Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“He’s an outright sleaze, if you prefer. But that’s conjecture. As is the reason I suspect that you and Majors refused to support each other’s accusations after Edinburgh. You were there together, after all. Surely each of you saw something that might help the other.”

Lisa had told me this herself: It’s not like she was on the witness stand. Without Majors, Lisa lacked a character witness. And with her physical evidence ruled out, there was no chance for a criminal proceeding. “Majors could have been a second voice, changed the your-word-against-his narrative, but she didn’t come to your aid. A year later she realized that McTavish stole her idea for his new book, and her only evidence came from that very same night. You were a witness to the conversation when Majors told McTavish her story. She turned to you, but by then you’d already signed your own NDA. Besides, you must have been too hurt to back up her story. Am I close?”

“I don’t blame her.” Lisa tossed a rock into the pit, watched it disappear into the dark. I didn’t hear it hit the bottom, which made my stomach quiver. “She didn’t have much of a choice. They would have ruined her career. And I would have had to break my NDA to back her up. But it hurt. So I guess I chose not to help her too. The number of times I’ve seen it.” She shook her head. “The world can’t stomach two strong successful women in the same place, so we have to hate each other, we have to compete. That’s how people like Wyatt designed it. I’ve got nothing against her, I just . . . let Wyatt and Henry win. Even if I didn’t know that was what I was doing at the time.” Another rock sailed into the abyss.

“That’s the key to how I knew,” I said. “Wyatt wouldn’t have taken losing your new book to a new publisher too easily. And McTavish was a bitter soul. So they cooked up a stunt. Of course, your new publisher would have been delighted to see the Henry McTavish quote on the cover, even with the caveat that you weren’t to see it before this trip. I thought at first that you were overwhelmed when you saw the quote, but you weren’t: you were horrified. Because that’s the exact word Henry used in a message he sent you. Simone’s his old assistant, and Royce is a perv, but I heard the same word from both of them. Firecracker. So by putting that word on something that was supposed to be yours, they marked it. Forever. A humiliation only you would know.”

“This all sounds like a pretty good reason to kill both of them,” Lisa said. “You still have no reason to believe me, so why do you?”

“I figure seeing the quote was the final straw. You marched into McTavish’s room and told him you didn’t care about the NDA and that you were done keeping his secrets. He wrote out a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, tried to pay you off, the same as he did before, but you burned it in front of him. The world’s changed: you hoped people might listen to you this time. You were done. Was that when he grabbed you?”

Lisa nodded. “Yeah.”

I sighed. “I’m disappointed. I thought we had a bit of truth-telling going on. Why bother lying?”

Lisa swallowed thickly. She’d stopped throwing rocks into the hole but was peering down it like jumping in was a viable way to get out of the conversation.

I kept on. “Henry didn’t grab you. He was crippled down his left side; his left hand was always clutching his cane. If he was going to reach out and grab you, he would have done it with his right hand, so if you were in front of him, which you’d have to be to hit him in the nose, he would have grabbed your left side. Your bruise is on the wrong arm.”

Lisa sucked her teeth.

“It’s okay,” I continued. “This isn’t an accusation, I’m just trying to get all the pieces on the board. You were always going to hit McTavish, that’s why you went there. You headbutted him straight in the nose. Partly because it felt good, and partly because you could pocket a bloody tissue. You gave yourself the bruise so you could claim it was self-defense if McTavish dared to pursue the injury, but that was just insurance: you knew he’d stay quiet, given what you were talking about. What you really wanted was the tissue. Well, the blood on it, anyway. Here’s where it gets tricky.”

Lisa laughed, but it sounded shaky. “Why would I want a bloody tissue?”