“Everything happens for a reason, Sunny.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does. And you know what else? I should thank Leila Donnelly.”
I stared at her. “Are you drunk?”
“No. I’m just seeing myself. Realistically, for once. And what I truly am…is too old for this shit.”
I took her by both shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Listen to me,” I said. “I’m going to get us an Uber. We’re going back to your hotel, and you’re going to eat a nice meal and get a good night’s sleep. And then tomorrow morning, I’ll come by and you can tell me whether or not you still feel the same about yourself, your life, and Leila fucking Donnelly.”
She sighed.
“Please.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ve put in a lot of hard and dangerous workfor you, Melanie Joan Hall. It’s the least you could do for me in return.”
She took a long, deep breath, in and out. It reminded me of the yogic breathing Natalie Blythe had done the previous afternoon.
“I’ll do it,” she said, “if you join me for dinner.”
“Of course,” I said.
We Ubered back to the Ritz-Carlton and I went up to MelanieJoan’s suite with her. Together, we called Tony, and Melanie Joan promised him, with Harold and me as her witnesses, that she would not attempt to escape again.
We ordered up steaks and Caesar salad and champagne from room service, and the three of us talked about our favorite TV series and the brutal summer weather and the best restaurants in Boston and L.A. and London and New York. Melanie Joan and I reminisced about the case that first brought us together—that deranged, homicidal ex of hers—and how our lives had changed since then. We talked about Richie and Rosie and Spike and my parents and Harold’s grandson and cooking and music and politics and Broadway shows. We talked about anything and everything in the world and in our lives—except for where Melanie Joan had been during the past few hours.
I was aware of that omission, but it didn’t seem to matter. Not until the next morning, when I was back at my loft and in bed with Rosie and I was awakened yet again by a phone call from Tony Gault. “Can you and Spike come to Connecticut with me?” he said as I struggled to open my eyes.
“Why?” I said.
“State Police want to question us.”
I said it again.“Why?”
“Leila Donnelly has been murdered. And as far as I can tell, Melanie Joan is a suspect.”
Thirty-one
“Explain to me why you and Melanie Joan Hall decided to drive to Ms. Donnelly’s house,” said the detective. I was in the State Police barracks in Westbrook, which was about an hour away from Union. The detective’s name was Gleason, and he’d been questioning me for a while. He looked like a younger Larry David, but he had a rich baritone voice and he wasn’t at all funny, which made for a sort of cognitive dissonance. I wasn’t enjoying our interaction. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d talked to a police officer when I was the one answering the questions, and I much preferred it the other way around.
I’d yet to see Melanie Joan, who’d come to Westbrook separately from Tony, Spike, and me. She’d driven in with her chauffeur, Charles. From what I’d been able to gather from Gleason, both Charles and Melanie Joan were persons ofinterest in the murder of Leila, who had been found shot to death yesterday, in her own home, with her own gun, not long after I’d spoken to her on the phone.
“We wanted to talk to Book Babe,” I told Detective Gleason.
“And who is that?”
It was the third time he’d asked me this. I was starting to get annoyed. “The screen name of a reviewer on a website called ReadAnon,” I said. “Book Babe had trashed Melanie Joan’s memoir, and Melanie Joan wanted to apologize, in person, for retaliating with a nasty comment.”
“I saw a screenshot of that comment. It was more than nasty.”
I sighed heavily. “Anyway, as I’ve already explained, we didn’t know that Book Babe and Leila Donnelly were the same person until she answered the door.”
“How did you get the address?”
“Source of mine.”
