“Nothing like that.” Kelner loudly exhaled for the umpteenth time. Apparently, Imani was tiring to him. “As I said, I can’t go into details. My point in telling you any of this is to urge you to let the police do their jobs. They know what to focus on.”

Silence rang in Imani’s ear. She ran Kelner’s words back to herself, looking for some clue that would suggest a different meaning than the obvious: Melissa’s own lawyer thought her guilty.

So why didn’t she? Imani wondered.

Maybe because fame was blinding, Imani thought. Perhaps because, despite a decade of friendship, she’d still seen Melissa in a halo of stage lights, her flaws blurred by good makeup and an ability to project emotions barely felt. It was possible that she’d wanted so badly to be associated with Melissa that she’d placed more importance on their interactions than she should have, elevating her friend to a status that she should never have occupied. That Melissa herself had never really wanted.

Imani tasted something salty and bitter. She was crying, she realized, bawling for a friendship that might never have been as deep as she’d felt, yet that she missed so badly that her bones ached. Maybe love in any form was never meant to be deeply examined, Imani thought, because it hurt too much to learn that people weren’t who you’d built them up to be. Each revelation about Melissa caused her physical pain, cutting like knives into her vital organs.

Or bullets, Imani imagined. A bullet—just like the one Melissa had put in Nate’s skull.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

TONYA

She smelled like a storm drain. It was the clothes, Tonya realized. Garments, hastily piled into paper bags, had spilled onto the grimy floor of the moving truck. Every scrap of clothing she owned stunk of the runoff water that had coated her mattress. Even the off-shoulder T-shirt and pajama bottoms she’d slept in the prior night, which had always been in the suitcase, balled and stuffed between breakable frames, had the odor of stale, dirty water and sweat.

During the prior night’s drive home, Philip had offered use of his house’s washing machine. Still, as she carried an armful of clothing to the closet at the end of the second-floor hallway, Tonya couldn’t shake the sensation that she was stealing something. If she’d been renting a real apartment, she’d be expected to visit a laundromat or put quarters into a basement machine.

The front loader made a cringe-inducing popping noise as she opened the door. It also released the musty smell of wet newspaper. Someone had apparently run the wash and then forgotten about it. A white-and-black lump lay inside the barrel, drying in a damp ball.