“We went everywhere together whenever he toured, and usually he’d always get a room just for us. Well, at least just for me, while he was out doing … whatever. But recently he’d been distant. He still wanted me to come on tour with him, but only in theory. In practice he didn’t want me there at all. He wanted me around but he didn’t want me around. Do you have any idea how frustrating that was? To be there but to also not be there? I should’ve just ended it, I know that now, but I was used to this life. I got to go all over the world—I wasn’t just about to stop.”
As she spoke, Michelle Hornsbury swept her hand over the edges of the big chair in the room. Rupert P.’s death chair. Now she sat down in it, which added an extra layer of queasiness to everything she was saying.
“So recently Rupie had been booking a room for me for a night. We’d walk into the hotel together a couple of times to be seen together, and then my trip would be cut shorter than the boys’. But this time he didn’t book me a room. I confronted him about it. I said I needed someplace to stay while I was here, and he said that I could just roam around the hotel. That it would just be for a night. That this place had ‘great amenities.’ As if that was supposed to make up for the fact that I didn’t have a bed to sleep in. Now tell me that’s not a horrible way to treat your fake girlfriend.”
“Fairly horrible,” I said, though all I could think about was how screwed up the world of boy banders and beards was.
“He said that the hotel had been all booked up. That he’d really tried to get me a room but couldn’t. But he had a room with the rest of the boys. And he had a room with Griffin.
“Two rooms!” Michelle Hornsbury went on. “It made me crazy! And then when I found him in a new room full of girls, well, I guess that was the final straw.”
“How’d you know he was even here?”
“I heard you and Erin talking about it at the bar, the first time we met. After I left my purse at the table I went back for it, and you girls were bragging about having Rupert in your room.”
“We weren’t bragging.”
“Whatever it was, I couldn’t believe it. It was the third room he had access to in this bloody hotel. Which was three more rooms than I had access to!”
“How did you even get in here?”
“I went to the front desk and said I was one of the girls in your room and that I’d lost my key. The boy at the front really was easy to persuade. He gave me a new key, no problem. I’ve actually had a key to your room since then. I had to confront Rupie. He wasn’t taking any of my calls, and now he was hiding out with other girls. I waited in the stairwell on this floor for all of you to leave, and then I went in the room. You can imagine how shocked I was to see Rupert all tied up.”
“Yeah—”
“I wasn’t shocked in the slightest! Rupie had always been a crazy bondage freak. In my mind, not only was he constantly off having crazy bondage fun with Griffin, now he was off having bondage fun with a room full of girls when he could’ve just been having it with me, had he asked! I suppose I just suddenly snapped. I completely lost my head. I choked him with the tights that had gagged his mouth.”
Well, shit.
“But if you killed him, why did you stick around? Why didn’t you just leave?”
“I knew word would get out soon enough and that if I ran it would look suspicious. I was actually hoping to have you girls caught. You’d already kidnapped him; the police would assume that you had killed him too. You were a troupe of raving mad fanatics after all. I figured if I caught you here with him that was my best chance to get away with it and place the blame on someone else. That’s why I wanted to get you to let me into your room so badly. Sorry about that, by the way.”
“Uh …”
“And then when I came here and he was gone I was shocked. Impressed. But shocked. You girls were pure evil dumping his body in the boys’ room.”
So it hadn’t been me. It had been Michelle Hornsbury: part-time model, professional beard, murderer.
And I was alone in a room with her.
Maybe I was going to hell today after all. Literally—at the hands of Michelle Hornsbury. I glanced toward the door, but there was no way I could get anywhere near it without Michelle noticing. Her eyes bore into me like a cop’s flashlight in my face, my heart speeding up. “Are you going to kill me?”
“What?”
I tried to keep my voice steady, but there was no hiding the fear in it. “Now that I know your secret, what’s to stop you from killing me?”
“Well, gosh, I’m not a psychopath! Killing Rupert was an act of passion!” Michelle Hornsbury cried. “A mistake, really. I don’t just go around killing people!”
“So why did you tell me?”
“For the same reason you tried confessing to me, I guess. Guilt isn’t good for my complexion.”
“Do you feel less guilty now?”
“A little … Maybe … Not really.” She sighed, seeming tired. “All I wanted was a room,” she said. “You have to believe me. All I wanted was one measly room.”
Beautiful, posh Michelle Hornsbury. I’d never seen anyone so sad and pathetic. I’d also never been this close to a murderer. I needed to get the hell out of there.
“Can I ask you something?” Michelle Hornsbury said.
“Okay.”