Chapter Twenty-Six
TWENTY-SIX
Nicole
Nicole didn’t need another tequila sunrise, especially after her drinking binge the previous night, but that didn’t stop her from lining up for her third cocktail.
It was a party, after all—her party—and hadn’t she earned it?
In the past twenty-four hours alone, she’d come face to face with an intruder, been steps away from a murder victim, and learned the man who’d taken all her family’s savings might be going to prison before Nicole could get it back.
If ever she needed a drink, it was now.
As she waited for her turn at the bar, bobbing her head to Duran Duran, she surveyed the room.
Maureen really had thought of everything, right down to the playlist of Nicole’s favorite songs.
“You,” she’d said, teary-eyed, when she saw her sister at the front of the crowd. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“Happy birthday, Sis,” Maureen had replied, wrapping her in a hug.
Nicole said, “Woody knew and didn’t give it away?” to which Mac shrugged.
“Maybe he’s turning a corner.”
If only, thought Nicole. Before things got better with Woody, they were likely to get a lot worse.
Fresh drink in hand, Nicole scanned the room once more. Every face was familiar, all of them belonging to people she’d known for years. The exception was the one by the double doors, open now to the resort’s main hall.
“Eva,” Nicole said when, breathless, she reached the doors. “What are you doing here?”
Eva Ki looked completely different from the polished young woman Nicole had met at the house. Dressed in jeans and a white sweatshirt, her dark hair piled wildly atop her head, she could have passed for one of Blair or Alana’s friends.
“I was going to the bar,” she said, looking flustered. “Is that for you? The party?”
Nicole lifted her drink. “It’s my birthday.”
“Happy birthday.” Not a trace of enthusiasm in Eva’s voice.
Nicole said, “I thought you were staying in Clayton, at the hotel by the water.”
“I was,” she said coolly. “I’m not anymore.”
Nicole swiveled her head to look back at the party.
She and Mikko’s girlfriend stood in full view of the guests, under the floodlight-bright chandeliers in the hall.
Nicole could see Shana and Tim near the window, talking to Blair.
Listening, no doubt, as Blair conveyed her excitement about her plan to attend college with Nash.
The detectives were occupied, neither one looking her way. And yet.
“Want to talk for a minute?”
Reluctantly, Eva gave a nod and Nicole guided her away from the door, out of view of the room.
They stopped beneath a large framed photo of Boldt Castle, the black-and-white image capturing its restoration decades prior.
With part of the roof missing and no glass in the windows, the landmark looked like a haunted mansion.
“Are you doing OK?” Nicole asked. “Yesterday was pretty crazy.”
Eva shrugged. She’d wrapped her arms around herself, the sleeves of her white sweatshirt binding her like a straitjacket. “Those bones … it’s just so awful. As if the woman in the ceiling wasn’t bad enough. The detective who interviewed me.” Eva nodded toward the door. “Why is she here?”
It took Nicole a second to realize that Eva was referring to Shana. “Friend of the family,” she said simply, not wanting to explain that her sister was the sheriff, Maureen’s friends all state cops. “Shana interviewed you?”
Eva nodded. “You?”
“I got a different detective,” she said, “but yeah, they questioned me too.”
“I didn’t really know what to say. I told them about the sounds I’d heard,” said Eva, “and that I felt like I was being watched, but I don’t know anything about the … the bones. Do you think—”
She snapped her lips closed. Nash had stepped out into the hall.
Blair’s boyfriend made a point of wishing Nicole a happy birthday, calling her Mrs. D, which she liked because it made her feel young and something close to cool.
But the way he swayed as he walked by reminded her that she’d seen Nash near the bar, nuzzling Blair’s ear, with a hand resting far too low on her back.
Even with the sheriff of the whole damn county in the room, the kid had gotten into the booze, and Nicole could do without a lecture from Nash’s mother.
When he’d disappeared down the side hall toward the bathrooms, Nicole looked expectantly at Eva.
“At first I wondered if that woman had something to do with this,” Eva went on.
Nicole said, “Me too, but it sounds like the victim died months ago, so unless this isn’t the intruder’s first time at the house …” She didn’t mention that the woman, Jenny, had escaped, or that there was an effort underway to capture her. Eva looked upset enough as it was.
“Months ago,” Eva repeated. “And the bones have been in the house that whole time?”
“Looks that way.”
“Mikko bought the house in September.”
