Page 32 of I Will Ruin You

But I did have one idea.

The boat.

I could sell the boat. I didn’t know what it was worth, exactly, but surely it would bring ten grand. I’d kept it in good shape. The fifty-horsepower outboard was well maintained. I had all the service receipts. I could do some quick research on its value, post ads online. But how quickly could I sell it? I had a deadline that was only four days away.

I heard a car pull into the driveway.

Bonnie.

I’d been so preoccupied I’d forgotten to go for Rachel. I came charging out the front door before Bonnie had her seat belt unbuckled. She had the door half open as I raised a hand and walked past.

“Hey, hold up,” she said.

“Just going for Rach.”

“I’m sorry. I got your text and never got back to you. I had a bitch of a day.”

She looked, as she sometimes liked to say of me when I’d had a rough one, like she’d been ridden hard and put away wet. Her face sagged, her eyes were dark. I opened the door the rest of the way for her. Getting out seemed to take every ounce of strength she had.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Allison.”

It was all she had to say. I knew the backstory.

“Her mother died. Overdose. Marta came to the school. We had to get the girl’s aunt to come down from Hartford.”

“Oh honey, I’m so sorry.” I took her into my arms.

She shook her head slowly. “What some of these kids have to deal with. Fuck.”

“I know,” I said.

She gave me an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. Your text. First day back. How’d it go?”

I couldn’t, for a moment, recall why I’d texted her. It had been about the LeDrews’ decision to sue me. If there was any upside to being blackmailed, it had made me forget Mark LeDrew’s parents considered me somehow culpable in the death of their son.

“Great,” I said. “Just great. I just wanted to let you know everything went just fine.”

Fifteen

The bar was called, quite simply, Jim’s, and it was the bar where Cherise Fowler was last seen alive.

Marta Harper was attempting to track her movements in the hours, even days, before her death in the hopes of finding out where she bought the fentanyl—and God knows what other drugs in her system—that had killed her.

She went up to the bar, flashed her badge to the portly man behind the counter with the towel thrown over his shoulder, just like a bartender in the movies would do it, and said, “Need to ask you a few questions.”

“Sure,” he said.

“You here last night?”

“Yeah, I was on. I’m always on. I stand here and serve drinks all day and all night, go home and sleep for five hours, and then come back and do it all over again. Stop me if I’m making you jealous. This about that girl what died in the alley?”

“Yeah. You Jim?”

“I’m Jim.”

Marta’s eyebrows went up. “The Jim?”