Chapter 16
“Ricky,” I called as I burst into the room, catching myself as I slipped on some drippings from the bag of ice in my hand. “Are you awake?”
I caught myself again, mentally this time, as the door closed behind me, shutting out the light from the hallway, and my eyes adjusted to the dim light of the room. I pulled up short as I neared the bed and suddenly, painfully remembered what had happened there before I had left the room.
“Mmf,” Ricky snorted. “Wha?”
“Sorry,” I said in a half whisper, my bubble thoroughly burst. “Never mind.” I looked at the bag of ice I was carrying, sighed, and started to replace the bag on Ricky’s ankle, now mostly full of sloshy water, with this new one.
As I reached for the bag of water, Ricky started pulling himself up into a sitting position, giving me a sleepy smile. “No, I’m up,” he said. “Aw, you brought me fresh ice. You’re so sweet.”
I looked up at him in confusion, but he didn’t notice, wiping the sleep from his eyes.
He went on, yawning out, “Mmm, those are some good painkillers. Anything else happen?”
“Yes, but …” I didn’t understand what was happening here. Had he forgotten what he had said? Had those painkillers really been that strong?
He was looking more alert now, still smiling at me. “You’re going to start holding out on me now? Out with it! What happened?” He pulled one of the pillows out from under his ankle, propping it up against the headboard next to him and patting the mattress in invitation for me to sit.
I cautiously sat down, not committing to the pillow against the headboard, but instead folding my legs under me and holding my knees in a protective pose. “We—Tawny and I—found the rug. From Richard’s suite.”
He bolted upright. “What! Where?”
My excitement was returning, too, in spite of my confusion. “On the beach. It almost—it almost looked like it had fallen all the way down there, like it had been thrown off the balcony.”
“That’s so far,” Ricky marveled. “Was there anything on it? Any clue as to why anyone would have thrown it overboard? Or who did it?”
“It was rolled up,” I said. “I don’t know if there was anything on it. We thought we shouldn’t touch it, let the sheriff’s office examine it as we found it.”
“Tawny thought that? That sounds like you, but not really like her.” Ricky grinned. Why was he so smiley?
“Wiley and Lis came by, too. I think it was one of them who said we shouldn’t touch it.”
“Probably Lis, I bet,” said Ricky. “Because she knows what’s on it and didn’t want you to see. But what did the sheriff say when they came out?”
“Umm.” My heart sank as I remembered the critical error I’d made in my desire to get away from Wiley and my misguided excitement to share this news with Ricky. “I didn’t wait for the sheriff. But Tawny went up to call them, so I imagine they’ll come soon. Maybe we should be ready to talk to them?”
“Yeah, probably.” His eyes were shining. He didn’t seem too bothered by my carelessness. “What else did Lis say to try to throw you off the scent?”
I thought back. “She said … that the rug being there was ‘perplexing.’ She seemed confused about it.”
“Convincing, huh?”
“Yes,” I said absently, still thinking about the conversation on the beach and feeling boneheaded for leaving the rug. Wiley and Lis hadn’t stayed down on the beach much longer after I’d left, but what might they have done in that short time? “Honestly, they were all kind of strange about it.”
“Strange how?”
“Tawny wondered what we’d do if we found out what happened to Richard, or who was with him. Like, she asked if we’d call the police.” Tawny didn’t strike me as a particularly law-and-order type of person, and the more I thought about it, the more I wondered where the question had come from.
“What did you say?” Ricky was still rapt, leaning in as close to me as his elevated ankle would allow.
“I said it depended. If there was another person and they pushed Richard, obviously we’d tell the cops. But if there was another person and Richard fell on his own, it would maybe depend on whether that person had a good reason for not coming forward as a witness.”
“That sounds about right,” Ricky said, nodding. “So Lis pretended to be confused, and Tawny wanted to know if we’d squeal if we found something. What did Wiley say?”
“Wiley always seems to act like he thinks everything is funny, but in a weird, mean way, like he’s keeping you out of some joke he’s in on. He made a weird crack about Richard being drunk and trying to throw the rug and going over with it.”
“That …” Ricky paused, thinking. “That actually sounds plausible, though, kind of. But why would Richard be throwing the rug? Why would anyone be throwing the rug?”
“That’s what I still don’t understand. The other possibility is that someone carried the rug out of the room and hid it on the beach, though it was more or less out in the open, just back in the bushes.”
“They would have had to move fast to get the rug out of the room,” Ricky pointed out. “And they would have faced a good chance of someone seeing them carrying a rolled-up rug out of the building.”
