The Deadly Sister by Eliot Schrefer Page B

what to say yet.
    “What do you mean?” she asked, studiously putting away groceries.
    I shrugged again. “You know.”
    “I’m sorry, who are you, exactly?” she asked.
    Keith could be here, somewhere, or he’d come home and he’d recognize me. I couldn’t lie. “Abby. Maya’s sister.”
    I watched her debate whether to introduce herself. Then she did. “I’m Blake. So Maya sent her sister to deliver? Or did Jefferson send you directly?”
    Oh my god. She thought Jefferson was still alive. I was in over my head—and I knew way too little about what Blake knew to play it off.
    “Neither of them sent me, actually,” I said. “Maya’s in trouble.”
    “No kidding,” Blake said. “Yeah, she is.” She eyed the doorway. As in, what she’d be booting me out through in a split second. But then she barreled on. “She was in trouble the minute she got involved with that guy. He’s the softest starter with the hardest endgame, you know what I mean? Lure ’em in and then squeeze.”
    I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. That Jefferson got Maya infatuated and then dropped her? That made sense, but Blake’s tone was too severe to be talking about romance.
    “You realize you girls’ little boyfriend owes me about fifteen thousand?”
    I remembered the packet of drugs in Maya’s bedroom. The implication was clearer, now. Jefferson was some heavy dealer and had gotten Maya involved. Blake was their supplier. And Jefferson hadn’t been holding up his end of the deal.
    “I get why Maya sent you,” Blake said. “She’s afraid to show her face—she thinks I won’t be hard on you, since you haven’t been involved. And I guess she’s right, fornow. Look, all I really want is my money. Whatever it takes. And I like Maya, I really do. But she needs to understand…you need to make her understand that just because this little problem’s got Jefferson at its root doesn’t mean that he’s the only one in trouble. She’s been getting her cut, which means that she can take a fall, too. Whether or not she devotes every minute of the rest of her life to avoiding me. You get that?”
    “My sister doesn’t owe you anything.” It came out before I knew what I was saying.
    “What the hell are you talking about? How can you be sure of that? Because I’m telling you, there seems to be a whole lot that you don’t know. Why exactly are you here?”
    “Jefferson Andrews is dead,” I said.
    “He sure is,” Blake said, eyes shining.
    “No. He’s really dead. Somebody killed him.”
    Blake dropped the grocery bag to the floor and sat on the arm of the couch. I could see stray wisps of hair fallen out of her elastic, sun damage around her eyes. She smelled like leather and dandelions, some hip men’s cologne. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
    I shook my head, soaking in Blake’s reaction. Her shock looked genuine—but she was a drug dealer, after all; I had no idea how crafty someone like that might be. Treating Jefferson as if he were alive could have been some wily ploy to keep me off guard. Though for what purpose, I couldn’t imagine. I took a deep breath. These waters were cold.“You’re not going to get any money from Jefferson, because he’s gone. Here are the facts: You’ve got a chain of guilt connecting back to you. If the police don’t figure it out on their own, they could always be given a nudge. I’m not threatening you,” I continued, seeing Blake’s darkening expression, “I just want you to know the facts. Obviously, I’m not accusing you of killing Jefferson. But I will do anything to protect my sister. And to do that I need to figure out who really killed him.”
    I could tell Blake got what I was saying. She was a drug dealer, but she also seemed fair, somehow. Honor among thieves. “He’s definitely been killed, nothing ambiguous about it?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Then I hate to say it, but the top of your suspect list should be your sister. He was screwing with