crosby police so quick to write #SkeletonBob off as a runaway?’”
I lift my head from the steering wheel. Blink. “What did you just say?”
“I said she wonders why the cops were telling people that Skeleton Bob was a runaway. I don’t remember anything about him running away from home.”
I snatch the phone from his fingers, and there it is, her Tweet from October 28. A little over three weeks ago. Relief slackens my bones, and I think I might cry. I think my body might melt into the grubby upholstery because she didn’t come here for Paul.
“She was here because of Skeleton Bob.” He was the unsolved crime she came here to solve. Skeleton Bob, not Paul, not his late wife.
“Well, duh. What did you think, that she came here for Katherine?” Chet’s eyes go wide with realization. “Oh. You did, didn’t you?” He laughs, a breathy sound. “That would have been awkward.”
“Not funny, Chet. This is serious. We need to tell Sam.”
Chet shrugs. “I’m sure he already knows. Once we plugged in her last name, she wasn’t all that hard to track down. A couple of clicks and he’ll end up like we did, right here on her Twitter profile. As a matter of fact, he’s probably already been and gone.”
I click on the hashtag, #deathinthedeep, and the Tweets fall into a neat column. Dozens and dozens of them from @SiennaAnne.
June 13, 1999: drug dealer and all-around bad guy Bobby Holmes disappears without a trace. When the cops closed the case without a body, the general consensus was good riddance. Nobody cared, for twenty years. #SkeletonBob #deathinthedeep
Bobby Holmes deserves more than fifteen minutes of fame. He deserves justice. Was his death an accident or a crime? The truth depends on who you choose to believe. #SkeletonBob #deathinthedeep
New details in the Bobby Holmes case, coming soon to a podcast near you. Not as open and shut as the police would like us to believe. #SkeletonBob #deathinthedeep #thetruthiscoming