Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
“Holy shit,” Marla breathed in true shock, her eyes ready to pop out of her head. Her nails pressed red half-moons into Kate’s arm as her grip turned painful.
“Ken!” Cassidy screamed, dropping to her knees and taking Kennedy’s head in her lap. “Oh my god, are you okay??”
“What happened?” Kennedy asked, her voice raw and weak.
“This Kate woman ‘found’ you,” Jean-Pierre said, having the audacity to put air quotes around the word. “Lying at the bottom of the stairs here in the wine cave.”
“The wine cave? What was I doing in the wine cave?” Kennedy struggled as Cassidy and Juliette helped her to a sitting position, propping her up between the two of them.
“We don’t know,” Cassidy said, giving Kate a look. There were still a lot of looks being thrown around, Kate thought, considering that Kennedy was not, in fact, dead.
“The last thing I remember is feeling unwell and going to lie down upstairs,” Kennedy said, looking around in confusion. “I don’t remember coming down here at all.”
“I went looking for you,” Cassidy said, shaking her head. “Upstairs, when you said you were going to lie down. You weren’t there!”
“That’s because Kate poisoned her and pushed her down the stairs like the killer in Something Borrowed, Someone Blue ,” Juliette stated so matter-of-factly that Kate almost found herself nodding along with the accusation.
That’s what felt so familiar to Kate about the wine cave—so much of the setting reminded her of the groom finding his poor dead bride at the bottom of the grand staircase in book three.
“Kate didn’t push anyone,” Jake said, standing up and putting himself in front of Kate. “It’s clear that Kennedy ate something that didn’t agree with her and passed out.”
“The oysters!” Kennedy said, recovering more life and tone. “It must have been the oysters in the bridal suite. They must have been spoiled, but I didn’t notice because we were so busy getting ready. Cassidy, remember when you had that bad case of food poisoning from the king crab legs on my graduation cruise?”
Cassidy shuddered. “Ugh, yes. I thought I was going to die. I even fainted at one point, trying to go to the bathroom.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “The oysters!”
“The oysters!” Kennedy echoed, nodding.
“Oysters?” Marla murmured. “I’ve had some cheap-ass oysters, but they never did this .”
Unfortunately for Kate, everyone else in the room seemed to be of a similar doubtful mind. They shuffled around, casting baleful eyes at her. But they could hardly keep accusing her when Kennedy had made up her mind that it had all been some big misunderstanding.
“We need to get you upstairs and get some electrolytes in you, Kennedy,” said Juliette, giving Kate one last warning glare. Between her, Cassidy, and Jean-Pierre, they managed to help Kennedy stand.
“We need to get you to bed, too,” Jake said to Kate. He looked her up and down. “You really look a mess, Kate.”
Kate looked down at the dress that was supposed to be her triumphant statement to the world that she had moved on and up—torn at the sleeve where she’d choked Kennedy, gashes in the knees of her stockings where she’d fallen when she tripped over the body, the skirt rumpled and stained with cheap red wine. An apt reflection of Kate’s emotional state for the weekend.
“Womp womp,” Kate muttered forlornly.
“Alright, drunkie, up you go,” Jake said, putting her arm over his shoulder and holding her waist. She was too tired, and still a little too drunk, to even appreciate the intimacy.
“I’ll help you,” Marla said, appearing at Kate’s other side and leading her toward the stairs. “Wouldn’t want you to have all the fun of putting drunk Valentine to bed by yourself.”
“I can manage,” Jake grunted, clearly struggling with Kate’s lack of balance. “You get some sleep, we’ll catch up with you later.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Marla said in that way of hers that always ended any disagreement. “I’ve cleaned up sick Valentine more than her own mother by this point. Besides, the vibe was getting decidedly finger-pointy down there. What the hell do you think happened? No way was that a bad batch of oysters, huh? Weird that it did seem kind of like Kate’s book, too.”
“It wasn’t anything like her book,” Jake said stonily as they climbed the stairs toward the upper floors. “And we’re not bringing it up anymore. Kennedy will be fine, though I’m not sure I can say the same for Kate here once she sobers up. How much wine did you drink, exactly? You smell like the inside of a grape press.”
“There was at least one bottle involved,” Kate said as they reached the fourth floor.
“Here we are,” Jake grunted as they arrived at the end of their hallway. He pulled on the golden cord hanging from the ceiling, the stairs creaking as they settled into place.
It took both Marla and Jake—and the rest of Kate’s dignity—to get her up the stairs and into the attic room. There was a distinct breeze in the back as she was half pushed, half shoved upward, and she couldn’t imagine what kind of view they were getting below. Not one they wanted; Jake had made that clear enough. But the two of them managed to keep her steady so she could reach the landing, and she army-crawled the rest of the way up.
“… really had to give her a good push,” Marla murmured to Jake as she ascended the stairs into the attic room.
“I didn’t push her!” Kate cried. “I just found her like that! Which sounds like what someone would say when they did push her, but I didn’t. I swear it. How could I? Think about the position of her body when I found her. That wasn’t the position of someone who’d been pushed down the stairs, it was the position of someone who’d been… I don’t know, placed there. Yeah, placed there! Which I couldn’t have done, could I? Because I was with you the whole time!”
Marla blinked at her as Jake finished climbing the stairs, both of them wide-eyed with surprise.
