The Murder Coat - Chapter 20

The Look on Her Face

The Murder Coat is a serialised mystery featuring Evie Harroway, a second-hand shop owner with a knack for finding trouble (and trouble finding her).

If you’re new here, head over to the Chapter Index and start at Chapter 1.

Or, if you prefer to listen, here is the audio version. 👇🏼

The drive back was quiet.

Not the companionable kind — the other kind, where even the radio knows better than to get involved.

When we pulled up outside my house, Lila parked with her usual surgical precision, as if parallel-parking were an emotional boundary. Engine still running… conversation very much not.

I reached for the door handle. “Thanks for… today.”

She nodded once, still looking straight ahead. Then, softer:

“You should wear that stone with confidence, Evie. Mavis gave it to you for a reason.”

The words caught me off guard — the same steady calm she always fell back on when I was floundering.

“Even when it feels wrong?” I asked.

“Especially then.”
She glanced over, the hint of a smile tugging at her mouth. “You’ll figure out how to stand in it. You always do.”

I got out of the car, wanting to say something — sorry, thank you, something that might untangle the silence between us — but by the time I shut the door, she was already shifting into gear.

Our eyes met for half a heartbeat before she looked away, and then the car eased from the kerb, tail-lights bleeding into the dusk.

Inside, the house felt smaller than I remembered. Too quiet. Too normal.

Horatio was waiting in the hallway, coiled on the armchair like he’d been timing my return. His eyes narrowed the instant he saw me. Then his gaze dropped to the white fluff clinging to my jeans — Muffin’s legacy.

I swear he sighed. Actually sighed.
Then, in one fluid motion, he hopped down, stalked past me and vanished toward the kitchen, tail flicking in crisp punctuation marks.

“Nice to see you too,” I muttered.

I dropped my bag by the door and stood there a moment, trying to collect the scraps of calm I’d had on the beach before Thax called.

That’s when Frankie appeared — hoodie, messy bun, smirk dialled up to eleven.

“Well, well, well,” she announced. Then — with the kind of theatrical flourish usually reserved for courtroom dramas — she held up her phone and pressed play.

A beat.

“Ice, ice baby…”

She waggled her eyebrows. “Look who’s back from her not-a-date with Detective Cool-as-Ice.”

I rubbed a hand over my face, not in the mood to stop, collaborate or listen. “Don’t start.”

“Oh, I’m already mid-start.” She pushed off the frame, circling me like a shark. “So, Bernie and I had an interesting chat.”

Here it comes.

Frankie’s grin gleamed. “She says you and Lila were once… close.”

“Close?” I tried for casual, but my stomach did a treacherous flip.

What the hell had Bernie said? She wouldn’t have spilled everything – dear god, I hoped not — but Bernie was a terrible liar. One wrong pause and Frankie would’ve leapt to conclusions.

“Yeah,” Frankie went on, oblivious to the panic blip I was trying to swallow. “She said it like it had a capital C. Then she did that weird lip twitch she does when she’s lying by omission.”

I snorted. “That’s just her face.”

“Uh-huh.” Frankie’s grin widened. “And what’s yours doing right now?”

“Practising patience.” I lurched towards my coffee machine. Because caffeine was what I needed.

Her grin softened just a fraction. “Evie,” she said, “that’s not a patience face. You don’t have a patience face.”

“Rude.”

“Accurate.” She pointed at me. “That is your ‘help me God, feelings are happening’ face.”

I tried to smile. It slid off immediately.

She leaned her elbows on the bench and — mercifully shut Vanilla Ice up. “So if it wasn’t a date, what did you two actually get up to?”

I hesitated, then sighed loudly. “Lila took me to see her nan, and meet her aunties. Out past Paraparaumu. Tiny coastal place.”

Frankie’s eyebrows shot up. “You met her family? That’s… not exactly a casual Saturday outing.”

“No, not casual,” I said, ignoring the jab. “They were loud, nosy… kind. Fed me till I almost burst. But they knew things, Frankie. About Pūriri House.”

Her teasing expression vanished. “As in — the Pūriri House?”

I nodded. “Apparently Lila’s mum and aunt were involved, helping the Templeton sisters back in the day. They didn’t say much — just that it was real, and it helped women who couldn’t go anywhere else.”

“Holy shit.” Frankie sank onto a stool. “So that confirms it.”

“Sort of. It still doesn’t tell us who killed Melanie.”

She made a tiny, unsure dip of her head, chewing on a hangnail. Then looked up. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I lied automatically.

She wasn’t fooled. “You don’t look okay.”

I fiddled with the edge of my sleeve, the pounamu warm against my skin. “Thax called me.”

Frankie groaned. “Oh, for God’s sake. What now?”

“He… mentioned a name. Said we should be careful.”

“What name?”

“Richard Harwood.”

Frankie didn’t move for a beat. Just that tiny tightening around her eyes — the look she got when her brain was busy assembling a red-string board at speed.

“Wait – the old politician? The one who’s mates with all those creepy Wellington power guys?”

“Yeah. Him.”

“And why is he in this?” A thin seam of dread ran under the words.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “But Thax sounded spooked. Said people know about you asking questions. About Morgan. About Pūriri House.”

Frankie blinked. “What?”

“Apparently someone’s been watching the subreddit. He thinks it’s connected.”

Frankie’s breath snagged, just slightly. Her eyes narrowed, focus sharpening like a blade.

“Evie… what the hell did we step in?”

I didn’t answer. Horatio appeared in the doorway, tail high, the ghost of judgement in his eyes. He leapt onto the bench between us, sat down, and meowed once — flat, unimpressed, final.

“Great,” I said. “Even the cat thinks I’ve lost control of the narrative.”

Frankie reached over and rubbed his head. “He’s just saying what we’re all thinking.”

Later, after Frankie had gone to bed and the house had fallen back into its usual nocturnal creaks, I sat at the kitchen table with my cold tea and my hot thoughts.
The pounamu pressed against my skin like a pulse, steady and certain. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Lila’s face when she saw Thax’s name light up my phone — the sharp flicker behind her calm.

I gave up on sleep around midnight.

The box was where it had always been — shoved under the bed, wedged between a stack of old journals and a shoe I’d never found the match for. Dust bunnies fled as I dragged it out.

Inside: a tangle of years. Polaroids, ticket stubs, the occasional relic of a life that had once fit me better.
Near the top, a photo I hadn’t seen in years — me and Lila in someone’s flat kitchen, the walls plastered with bad posters and worse wallpaper. She was laughing, head tipped back, one hand mid-gesture; I was in profile, caught halfway to laughing with her.

Another one: the two of us on a windswept beach, hair wild, clothes wrong for the weather. The edges were soft now, bleached by time, but the way she was looking at me — that hadn’t faded at all.

And I felt it again — that sting of knowing I’d handed Thax the space to wedge himself between us.

I told myself I was digging through this because of the case, hunting for something my brain had tucked away.

But that was bullshit, and I was too tired to pretend otherwise.

I slid the photos back into the box, closed the lid, and pushed it under the bed again – out of sight, not out of mind.

When I lay down, Horatio appeared on the duvet, a silent, judgmental paperweight.
Somewhere in the dark, I whispered the name Thax had given me, just to hear it aloud.

“Richard Harwood.”

It sounded heavy in the air – like a door I’d just unlocked by accident.