“Yeah. If I had to guess, the detectives are trying to figure out who had access to it late last year.” Nicole considered holding back her feelings about Mikko Helle, but if the man was as much trouble as she suspected he might be, his girlfriend deserved to know.
“That includes Mikko,” she said. “They’ll dig into his life.
That’s how these things go.” What would they find, Nicole wondered, when they did?
Underneath her hoodie, Eva’s chest rose and fell.
“When it started,” she said, “Mikko didn’t even notice.
Honestly, for a minute I thought it was him.
We were over there swimming one day, in the river, and when I went to shower there was this ring of soap scum around the tub.
I hadn’t used it yet, and Mikko doesn’t take baths.
I thought maybe it was one of the workers, like he had to rinse out a bucket or something?
But the next day, I was there alone for a bit while Mikko dealt with something at town hall, and I saw footprints.
A trail of little puddles leading from the bathroom door to the closet. ”
A shiver rolled down Nicole’s spine. “What did he say?” she asked. “When you told him?”
“He said I had a good imagination. He laughed. I even showed him the footprints. He insisted that they were mine.” Her eyes darted around the empty hall.
Maybe it was because Nicole was decades older than Eva, but she suddenly felt fiercely protective.
The woman had known something was wrong, and Mikko had made her feel like she was crazy.
Gaslit her, even when she had proof. Nicole knew what that was like.
She’d felt it with Woody just last night.
“There was a message, written in the dust on the bar. I saw it the first day I came to clean.” The words were out before Nicole could stop them, a ragged, nagging cuticle she had to rip away. “It said: I’m watching. Did you ever see a message like that?”
Eva shook her head. “God, that’s terrifying. You think the trespasser wrote that? I don’t get it. Was she trying to get caught?”
“I don’t know. That’s what bugs me too,” said Nicole. “What she did is totally illegal. She can’t have wanted us to find her, right? So why leave that message? I thought …” Nicole paused, bit her lip. “I thought maybe it was Mikko.”
If Nicole was wrong—about him, his deal with Woody, his shady behavior—this would be a defining moment.
The opinions she’d formed about Mikko Helle, the attractive young former professional athlete who’d sidled into her family’s life, were largely based on instinct.
Nicole wasn’t like her sister, with a radar finely tuned to duplicity and danger.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t sense a snake in the grass if it was coming, fangs bared, for her children.
Eva’s full mouth inched its way into a frown. “I get that,” she said. “Mikko likes to play games. Mess with people for fun. He likes to see how they’ll react.”
Games. Was that why Mikko had targeted Woody? Was this simply a case of a bored rich guy fucking with a trusting local?
“Nobody ever calls him on it,” Eva continued. “They’re too afraid of confronting him. I’ve seen his so-called friends take all kinds of shit back in D.C., but they just keep coming back.”
“Why?” Nicole was incredulous. She couldn’t imagine choosing to spend time with someone like that.
“Fame?” Eva shrugged, her cotton-clad shoulder nearly touching her ear. “Money? Mikko loves to party, and he pays for everything. People use him. If he realizes it, he doesn’t care. He’s using them too.”
All at once, the sweet drinks that had settled in Nicole’s stomach started to churn. “I’m sorry,” she said, doing her best to keep them down, “but Eva, if that’s what he’s like, why are you with him?”
“I’m not. I ended it,” she said, her expression hard. “Last night, when we got back to Clayton. I need to find a rental car so I can drive home to D.C., but until then I’m staying here.”
“Oh.” Nicole laid a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Eva.”
“Don’t be. I’m not,” she said, though a tear was sliding down her rosy cheek.
“We weren’t together for that long, just four months in all—and it isn’t just the partying that’s the problem.
The way he reacted to the bones, it was creepy.
Like they were this big inconvenience. I mean, somebody’s dead.
They were rotting away down there all this time.
” Eva squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head.
“I thought I knew him pretty well, but now I’m not sure.
I wouldn’t call him heartless, but … I just don’t think I can trust somebody like that. ”
Trust. That word had many facets, all of them reflecting the light in a way that left you blinking and half blind. Trust was about confidence and faith, but also conviction. Knowing a person would do what they promised. Not needing to worry they’d double-cross you like a secret agent in the night.
Eva had known the man for four months, in the most intimate of ways.
If she didn’t trust him, what did that say about Mikko Helle?