CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 11
Can You Do a Dress Rehearsal for Murder?
“Can you zip me up?” I ask Oliver, turning my back to him and gathering my hair up.
He steps toward me and takes the zipper in his hands. He pulls it up gently, then plants a kiss on my bare shoulder. “You know this is a romance trope, yes?”
“It is?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” His breath is warm on my neck. “Usually deployed when things are still platonic between the two main characters, but about to get spicy.”
I turn around. He’s wearing a light gray suit and matching tie with a white dress shirt. His hair is curling in the right way, and his freckles are popping because of the sun we got today on the boat and walking around Avalon after our near miss with José. “Are things about to get spicy?”
“Do we have time?”
I sigh. “No.”
“And yet you tempt me.”
“Good. But wait. Why do you know about romance tropes? You’re not thinking of writing a romance novel, are you?”
“I might need to if Vicki turns down my latest manuscript.” Vicki is our common editor and the reason we met in the first place.
“She won’t.”
He leans his forehead against mine. “She might.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“I feel bad. Your new book is fantastic. They all are.”
“Thank you.” He brushes his lips against mine and runs his hands down my arms raising gooseflesh. “I’ve always liked this dress.”
It’s a pink halter with a deep V in the front that hugs my curves in all the right ways.
That makes two compliments from Oliver on my appearance in as many days. Maybe because my usual wardrobe consists of leggings and oversized sweatshirts.
But I hate how my brain is cataloging his compliments.
Like I need to gather evidence that he loves me.
Like I’m building a case to prove to myself we’ll work out this time.
“You don’t look so bad yourself.”
“Why, thank you.”
We kiss, slow and lingering. I start to think about taking off the dress he’s just zipped up as the heat builds between us, but...“We have to go.”
He smiles against my lips. “Who says?”
“The schedule.”
“The one that has a murder on it? I’m thinking we shouldn’t be following that one.”
I sigh and release him. “Poor Emma.”
“It’s not great.”
“Understatement.”
He smiles. “Certainly not what I hope for my wedding.”
My heart starts to beat faster. “You’ve thought of your wedding?”
His eyes meet mine. “As one does.”
“And?”
“I’ve always liked the month of May.”
May. It’s October now.
And I know—because I’m a woman—that seven months is not enough time to plan a wedding unless you have Emma-level resources, which I do not.
“El?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you calculating whether there’s enough time to plan a wedding in May?”
“Maybe?”
“I haven’t even asked you yet.”
Yet. That means he’s going to, right?
Right?
“I know.”
“It doesn’t have to be May.”
“Sure. Any month will do.”
“Hey, hey.” He puts his finger under my chin, lifting it. “You should know I think proposing at someone else’s wedding is tacky.”
I force a smile. “Especially when there might be a murderer on the loose.”
“Especially then.”
“So, no proposal this weekend is what you’re saying.”
“Don’t you want to be surprised?”
“Not sure. I’ve never been proposed to before.” I say this as gently as I can because even though we were together for four years last time, marriage never came up. Not this specifically, anyway, and that was a sore spot between us.
For me, anyway.
I don’t know how Oliver felt about it.
I never addressed it with him because I was young and stupid, and I thought if I told him what I wanted, then he’d never give it to me, which was unfair to him.
Because how can you give someone something you don’t know they want?
And also: He’s not Connor.
By which I mean, if I’d told him I wanted to get married, we could’ve had a normal conversation about it. Instead, I’d probably done something stupid like crap on everyone we knew who was getting married and talked about how it was a patriarchal institution that wasn’t good for women. 51 , 52
And then I’d gone and done something extremely stupid that ended us.
So all this talk of weddings and wedding dates is scary and nerve-racking, and we should move on to other things.
Like preventing someone from dying at this wedding.
That felt like a remote possibility as we wandered around Avalon after our encounter with José. It was a nice respite to take in some of the island’s history, hold Oliver’s hand, and forget about all the drama. The sun was shining, and the little shops on the main street were brightly painted in a rainbow of colors, and the air smelled like the ocean and flowers.
