Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Harriet
Tres Hermanas smells like garlic and charred steak and warm bread. The dishes and silverware clink as the waitstaff cleans the lunch hour wreckage.
Serena stands, signaling the end of our meeting with organizational wunderkind Malik Thomason. He shakes Serena’s hand and then mine, quick and confident.
“I’ll look forward to hearing from you both,” he says, clutching his tablet. With that, he disappears out onto Commerce Avenue.
We sit back down. Serena sets her phone down. Her home screen is one of her ultra-dramatic architectural photos. She’s wild about lines and shapes. “Did you catch that?” she says, twisting her glossy black hair into a bun. “Hearing from us both. He did his research, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did,” I say with a sigh.
One of the regional tech blogs recently called me “the shadow COO of InovaSpire,” and they’re not wrong, though I asked Serena not to give me a C-title. I prefer to work behind the scenes.
“What do you think?” she asks me.
“I think you were right about him,” I say. “He’s fast. He processes systems fast. He tracks consequences. Didn’t flinch when you asked about moving the timeline. And the playbook he suggested?”
“I liked that too,” Serena says as she stands again. “He’ll be a force multiplier, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely.”
She gives me a look that’s part pride, part sorrow. “He’s good, but I swear it’ll take more than two people to do your job.”
“I’ll still be around,” I tell her. “Questions, advice, emergency brain-picking—I’m yours.”
“I know.” Her smile is warm, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She took the news hard. Couldn’t believe I’d walk away from a company I helped build just to go organize someone’s private empire.
“I always thought you were destined for… something bigger,” she’d said when I told her.
From her angle, it is a terrible move.
But I can’t tell her the truth—that I’m the reason a vampire is in town, and the only way to keep him from preying on my friends and family and neighbors is to work for him.
I can’t tell her about the investigation either, or how every lead feels like a chance to balance the scales. To save a life instead of costing one.
“Let’s have that offer to him before he gets back to Cleveland.”
“On it.” I signal for the check. “Go ahead—you’ve got the media thing.”
Serena takes off. I hand the card to our waitperson and ask her to add a slice of cheesecake to go. Then I fire up my tablet and send the offer out.
“Well, well, well.” Josie slides into the seat across from me and pulls her son, Angus, onto her lap. He’s in a Spider-Man shirt, and his curls are half-wild.
“High five.” I reach over the table to meet his hand for a high five, and he tells me about the boat they’re going to ride on for his upcoming birthday.
“Are you going to be five?”
Angus smiles. “No, three!”
“Whaaaat?” I say, pretending to be aghast.
Angus laughs. He loves being mistaken for an older boy. Our waitress brings my dessert in a box and a little plate of animal crackers for Angus.
“What do we say?” Josie says to Angus.
“Thank you!” Angus starts arranging the animal crackers in pairs.
Josie waves to a few people. She is the ultimate high achiever. In addition to her seat on the city council, she runs a literacy nonprofit. She’ll run for mayor someday, not that she’d admit it publicly.
“So. You know everybody’s talking about you and Alexandru’s investigation, right?”
I keep my expression neutral. “Everybody?”
She ticks off fingers. “City admin chat. Mom group thread. My book club. Just to name a few. People don’t know what to think.
Some think the prince is enchanted with you and just playing along to stay close.
Others think he’s this benighted old-world royal who’s fallen into your personal murder conspiracy cult. ”
“Maybe it’s both,” I joke.
Josie takes a breadstick from the basket that the waitress forgot to take. “You’re just a female Svengali, aren’t you?”
I shrug. “What can I say?”
“I mean, is he truly on board with it?” She leans in. “Or is he just really, really, really on board with you?”
I would not marry a Renfield even if the alternative were to be chained to the bottom of the sea to slowly be consumed by eels.
“We have a purely professional relationship.”
“It seems weird that your part-time employer would become so invested in this thing. And I still say it’s the Snag Tooth Riders.”
“Even if the stairway collapse was the Snag Tooth Riders, there’s still something up with the rest of the accidents.” I hold up my hand, stopping her inevitable disagreement. “I know, I know. Bad for wedding tourism.”
“Do you have any more proof of anything? Bring me proof, and I’ll go down to the police station myself.”
“We’re working on proof,” I say.
She gets a sly look on her face.
“What?” I say.
“Alexandru is handsome… in a dashing, surly way. He’s very take-me-now-against-a-wall handsome.”
“Pass,” I say.
