Chapter Fourteen
L aodice had internally debated between sneaking into the staff area or knocking on Britt’s door. She really wanted to talk to Britt—the self-possessed woman would be hard to shock or shake anything out of, but it might be possible to appeal to her better nature, and see if she knew or suspected anything about Jesse’s blackmail attempts.
However, Kyle and Sarah were both in the dining room, and if previous patterns held true, they’d be there until the end of the meal at least. That meant Danielle was the only person in the staff spaces, and she’d overheard the young woman asking Sarah if she could go nap in her room. Sarah had dismissed her with irritation, but it was good news for Laodice. She might never get a better time to snoop.
The foyer was still and silent, and Laodice shivered involuntarily as she headed for the bar and the door behind it. It was weird; she knew there weren’t any security cameras and that nobody in the gallery room could possibly hear her, but she was still moving quietly, her ears straining for any sound.
And just as well, because as she neared the staff door, she heard the unmistakable noise of someone turning the handle, as well as an exasperated huff.
Laodice took two steps backward and ducked behind the bar. It was partial concealment at best, and she held her breath as Danielle shoved the door open, but the younger woman didn’t look behind herself as she strode towards the main entrance. Laodice caught the flash of a phone screen in her hand.
“Hello?” Laodice heard her say. “Yes, it’s urgent.”
And then then Danielle was out the front door.
Okaaay. Well, that was weird, possibly even suspicious. Hadn’t Telfer said Danielle wasn’t allowed to have a phone? On the other hand, if she’d been employed here, Laodice would have totally broken that rule too. And if Danielle had decided on getting a breath of fresh air and talking to a friend instead of taking a nap, Laodice wouldn’t fault her for that either.
There was no keycard scanner on the staff door, and though there was a deadbolt, it wasn’t engaged. Sarah obviously didn’t care too much for making the others keep up any kind of security protocol. Laodice slipped through the door and wondered what the police had made of the lax security. If they’d bothered to ask, of course, and if Sarah had told the truth. She couldn’t help thinking of Olympus, with its security gates and guard station on the ground floor, of the keycard that got her to the sixth floor and Stephanie at the Bridal reception desk, screening all visitors. In comparison, Halcyon appeared to be running on the honor system, which would be all well and good if one of the inhabitants wasn’t a murderer.
The lights were still on in the administration area, which probably meant Danielle planned to come back soon. Laodice would need to work fast.
Unfortunately, Sarah’s office door was locked. Laodice poked around a couple of the other offices, but there was nothing in them but furniture. Brand new office chairs sat behind unmarked desks with empty drawers and filing cabinets, everything with a patina of dusty neglect.
Remembering what Sarah had said about her hacking a server, Laodice tried the humming cabinet next, but that, too, was locked. She turned into the hallway off the office space, feeling like an idiot. Only about fifty-four percent of murders were ever solved, and that was by the professionals. She wasn’t a police officer or a spy, and it was sort of silly to behave like one.
On the other hand, something strange was happening at Halcyon, and the police might not be the best people to work it all out. There was the murder, of course, but also the job Sarah had mentioned. Something big, she’d said. Retirement money.
Laodice was fairly certain Sarah meant to retire in comfort.
The hallway had several doors. She found a small staff lounge behind one, with a kitchenette and a new couch. The next two doors were locked, but she went on, doggedly trying them all while she listened for the sound of Danielle’s return. She’d already marked several hiding spots.
The next door opened onto a small, obviously unoccupied bedroom, with a single bed holding a bare mattress and two pillows without cases, a nightstand, and a clothing rack. A smaller door inside the room opened onto a sink, toilet, and closet-sized shower. Laodice envisioned the luxurious bathroom she’d enjoyed upstairs, and felt a pang of guilt.
Hm. If this was the live-in accommodation for staff, then the two previous locked doors were probably also bedrooms. She went back to the hallway and tried the door opposite.
This one opened on another bedroom, empty of an inhabitant, but definitely in use.
The bed was neatly made with a patterned duvet, and a pair of shiny black shoes were under the clothing rack, which held white business shirts and black slacks. There was more furniture, too: a plastic set of drawers that probably held more clothes, and a narrow bookshelf, leaning haphazardly from the weight of the hardcover books crammed into it. Laodice squinted at the titles in the light coming in from the door, and spotted The Encyclopedia of Cocktails , Spirited, Meehan’s Bartender Manual , and Cocktail Codex.
Kyle’s room. She slipped inside and closed the door, turning on the nightstand lamp for light.
Then she paused. Up until now, she hadn’t done anything really bad. Keeping information from the cops wasn’t a crime, and walking into a restricted area might get her kicked out of Halcyon, but didn’t feel illegal. Searching someone’s private possessions felt criminal. And was, you know, wrong.