“I was talking about getting you up the stairs,” Marla said slowly, waving to the gap in the floor for emphasis.
“Oh.” Kate looked about the room helplessly, as if the answer to what had just happened with Kennedy might be found in this dusty collection of old books.
“Why don’t we get you changed,” Marla suggested, shooing her toward her suitcase in the far corner.
“I can change myself,” Kate muttered, glancing over her shoulder and just catching the look the two of them exchanged. She didn’t want to think of it again—Marla and Jake together —but her brain was far too full of wine and way too empty on good sense to protect her from the image.
“Last time you insisted you could change yourself, I found you in a bathtub trying to wear my turtleneck as a pair of leggings,” Marla said, unzipping Kate’s bag and leaning back as it vomited out its contents. “Jesus, Valentine, how much did you pack for this weekend?”
There hadn’t been a plan to her packing, so much as a frantic last-minute grab of whatever was at the top of her drawers. Marla dug through layers of ratty sweatshirts and a pile of embarrassingly threadbare underwear and managed to find an old T-shirt and a pair of pajama pants with puppy faces on them that her mother had given her for her birthday ten years ago. They were the pajama pants of a recent college graduate, not an adult woman with multiple bestselling books and a mortgage.
“I really am a mess, aren’t I,” Kate whispered, mostly to herself. She looked at Marla, so cool and collected, who always seemed to know how to handle herself in a bad situation. She never had to ask what would Loretta do , because what would Marla Lynch do was always good enough. Kate raised her voice. “I’m glad you’re here this weekend. I know I’ve been… well. I’m just glad you’re here. To help.”
Marla finished shoving all her clothes back in her suitcase and straightened up. “Sleep on your side and don’t puke in the bed, no matter how tired you are. Trust me on that one. Try not to get accused of any other crimes while I’m sleeping.”
“You don’t have to stay,” Kate said to Jake after Marla departed, realizing she’d been holding her hand in a fist the whole time. She opened it up, something black embedded into her skin from the pressure, and brushed it off on the pillow before wriggling into her pajama pants under her dress, losing her balance more than once. “I don’t need babysitting.”
“Apparently you do, considering what happened the last time I left you alone,” Jake said, tossing his jacket over the chair. He paused, glancing at her. “I’ll sleep in the chair for tonight. I’m changing now, if you don’t mind.”
Kate did a little tilting whirl, facing toward the bed resolutely. “It’s not like I’m a Peeping Tom or something. I’m not even interested.”
“Why’s that, because you’re sobering up now?” Jake muttered.
“Hey! That’s not—” Kate turned, ready to argue, but definitely not ready for Jake stripped down to his boxer briefs and bent over, pulling off his socks.
They were dark gray Calvin Kleins, based on the waistband that she couldn’t stop staring at, and they hugged him everywhere . Her mouth went dry, all words abandoning her. Jake sensed the shift and straightened, white lines of old scars jagged across his back.
She’d never seen Jake without his shirt in person. She’d seen plenty of pictures while they were making The Wandering Australian books, but that had been young Jake. Surfer Jake. Pre-accident Jake. She knew about the wipeout that had fractured his pelvis, broken several vertebrae in his back, and shattered his femur. But she’d never seen the physical evidence, and the feeling it stirred up in her was so immediate and visceral that she lurched forward, hand outstretched.
“Don’t,” he said, the one word sharp and clear. He took a breath that seemed to involve every muscle in his body, and when he pushed it out his shoulders softened. “Don’t, Kate.”
“Jake,” she said, hand still hovering there. It must have been the alcohol, the late hour, the shock of finding Kennedy, because she couldn’t stop the tears that welled up. “Oh, Jake.”
“If I wanted pity, I’d have visited my mum,” Jake said, snatching a long-sleeved shirt from his bag and quickly pulling it over his head. It fit him like a glove, showing the muscles underneath, but covering the scars.
Kate drew her hand back sharply. It wasn’t pity she felt, not at all. It was hurt . Hurt for the Jake from those Wandering Australian pictures, who’d had the world in front of him. Hurt for the Jake she knew now, living with a shattered body and dream. But Jake didn’t want her hurt, any more than he wanted her attention.
“I’m going to sleep now,” he said, keeping his eyes resolutely away from her. “You should, too.”
“Fine,” Kate muttered, crawling over the bedspread toward the pillow. But there was something on the pillow, standing out black against the soft pink comforter, and Kate swept it up with her finger to take a closer look. That shard Jake had fished out of Kennedy’s mouth when he was performing CPR. The one that had been stuck against her skin when she changed earlier. Kate brought it close enough to make her cross-eyed, frowning at it. Something about it was so… familiar .
She’d never seen any oyster shell like this. It was too smooth, too black and shiny, and now, under less stressful circumstances, she realized the tip was bright red. Were there red oysters? Jake was already breathing deep and even, but the sliver tugged at her memory. She should know what it was, she was sure of it.
Kate sucked in a sharp breath, heart pounding. She did know what it was—a rosary pea, a decorative bead used in jewelry and ornamental plants that also happened to be deadly if ingested. And she knew that because it was exactly how the bride had been killed in Something Borrowed, Someone Blue , the latest Loretta novel. Juliette had been right about the circumstances, even if she’d been wrong about the culprit.
Kennedy hadn’t eaten some bad shellfish. She’d been poisoned.