I nodded. “And it’s a long, treacherous walk to the beach. It would have to have been someone really strong—like, I don’t think anyone here is that strong—or, more likely, two people to carry it down there. It feels more likely that it did fall there, but harder to understand why.”
I had relaxed into the spot Ricky had made for me, sitting next to him now, leaning on the pillow he had placed there.
“Okay, let’s review our suspects,” he said, grabbing my wrist and starting to count off names on my fingers.
“We have Lis, Wiley, and Tawny. There’s also Rachel—or, rather, Rachel’s hitman, killing Richard for her, then meeting her at the café. ”
“I think that theory’s out,” I said. “I know who she met with at the café.”
“How long was I asleep? You’ve been so busy,” Ricky said admiringly. “Who was it? What was the meeting about?”
“I don’t know what the meeting was about,” I said, “but I know it was with Brad Benson, Cecilia’s attorney.”
“Hmm, something to do with the will?”
“No, he said he was advising her on a personal problem.”
Ricky played with another finger. “Wild card: Mary Alice? Any reason why she might have killed Richard? If only for the sake of argument?”
I furrowed my brow. I’d never considered Mary Alice, but something floated to the front of my consciousness. “She did owe Richard money.”
“That’s right!” Ricky waved my hand at me in excitement, then paused to think again.
“But, didn’t we hear Rachel telling her she’d still have to pay it back?
And Mary Alice didn’t seem that surprised or upset about it.
If she’d killed Richard to clear the debt and it hadn’t worked, I feel like she’d have had more of a reaction—or tried to kill Rachel, too, or something. ”
I looked at Ricky incredulously. “Are you clearing a potential suspect? I don’t think you’ve ever done that before.”
“I am capable of personal growth.” He smirked.
“Or at least of occasional rational thought.” He rested his head on my shoulder, still playing with my fingers.
He folded down all but my index finger. “I still think Lis makes the most sense. I don’t know how she did it, but the only clear motive we have goes back to Cecilia’s will. ”
I studied the whorl of my fingerprint, my mind following its loops and dead ends. Something was sticking in my craw, but it was floating out in the ether beyond my finger’s reach. There was something wrong with the will, something I had forgotten or overlooked.
Maybe Ricky could help me get closer to it. “You keep talking about Cecilia’s will,” I said. “What do we know about Cecilia’s will?”
“What do we know? Not a whole heck of a lot,” he said, pursing his lips at me. “You know something, I suppose. I’ve only guessed.”
Of course. I’d been so stupid.
“What have you guessed? Remind me,” I said slowly, dreading the confirmation of my colossal brain fart.
“What I’ve guessed, which I kind of assumed you’d confirmed without actually saying so, is that, as Cecilia’s children, Richard and Lis stood to split her estate, but with Richard dead, Lis became the sole heir. Are you telling me that’s wrong?”
The bed vanished with a poof, replaced by an endless black void into which I was falling, falling, falling, spiraling downward on my own embarrassment. I couldn’t believe I’d been so … so … ugh.
“Oliver,” Ricky said, his mildly worried face popping into my void. “What’s wrong? You’ve gone pale.”
I stared balefully at him through the blackness, which slowly faded away under his light, bringing me back to my spot next to him on the bed. No wonder he’d broken it off with me, even if he seemed to have forgotten that now. I’d utterly failed him.
The concerned crease between his eyebrows was deepening as he waited for any response from me. “Are you okay? What about the will? Was I wrong?”
“Yes and no,” I finally managed, breaking through the embarrassment threatening to paralyze my brain and mouth.
“Okay?”
“Yes, Lis is now the sole heir. But the rest of it was all wrong.”
“Can you tell me? I know you were sworn to confidence, but I figure maybe now …” He grabbed my hand again, lacing his fingers between mine, raising his eyebrows hopefully. “Maybe now you can let me in on it, and it can be our confidence?”
What now? I was already too consumed by recriminations to try to understand this confusing new gambit. But it seemed obvious that the only way out was to let Ricky into my confidence about Cecilia’s will.
“I … you ended up with the right heir, and I never questioned how you got there. I assumed you knew, because I knew. Does that make sense?”
“Not really,” Ricky said gently.
“I try so hard,” I said, pleading. “Usually I do better. I can’t believe I did this.”
“Oliver, I know you try hard. It’s okay if you made a mistake or if there was some misunderstanding,” Ricky said, placing his other hand over the hand he was already holding.