Laodice waited for the voice of her conscience to chime in, which it usually did sounding uncannily like Cassie. Not a whisper.
Okay, then. She grabbed a couple of tissues from the nightstand, in case fingerprints became a thing, and pulled the top drawer open.
Underwear, socks, and a handgun.
She sucked in a breath.
Come to think of it, what was Jesse’s cause of death? Based on what she’d seen of the body, she’d been assuming a blow to the head. Something had definitely split his scalp, and there’d been blood all over his face. Wouldn’t she and Telfer have noticed a bullet wound?
Her memory of heist movies and the occasional crime drama weren’t helping her out much on this topic. She’d have to do some searching online when she got back to the room. In the meantime, it might be useful to know that Kyle had a gun
She made quick work of searching the rest of the bedroom and the bathroom, both of which were annoyingly normal and didn’t have anything like a secret panel that concealed a briefcase full of a million dollars and several passports, Jesse’s missing shoe or laptop, or a signed confession note that outlined exactly what Kyle had done and for what reasons. It was the room of a man who didn’t spend much time in it and hadn’t brought many possessions to Halcyon. The collection of mixology and cocktail books were the closest things to personal items. They’d obviously been read, with narrow highlighter tabs bristling from the top of Cocktail Codex like a neon-colored cityscape. She opened it and thumbed through. There were some pencil notes printed in a strong hand, indicating different amounts or noting substitutions. He’d highlighted a lot of the introduction.
Laodice recognized the signs of a true obsessive, and replaced the book with more respect than she’d previously had for Kyle.
Time was running out. She scanned the room one last time, decided she hadn’t disturbed anything too much, and went back to the hall. Two more empty bedrooms, a laundry room with two washers and dryers, and at the end of the hallway, the kitchen.
It was a beautiful space, with gleaming stainless-steel benches, a full complement of pots and pans, and several oven and grill stations. Her own kitchen was usually used for heating takeout leftovers, one-pot pasta dishes, or the occasional lazy breakfast, but she’d seen the test kitchens at Olympus. This kitchen was smaller, but it had the same feeling of ruthless efficiency in the service of art. The only notes of discord were a dirty cutting board and knife, with a few lettuce scraps clinging to the blade, and the deep fryer in the corner, still smelling of fish. So the salad had been prepared onsite, and the fish and chips at least cooked here… She opened the doors to the enormous fridge and found two heads of lettuce waiting their turn to go under the knife. The freezer next to the fridge had a giant bag of frozen french fries, three-quarters empty, and a popular brand of battered fish fillets.
More confirmation of what Sarah had already all-but-confirmed. But nothing new, no revelations into the dual mysteries of who had killed Jesse and what Sarah thought was going to be her last big job.
This whole spying venture had been a bad idea, risky and stupid. She went into the walk-in pantry, closing the door behind her. It was barely stocked—boxes of cereal and kitchen basics. She closed her eyes, annoyed, and opened them again.
Then she went still. At the top of her eyeline, nearly out of sight on the top shelf, she could see the corner of something smooth and black.
A laptop, maybe.
Maybe Jesse’s laptop.
She needed something to stand on. A stepladder, or a stool, or even a box. She opened the pantry door, and nearly fell headlong into Britt.
They stared at each other in mutual shock and suspicion.
Britt recovered first. “What are you doing here?” she said, in a harsh whisper.
“What are you —” Laodice began, and cut off as they both heard the sound of footsteps in the hallway, getting closer.
Britt grabbed her arm. “This way,” she said, almost inaudible, and Laodice let herself be hustled through another door, into another short hallway, which spat them both out in the room that Laodice had thought was probably meant to be a gym, right next to the hot tub room.
Britt let out a breath she might have been holding the entire time, and Laodice wrenched her arm free. It hadn’t escaped her that she might have been walking with a murderer. She’d made the decision to go with her in an instant, and had had to follow it through. Now she was thinking.
“Upstairs,” Britt said, her voice tense, and they went back through the foyer and past the gallery room, where Laodice could still hear voices in quiet conversation. It seemed like years since she’d been in that room, but her whole spying adventure had probably taken the grand total of fifteen or twenty minutes.
Laodice followed Britt, eyeing the woman’s broad back. She was putting some pieces together. The walk, the steady authority, the practical watch she hadn’t removed…
Britt opened the door to the room she shared with Carrick, and for a moment Laodice lost her train of thought. The suite was decorated in clean white and chrome grey, with strip lighting glowing softly on the walls. The bed was low and white, with subtle trapezoidal shaping. But it was the ceiling that drew the eye, shaped and painted to suggest a geometrical observation dome, with stars not just painted on the roof, but twinkling LED lights brightening, then fading in a complex pattern.
