Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Well, wasn’t this a fan-fucking-tastic mess she’d made of things now. She could only stare at the door Jake had disappeared through, waiting for her brain to tell her what to do next. Waiting for Loretta to give her a single fucking clue about what to do now.
“It can’t go on like this, Loretta,” said Blake, running his hands through his wavy hair in frustration. “I can’t go on like this. You have to choose. Me or him. Us or not. You can’t keep leading me on, jerking me around, making me feel things for you and then punishing me when I do. You have to choose.”
“I choose myself, Blake, every time,” Loretta said, putting on a precise layer of alarming red in the dingy bathroom mirror at the Key Lime. “That’s what you and Geoff don’t get. I. Choose. Myself.”
“Then let us go, Lor,” Blake said. “If you want to be free, fine. But let us be free, too.”
She wouldn’t let the pain in his voice or the anguish so clearly etched on his face get to her; she couldn’t. Too many people were depending on her to save them. He thought she was free? Ha. She was just as trapped as the rest of them.
“You know where the door is and how to use it,” was her only reply.
And use it he had. But this time it hadn’t been Blake, and she hadn’t imagined it. She’d had Jake, and she’d let him walk away. And not even Loretta could save her now. Oh god, was she going to have to admit that Jake might be right? That she might be doing exactly what he’d accused her of—hiding in her fantasies, unable to face reality, more comfortable manipulating the fake lives of her characters and their emotions to suit herself. But now she couldn’t even manage that. Jake had ruined Loretta as thoroughly as he’d ruined her.
So what if she asked herself what Loretta would do far more than she asked what Kate Valentine would do? That “fantasy” had been paying her mortgage for the past two years. Of course, that “fantasy” had also landed her at her ex-fiancé’s wedding in an isolated manor during a storm with at least one murderer and several sociopaths. So maybe the argument could go both ways.
Her stack of suspects now felt childish and stupid as she stared at them in her neat, organized handwriting. Like they were in a Loretta story, with tidy backstories and clear motives that made them obvious suspects in a web of suspects that eventually led to a clear murderer. But that’s not how motives worked in real life; in real life, they were messy and overlapping and chunks of time went unaccounted for and everybody had a reason to kill everybody else but nobody cracked and fessed up. She ought to just hole up until the storm passed, catch the first floating craft out of there, and let the police sort it all out.
But Kate was tired of doing what she ought to do. Doing what she ought to do had kept her safe, but it had never made her happy. She’d rather walk into the storm-tossed sea than admit it, but Jake had a point. She couldn’t keep turning to Loretta to solve her problems. And it wasn’t like anybody else was going to find Rebecca’s killer or save Kennedy from another poisoning attempt. The closest thing Kennedy had to Loretta was Kate, so Kate would have to do.
Her gut was telling her she was still missing something. A suspect she’d overlooked, or a motive she hadn’t discovered yet. Everyone she’d investigated so far had good reason to kill Rebecca, or Kennedy, or Rebecca and Kennedy. She’d even found the missing champagne glass, but she wasn’t convinced it had led her to the murderer like she thought it would. Cassidy had plenty of motive, but Kate believed her affection for Kennedy was real. She didn’t think Cassidy would try to poison her cousin, much less her half sister. Richie and Steven certainly had plenty to gain from getting Rebecca out of the way, but their attempts at sabotage had been clumsy and obvious. No way had Richie Hempstead had the foresight to bring a specialty poison for the weekend. And everybody else—Marcus, Juliette, Spencer, even Serena—all had alibis for the time of Kennedy’s poisoning. Plus, there was the matter of staging Kennedy’s poisoning to look like one of Kate’s books, which could mean that whoever wanted Kennedy dead also wanted Kate to pay for it.
“I need to go back to the scene of the crime,” Kate said out loud, testing the sound of it. It sounded… good? She needed to understand the evidence. She’d also done enough research for Loretta to know that often it was the hundredth time an investigator walked the scene that put all the pieces together for them.
Someone had obviously made a run on the wine cave since the last time she’d been down there; several of the racks were empty, and there were foil wrappings littered all over the place. Kate hadn’t registered much about the place the night before—Kennedy’s dead-at-the-time body and all—but now she realized how extensive it was. It must have spanned half the length of the house, the deeply polished wooden racks going back forty to fifty feet. It was also obvious it wasn’t originally built to house wines. Large wooden shelves stacked all the way up to the ceiling must have been used to store contraband barrels of whisky and rum.
She pressed into the depths of the cave, toward a line of refrigerated units in the far reaches, their motors quiet, their doors heavily padlocked. She spotted the coveted Dom Pérignon behind one of the glass doors, and absently reached for the padlock to give it a tug, just to check. She’d never had Dom, and she’d always wondered if it really did taste ten times better than her ten-dollar sparkling wine.
But when she tugged on the padlock, the unit moved slightly. She frowned, tugging a little harder, and it rolled forward a full inch. She bent down, looking for wheels, but the unit seemed solidly set on the floor. She shined her light on the floor, pulling once more, and realized it was because the unit itself wasn’t moving—the floor was. The entire unit was set on a rotating disc, opening to reveal a secret passage behind it.
