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Liam shook his head.
Josie said, “What about Saturday morning between six and eight?”
“Home until seven thirty. That’s when I left for the studio.”
Noah said, “Yesterday. Between seven forty-five and ninea.m.?”
“I was home until eight fifteen. I was supposed to leave the house at seven thirty, like always, but I was upset and frustrated. I considered not coming in at all. I was late. I got here at eight forty-five-ish.”
Josie said, “Did Claudia ever mention a man named Archie Gamble?”
“No,” Liam replied easily.
On her phone, Josie pulled up the driver’s license photo of Gamble and showed it to Liam. “Have you ever seen or met this man?”
Liam took a few seconds to study the photo before answering, “No. Who is he?”
Josie ignored his question and pocketed her phone. “Did Claudia ever tell you that she thought someone was following her?”
His eyes widened. “What? No. Was she?”
“We believe so,” Noah. “Mr. Flint, you said that Claudia was lying about a lot of things. Was there anything else besides show-related things?”
He turned away from them, pacing slowly in a small circle. When he made no move to answer the question, Noah said, “I know you’re concerned about Claudia’s reputation. That’s admirable, but I can assure you that no damage to her reputation is worth someone’s life. Her killer is still out there. He’s taken three lives already within five days. If you know anything that might help us, even if you’re not sure whether or not it will help, we need to hear it.”
Liam stopped walking. His eyes stayed glued to his feet. “The thing is, I don’t know what the lie was—Claudia would never tell me—but whatever it was, it was huge.”
“What do you mean?” Josie said.
Finally, he looked at her. “Claudia was hiding something. A few months ago, after the Trudy thing, I noticed she was upset about something. At our lunches, she was distracted. A few times here at the studio, I noticed her getting teared up and trying to keep it from Beau and the staff, although that wasn’t hard since no one really paid attention to her. I asked her what was bothering her a few times. She denied anything but I told her, ‘denial might work with Beau, but I know you. Just tell me what’s wrong.’”
Noah said, “What did she tell you?”
He adjusted his glasses. “She broke down crying. She said that she couldn’t ever tell me. I told her she could tell me anything and I would always love her. No matter what. All she would say was that years ago, she’d done something terrible and only recently did she realize the harm it had caused. I tried to console her, but she said that what she had done was unforgivable. I told her it was hard for me to imagine her doing something terrible. She was genuinely the best person I ever knew. She said she wished she could take it back and that no one could ever know about it. It would destroy her life.”
“But she wouldn’t tell you what it was?” asked Josie.
He shook his head. “I tried and tried. I thought if she just told me, she’d feel better. Or maybe we could work through it together. After a while, she asked me to drop it. She said she had made her peace with it. I had to let it go. But I think it haunted her.”
Noah said, “Do you have any idea what it was? Could you speculate?”
“I have no idea,” Liam answered. “I spent weeks trying to come up with a theory. I couldn’t. There’s literally nothing I can imagine her doing that would be so bad. I just can’t imagine what would be unforgivable in her mind.”
Josie asked, “Did you ever ask her if Beau knew about it?”
“She’d never give me a straight answer. She would just say, ‘I don’t want to talk about this anymore.’ I respected her wishes. I honestly thought that one day she would feel comfortable talking about it. But months passed and her mood returned to normal and since she was happy, I didn’t push the issue. I planned to ask her again one day but then she was murdered.”
A few months ago, the Collinses had signed a huge contract to take their show national. A few months ago, Claudia had found out that her husband had sabotaged her career goals. A few months ago, she had taken thirty thousand dollars in cash out of a bank account to donate to a charity—a charity that had no record of such a donation. A few months ago, Archie Gamble had started following her.
None of these things seemed related to one another at all.
Before she could ask Liam more questions, Josie’s phone rang. She fished it out of her pocket. It was Beau Collins.
Liam’s face paled. “You don’t think her murder is related to whatever she was hiding, do you?”
Josie swiped answer. “Quinn.”
Beau Collins’s voice announced, “I need you to come back to the studio right now.”
