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Chapter 15: Our Little Family

Chapter 15: Our Little Family

Greg immediately looks to me as if I hold all the answers -- in this case, as in most cases, I do.

"Tragedy, tragedy, tragedy, just a damn tragedy," I simply shake my head. "Horrific. It's just horrific. A travesty. A real travesty. Usually, those things are indestructible until they break – mostly all of them anyways."

"Do you ever make sense, babe?" Jay asks and cocks his head to the side to give me a knowing look.

"I just wonder...who would murder an innocent and revolting statue like this?" I ask aloud, silently directing my anger at Max – this is all his fault and he isn't even here to pay the price. He made me an accomplice in his crime and acts of violence by persuading me to help him bury the body after forcing me to accidentally kill the body.

"Who said she was murdered?" Boss Man arches an eyebrow at me, suspicious.

"Maybe she isn't dead," I reply with a shrug, choosing to be blindly optimistic. "Maybe she's at sea because she was kidnapped as bounty by Ethiopian pirates or something," I throw an idea at him, hoping to sidetrack him.

"And that's my cue to leave," Decoda says before making her way out of the front door without so much as a 'goodbye, you lovely people'.

"Do you own a trampoline?" Boss Man asks me, still skeptical of me. "Because you're jumping to a lot of your own conclusions here." He shakes his head at me. "Way to chase Decodes away. She doesn't handle 'insane' well."

I shrug, cavalier about everything he just said. "If it comforts you in any way, the police always say that there's a forty-eight-hour window before we can safely assume someone is dead."

"That doesn't comfort me in any way because I can bet that you, and whoever else you involved in this stupid scheme of yours, made her vanish within more than forty-eight hours ago," he accuses me despite basing his theory on no evidence whatsoever.

"Are you saying that we should call off the search for her and start a search for her body instead?" I cautiously ask him. "Are you thinking the worst, that we should assume that she's already...?" I ask in an over-the-top voice before gasping loudly and dramatically placing my hand over my mouth.

"There isn't any search party looking for her," Greg corrects me before I can get carried away again.

I frown and furrow my brows, in deep thought. "If you really love her, Boss Man, you'd have called in a search and rescue team by now." This is on him.

"I just found out that she's missing!" he angrily reminds me. "Otherwise--"

"Exactly my point," I talk over him.

"Otherwise, I would have!" he shouts over my voice.

"I'm gonna go and shower," Jay chips in before I can argue with Boss Man further. "Clearly, you two have both forgotten that we're talking about an inanimate object, and at this point in time, I've just really lost all interest in this conversation."

"Show some respect, the body isn't even cold yet!" I snap at him and then correct myself immediately. "I mean...if there's even a dead body! 'Cause like...we still don't even know yet! She could still be alive and well!" I yell after him but my shouts fall on deaf ears.

"It's a marble statue; the body is always cold!" Jay hollers back, attempting to make a point.

I shake my head and send Greg a pitied look. "Sorry about him, he can be so insensitive sometimes. How dare he assume that?!"

"This coming from a murderer," Boss Man scoffs at my nerve.

"Listen," I start, figuring my way out of this, "I have a conspiracy theory..." I trail off before deciding to out my friend like the true best friend that I am, "Max did it."