Her lip trembles. “I can’t get caught with this, Sonia.” She wipes at her face, choking on her words. “If my parents find out—and Cornell—”
I nod. “Your parents are going to be pissed. But Cornell might not have to know.”
She stares at me, sniffling.
“Look, I can’t promise anything, but I know Sheriff Wood. He’s going to be way more interested in solving Gretchen’s murder than prosecuting you for ‘borrowing’ her purse.”
“You’ll back me up? You won’t tell him I stole it?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Doesn’t he already know about your previous record?”
“If I’m going to tell him what I did, I want to know whose side you’re on.”
I drop my hands into my lap. Aisha has done nothing but try to support me the last two weeks. I’m pissed that she took it, that she hid important evidence, but I can’t turn my back on her either. “Fine. You saw the purse in Gretchen’s car and you were just borrowing it. I would never doubt for a second you were going to give it back.”
“Okay.” Her shoulders seem to loosen. She looks down at the purse between us, running her thumb around the edge of the gold emblem. “What do you think the money was actually for?”
My lungs are so full I have to think to breathe. “I have no idea.”
TWENTY-NINE
SHERIFF WOOD SETS DOWN HIS phone and picks up the paper evidence bag that now contains Gretchen’s five thousand dollars. “All right, I have some questions for you girls, and I need you to be completely honest with your answers.”
Aisha shifts in her chair. “What kind of questions?”
“First, I want you to understand we’re talking about Gretchen here. Whatever you say to me about your own activities in relation to hers will not leave this room.” He sets the money down and looks right at me. “Was Gretchen ever involved with any kind of drugs?”
I clutch my hands in my lap. It was my first thought too, after I found the money. Gretchen had her own credit card and checking account. When she went shopping, that’s all she used. I can’t think of any reason she might’ve wanted that much cash unless it was for something illegal.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “I mean, she smoked a joint here and there at a party, but I wouldn’t call that a drug problem. She barely even drank.”
Aisha shakes her head in agreement. “She just wasn’t the type.”
“Right.” The sheriff nods. “She was valedictorian, captain of the tennis team, up for prom queen . . . not under any kind of pressure.”
“It would’ve gotten in her way,” Aisha says, missing his sarcasm. “Gretchen liked to win.”
“But it makes sense to both of you that she had a secret boyfriend no one else knew about?”
I press my lips together. Because it makes sense that she would keep it from everyone but me.
“Sonia, you were closest with Gretchen.” His face is stern. “But you’ve suggested there were things she didn’t always tell you.”
Obviously. She hid a whole relationship from me. But he’s right; there were things she kept to herself. Gretchen would never let me touch her phone, making sure it was locked every time she set it down. And the night of the party I drove home in silence while she seethed next to me, never saying a word about what happened.
“I know there were.”
“How do you know? Did she exhibit odd or uncharacteristic behavior? Sneak out at strange hours? Did you find things that made you suspicious of her activities?”
Aisha and I exchange a look. It’s hard to explain all the things Gretchen said or did that made her who she was. Or who she wanted people to think she was.
I clear my throat. “Well, she did sneak—”
“She had, like, a file she kept on people,” Aisha says. She looks nervously at me, but I just sit there, openmouthed. “It was kind of like a black book. I only saw her looking at it once, on her phone.”
The sheriff glances at me and my pulse picks up. I didn’t realize Aisha knew about the files. I think of the video of Marcus, of Gretchen suggesting he cared about me, and him wishing her dead.
I nod slowly. “It was just a thing she liked to do. She kept track of things people said and did. She wanted to know what they were up to.”
“Kept track? Like to use it against them?”
“Not exactly. . . .” It seems unfair to drag this side of Gretchen through the mud when she can’t explain it herself. “Sometimes she’d show things to people, to make them uncomfortable, but it was like a game to her.”
“I think it was more of a control thing,” Aisha says, a hint of bitterness in her voice. “Gretchen was a huge control freak. She liked to have power over people.”
I think of the essay-selling website and shift in my chair.
“I wish someone had mentioned this earlier,” the sheriff mutters, jotting on a pad in front of him. “You say she kept it on her phone?”