Page 82 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
“Louis recovered the photo you deleted,” Kate pressed, needing to get the truth out even if she had to be the one to say it. “The one that shows you putting the poison in Kennedy’s champagne bottle. You called Rebecca ‘Atilla the Hunter.’ You stubbed your toe on the barrel in the hidden passageway. You were the one who led me down to the wine cave.”
Marla paused, back hunched as she struggled to lift the canoe again, every line tense and waiting. And then she let it drop with a clang, making Kate jump.
“Why don’t you ask what you really want to ask,” Marla said, her voice wound tight. “I mean, unless you’re down here for some recreational rowing yourself.”
“Marla, did you…” The words came slow and reluctant, as if she didn’t want to let them out. “Did you poison Kennedy?”
Marla gave a little laugh, shaking her head. “Did I poison Kennedy? No. No! No.Youpoisoned Kennedy.Youdid. Of course you did! Isn’t it obvious? You’re the crazy ex-girlfriend. You’re the one with the overdue book and the broken engagement. You’re the one who made a scene over that simpering Loretta speech that Spencer read at the rehearsal dinner. You’re the one who was found with Kennedy’s body. You were supposed to be the one who stole her necklace and hid it in your suitcase just like the idiotic sister in your dumb book. You were blinded by a jealous rage. You couldn’t let her have him, of course not. And you knew how you were going to get your revenge, because you’d written the damn book on it. Poison in the champagne glass, just like Lucretia.”
“Youwerepoisoning the champagne in that photo,” Kate said. “That’s why you deleted it. You couldn’t let anyone see.”
“Well aren’t you the clever little fucking detective,” Marla said with a sneer. “Did you have to hallucinate Loretta to figure that out, or did you come up with it all on your own? I tried to do it in the storage room whenI first got here. I didn’t know they kept the good stuff under lock and key. Like they thought us regular folks would go hog wild or something if they left it out. Pompous assholes. God, I hated Rebecca. She was the worst one of all. So demanding, like her shit was made of gold.”
Kate shook her head at the cold bitterness in her friend’s tone. Marla had always been above it, or removed from it, but Kate had never heard her like this. So small and mean. “Marla…why?”
Marla kicked the canoe out of her path with a vicious thud, reaching for a nearby oar in a rack and flipping it toward Kate. “Why? You want to knowwhy? You know, when I met you, you were a fuckingbusinessmajor whose greatest ambition in life was maybe owning a bookshop someday. You’d never written a thing in your life! I let you into Nights of the Round Table because I feltsorryfor you. You were clearly out of your depth at UW, with no friends, and I thought maybe some of my shine would rub off on you.Iwas the one who started the writing salon everyone wanted to get into.Iwas the one who got her first book deal before graduation.Iwas the one who got written up inThe New York Times.Iwas the oneThe Seattle Timescalled “Seattle’s Rising Literary Star.” Me!”
Kate had backed up as far as she could go, bumping into the doorframe as Marla swiped the flat of the oar menacingly.
“And then Spencer hires you for some random, stupid ghostwriting project, and he’s only doing it because he wants to bone you so bad. And I figure, fine. It’s sellout work, it’s someone else’s story, it’s like writing cereal box copy. It’s not the real deal. It’s notart. And you write a couple more, fine. Good for you. Even those stupid books you wrote with Jake were just masturbation material for housewives and frat bros. You weren’t writing anything worth being proud of. But then you finally manage to crap out that detective story you’d always mooned over, and Spencer only bought it because he was so in love with you and hoping you’d finally notice him. It was never supposed to go anywhere! But suddenly, you’re on the bestseller list, you’ve got a movie deal in the works, you’re getting invited to all the alumni events, you’re winning the fucking awards. You got every good thing, and you deservednone of it!”
“But… you were winning awards, too,” Kate said. “And Spencer was buying your books, too.”
