Chapter Seven
Seven
Once I see the hotel’s wedding venue, I remember why Waylen and I rejected it more than a decade ago.
It’s funeral-parlor chic, with cloth-draped chairs and a peach carpet.
The view of the ocean is pretty, at least. Elodie and I pretend to be interested as the chatty event planner leads us from room to room, detailing the catering options and how many people can be seated in the dining room.
Live music optional for a fee, of course, or we’re welcome to hire our own entertainment.
The sweethearts package comes with a wedding cake, baked and decorated by their own personal chef.
Elodie has recovered from the plot twist I threw at her earlier, and she’s fully embraced her fictional role as my spouse-to-be. If she finds this building half as gaudy as I do, she doesn’t let on, chattering and asking questions about floral arrangements.
“To be honest, we don’t get many winter weddings here,” the event coordinator says. She’s in her sixties at least, with silver hair swept into a classy beehive, and her blue eyes are heavily done in matching eyeshadow. “Most couples prefer the summer, so they can be out on the beach.”
“We’re a couple of snowbirds,” I say. “We usually spend our winters down in Florida, but this year, we thought it would be fun to see the snow.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” the woman says, her bracelets and rings clattering as she presses a hand to her chest. “When’s the big day?”
“The first week of December,” Elodie says. “Call me superstitious, but I think winter weddings are good luck.” She points to me and then back to herself. “Her parents and mine both had summer weddings, and it ended in divorce.”
“She thinks it’s a curse,” I say, feigning playful annoyance.
“She thinks I’m being silly,” Elodie goes on. She leans toward the event coordinator conspiratorially. “But you must see a lot of weddings here. You tell me. How many summer weddings have ended with some sort of tragedy?”
I can’t help my wicked smile. She’s great at improv. Elodie is a chameleon, able to adapt to her surroundings, and when she ditches the snooty, uptight thing she does, she can be quite likable.
The event coordinator winks. “Most weddings go beautifully, especially here. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“Oh, come on,” I say playfully. “There must be something.”
“Give us the tea,” Elodie adds. “I’m right, aren’t I? Summer weddings are cursed.”
“No, no, summer weddings are not cursed.” The woman’s eyes dart back and forth, making sure we’re alone on the tiny dance floor surrounded by empty tables and chairs. “We’ve had nothing but happy couples! Well…except for one.”
Elodie sits at the edge of a nearby chair, leaning forward excitedly. “Really?”
The woman looks nervous now. “I shouldn’t—”
“Please?” I take a less pushy approach, sitting across the table from Elodie. “We’ve bickered so much about when to have the wedding. Maybe I’ll feel better if you tell me that the summer is a bad idea.”
“They never actually booked the wedding,” the woman says, holding her palms up as though warding off an attack. Her voice lowers to a hush as she joins us at the table, and there we perch like a trio of gossiping schoolchildren. The exact sort of clique my daughter abhors.
“But they asked for a tour of the place when they stayed here. They were from England, and apparently the young lady had her heart set on the beach. The man was a real charmer. I don’t know what they did for a living—something with computers maybe.
I got the impression they had a lot of cash.
” She swipes one hand over the other, miming a stack of bills.
“What happened?” Elodie asks, truly rapt. Elodie is wearing a lot of jewelry, and none of it looks like the costume stuff I have on my dresser. I can tell she’s still thinking about the engagement ring she saw on Bertram’s hard drive.
“Well, they stayed for a few days, and they were all lovey-dovey holding hands on the beach and ordering our couple’s dinners—that’s lobster for two.
And then one night, I was closing up late after showing the dining hall to some CEO looking to host his retirement luncheon here.
I heard this awful shouting coming from one of the rooms. The young woman stormed out of here in tears.
Nearly knocked me off my feet when she bowled into me.
The next day, both of them had checked out. ”
Elodie’s face falls. “That’s it?” she asks. There’s more tension than that at a PTA meeting.
But the coordinator’s nervous yet pointed silence tells us that is not, in fact, everything.
I reach out and put my hand over hers. She flinches. “What is it?” I ask.
She frowns. “A week later, I’d forgotten all about it. Lovers’ spats aren’t the only things going on around here, and it was an especially busy time for me. But then the police showed up. Apparently, the young lady’s family had reported her missing when she stopped returning their calls.”
Elodie is already glancing at her phone, no doubt looking for a hit on any news articles now that we have this new information. She moves faster than the speed of gossip.
“Oh no,” I say. My tone doesn’t express the rush that goes through me.
It’s the satisfying thrill I feel when I’ve just had a breakthrough.
I’m amazed by Elodie’s easy ability to pry gossip out of a stranger.
This is going to be more fun than I thought.
“But surely it was just a misunderstanding. They found her eventually?”
“Don’t know,” the coordinator says. “The police never followed up.” She stands, clearly flustered.
“If you’ll excuse me, I—I’ve already said too much.
Please, you ladies help yourselves to looking through the venue again.
Here’s my card if you’d like to book your event. We’d be glad to host your reception.”
She’s out of there as fast as if she’d seen a ghost. I scoot my chair closer to Elodie’s and look at her phone. “Anything?” I ask.