“You sure? It’s been ages since you broke it off with Maverick. And I can’t be the only one who sees some chemistry between you two.”
“Not the good kind of chemistry, trust me. Anyway, guys are more trouble than they’re worth. Interruptions, distractions, demands—the constant drama—”
“I know, I know.” Josie lifts her hands in mock surrender. She’s heard this rant before. “Romance is nonsense, relationships are a trap—yada yada.”
“They’re not a trap,” I correct. “They’re just a lousy return on investment. More cost than benefit.”
Josie smirks. “Only you would put love in spreadsheet terms.”
I grab a breadstick just for something to do with my hands. I haven’t told her I’ve quit my job yet. I don’t know how to tell her that.
Instead, I tell her about Mom’s super side-eye on Alexandru, and she’s highly entertained.
“Your mom is the ultimate tough cookie. I can so still see her ordering recruits around and taking no shit.” Mom was in the Army for a few years.
“Yeah. She takes even less shit now,” I say.
“I know,” Josie says softly.
I don’t have to complete the sentence, namely that she takes less shit now ever since James disappeared.
Josie catches me up on city council gossip, including that jerk, Harlan Delmere, trying once again to ram through the most horrible building project in Ashwood history.
“I thought you guys already voted that down!” I say.
“Now that Deputy Mayor Kazan died, Harlan gets to call another vote.”
“Like anyone’s going to change their minds,” I say. “What a jerk.”
“Being a jerk never stopped Harlan Delmere,” Josie says, stroking Angus’s hair. “The mayor’ll veto it in a heartbeat, won’t he?” she says to him. “Won’t he? Yes, he will! Yes, he will!”
Harlan wants to build a big retail/residential complex on everybody’s favorite riverside park, a beautiful and prime parcel right between Ashwood and Creighton. He’s trying to do a land swap with some scrubby land down the river.
Nobody’s going for it, except the few council members he has in his pocket.
My attention is snagged by a group of college-aged kids over at the large table in the corner. “Hey, there’s your cousin Lisa.”
Josie twists around. “I think that might be her robotics group. They do some kind of contraption battle thing. Why?”
“Alexandru and I talked to her at the wedding expo, but Kip was right there, and I feel like he sort of put the kibosh on her giving the detailed answers we would’ve liked to hear.”
“Kip likes to be the star of every show.”
“Keep this to yourself, but he’s one of our suspects.”
Josie sits up. “Kip?”
“Kip!” Angus bangs a crayon on the table.
“I can’t imagine that,” Josie says, but then she looks off like she might be imagining it. “Do you want me to get Lisa over here?”
“I don’t want to interrupt her robotics meeting.”
“That meeting’ll go three hours while they stuff themselves with food before they go back to their workshop and tinker all night listening to goth music.” She pulls out her phone and shoots off a text.
Over at the table, Lisa twists around and waves. She holds up a finger.
“OK, she’s coming.” Josie tucks away her phone and smooths Angus’s curls. “Seriously, though, is there anything that will make you conclude that these accidents were just that, accidental? What will it take to make you think that?”
“If that’s what the data says to me.”
Josie sighs. “You’re usually right about things, but if we’ve got a wedding saboteur on the loose here...? Then I hope you figure it out fast.”
“Hey!” Lisa slides into the seat next to Josie and ruffles Angus’s hair. “Can I have an animal cracker?”
Angus shakes his head no. Josie cajoles him into sharing just one, to which he reluctantly agrees.
Lisa laughs. “Just kidding!” She smiles at me. “So what’s up?”
“I just had a few questions after our discussion at the wedding expo the other day.”
Lisa gives me a sassy look. “You and the hot prince?”
“She has him hypnotized!” Josie exclaims, standing and hoisting Angus onto her hip, still holding his crayon. “Let’s go see Abuelita in the kitchen!”
Angus lets out a sound of delight as they head back.
I turn to Lisa. “I was curious to hear more about your thoughts on how a perfect storm of vibrations could’ve made that tower of champagne glasses fall.”
“It really is just a theory. But it’s like the base beat travelled along structural beams and where the table was unfortunately placed.
It’s the only thing I could come up with, because honestly, I watched the Stanley people build that thing, and it looked good to me.
Those towers are pretty stable when they’re built right, and that one was built right.
I don’t care what Kip says. It was a good tower. ”
“So you were near the tower the whole time? From when they built it to when it crashed?”
“Pretty much. Right across from them.”
“Can you walk me through it?” I ask.