Chapter Eighty-Four Piper
Chapter Eighty-Four
Piper
The moms sat in Piper’s dining room, preparing to leave for the Influencer’s party while the kids made themselves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the kitchen. They’d temporarily relocated the cafeteria to Piper’s house so the kids could keep Travis company while he slept in his crate.
Piper removed her feet from the uncomfortable taupe-colored heels she planned to wear to the party and wiggled her toes.
There was a reason law enforcement officers didn’t wear heels. What if they managed to get into Richard and Margaret’s basement and Chip pulled a gun and demanded the diaries? What if she needed to tackle someone?
Kiersten picked up the diary sitting on the table while Piper applied a Band-Aid to her heel. These damn shoes always produced blisters.
“Let’s read her final entry again,” Piper said.
Kiersten read the last sentence. “But if Dickie succeeds in killing me, I will leave a clue, buried in the past, leading to the truth.”
“A metaphor?” Rosamund asked.
Kiersten shook her head. “I think it’s literal.”
“Literal how?” Rosamund asked.
“Lillian told me a lot of the fallout shelters had dirt floors because it was cheaper. I think Dottie buried something in the floor,” Kiersten said.
“So we just have to find the nuclear-fallout shelter under Richard and Margaret’s garage,” Piper said.
“Right.” Kiersten nodded.
“And then we just have to get inside and dig up the floor,” Rosamund said.
Kiersten’s face fell. “Well. Yes.”
“And we have to do that without letting them know we’re doing it,” Piper added.
Kiersten looked crestfallen. “Look, I didn’t say it would be easy. I just said this is what we need to do next.”
Piper sighed, then froze, arms in midair. She was about to run her fingers through her hair, as she always did when frustrated. But she couldn’t do that today, because Caitlin had fixed her hair with hairspray. She wasn’t allowed to touch it.
Instead, she lowered her arms and ran her sweating palms down the side of her blue shantung silk sheath dress.
This was her baby shower, bridal shower, dance-recital, and kindergarten-graduation dress, because these were the only occasions that caused her to pull it reluctantly from her closet.
But those were spring events. It was November now. Shouldn’t her outfit be more autumnal?
“I think you look lovely,” Kiersten said, as though these wardrobe insecurities were written across her forehead in lipstick.
“That’s because you’ve never seen me in anything but yoga pants and a sweatshirt.” She curled her toes inside her taupe pumps. “I hate wearing clothes like this.”
But it wasn’t just the outfit making her uncomfortable. It was her conscience too. She did dangerous things for a living. It was part of the job description. But she’d never forgive herself if something happened to Kiersten and Rosamund.
Piper glanced at Rosamund, who looked stunning in a full-skirted, knee-length purple dress.
Then she double-checked the safety and tucked her Glock, and a knife, into her purse. “You both look fantastic . . . but . . . I think you guys should stay here. I’ll go snoop around and report back.”
“Absolutely not,” Rosamund said emphatically.
“Look,” Piper said. “They know we have the diaries. They know we’ve read to the end. They know we’ve probably figured out what happened to Dottie. They have to be getting desperate. And desperate people do . . . dangerous . . . things.”
Kiersten shook her head vehemently. “One of us needs to distract Richard and Margaret while the other person searches their basement. One of us needs to question Aspen and be a lookout. You can’t do this alone.”
“I don’t know.” Piper frowned as they moved from the dining room into the kitchen. “I really think you guys should stay home with the kids.”
“No!” eight kids shouted with one voice as they turned to look at their mothers with mutinous expressions.
“You promised that Matthew and Guinevere and Caitlin could be in charge of us for a whole hour,” Bella said in a deeply aggrieved voice.
“And we promise not to leave the cul-de-sac, no matter what,” Olivia said.
“And we won’t turn on the stove,” Johnny added.
“And we won’t fight,” Caitlin promised.
“And in case of a catastrophic injury, we will start the breathing, stop the bleeding, protect the wound, and treat for shock,” Guinevere recited.
Guinevere had paid very close attention to Kiersten’s first aid demonstrations. Piper suspected she wanted to be prepared should she ever be called upon to compete in the Hunger Games, play Quidditch, or enter a military academy for dragon riders.
“We won’t open the door if a stranger rings the bell,” Matthew promised.
“We won’t open any packages,” James said.
“We won’t shoot Nerf guns in the house,” Johnny added. “Only the backyard.”
“If we need anything, we’ll ask Lillian next door or Miles,” Luke said, reciting yet another rule from the list Piper had given them an hour earlier.
“We won’t let Travis out of his crate until you come home, even though it seems really mean to keep him locked up,” Bella said.
“And we will stop, drop, and roll if we accidentally immolate ourselves,” Matthew added. “But that won’t happen, because we will not play with matches.”
“I think they’ve got this,” Kiersten said, glancing at Piper. “We will literally be down the block. For an hour. We have cell phones. They can call us.”
“Caitlin, Matthew, and Guinevere are very ’sponsible thirteen-year-olds,” Bella added earnestly.
Rosamund smiled. “I think they’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Okay.” Piper raised her hands in surrender. She couldn’t fight the mothers and the kids. “Just be good. You know how I—”
“Worry,” all the kids said in unison.
She gave the group a sheepish smile. “Fine. I am now turning my default setting to semi-relaxed.”
Caitlin rolled her eyes. “Mom. You came from the factory without that setting.”
She rolled her eyes back at Caitlin, who giggled and trouped into the backyard with the other kids to play Red Light, Green Light, Dynamite, Boom, a retro game from Rosamund’s childhood that they had appropriated.
“Let’s get this over with.” Piper lifted her chin, forcefully expelling from her mind the ten thousand worst-case scenarios housed there, involving everything from kidnapping to natural gas explosions.
Kiersten ran next door to her own house and stashed the diary in the bag of birdseed.
Then they headed down the sidewalk toward Aspen’s house as Piper tried to ignore the fact that her feet already hurt.
Every time she wore these shoes, she regretted it.
And yet every time she wore this dress, she wore these shoes because they looked nice.
If doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result was the definition of insanity, then high-heeled shoes were proof of mental instability.
Her eyes narrowed at the long line of cars parked up and down Beaverbrook Lane as she minced forward in her heels. So much for Chip’s fears that no one would show up for Aspen’s party.
A burst of anxiety knifed at her gut, driving away petty concerns about her clothes, her hair, her damn shoes.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
Someone had even parked their Mercedes in front of the fire hydrant due to the scarcity of spaces.
“Let’s hope the kids don’t play with matches,” Rosamund muttered under her breath.
Piper gripped her purse, feeling the comforting outline of the handgun stashed inside. Then they climbed the steps, walked through the already open door, and entered the Influencer’s house.