Inflated Ego novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: Bruise
I didn't knock.
I had no right to, and I didn't care.
Margot's door was on the latch, and I found her standing in her kitchen at nine that night in a grey sweater, with a broom.
The lemons were gone.
The floor was spotless.
She looked up, and the broom stopped moving.
"You saw VanBuskirk," she said.
"She showed me your card at 2:14."
Margot let the broom fall.
It struck the tile with a flat clatter and neither of us moved to pick it up.
"I can explain."
"Then do it."
She pulled out a chair and sat, and gripped the table edge with both hands.
"I left your place because Dale sent me a message at two," she said. "He said he'd found something in the books and he was at the office. He said I needed to see it before my grandfather did."
"At two in the morning."
"Dale did everything at strange hours. I went."
"And?"
"And I went in through the atrium, and I called his name, and he didn't answer."
Her voice was thin.
"I saw him on the floor, Mason. He was already dead. I ran."
"You ran."
"I panicked. I thought, if I call the police they'll ask why I was there at two in the morning."
"They'd ask why a message from a dead man is on my phone. I couldn't."
It was a neat story.
It was too neat.
It had one hole in it, the size of a green earring, and I sat down across from her and said nothing about it.
"Why tell VanBuskirk I was with you?" I asked.
"Because I was afraid she'd find your name on that card and think the worst."
"And that wasn't a lie?"
"It was the smallest lie I could think of."
She was crying without sound.
I reached across the table and took her hand.
Her sleeve rode up an inch, and I saw her wrist.
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