Page 113 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

“It would be helpful to have somewhere that we could all see,” Allison says. “Like an easel or a—”

“Whiteboard,” Oliver and I say together.

It’s this joke we used to make when we watched cop shows. At some point, the suspects were always going to go up on a whiteboard. Maybe sometimes there’d be string involved in tying the pieces together. But are real crimes ever solved that way? Crazy people have whiteboards, too, only we call them “crazy walls” and act like they’re different.

“I think I saw something like that,” Isabella says.

She jumps up from her seat and walks to the corner of the room, where there’s a folded screen in bright colors with a flower design on it cornering off the room. She returns with a large easel with white butcher paper on it and several colored markers.

“Where did that come from?” Oliver asks.

“The guy at the front desk said there was some kind of conference here before us? I noticed it yesterday and asked.” She puts it near the fireplace so we all have a view. “Shall I write? I have good handwriting.”

I look around the room. This is usually the point in movies where someone with a guilty conscience gives it away with a look or a resistance to the process. But no one looks any different from usual, and everyone seems to think this is a good idea.

You see what I mean about reality versus fiction?

“We need to know where everyone was at the key times,” Oliver says.

Isabella makes a series of boxes with our names in them.

Eleanor

Connor

Oliver

Harper

Guy

Allison

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