The Lying Game Complete Collection - Sara Shepard Page 0,113

Friday evening, and Emma and Laurel stood in the foyer of the Mercer house. Mrs. Mercer peered at the girls from the doorway of her office. Drake panted beside her, his long tongue looking like a thick slab of ham. Emma edged away from him slightly.

“It’s just a stupid tennis dinner.” Laurel went on in a sweet voice. “It’s going to be totally boring—Nisha’s throwing it. And anyway, didn’t Coach Maggie tell you she was practically going to put an ankle monitor on Sutton once she gets there? You have nothing to worry about.”

“Please?” Emma gave Mrs. Mercer puppy-dog eyes that matched Laurel’s. A week ago she wouldn’t have believed she’d want to go to something at Nisha’s house. But the truth was, being grounded kind of . . . sucked. It wasn’t that she was simply stuck in the house; Mrs. Mercer had taken away Emma’s Internet privileges, disconnected the cable box from Sutton’s room, and confiscated Sutton’s iPhone. After becoming accustomed to Sutton’s shiny, high-tech gear, the outdated, banged-up BlackBerry Emma had brought from Vegas wasn’t exactly cutting it. She had spent the evenings scouring Sutton’s room once more, searching for anything relevant to her murder, but there was nothing. The only thing left to do was homework. Sutton was probably rolling over in her grave.

If I was somewhere as boring as a grave. Which I highly doubted.

Emma wasn’t supposed to be allowed out for Nisha’s tennis team dinner, but Coach Maggie had apparently called Mrs. Mercer at work this afternoon and urged her to let Sutton attend. It would be good for team morale, Maggie had said, assuring Mrs. Mercer she would be there and would keep an eye on Sutton. But now Mrs. Mercer was hesitating.

“You’ll watch her like a hawk, Laurel?” Mrs. Mercer asked.

“Yeh-hes,” Laurel groaned, fidgeting with the strap of her flowered camisole.

“And you two will come straight home after the dinner is over?”

“Absolutely,” the two girls said in unison.

Mrs. Mercer put a finger to her lips. “Well, it is Nisha.” She uttered Nisha’s name in the same reverent way she might talk about the Dalai Lama. Mrs. Mercer was convinced Nisha was a model girl with straight As and iron-tight morals who could do no wrong.

“Okay, fine.” With a sigh, Mrs. Mercer lowered her shoulders and shooed them out the door.

Emma climbed into Laurel’s car, and Laurel swung into the driver’s seat and whooped. “How does freedom taste?”

“Amazing!” Emma cried.

Laurel drove one-handed through the neighborhood, using her other hand to run a paddle brush through her long blond hair. Despite her messy room, Sutton’s sister was permanently polished: constantly reapplying lip gloss, checking her teeth in mirrors to make sure nothing was caught between them, and dragging out the ironing board from the hall closet and smoothing her skirts and shirts. Emma liked that Laurel took care of her own clothes instead of asking Mrs. Mercer or a dry cleaner to do it. She was resourceful, like Emma was. She could take care of herself.

But that didn’t mean Emma trusted her.

Emma shifted in the passenger seat and mentally assumed her sleuth mode. “So apparently, Madeline has a secret,” she began, turning to Laurel and catching sight of the canine day care, Doggie Dude Ranch, that zoomed past her window. A turquoise and crystal shop was next, followed by a big outdoor pottery shop.

Laurel’s eyebrows shot up, but she didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Oh yeah? What?”

“She won’t tell me. It has something to do with the night before Nisha’s back-to-school party.”

Laurel’s face clouded. “You mean the night before you ditched me?”

Emma bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. Oops. Sutton was supposed to pick up Laurel for that party . . . but since she was dead, it didn’t happen. “Yeah. Well, anyway, Mads called Charlotte that night and told her what it was. I guess it was kind of a big deal.”

“Why weren’t you with them?”

The AC in the car suddenly felt ice-cold. You tell me, Emma wanted to say. “I guess that means you weren’t with them either?”

Laurel’s mouth formed a straight line. The Jetta veered over the line on the highway, and the driver next to them blew his horn, making both girls jump. “Uh, no,” she answered tightly after she’d steered the car back into its rightful lane. “I wasn’t.”

“So where were you?” Emma tried to sound like she was making casual conversation, even though her heart was rocketing inside her chest.

Laurel’s fingers clutched the