"Nothing. Just had to readjust. My foot was falling asleep," Raley said.
My body unclenched, and I let out a long but hushed sigh of relief. They hadn't spotted me. All was good.
The couch springs squeaked, and I prayed they weren't any closer together than before. So all was almost good.
I reached the chair where his jacket hung. Sam was right. There was no way to ease it over without Mom and Raley seeing it move. While they were pretty engrossed in each other, even they would notice a floating blazer.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and texted Sam.
make a distraction now
Hours seemed to tick by, although it was probably just seconds, and then I heard a crash and a feeble cry.
"What was that?" Raley asked, and the sofa springs made more noise.
"Help me," Sam shouted. "I can't get up."
I smacked my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing, certain Mom and Raley heard me. But they were too busy jumping up and running out of the room.
"Hartley? Sam?" Mom cried out.
Before I got a chance to grab the jacket, my phone vibrated in my hand. Sam sent a selfie of her sprawled out on the kitchen floor, her left leg bent at the knee, a chair lying on the floor beside her, and her giving me a grin.
I stifled a laugh and yanked the jacket down. Feeling inside the pockets, I hoped I wouldn't find anything I couldn't unsee. Like a condom he'd conveniently put in his pocket before coming over to my mom's house. Ick.
Luckily my fingers connected not with the proof my mother was actually dating but with the paper edges of a small notebook. Bingo.
I pulled it out, excited butterflies in my stomach, and quickly flipped through the pages as I listened to Mom and Raley attempting to help Sam in the other room.
I turned to the last page he had written on and couldn't decipher a word of it. Was it English? Had he taken penmanship in school?
Without time to figure it out, I turned on my camera and snapped photos. The pages were dated, so I went back three of them until the day before Connor died.
Mom and Raley were saying something, but they were still far enough off that I couldn't make it out, especially over the screams coming from the television.
I shoved the notebook back into the jacket pocket and stood up. I flung the jacket back to where it had been, and the notebook fell out onto the cushion. Crap.
"No, I'm fine. Really. I don't need an ambulance," Sam shouted.
I picked up the book, opened the jacket, and slid it into the interior pocket. Please stay put.
My heart leapt into my throat as I heard footsteps.
I took off and skidded back toward the stairs, hopefully looking like I'd just run down them. I was certain I was a sweating, wide-eyed, terrified mess when Raley rounded the corner with Mom and Sam behind him.
"What's going on? I heard shouting," I said and hoped my breathlessness could be explained by running down the stairs due to my best friend's near death experience.
Mom patted my shoulder. "It was nothing. Sam just slipped."
She and Raley went back to the sofa, and she said to him, "I may need to change my floor cleaner."
Sam grabbed my arm and whispered, "Did you get a look?"
I nodded. "Come on."
We ran back to my room and jumped onto my bed, nearly sending my laptop flying.
"You didn't actually get hurt, right?" I asked as we huddled over my phone.
"No. I kicked the legs out from under the chair. Your mom looked scared that I'd broken all of my bones though."
"Did she crush you in a hug when she realized you'd live?" I asked.
Sam chuckled and said, "No, but she gave me a normal one."
Nice to know SMother saved that vise grip for her daughter.
"What does it say?" Sam squinted at the picture of Raley's notebook page on my screen.
"I'm not sure." The notes were written in cursive, but it was sloppy enough that I had a hard time deciphering the letters. Not to mention it seemed to be written in some sort of shorthand.
"I think that's a B." Sam cocked her head to the side. "Or a P."
I blew out a sigh. This was going to take longer than I thought.
"Is that an S?" Sam squinted. "Yeah, an S and an L."
"Maybe?" I said.
She straightened up. "Initials!" She stabbed a finger at the pair of letters. S.L. "That must be Sophia Larson."
"Yes!" I nodded. "Okay, S.L. in RR at 10:45," I read off the page. "What's RR?"
Sam scrunched up her nose a second before answering. "Oh! Restroom. Remember, Sophia said she was in the ladies' room when Connor died."
"That's right! So, Connor must have been killed around 10:45." Okay, now we were getting some real info. I glanced down at the next lines. "2 ew." I looked up. "What does that mean? Two ews? Too gross?"
We thought about that a beat before Sam perked up. "Raley likes acronyms. Not ew, E.W. Eyewitness."
"You are brilliant."
"Thank you." She did a mock bow before pointing to the line in the screen again. "There were two eyewitnesses to Sophia going to the bathroom!"
"Okay, so we know that Sophia's story checks out."
"At least about her peeing," Sam cautioned.
"And we know that Raley likes acronyms and initials." At least that got us somewhere. I flipped to the photo of the next page in Raley's notebook. "Here's another E.W." I pointed down to a line that read: Ew argument. 10:15. CS and JP.
"Argument," Sam said, perking up. "Look, CS. That must be Connor Simon."
"Eyewitness argument Connor Simon and JP." I looked at Sam. "Does that mean there was a witness who saw an argument between Connor and someone with the initials JP?"
"At 10:15. That's only half an hour before he died," Sam said. "Pretty coincidental timing."
I nodded. "Raley must have thought so to write it down."
"JP," Sam said, mulling the letters over. "You know who that has to be, right?"
"Pruit!" I said, putting it together.
Sam nodded. "The manager who supposedly had a hand in everything Connor did. Jason Pruit."
I glanced down at the notes again. Clearly Pruit was on Raley's radar.
Which made me wonder, had Simon's manager not only had a hand in everything in his life…but also his death?
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, Sam and I woke up early, determined to find out what, exactly, Connor and his manager had argued about just before his death. We'd poured over the rest of Raley's notes, and while I gave the detective credit that it appeared he had thought to question Pruit about the argument, he hadn't noted much about the outcome of that interrogation. Only that Pruit claimed to have been on the other side of the con, checking on something at the Peak Games booth for Connor, at the time Connor had died.
Though claimed and could prove were two different things.
So, Monday morning Sam and I sat in my room as I put my phone on speaker and punched in the phone number that Chase had found the day before for the manager's office. Four rings in I was starting to worry that maybe the offices were closed that day for the long weekend, when an older woman finally answered.