“A spaceship room,” she said. “Cool.”
Britt smiled, her eyes softening a little. “Carrick loves it.” She motioned with her chin to the door. “Closed, please.”
Laodice obeyed, but before Britt could start talking, she leaned casually against the wall and looked her up and down. “So, you are a cop.”
Britt’s eyes narrowed. “Who said that?”
“None of your business.”
“I am not a police officer,” Britt said, too carefully.
“Isn’t this the thing where if you’re a cop you have to tell me?”
Britt rolled her eyes. “That thing wouldn’t apply, and also doesn’t actually exist.”
“Really?”
“Think about it. Undercover officers would be made in an instant. Anyway, I’m not, strictly speaking, a cop.”
“Uh-huh. So as far as I know, you were snooping around, exactly like me, and I have no obligation to do anything you say.”
Britt regarded her. “I’m a law enforcement agent with different responsibilities and a jurisdiction outside the local police force. For reasons I am not able to discuss. I need you to not mention to anyone that you saw me in the staff area.”
“Are you FBI? CIA?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“NSA?”
“Laodice, I’m not going to tell you. I wouldn’t even be telling you this much if I didn’t need you to keep your mouth shut. Can I trust you?”
“I’d need to see some sort of ID,” Laodice said, and then registered that Britt had used her real name.
Britt waited a beat, to make sure she’d gotten it, and shrugged. “I don’t have my ID on me.”
“Well, that’s convenient.”
“Not right now,” Britt said, dryly enough that it took Laodice a second to recognize it was a joke. “Okay. Give me a minute.” She reached under her pillow, and Laodice tensed, but Britt’s hand came back holding a phone, not the weapon Laodice had abruptly feared.
Britt noticed her tension, of course. “At least you have some survival instincts,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder.” She held up one finger and placed a call. “Hello. Yes, sir, that’s correct. Would you be able to confirm to someone that I’m a member of an unspecified government agency?” A pause. “An accidental encounter in the course of my investigation.” Another pause. “No, sir. Nothing relevant to your case. Here.” She handed the phone to Laodice.
“Hello?”
“This is Detective Bernard of the Hippocampus PD.”
Laodice had more or less expected that. “This is Laodice Troiades.”
A pause. A sigh. “Ms. Troiades, I can assure you that I have personally checked Ms. Evans’s credentials, and she is indeed a member of a government agency. I have spoken to her superior officer, and was informed that exposing this information would endanger both Ms. Evans and her current case.”
“But you told her who I was,” Laodice said. Unless Alma had spilled the beans, it was the only explanation.
“I did.” Bernard waited a beat. “Is that all?”
“So you don’t know what she’s working on either, huh?”
“Ms. Evans is outside of my jurisdiction, Ms. Troiades,” Bernard said, and yeah, he didn’t know and he didn’t like it. Having some kind of federal agent—Britt had to be, if she was getting cooperation from the local police—interfering in his case must be intensely irritating.
Britt held her hand out for the phone. Laodice ignored her.
“Was it the blow to the head that killed Jesse?” she asked, trying her best to sound casual.
“I’m not able to discuss—”
“So he wasn’t shot?”
“Shot?” Bernard said. He sounded startled for a beat, then his voice slid smoothly back into weary patience. “What makes you say that?”
“Just wondering!” Laodice said cheerily, and hung up.
“You’re a menace,” Britt said, as Laodice handed back the phone. “Are you happy now?”
“I won’t tell anyone except Telfer. And he can keep a secret.”
Britt grunted, as if that was more or less what she’d expected. “No one else, please. I’m not kidding when I say this could be life or death.”
“Does Carrick know?”
“Yes. You can confirm that with him if you like, but don’t discuss it further.”
“And you know that Jesse was blackmailing him?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Britt said, looking genuinely angry for the first time. “How much have you managed to ferret out? Anything else you want to tell me?”
Laodice thought of the laptop, hidden on the top shelf of the pantry, and held her tongue. Britt wasn’t there for Jesse’s killer, and if it did turn out to be Jesse’s laptop, Laodice would, naturally, hand it over to the police. But she wanted a look at it first.
“Okay, yes,” Britt said. “Jesse was trying to pressure Carrick to get him a new job. Jesse’s family are high-flyers—politicians, big funds—and Jesse was supposed to graduate summa cum laude, go to law school, and become a senator by the time he was 35. What actually happened was that he partied through college, graduated without honors, and smashed his car into a preschool fence while he was on coke.”
“A preschool ?”
“It was at night. No one was hurt.”
Laodice raised her eyebrows. “But none of that looks great on your law school application.”
