Say it Louder (27 page)

Greer gapes at Dave.

“This was back when I was manager. We were still in Pitt, but we were playing all over, bunch of states, and we’d booked a tour opener gig. We were so close to making it—everything we’d worked for was
right there
, we had contract offers from three labels.”
 

Dave looks desperately from me to Greer, begging us to understand. “I couldn’t ruin all of that for my band. But now … they don’t even really need me anymore.”

A deep voice rumbles from the darkened hallway off the living room and Jayce steps out. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

CHAPTER FORTY

I knew Jayce was babysitting, but I didn’t realize he was listening. He wears an expression I can’t decipher. “You let Kristina cover it up to protect
us?”

“That was the general idea. Fucked it up good, didn’t I?” I run my hands through my hair, exhaustion dragging me down. “Sorry to keep pulling you guys into my shit.”

“First time for everything. More than anyone, you’ve always had our backs. Like when Gavin disappeared. And throwing Violet to the wolves? That’s all on Kristina,” Jayce says.

I’m staggered.

Forgiven.
That’s how this feels.
 

It doesn’t take long for Jayce to call the other guys back to the house. Greer’s doing this flappy little owl thing, fussing over what’s going to happen tomorrow at the arraignment.

Willa’s not helping his mood—she keeps shooting sharp questions at him, asking about evidence and timelines. I shut it out because the whole time I was in jail, and the whole time I was driving to New York and back, I had layers of evidence like a reel of horrors on repeat in my head.

“Show me,” Willa demands, and this time her tone is forceful enough that I go to the kitchen table where Greer’s been laying out the collected evidence. Credit card receipt. Bill of sale on the Explorer. And then he gives her the picture from the red light camera.

She stares at it, squints, and picks it up so she can see it more closely.

Tyler and Gavin rattle through the back door.

“Hi, Willa.” Tyler gives her a nod and a smile, but Willa’s still engrossed in that damning photograph.

“Didn’t you just drive to New York to see her?” Gavin asks me. “How’d she get here?”
 

“Bus,” she answers without looking up.

He rolls his eyes. “You two ever heard of carpooling?”

Willa’s eyes snap up to me. “Tell me again about when you got your tattoos.” She points to
love
and
fear
etched on my knuckles. “Were you still living here?”

“It was my senior year in college.”

“Dave and I shared an apartment on Robinson,” Gavin adds.
 

“Did anybody go with you to get the work done?” Willa asks, and it’s such a random question in the middle of her cross-examination with Greer.

“I did,” Tyler volunteers. “It was right around finals, before Christmas break. We were studying and got kicked out of the library for, um, shenanigans.”

“You were trying to hit people on the ground-floor study carrels with paperclips from the third floor.” I pause when Tyler gives me a look. “OK,
we
were practicing our aim.”

“So we had a couple of hours to kill before band practice and went to the tattoo shop by Tong’s restaurant.” Tyler lifts a sleeve and displays a bird on his shoulder. “Why does that matter?”

Willa taps the date printed on the photo. “Because this was taken two months later.”

I give it another look, then zero in on the hands gripping the steering wheel in the grainy black and white photo. White hands. Nothing on the knuckles.

It feels like the air is sucked out of the room.

“You weren’t driving.”

I don’t know who says it, because my head is pounding so loud, so hard, it’s like I’m trapped inside a bass drum. All of the guilt, the self-hatred, the bullshit Kristina’s been feeding me for four years is wrapped up in a lie about who was behind the wheel that February night.

Pandemonium breaks out in the kitchen as everyone starts talking at once, a flood of anger and hope and
holy shit does this mean…?

But I keep coming back to three words.
I wasn’t driving.
They’re stuck on repeat like a song, like a whole fucking chorus that breaks chains and looses angels.

Willa skewers Greer with a glare. “You wanted a deal.”

“
Dave
wanted a deal. There was a preponderance of evidence,” he backpedals.

“The only thing this evidence proves is that Kristina is lying. She lied to the cops.” Willa turns to me. “Can you prove when you got your Tattoo? A receipt or something?”

Greer kicks into gear, quizzing Tyler and me about whether we paid with a credit card (no), got a receipt (maybe), or documented it any other way (does a tweet count)?

He decides the best way to prove that these aren’t my hands is to track down the tattoo shop’s records and comb through any social media or press clippings between mid-December and early February that might have my hands in the picture.

“What kind of trouble can Kristina get into for lying about all of this?” Gavin asks Greer.
 

“Some.” He sees this answer doesn’t satisfy any of us. “Not enough, considering what the consequences would be if you couldn’t prove you weren’t driving.”

“Not enough is right.” Gavin turns to me. “Remember how we said we’d take her down too? Let’s figure this out.”

***

Greer leaves, clearly uncomfortable with some of Jayce’s more creative and totally illegal suggestions involving bodily harm.

I think he’s kidding, but his murderous expression tells me I might be wrong.

Gavin finally quiets us down. “I have an idea. When she moved out, do you have any idea where Kristina went?”

I nod and pull out my phone, scrolling through emails to find a shipping notification from an online store where we had a joint account. Of course she couldn’t be content with just moving out and taking virtually every scrap of my furniture with her. She had to
decorate
, and on my dime.
 