“How many hidden passages does one manor house need?” Kate wondered. But her voice wasn’t the only sound filling the space—somewhere deep in the darkness of the secret passage was a thumping sound, with occasional high-pitched whining sounds. Like someone… crying out for help? Or in pleasure? It was hard to tell.
She shined her flashlight into the space to get a better feel for it, and realized it was also more extensive than she’d first realized. It followed the wall behind the refrigerated units in both directions, dusty and narrow with exposed wooden beams and stone floors and not much else. And there again was the thumping sound, the whining coming through more clearly as a melody. Music. There was a wooden lever at about head height on the opposite wall, and Kate had firsthand experience with how it must work. She pulled it down, and the section of wall slid silently open. At least she wasn’t braced against it half-naked this time.
A wave of warm, humid air hit her as she stepped through the hidden door into a tropical paradise. The space must have been at least as large as the wine cave, cavernous with massive stone pillars holding up the edges. The walls were a kaleidoscope of aquatic colors—deep turquoise and brilliant blue and seafoam green with gold and red accents. Every square inch of the place was decorated in tile motifs, with sea nymphs frolicking in the waves and gods with their tridents commanding schools of fish and pods of dolphins.
An Olympic-size pool took up the majority of the space, with private alcoves for changing and showering, as well as a hot tub big enough to hold thirty people, with a gold statue of Poseidon as its crowning glory. Even down here, in a complete absence of sunlight, there were Rebecca’s fronds and potted plants, making the whole place feel worlds away from the dreary weather outside. Kate could have been in Tahiti or Jamaica down here.
The pool room. She’d found the site of Rebecca’s murder.
And floating in the middle of the murder scene—which boasted a tile floor in a repeating floral motif—were Richie and Steven on matching slices of inflatable pizza. They both wore sunglasses despite the fact that there was very little light from the few large flashlights they’d set at the edge of the water, and they spun in lazy circles around each other.
“Hello,” she said.
“Jesus!” Richie exclaimed, upending himself off his pizza slice and dropping into the water with an unceremonious splash. Steven’s only reaction was a single harrumph as Richie resurfaced. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“What are you doing down here?” Kate countered.
“We’re celebrating,” Richie said, wading to the edge and lowering the volume on a Bluetooth speaker. He tossed his glasses and held out a hand expectantly to Kate. When she didn’t move, he huffed impatiently. “Towel?”
She turned to a lounger behind her where there were, sure enough, a stack of fluffy white towels. She took one and handed it to Richie.
“What are you celebrating?” Kate asked. “Rebecca’s untimely demise?”
“Don’t be macabre,” Richie said, wiping his face. “I mean, yes, but it’s tacky to say it like that. With Rebecca out of the way, the family trust stays where it belongs: in the family. Cassidy and I managed to convince Ken to delay the whole homestead donation business a few years, so she can have more time and money to dedicate to all her little charity causes.”
“And so you can get your inheritance?” Kate said dryly.
“Yes. Ken has graciously promised to intercede with the board on my next inheritance request,” Richie said primly, “and I promised Steven I’d cover his debts with Rico so he doesn’t get his legs broken. With interest, of course. I’m not the fucking charity lover in the family.”
“A prince among paupers,” Steven said to the ceiling.
“Hand me the bottle, will you?” Richie said, snapping his fingers. “And the glasses?”
Kate turned to the lounger and the table beside it, where a bottle of red wine and two glasses waited. She started to hand them to Richie, who put his hands out to take them. But when he held his hands up, there were red blisters along the pad of his thumb on both hands. Kate snatched the bottle back and set the glasses down with a clink, snagging Richie’s hands.
“Hey!” Richie protested. “What the hell?”
“You were the one sabotaging the house all weekend,” Kate said, letting him go. He splashed back into the water, coming up spluttering. “You cut the generator fuel line and sabotaged the windows in the ceremony room!”
Richie sniffed. “You can’t prove anything.”
“It was my idea,” Steven said placidly, running his hands through the water and spinning in circles. “I also shut off the main water line down here earlier. The inspector won’t be so willing to approve the historical designation after they’ve spent all weekend not showering or pooping, whoever they are.”
“But this one made me do all the dirty work because he’s got delicate wrists,” Richie said, rolling his eyes.
“I have carpal tunnel from all the contracts I’ve written up for your aunt over the years,” Steven said primly. “She insisted on handwritten first drafts, said she didn’t trust email for contracts. I don’t even think she owned a computer.”
Kate knew for a fact she did, and someone had used her drowned body to access the family fortune on it. But if Steven was lying, he was either doing a really good job at it, or a really bad one. He spun around in lazy circles as Richie paddled their drinks back out to him, his wine sloshing into the pool water and swirling like drops of blood. Which reminded Kate that she was standing in the real scene of the crime. And Richie had lied to her about Rebecca leaving on her own.
“You said Rebecca was here last night,” Kate said.