“Except hewasn’t,” Marla hissed, close enough that Kate could smell the wine on her breath. “Spencer called me into the Simon Says offices eight months ago to tell me that not only were they not going to buy my next book but they were pulling everything else out of print. They were going to remainder my books. Do you know what happens to a remaindered book? They fuckingshred it. Pulp it. Send it back to the earth, like it never was. Like you never even wrote anything at all.”
“Marla, I’m so sorry.” Kate took a deep breath. “I didn’t know. If I’d known—”
“You would have what?” Marla challenged. “Promised to do something and then completely bailed, leaving me holding the bag like you did for the alumni award ceremony?”
“So the lingering vibesarebad,” Kate said, remembering their conversation in the wine room.
“Of course they’re bad!” Marla shouted.
“But I don’t understand, you moved out here to the creative commune. You’re living the dream!”
“It’s not a dream,” Marla griped. “It’s a fuckingnightmare. Half the time there’s no running water, nobody knows how to cook a decent burger because they’re all pretend vegans, and every morning Derrick plays his awful ukulele music at sunrise. I only moved out here because I couldn’t afford the rent on my apartment anymore. Nobody lives on communes because theylikeit, they’re just on too many drugs to care! I only started going to the historical society because the museum served free hot dogs with admission on Wednesdays. I found out about Rebecca’s big plan for the island, and how nobody at the society wanted to touch her with a ten-foot pole. So, I volunteered, logging the blueprints, learning the layout of the house. And when it came time for the in-person inspection, Rebecca insisted it happen this weekend so she could tell her family to fuck off to their faces. Everybody at the society was only too happy to let me be the one to do it. I could finally get my revenge.”
Kate hugged her chest defensively. “Why poison Kennedy?”
“Because that bitch is the reason they scrapped all my work! I saw the blind item in thePub Dailyemail. Kennedy threw her family money around and thought she could call the shots at Simon Says. Like that walking ad forLegally Blondewould know athingabout real art. She was the one who made the decision to remainder my books, to shred my life’s work, because it was cheaper than paying to store them. She destroyed my fucking career. I couldn’t let her get away with it. And who better to kill her than the jealous ex? I just had to send you the invitation Rebecca sent me, make you think she was personally inviting you.”
“That wasyou?” Kate said in shock. But it finally explained why Rebecca hadn’t seemed to recognize her at the rehearsal dinner; because she hadn’t been the one to invite Kate.
“Well, I knew you sure as hell wouldn’t show up without a cause that actually servedyou,” Marla said. “It wouldn’t be enough to show up for anybody else. I learned that lesson at the awards dinner. But if a reclusive rich lady invited you under mysterious circumstances? I knew you’d eat that shit up.”
It was a classic case of right motive, wrong suspect. Kate had suspected Serena for the same reasons, but she’d missed the suspect right under her nose. She should have known it at the rehearsal dinner, but she’d been so distracted by everything else she’d made the wrong assumptions.
“So, you were going to kill Kennedy and frame me,” Kate said. “But you accidentally poisoned Rebecca Hempstead instead, when she stole Kennedy’s champagne.”
“That wasn’t my fault!” Marla said, hysterical. “It was her own fault, really. Basically suicide. They can’t blame me for that!”
Now that Kate really thought about it, it was clear she’d imagined most of the parallels. Rebecca hadn’t drowned after all, nobody was trying to frame Jake, and there wasn’t a party boat in sight. She’d been a victim of her own theory, making the most basic of investigator mistakes—jumping to conclusions without all of the evidence.
“That’s why you were genuinely surprised when Kennedy woke up,” Kate said, working through the evidence now that she had most of thepieces. “You thought you’d given her enough to kill her, but she never finished the bottle. So you tried to smother her instead.”
Marla gave her a wary sidelong look. “How do you know about that?”
“You came in through the secret entrance, but her cousin interrupted you,” Kate said, the pieces finally all fitting together. “So you tried again, during the ceremony. You started that fire in the storage room, not faulty wiring.”