“Nope. He might have gotten in somewhere, provided he pleaded rehabilitation and his dad wrote a big enough check.” Britt shook her head. “But then he paid someone else to take the LSAT for him. And that , the schools don’t tolerate. He was red-flagged. No law school pipeline to politics.
“My guess is that his dad called in a few favors to get him a place at a buddy’s firm, but Argive Holdings is a bigger place, a bigger name. That’s why he was pressuring Carrick. He thought blackmail would get him in faster than actually working for it, the lazy asshole.”
“He’s dead,” Laodice said doubtfully. She wasn’t sure if not speaking ill of the dead should really extend to Jesse, but her mother’s voice was sounding in her head anyway.
“He’s a dead lazy asshole,” Britt said, unmoved.
“Did Hazel know? About any of this?”
“I’m not sure. I do know that it was a whirlwind romance. He met her through friends last year. She’s got a sizeable trust fund, and stands to inherit substantially more.”
“She’d already married him,” Laodice said.
“And how did you know that?”
“I overheard her telling Yvette.”
“I should put you on payroll,” Britt said. “Well, what’s your take? Who do you think took out Jesse?”
“I—” Laodice said, and then stopped. If it wasn’t Carrick or Britt, that meant the last real suspects she and Telfer had left were Samuel and Patrick. She and Telfer hadn’t told the police about Jesse trying to bug them, and Britt probably didn’t know about it either. And the timeline worked. Patrick could have killed Jesse in reaction to his snooping—by accident or self-defense, it had to be, she couldn’t see him committing murder—and then he’d gone downstairs, pulled Samuel away from the cocktail thing, and later that night, when everyone else was sleeping, Samuel had taken Jesse into the woods and hidden him.
And the next morning—what? They’d hidden Jesse’s laptop in the kitchen pantry for…some reason? They’d kept pretending they wanted to talk to Jesse, showing Laodice and Telfer the bug and pretending to be worried about Hazel, all the while knowing that Jesse was dead and his body was lying in a creek?
Laodice let go of her skirt and smoothed the fabric she’d crumpled with her hands. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what the police turned up or what everybody’s alibis are.”
Britt was watching her shrewdly. “But you have an idea, don’t you?”
“Up until ten minutes ago, you, Carrick, or both of you working together were my top suspects,” Laodice said, with perfect truth. “I didn’t want to think it was either of you, but blackmail’s a good motive.”
And she couldn’t help noticing that Britt hadn’t told her anything about the blackmail, other than to confirm Carrick was being pressured. Instead, she’d ruthlessly spilled the sordid details of Jesse’s background. Was she hoping Laodice would bite at juicier meat if it was dangled in front of her nose?
There was a shuffling noise outside the door, and she must have reacted somehow, because the next moment Britt had glided towards her and was opening the door for Carrick.
“Hey,” he said, smiling at her, and Laodice saw his whole heart in his eyes.
She sort of wished she hadn’t. Whatever Britt’s investigation was, he seemed to be a part of it, which meant she and Telfer weren’t the only people who’d started the week in a fake relationship.
Carrick’s feelings, it seemed, were all too real.
***
Telfer had unearthed a pack of sticky notes from his satchel, and sat at the dressing table-cum-desk, doing his best to make some sort of coherent order of the firm evidence (rare) and guesses (many) he and Laodice had put together.
“Hey, I think we can—” he said, turning to Laodice when she came in, and then he saw her face. “You got something?”
“I got a lot ,” Laodice said. “In order, Danielle has a phone, Kyle has a gun, I think Jesse’s laptop is hidden in the kitchen, and Britt’s a Secret Service agent or something. Oh, and I’m pretty sure the cause of death was head trauma, because of the way Bernard reacted when I mentioned shooting.”
“Okay,” Telfer said, and leaned back in his chair. “Explain.”
Laodice did. It took over half an hour, with a lot of backtracking and, “did I tell you about that? What about this?” and he wasn’t aware if she knew she was grinning through most of it, revved up by her success and the adrenaline rush of what sounded like a couple of nerve-wracking encounters with law enforcement. She did stop smiling towards the end, when she brought up the increased likelihood of Patrick and Samuel as perpetrators.
“I was thinking about that,” Telfer said, and pointed at his sticky notes.
“Cool, a murder board,” Laodice said, leaning over his shoulder. “All you need is some red string.”
Telfer had thought the same thing, but he was using arrows instead. “We’ve been thinking that if it was more than one person, it had to be a couple, but that’s not necessarily true. Patrick could have killed Jesse and bribed Kyle to move him. Or Hazel could have done it—”
“Not Hazel,” Laodice said.
“We’re not ruling people out because we like them, remember?” Telfer said.
“This isn’t because I like her. I saw her realize he was dead. She didn’t do it.”