Welcome to Case Closed.

You're listening to Bye Baby by Carilla Lovering,

narrated by Helen Laser and Carissa Vacker.

Let's pick up where we left off last week.

Chapter 49.

Billy

October 27, 23,

14 days after.

My Uber speeds through the Lincoln Tunnel on the way to Teeterboro Airport.

I try calling Alex again, my fourth attempt this morning, but he doesn't pick up.

I don't know why I'm remotely surprised, but my stomach plunges into a new wave of misery all the same. I lean back

into the stiff leather seat and close my eyes, the horror of everything that happened last night

rushing back to my consciousness, like remembering a nightmare. Alex and me standing face to face

on 8th Avenue,

the street congested with foot traffic from Madison Square Garden around us,

our pizza forgotten.

Have you been lying to me?

He'd asked.

Were you in Jane's apartment that night?

Is that when you got the hat,

you didn't miss our dinner because of a migraine, did you?

In that instant, in my delirious fog of cheap, bud, light, and looming panic,

...