Nevada postage-stamp towns. Her explanation for being here sounded about half reasonable. What else? Only two other known facts I could think of offhand that didn’t fit their narrative.
I shuttled a look between the two of them. “What about that note demanding a million dollars?”
Danya glanced at Shanna, then back at me. “I found it in the mailbox. That’s all I know about it.”
“Except by then Jo-X was in your garage.”
“I didn’t know that. I mean we didn’t know anything about Jo-X being there, or even being dead. Everyone thought he was just missing, which, of course, he was. The note didn’t make any sense, so we thought it must be kids fooling around.”
“You should go back to Reno, talk to your father. It’s likely that note would get you off the hook for anything having to do with Jo-X.”
Danya’s eyes narrowed. “Think so, huh? Bastard turns up in Danya Fuller’s garage, except her father’s name is Fairchild, and this happens a month after Josie Fairchild signs his guest book? And Danya and Josie are half sisters? Who’s gonna think that’s a coincidence? That note wouldn’t mean I’m innocent. The police might even think I wrote it or had someone write it for me.”
“Why would you do that?”
She stared at me like my hair was on fire. “I didn’t. So how would I know why anyone would think I wrote it, other than cops are suspicious and they want to solve murders.”
That note was nothing but trouble. It meant someone else was in the game. Danya or Shanna could have written it, but that would mean they knew about Jo-X in the garage. But why put him there in the first place? Why not get rid of him? And if Jo-X’s murderer wrote the note, why would he think the girls would pay $1,000,000 instead of calling the police and reporting the body? The note-writer must’ve thought they would pay, or might, but why? No answers to any of that, which brought me to the second thing that didn’t fit the narrative.
“Josie is one thing. She might even be a motive for murder.” I looked at Shanna. “Now tell me why you became Celine.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THERE ARE MOMENTS of dead silence in the world, when you can hear your heartbeat, worms tunneling underground, clouds floating by, a leaky faucet in a neighbor’s house. This was one of those.
Finally Danya said, “You called her Celine at that bank in Reno. Why would you do that? Where did you come up with a mega-bizarro thing like that?”
Mega-bizarro. I filed that away for future use. You never know when you might want to sound twelve years old.
“You look at Celine on TV then at Shanna and their figures and heights are the same.” I wanted to see how that absurdity would play before hitting them with something more concrete.
“Their figures?”
“Boobs, if you want to get technical.”
Danya gave me an incredulous look. “You’re a tit expert?”
“Sort of. Yeah.”
“That’s beyond ridiculous. Kind of nasty, too. And Celine is black, Shanna is white.”
“No argument with any of that, including my being nasty.”
“Shanna isn’t Celine. That’s totally ludicrous.”
“Would be, if it weren’t true. But luckily there’s more.” I pulled out my cell phone. I’d uploaded the two videos from the flash drive. I got a video going and held it out to the girls.
The video was silent. Danya and Shanna stared at it in shock as someone approached Shanna in a roadside diner and handed her a menu. Shanna was wearing shorts and a yellow halter top.
The video lasted less than ten seconds. When it ended, I said, “Want to see it again?”
“It was that bitch waitress,” Shanna said. Danya put an arm around Shanna’s shoulders.
I let that tender moment run for a moment, let them consider the implications of what they’d just seen. Then I said, “Okay, there’s no sound so how about you narrate this one for me.” I played the first video, the one with Shanna in that same yellow halter walking toward the helicopter with a guy in a flight suit.
“Well, shit,” Shanna said when the clip ended. She dropped her head and her shoulders sagged. Then she sort of shook herself and said, “Wait. How does any of that mean I’m Celine?”
“‘Celine’ was written on the flash drive.”
“Yeah? So?”
Yeah, Mort. So?
“What if the flash drive belonged to Celine?” Danya said. “She might’ve written her name on it.”
I looked at Shanna. “That doesn’t explain why you’re in the video, or the droopy, defeated look you had when you saw it just now.”
“I’m tired. I get all droopy when I’m tired.”
“That’s unfortunate. Now guess where I found that video.”
“In a box of Wheaties.”
“Close, but wrong. It was in Jo-X’s pocket when I found him in your garage.”
They both stared at me.
“Consider the myriad implications,” I said to Shanna. “Dead, disgusting rapper in your garage, video of you in his pocket, the name Celine on the flash drive, helicopter pilot who can probably be identified as Jo-X by experts. Guy had to get a pilot’s license somewhere. You are in this up to your eyeballs. Or would be if