“So what if I did?” Richie asked, struggling to remount his pizza slice. He finally managed it, ungracefully, before swirling dramatically and eyeing her. “Oh, you’re doing, like, a detective thing, aren’t you? That Juliette woman warned me about you snooping around like you’re a real whatever her name is. Nancy Grace.”
“Nancy Drew,” Kate said flatly. “And I happen to know Rebecca didn’t leave here alive, because she drowned. Which means somebody dragged her body upstairs while somebody else was dragging Kennedy’s unconscious body to the wine cave.”
Richie snorted. “Several eyewitnesses will tell you Steven and I were down here when Ken had her little spill. They would have noticed Aunt Rebecca floating like a turd in the middle of the pool. If Auntie R drowned down here, she did a good job of pretending she was fine when she left. Well, except for puking in the changing room. Woman can’t hold her champagne.”
Kate frowned. “What champagne?”
Richie waved at an alcove on the opposite side of the pool. “Take a towel with you and mop it up, will you? It still smells like ass in there.”
Kate skirted the pool, the water and the lamps throwing disorienting fractures of light in her path. Twice she almost stepped into the pool because she couldn’t see where she was going, and she had to turn on her own flashlight to find her way to the alcove that she realized was a separate room with teak cabinets and stacks of fresh towels. The floor looked like it had been cleaned recently, but Richie was right about the distinct tinge of vomit in the air. It was sharp and acrid, same as Kennedy’s the night before.
Kate poked through the cabinets filled with swimsuits, cover-ups, and leather sandals. But the last cabinet had a carefully folded garment in a bold floral print—Rebecca’s rehearsal dinner dress. And tucked behind the dress was a champagne bottle, the label gold with black writing. A doll-size wedding dress hugged the neck of the bottle wearing a red sash, the words For the Bride printed in a florid white script.
Kennedy’s personal bottle of Dom Pérignon.
Rebecca had gone to the bar to get her own bottle of Dom at the rehearsal dinner, but apparently she’d swiped Kennedy’s instead. She hadn’t been feeling well, same as Kennedy. And she’d thrown up, same as Kennedy. And Kate knew from her research for Loretta book three that abrin poisoning could also cause foaming in the respiratory tract if a lethal dose was ingested. Rebecca had obviously been in the pool last night, but what if Richie had been telling the truth? What if Rebecca really had left the pool room after not feeling well last night?
Kate dashed out of the locker room to the edge of the pool where Richie and Steven had consolidated to one slice of pizza, their limbs entangled. Kate imagined it was only a matter of time before their party got R-rated again. “Hey!” she said, loud enough to snag their attention. “I need a glass.”
“So go to the kitchen and get yourself one,” Richie said.
Kate looked around until she spotted a long-handled pool net mounted on the wall. She took the net and wielded it in Richie’s direction, knocking his wineglass out of his hand and scooping it up with the net despite his protests. She rinsed it out and brought it to the locker room, shaking the water out and setting it in front of her flashlight. She poured the remaining contents of the champagne bottle into the glass, a thick trail of white powder lumping around the opening of the bottle. And there, in the glass, a single shard of black and red.
“The champagne glass was a red herring,” Kate whispered, disappointed in herself for falling for the oldest trick in the book. It wasn’t the glass with Bride etched on it that had done Kennedy in; it was the whole damn bottle. And now Kate knew how Kennedy had been poisoned, and she finally had the answer to the question who killed Rebecca?
“Rebecca killed herself,” Kate whispered.
Rebecca had swiped the bottle of champagne earmarked for Kennedy, which had been poisoned with the rosary peas, and brought it with her to her evening swim. When she’d started to feel bad, she must have suspected sabotage after her big announcement. She’d rushed to her office to finalize the paperwork, but the poison would have fully hit her system by then. She’d tried to go for help and gotten tangled up in the potted plants. Kate had been so focused on all the reasons why someone would want to murder Rebecca—to be fair, there were a lot of reasons—that it never even occurred to her Rebecca had been the collateral damage, not Kennedy.
“Richie!” she shouted as she entered the pool room once again.
“ How are you still here?” Richie complained.
“The secret passages,” Kate said. “What do you know about them? Where do they go?”
“Who knows?” Richie said, sweeping his arms out and turning their slice in a lazy circle. “All over the house, I think. Apparently Great-Grandpa Russell built them to hide his imported Canadian whisky. He was super paranoid about the G-men even up to his death, so he never told anyone where the secret passages were or how to open them. Aunt Rebecca spent years trying to clear them out and catalog them after she inherited. Found four skeletons. Four . Two were animals, but one was a child-size human and the other was clearly a man in a suit. We have no idea who they were, how they got in there, anything. I never set foot in those passages.”
“You said Rebecca cataloged all the passages she found,” Kate said. “Do you know where she kept the documentation?”
“No idea,” Richie said, starting to sound irritated. “More importantly, I don’t care.”
“The trust,” Steven said, giving a little laugh. “Rebecca would have had to submit original blueprints to the San Juan Islands Historical Trust with construction dates and architect names. She probably would have marked the passages on those documents.”
The historical society. The secret inspector. What if…
Kate needed to find Kennedy as soon as possible.