Page 36 of Dead Man's List

Kit followed her, Sam at her side.

Which somehow felt…right.

Only because he’s good at his job. He’ll make Julie feel better.

You are such a Lying McLiarface who lies.

Julie closed the storeroom door, the music immediately quieting.

Sam huffed a relieved breath. “Oh. Thank you. That’s so loud.”

Julie looked grim. “What’s happened?”

Kit drew a breath. “I’m so sorry, Miss Sparks. Shelley Porter is dead.”

“What?” Tears filled Julie’s eyes. “No. She OD’d?”

“No,” Kit said quietly. “She was murdered, probably Tuesday night.”

Julie sagged, stumbling backward into the wall. Sam was at her side in a blink, helping her to a chair.

“Who did it? Who killed her?” She looked up, her eyes fierce through the tears. “Was it Ace?”

“We don’t know,” Kit said. “We were hoping you could give us information that would help us in our investigation.”

Julie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I don’t know what you want to know.”

Sam looked at Kit, wordlessly asking if he could take over. Kit gave him a nod.

“Julie,” he said, “did you know if she was using since she got out of rehab?”

Julie nodded sadly. “I hated the drugs and what they turned her into. I tried to keep my distance because I didn’t want to get dragged into her drama, but she’s been my best friend since kindergarten. She asked to meet me here at the mall after my shift. That was the day she got out of rehab, so I did. She was high that night. One freaking day out of rehab and she was flying.”

Sam sighed quietly. “Do you know where Shelley got the money for her drugs?”

Julie sighed. “She stole it from her mom and her aunt. Even from me. This was before rehab. That day after she got out of rehab, when I saw her high, I made her tell me where she’d gotten the drugs. She just laughed and said Jen had bought them for her. I knew that meant she’d stolen again. That was the last time I saw her. We talked on the phone a few times and texted after that, but I wouldn’t see her in person.”

Kit was disappointed. She’d hoped Julie would have more recent information. “Can we see your texts?”

“Yes, but she never admitted anything to me over text. She kept any mention of drugs off my phone because she knew I didn’t approve. You might have better luck with the other people she was texting, because she wasalwaystexting someone. Did you find her phone?”

“We didn’t,” Kit said. Her killer had likely taken it.

“Did she keep her texts in the cloud?” Sam asked.

Whoa, Sam.Kit was more than impressed.Good question.

Julie nodded. “I think so. The night we met here at the mall, she’d just gotten a brand-new phone. I have no idea how she paid for it, but I went with her to the phone store—it’s at the other endof the mall. I remember her telling them that transferring her stuff from the old phone to the new one would be quick, because she’d just backed up to the cloud.”

Kit held her breath. “You wouldn’t happen to know her cloud username and password, would you?”

Julie nodded, but reluctantly. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“It can’t hurt her now,” Sam said, so very gently. “It can only help us find her killer.”

Julie swallowed audibly, new tears filling her eyes. “She never changed it in all the years we’ve had email accounts. Her user ID was her email.” She spelled it out for them and gave them Shelley’s password. “I hope I did the right thing in telling you.”

“You did,” Kit assured her, then realized she hadn’t delivered all the bad news. “I’m sorry, but you should know that Shelley’s mother was killed, too.”

---