I show Gavin the address. “What are you thinking?”

“I think we need to find out what makes her tick. Beryl’s pretty good at knowing where people keep the stuff they want to hide.”

“Search her place?” Tyler asks, mulling over the idea. “Stella would do it. She fucking hates Kristina.”

“It’s a pretty long list,” Willa adds, chuckling. “But it’s not like we can just go to the super and ask for a key.”

I hold up a finger and then dash down the hallway to the guest room, where my suitcase is a scattered mess of dirty laundry. I dig in and find the jeans I wore Thursday. Deep in one front pocket is a tiny key ring with three keys, two stamped
do not copy,
and a gold plate key fob.

Back in the kitchen, I hold the keys out to Willa. “Ask and you shall receive. The silver one’s for my place. The other two are for Kristina’s. When she showed up at my house Thursday night, I grabbed her keys to get mine back. Then I threw her out.”

Willa wraps her fingers around them, the warmth of her hands touching mine. “Get through the hearing tomorrow. Let Kristina tell her lies under oath, and then let Greer cut them open.”

“You’re going back to New York? Now?” She just got here, and on a nine-hour bus.

“Today’s a new day,” Willa starts, standing.

“I know, I know. Don’t waste it.” I finish her sentence with a smile and lean in for a kiss.

She returns my kiss with an intensity that draws groans from the rest of the band and Jayce’s good-natured “get a room.”

But relief pours through me and I hold her tight, kiss her back harder, trying to make my body say everything she needs to hear from my lips.

Willa traps my lower lip between her teeth and bites down just hard enough to sting. “Don’t you dare come back to New York until an actual judge tells you that you can, OK?”

I promise.

I want to promise her more, but it feels like more is impossible right now. Too much hangs over my head, too much is still unresolved.

All I can manage in this moment is getting her a flight home instead of a bus, and two whispered words as she slips out the back door. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” She hitches her messenger bag higher on her shoulder, and I glance around in case the cameras get frisky and try to get a shot of us.

“For not being there for you. For not being at your gallery opening.”
For not telling you that I love you.

“I don’t need sorry,” Willa says, moving toward the back fence gate that leads to the alley. “I just need you.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Stella and Beryl meet me at Righteous Ink and we take a taxi to Kristina’s new digs. It’s new construction with a shiny cold lobby, no doorman.

Even though I know Kristina’s in Pittsburgh giving her statement to a judge right now, I still feel like a thief, so I don’t blame Violet for not wanting to come.

“How did you know she was lying?” Stella asks as we wait for the elevator. I’ve caught them up on most of the situation. “I mean, you said the lawyer was going for a plea deal. All signs pointed to guilty.”

My voice shakes as I tell them the truth. “At first I thought he was guilty too. He was so convinced of it. So scared. But the thing that kept coming back to me was the fact that everyone decided to believe Kristina about this when she’s been nothing but a liar.”

“But how did you figure out the red light picture?” Beryl asks.

“I didn’t even know they had it. I just remembered a time when I got arrested for tagging, and the cops had every reason to believe it was me—I had spray paint on my hands and cans in my bag, and I even
told
them I did it. But it wasn’t me. I was just along to watch.” We exit the elevator and find Kristina’s door. “I wanted to believe that Dave was better than what Kristina said about him.”

Stella takes the keys from me and unlocks the door. A thick floral smell hits us first, like too much fruity body spray. The place is crowded with boxes and furniture—nice stuff—and the floor is littered with high heels and packing paper.

“Suzy Homemaker, she is not,” Stella sniffs. She turns to Beryl. “What do we do?”

“You take the living room,” she tells me. “Look on bookshelves and inside vases or under display items. Stella, take her bedroom. Bedside table is obvious, but between mattresses and under the bed are also likely. Pull her dresser out from the wall and look under it. Top closet shelves too. I’ll start on the kitchen.”

We take our places and begin our search.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” Stella calls from the bedroom.

“Something bad.” That’s about all I could come up with as I flew home. “Something the band could use against her. We know she’s been collecting secrets on the band, so if we could find something she might use against them, that would be great.”

Beryl pops her head out of the kitchen. “Gavin’s exact words when he called me were ‘take her down.’”

There’s silence for several minutes except the sounds of drawers opening and items being shifted around. Stella comes out of the bedroom with a big wobbly dildo, purple and veiny, and parades around like she’s holding her cock.

I collapse on the couch with laughter while Stella giggle-snorts and Beryl pauses ransacking the kitchen to tell us that’s not even half the size of the sex toys she’s accidentally found in the homes of the rich and famous.

“I’d rather find a fake dick than some of the real filth I come across,” she says.

Stella just cackles and goes back to the bedroom, still wagging her fake purple penis and shaking her hips for emphasis. My stomach hurts from laughing and it hits me—these are my friends.

Real friends. I lived half of my teens on the streets with people who were friends only if they could get something from me. So far in my twenties I’ve been operating in defense mode. Now I’m struck by how Beryl and Stella and Violet have embraced me.

I’m just about to get all mushy and distracted from our mission when Stella yells “Holy shit!” from the bathroom.

Beryl and I rush over to see what she’s found. Strewn across the counter are cosmetics, hair potions, a flat iron … and more than a dozen bottles of pills.