Page 32 of She Doesn't Have a Clue

“Kate,” he said, and the look he gave her was so… sohopeful, it made something sick lurch inside her. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“I’ve been looking all over foryou,” Kate said, remembering what she’d been doing there before Mrs. Lieman’s attack. “Where have you been?”

“Don’t you dare,” Mrs. Lieman said, bustling between them. “Don’t you even look at my son, or talk to him, or breathe the same air as him!”

“Mom,” Spencer said, fiddling with his glasses. “Please stop. We can hear you all the way downstairs.”

“You are making a bit of a scene, Marge,” Mr. Lieman said, thoughhe didn’t seem to be able to meet the small woman’s gaze, either. “Your blood sugar’s running low, probably.”

“I’ll make any kind of scene I want, if it saves my son falling for her mind games again,” Mrs. Lieman huffed.

“There’s breakfast downstairs,” Kate said weakly. “Scones, coffee. And mimosas.”

It was the promise of booze that finally kicked Frank Lieman into action. His grip on Mrs. Lieman’s arm tightened, the light coming on in his eyes as he dragged her toward the stairs. “Come on, Marge, let’s get you some eggs and coffee and leave the kids to work out their business in peace.”

“I will not leave him alone withher,” Mrs. Lieman said, eyes bulging. “You let go of me this instant, Frank!”

“What’s he gonna do, Margey? Ask her to marry him? Move in with her? They did all that already. What harm is one little chat gonna do?”

“Your mother is in high form today,” Kate muttered while Mrs. Lieman stared bloody murder at the two of them as her husband towed her down the stairs.

Spencer turned to Kate, his eyes dark and serious. “Is that my shirt?”

It was not the first question Kate expected from Spencer, nor was she expecting the intensity of the look he gave her as his eyes swept down the front of her shirt, reminding her how soaked through it still was.

“I need to change,” she said abruptly, heading up the stairs toward the fourth floor.

“Itismy shirt, isn’t it?” Spencer said, trailing after her.

“No, it’s not,” Kate said, tugging on the bottom to look at it. “This is mine. The Turkey Trot run we did our first Thanksgiving together.”

“You don’t remember?” Spencer said. “You woke up with food poisoning and begged me to run the race so you could get the shirt? Because you’d seen the design and thought a turkey wearing gold hot pants was the funniest thing you’d ever seen?”

“Oh,” Kate said, frowning. Now that Spencer mentioned it, that sounded… vaguely familiar. “Do you want it back?”

“No, it’s fine,” Spencer said, in that tone that always meant itwasn’tfine and she was going to hear about it in little muttered asides until the day she died.

“You can have it back,” she said, finding the pull cord with her face. She blinked in surprise and grabbed it. “I need to change into some regular clothes anyway. Or wedding clothes, I guess.”

“Yeah, wedding clothes,” Spencer said vaguely. But then he grabbed her by the arm, stopping her. “Wait! I mean…”

He looked terrified, like she might strip down right there in front of him, glasses flashing as a burst of lightning illuminated the vampire-killer stained-glass window at the end of the hall.

“Spencer, it’s fine,” she said, turning away so he wouldn’t see her rolling her eyes as she pulled the attic stairs down. Without the generator powering the lights, the attic was pitch black, not even a small window to light the interior. She should have grabbed that flashlight from Mrs. Lieman while the woman was waving it in her face. The ladder swayed slightly as she reached the top.

“What are you doing?” she asked Spencer as he mounted the bottom stair.

“I’m… going up the ladder?” he said, equally surprised.

“Okay, but… why?”

“Well, that’s where you’re going, isn’t it? I’m just following you.”

“You can’t do that!” she said hastily. The attic was small, and still smelled faintly of Jake. Plus, there was the matter of her murder wall, and Kennedy’s poisoning. And Spencer being prime suspect number one, at least in Jake’s eyes. “If you come up we’ll be bumping into each other. Inappropriately.”

“You don’t seem to mind bumping into Jake up there,” Spencer muttered as Kate felt her way across the room. Though Kate wondered if you could call it a mutter when it was loud enough that anybody on the floor could hear. “So, what’s the deal with you two, anyway? Are you… dating?”

He said the word like anybody else would say “murdering children.”