Page 55 of What They'll Say About Us

"Maybe not if the criminals were also playing chess."

"Maybe true crime podcasters shouldn't leap to conclusions. Good investigators follow facts. They don't speculate."

Despite his words, I knew we wouldn't be making this trip if he didn't feel there was something to find. "Do you think he'll tell you the truth?"

"Expose misconduct, say he screwed up in front of you?" Barclay asked cynically. "No. But he might reveal something that will be helpful."

"Let's say I wasn't there. Would that make a difference? Wouldn't he be just as concerned about you going after him and exposing his misconduct?"

"Possibly. Let's wait and see what he says. In the meantime, tell me about you and Paige. I've read mixed reports about your friendship. I know you were rivals. What don't I know?"

That felt like a loaded question. But if I opened up, maybe he'd start to trust me. "Paige and I were a lot alike. We were passionate about acting. We wanted to be stars, and we liked the lights of center stage."

"Where there was only room for one star."

"And it was Paige," I admitted. "I accused her of flirting with Hale to get the part. Actually, I didn't accuse her; I just spread that rumor about her."

"Nice," he said dryly.

"I wasn't particularly nice back then. I was jealous and petty, and when she got the part, I felt like everything I'd been working for my entire college career was gone. I'd failed. I wasn't going to star in the spring production. I wasn't going to get reviews and accolades and maybe auditions with talent agents coming to the show. That was going to be Paige. And I was an emotional twenty-one-year-old girl who didn't know how to handle failure."

"Because you never failed, I'm guessing. A pretty girl like you probably got what she wanted most of the time."

I couldn't really take his words as a compliment with his underlying tone of contempt. "I did use my looks to get what I wanted. It sometimes felt like the only thing I had was my looks. I wasn't as smart as other people. I wasn't even sure I was that good of an actress. I was afraid I was going to be more like my mom than my aunt."

"What does that mean?"

"My Aunt Vivienne was the star of the family, and her sister, my mother, could never get out of her shadow. My mom raised me to be a fighter, to do whatever it took to get ahead. And when Paige won the part, I felt like I was just like my mom, second best. And no one wants to be second best. It leads to a lifetime of disappointment. I saw that firsthand with my mom. I know that doesn't excuse the rumors I spread, but the overwhelming feeling of failure drove my actions. By implying she didn't win the part fairly, I could still feel like I was the best."

"That's remarkably honest," he commented. "But it also begs the question, did your overwhelming need to get that part drive you to kill Paige?"

I sat up straight in my seat, realizing I'd led him to exactly that conclusion. "No, it didn't. And if I had killed her, do you think I'd be trying to prove her death wasn't an accident?"

"I spoke to Alina MacIntyre," he said, not answering my question. "Paige's sister told me she always suspected you had something to do with what happened. That's why she approached you publicly at the convention, why she made her claims in front of hundreds of witnesses, so that you couldn't turn her down in private. You would be forced to do as she asked, forced to help her get the case reopened, and you'd be forced to admit what you'd done. Or we'd figure out you were involved once we started looking into things again."

My stomach churned at his words. "I'm not surprised by what she told you. I saw the dislike in her eyes when she first approached me. But Alina is wrong. I didn't like Paige, but I didn't kill her. Someone else did."

"And you think that someone else is Hale?"

"Why else would Detective Cabot let him off the hook so easily?"

"Maybe he didn't want to see his friend's reputation ruined if it came out that he slept with a student."

"That still doesn't sound like what the lead detective should have focused on. You told me a good investigator follows the facts, and a college girl threatening to reveal a sexual relationship between herself and her professor is a good motive for murder. Do you disagree?"

"No. That's why we're going to talk to him."

"You were there the day Paige was found, weren't you?"

"Yes. I was one of several officers called to the scene."

"What did you see?"

As I glanced at him, I saw his jaw tighten. "Something no one would ever want to see," he returned. "An image I couldn't forget for a very long time." He paused, then added, "There was no blood or marks on her face. Paige looked like she was asleep with her hair flowing out behind her. But when you looked closer, when she was turned over, the jagged gash at the back of her head and the blood matting those strands told a different story."

I shivered at his words, seeing Paige floating lifeless in the lake, a small figure in a huge body of water. And she would become just a statistic, a victim of a tragic accident, a sad story of a drunken college girl who stumbled and lost her life. I couldn't believe that was her truth. "Did you ever doubt Cabot's conclusion?"

"I had no reason to. Like I said, he was a good detective. And now I want to make sure he got it right. Because his reputation doesn't deserve to take a hit unless it's warranted. So don't think I'm going to protect him or cover for him. If he did something wrong, I won't dismiss it."