Page 49 of What They'll Say About Us

"That's great."

"But Detective Cabot didn't follow up with you about that. Why wouldn't he?"

"Another good question."

"I have many questions," Morgan said. "Another one is why didn't anyone report Paige missing to the police?"

"Sloane said the first night she thought Paige was with Nate. I guess she didn't realize he'd already gone out of town. On Saturday night, she checked in with Carrie because she was worried. Carrie told her that Paige had gone away with someone, but she didn't know who."

"Carrie didn't mention that in her interview with Cabot." Morgan thought for a moment. "But who would Paige have gone away with? Her boyfriend was out of town. Hale was with his wife on Friday night, so she wasn't with him, at least not during the time he was at dinner."

"Maybe they were supposed to go away on Saturday," I suggested, my mind racing to put the pieces together in a way that made sense. "Maybe she was spiraling about it and called him and asked him to meet her at the lake. They argued. He killed her. He goes home. And no one knows anything until her body shows up on Sunday morning."

"That's possible," Morgan said slowly. "Is there anyone else she could have been supposed to go away with?"

My mind turned to Liam. What had been his plan that weekend? I hadn't seen him on Saturday, but I couldn't remember why.

"What are you thinking, Tessa?" Morgan asked.

"I was thinking about where Liam was that weekend, that Saturday. I think there was a music festival downtown." I nodded as the memory came back. "It was an all-day thing with different bands on Saturday and Sunday. He got a room downtown. He was going with a group of friends. But I didn't want to go because I didn't really like some of the people in that group or the music acts. I don't like music festivals in general, too much standing around, and always so crowded. But Liam was really into it, so he went without me."

"Are you suggesting that Paige was supposed to be a part of that?"

"Well, he never said she was, but like I've said before, Liam and I were not in a great place. I wasn't asking him a lot of questions about what he was doing."

"What did you do that Saturday? I know you were home alone on Friday night. What about Saturday? It doesn't sound like there was a rehearsal."

"There wasn't, which was kind of weird because we were two weeks away from opening, but Hale had said he thought we were getting stale, to take the weekend off, and clear our heads."

"And you did what?"

"My aunt took me to lunch, and we went shopping. She knew I was down about my understudy role and not getting along with Liam, so I spent most of the day with her, and then I was back in my apartment alone, feeling a little sorry for myself, as I recall," I added with a small smile. "I seemed to do a lot of that back then."

"How did you hear about Paige?"

"I was getting coffee Sunday morning, and people were talking about a body getting pulled out of the lake, and someone said it was Paige. I was shocked. I didn't believe it at first. I called Sloane, but she didn't answer. I guess she was busy trying to help find Paige's family members. I called Liam. He was at the festival. It was super loud. He said he'd come over when he got back."

"And did he? What was his mood?"

I drew in a breath. "He came over around six. We hugged each other. He'd heard more about it since the first time I'd spoken to him, and our theater group had been texting all day, so we had more information, but not a lot. It was a really sad night." I paused. "I've been so focused on the details of Paige's actual death that I hadn't really thought about all that. We need to organize everything we discussed so we can present it to Detective Barclay in a coherent manner. We have to make him see how many holes there were in the investigation."

"And let him know about a relationship between Hale and Cabot."

"Definitely. That might be the most damning information we have." I frowned. "We haven't talked about Paige's family. Was there an interview with Ray?"

"Another short one. Ray said he hadn't spoken to his sister in a few days. She was pissed at him because he'd failed a class and gotten put on probation, so they weren't talking much. He also said his sister was obsessed with the play, so even if he had wanted to speak to her, he doubted she would have answered the phone. No one else in the family had spoken to Paige in probably a week. She wasn't talking to any of them about any of her problems."

"I don't know how things went so bad for her so fast. I thought she was living the dream," I murmured, thinking about how badly I'd misjudged Paige, how I'd only seen her through jealous eyes, and what I'd seen hadn't even been close to accurate.

"No one really knows what's going on in someone's life, even when they're close to them. Everyone has a secret," Morgan said. "We find that out in every crime case we follow."

"And we don't know all of Paige's secrets yet. When we do, that's when we'll be able to figure out who killed her. Thanks for doing all this work, Morgan. It's super helpful, and you also got us lunch."

"No big deal. What are you going to do next?"

"After I finish eating, I want to go next door and see if I can talk to Nate again, or maybe Jay. Was he mentioned in the police report?"

Morgan shook her head. "I don't remember seeing his name. But there was a note that no other statements from students in the cast and crew had provided useful information, so maybe he was grouped up in that comment."