“I’m using my VPN to search British headlines, since nothing is coming up here,” Elodie says.
I’m annoyed with myself for not thinking to do this when I was doing my own research last night.
But still, there’s nothing. Not a police report.
Not a “Have you seen me?” Facebook post. There is nothing at all besides the same blurry paparazzi photo we’ve both already seen.
I think back on Bertram’s irritating charm. The way he made me want to believe his softhearted lonely genius act. His kindness when he thought I was just a bumbling new journalist on the brink of getting fired.
But the evidence is there. Or rather, the evidence is not there.
“He made it go away,” I say. “With all his money, he must have some resources. Someone who made this all disappear for him.”
“ ‘Old data,’ ” Elodie says, shuddering as she recalls the name of the file with Annie’s photos. “That’s all people are to him.”
“We’ll have to go back there,” I say. “I can say I misplaced something.”
“Are you crazy?” Elodie hisses. “He’s dangerous.”
This isn’t a conversation to have in a place where the walls have ears, so I drag her to her feet and we make our way back to the car.
“I’ve worked with murderers before,” I say, warming my hands as the heat blasts through the vents in the dashboard. “I just put a woman away for murdering her husband back in the eighties.”
“That was you?” Elodie says. “I followed that case. There was a whole podcast about it.”
“Granted, she was sloppy,” I say. “It wasn’t hard to prove. The police at the time just didn’t think a PTA mom would be capable of such a thing, so they never really investigated it.”
“But you weren’t alone with her, in her apartment, with nobody to hear you scream,” Elodie presses. “And she wasn’t a billionaire with cronies to bury your body for her.”
I bat my eyelashes adoringly at her. “Aw, El. I didn’t know you cared.”
“I don’t,” she says as I throw the car into drive. “But if you end up buried in pieces in the Long Island Sound, it’s going to fall back on me. Mr. X seems to really like you.”
I smirk. “He seems really invested in this case,” I say. “He hates billionaires.”
“Who doesn’t?” Elodie says. “Look at what they’re all doing.”
I nod. “But we have to stay objective. At least professionally. If we let our own feelings get into the mix, we’ll make mistakes.”
Elodie clenches her jaw, but she nods. “Let’s fry this bastard,” she says. “And then get manicures.”
“Bloodred nail polish,” I add, making her laugh.
At Elodie’s insistence, we stop somewhere for a late lunch.
By the time we’re done, it’s nearly time to pick the girls up from school.
She’s regaled me with her own plan to do some deeper research.
Pull security camera footage from neighboring buildings, do a deeper dive into Bertram’s files.
I nod along, admiring her tenacity. But what I don’t say is that she’s being far too cautious, that a great reward requires greater risks.
I’ve decided here is where we’ll diverge. While Elodie investigates this digitally, I’ll take a more direct approach. Maybe she’ll stumble upon something we missed the first time, but, just maybe, this will require more of a risk than Elodie is willing to take.
After I drop Elodie back at her car, I call the front desk at Bertram’s apartment building.
I know the odds of getting his phone number are exactly zero, but all I need to do is get close to him.
I recognize the voice of the man at the front desk when he answers—the one who helped Elodie and me get through to Bertram.
“Hi,” I say, disguising my voice. Years of reading bedtime stories to my daughter have made me a pro at this.
I can sound like anything from an enchanted princess to an evil sea witch.
A harried delivery courier is somewhere between those two things.
“I’m calling from UPS. A resident of your building has a delivery scheduled, and it’s going to require a forklift.
Does your building have a service elevator? ”
“Oh my goodness,” the man says. “How big is the delivery, exactly?”
I pretend to be checking a document. “It says the dimensions are ten by twelve feet, six feet deep. Should be arriving tomorrow. Can I confirm someone will be there to sign for it, and that there’s a freight elevator?”
“We do have an industrial elevator, but it’s usually for furniture deliveries and residents who are just moving in. Who is it for?”
“Bertram Casimir.” I pretend to have difficulty pronouncing the name. “The penthouse. Arrival will be around four p.m.”
This will give me enough time to pick Collette up from school, check in with Waylen, jet out of the house to run my little errand, and be back before dinner.
“Someone will be there,” the man assures me, and we hang up.
A recluse like Bertram relies on things being safe and predictable.
He is surrounded at all times by cameras and security guards.
So if he’s expecting a package and doesn’t know what it is, that will already rattle him.
And when I happen to show up instead, under the guise of wanting to ask about his charitable donations, he’s going to be downright confused.
He’s going to get that nettling, impossible-to-prove sense that something is amiss.
That’s what I want. To keep him off his game so that he makes a mistake.
I have a new text from Mr. X asking how today went.
I type back that we may have a few leads, but I leave out my latest plan, just in case he tells Elodie about it and she tries to stop me.
Working with a partner always has its flaws, and while I’ve come to admit that Elodie is brilliant, her flaw is that she’s too cautious.
I can’t blame her for that—she’s coming from small-time white-collar investment fraud.
I won’t involve her in the dirty work. I’ll handle it myself.