Page 75 of 2 Sisters Murder Investigations

Marshall’s lip curled into a mean sneer.

“Becausethat’swhere all the bodies are,” Baby said.

CHAPTER87

BABY COULD SEE ITall flashing in Su Lim Marshall’s eyes.

The high-school ex-boyfriend in South Korea, arrested when his computer was found stuffed with forged exam results, all mysteriously downloaded in a single day. That same ex-boyfriend who, stricken with shame, had committed suicide by stabbing himself in the heart.

The landlord in Los Angeles who had raised the rents in the building where Marshall lived and who died after falling down the stairs of that same building.

Then there were the two former husbands. The first one went out fishing one night and never came home; the second one had been killed in a drive-by shooting at three a.m. in a neighborhood he shouldn’t have been near.

Marshall had to be wondering which of her past sins Baby was about to expose, which ones she had uncovered and locked onto.

Because surely Baby hadn’t found them all.

But Baby had.

Together, Baby and Jamie had traversed the labyrinth of false names, accounts, addresses, and identities Marshall had used to hide who she really was. Jamie, on the keys, followed links, and Baby — while also trying to clean and organize his den of disgustingness — chimed in with suggestions about what avenue to explore next.

Baby watched Su Lim Marshall go to the huge windows and look out at Los Angeles. She saw Marshall make the decision to kill her right then and there. It came over her like a stiffness. Living rigor mortis. Baby guessed you had to be like that to kill as efficiently as Marshall had over the course of her life. You had to be so completely and utterly disconnected from the act that your body lost itself in the task, like the automatic motions of a Roomba doing its slow waltz across the floors.

Marshall didn’t even say she needed a water or a notepad or to call the receptionist, didn’t make some petty excuse to reassure Baby as she crossed to the cabinet at the side of the room because the stupid big black glass desk didn’t have anything as practical as drawers in it. Baby didn’t mind that Marshall thought so little of her, that she wouldn’t even pretend she wasn’t going to kill her. Because, Baby supposed, in the end the womanwantedher to figure it out, to get up and rush toward her. It would make Marshall’s claim of a sudden attack and a struggle during which she had to defend herself all the more believable.

But Baby didn’t do that. She didn’t even look at the woman. She just sat quietly and listened. She’d been doing a lot of that the past couple of days, listening rather than talking. She’d been listening to Rhonda crying in her room at the beachside mansion at night. She’d been listening to Arthur and Mouse puttering around the big kitchen in Manhattan Beach, adjusting to life in the huge house with Baby and Rhonda after the Waterway Street house had been declared uninhabitable. Now Baby listened as Su Lim Marshall opened a thin, sleek drawer in the cabinet and placed her hand on what was likely a thin, sleek gun. She heard the door to the office fly open. She heard Marshall gasp and heard Mouse’s low, hellish growl. She heard the big dog’s nails on the hardwood as he and Rhonda stepped into the room.

Baby finally looked over. Her sister held the chain connected to Mouse’s collar with both hands, and her boots were planted on the floor, and still Rhonda had to lean all of her two hundred and sixty pounds back to stop the animal from getting to Marshall. It was as though the dog knew exactly who’d poisoned him.

Marshall froze with her hand in the drawer, and Mouse let out a series of eardrum-shattering barks that bounced and echoed around the huge room so it sounded like an army of devil hounds had arrived.

“You let go of what you’re holding and put your hands in the air right now, Marshall,” Rhonda said, gripping the chain with all her strength, “or I will.”

CHAPTER88

I KNEW BABY WANTEDto be at the front of the crowd outside the Men’s Central Jail release gate, ahead of the jostling media and internet people waiting for Troy’s release. She wanted to be where the action was.

My baby sister had been a ball of fiery excitable energy since the brief of evidence she’d submitted to the Los Angeles chief of homicide had been accepted and charges had been laid against Su Lim Marshall in relation to three mysterious deaths on US soil. That had happened two days earlier, and a swirl of activity had followed — Arthur Laurier’s property had been released back to him with the condemnation reversed, and the nefarious new neighbors had vanished from Waterway Street, both of which only added to Baby’s vibrancy.

She twitched and paced beside me as we waited for the gates to open, but she stuck by my side, because I wasn’t a front-of-the-crowd person, and because she had been worried about me since Dave Summerly died in the forest.

I was worried about me too. About how I was ever going to forgive myself for not telling the guy how I really felt, for not taking a moment to stop what I was doing with the agency and Baby to work out whether he and I should be together. He’d died saving my life, and now I would have to wonder for the rest of that life what “we” had been to him in his last seconds. What we could have been. Or should have been. Baby had dealt with her grief the same way she dealt with most things. She’d hidden from it in the hurricane of activity she had generated for herself. But I hadn’t yet figured out what I was going to do. I was keeping it together for my sister’s sake, presenting a strong front out of habit.

Troy Hansen was led out of the automatic doors beyond the release gate, and he came to the front of the scrum with that small, uncertain, weird smile on his face. It widened slightly when he saw me and Baby, and widened further when George Crawley stepped out of the throng and hugged him. The two men rocked back and forth in the big bear hug. People in the crowd were clapping. I felt a little sick.

“Casey’s Crime Channelhas always believed in Troy Hansen’s innocence,” a young woman nearby said, filming the hug and the scrum and herself with a phone on an extendable selfie stick. “It’s a glorious day for Troy Hansen supporters here at Men’s Central. We’re so excited to see him walking free today. Like and follow for more or DM me on how to subscribe to the podcast.”

Troy and George tried to get to a car in the lot, but the crowd followed them, so the man of the hour bent his head and spoke into someone’s mic, probably hoping a quick statement would make the crowd back off.

What he said made Baby squeal.

It made me roll my eyes.

“I wouldn’t be free today without the Two Sisters Detective Agency.” Troy waved at us. “Rhonda and Baby Bird. If you need help, call the Birds!”

Before the crowd could come after us, Baby and I hightailed it to my Chevy Impala, which police had released back to me a few days earlier, Baby grinning all the way. The afternoon sun had warmed the leather seats, and as we left the lot, Baby drummed the dashboard so hard and fast, it was like a hum.

“Did you hear that?” She cackled, gave her drumroll a big smacking finish. “Man. That was great. ‘If you need help, call the Birds!’ What better endorsement is there? The guy waswalking out of prisonbecause of us.”

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