It was eerie, though. It feels like we’re the only people left on this island.
Because, of course, we are.
Hurricane Isabella is building steam in the Pacific off the coast of Baja California. If it makes landfall here, it will be only the second time that’s happened this century.
As the afternoon wound on, the wind picked up, making the ocean choppy as the palm trees rustled above us.
Nature was telling us something.
We shouldn’t be here.
It was a message that was hard to miss as we passed shops whose windows had been boarded up with plywood and crews filling sandbags on the beach. There was a long line for the ferry—scared-looking people pulling large suitcases and holding their dogs tight against their bodies.
It was still a beautiful day, and so we chose to ignore the red-and-black hurricane warning flag whipping against the wind and put our feet in the ocean, letting the warmish water tickle our toes, and the hours ticked away without any friction between us.
But now we’re about to go back into the lion’s den, so potential murder feels like something we should talk about.
Somehow there are fewer minefields in that than in our relationship.
“You guys coming or what?” Harper calls through the door. She came back from her boat tour an hour ago with a ridge of sunburn on her nose. I wanted to ask her about the Connor thing, but instead, I’ve added it to the list of things I’ve shoved down and hope never to have to think about again.
“Yes!” I open our door. She’s wearing a flowing dress in a deep teal blue, and her hair is in an updo. She looks, for a change (ha ha), better than me.
She’s also holding a phone.
“Where did you get that?”
“It’s your work phone.”
“I have a work phone?”
“It’s where your work emails come to. You know this.”
“And you brought it this weekend?”
“Good thing I did.”
“Is there some publishing emergency I don’t know about?”
I feel a beat of panic because, despite my joke, there is a publishing emergency. I’ve owed chapters to my editor for weeks. If it goes too much longer, she could cancel my book deal.
The problem is that the idea I pitched to her has floated away from me the way ideas sometimes do. They feel so strong in the moment, and then, poof , when you try to flesh them out, they’re not there.
I have to find it again or come up with some new fabulous adventure for Cecilia and Connor to go on, or the series might be over.
Which is ironic, given that I wanted to end it three months ago.
That’s what ironic means, right? 53
“No, dummy,” Harper says. “Me having your phone means I can text since mine got fried.”
“Who do you need to text?”
“No one.”
I reach for the phone and she holds it away from me.
Ugh. It must be Connor.
Wasn’t I just saying I didn’t want to know this??
I never learn from my mistakes.
“You look nice,” I say to Harper.
“Flattery will get you somewhere.”
“Good.”
The phone bleats. She looks down and frowns at it. “That person is tweeting again.”
“Who?”
“@Emmaswooden. I put an alert on it.”
“What did they say?”
She shows me. It’s a short thread.
@Emmaswooden Maybe the soak didn’t get you all wet but you haven’t got nine lives left now...
@Emmaswooden I wouldn’t go high flying, you’re always lying, just stop trying.
@Emmaswooden And hold on to your man real tight, if you can’t treat him right, you wouldn’t want to lose him in the night.
“Song lyrics?”
“Not from any song I know.”
“But the ‘all wet,’ that must refer to the hot tubs, and the ‘nine lives’...that refers to cats.”
“Yeah.”
That frisson of fear I pushed away rises into my throat. “It’s someone who’s here.”
“Or who has contact with someone here.”
“Right. Shit.”
“Should we tell Emma?”
“We definitely should,” Oliver says.
“I agree,” Harper says. “But here’s some good news: I looked into it and cats are allergic to chocolate and grapes...those were in the dessert Mrs. Winter gave it.”
“So, not poison.”
“Not for humans. But that’s probably why the cat seized.”
Ugh. Inspector Tucci was right ? That almost never happens.
“We did some investigating of our own,” I say, then fill her in on our conversations with José.
“So he took hush money?” Harper says.
“He did.”
“Did you, at any point in your conversation, say, ‘No way, José’?”
“Why would I say that?”
“Come on, you definitely thought it at least.”
Harper’s right. This does sound like me.
But it’s kind of annoying to be called out on my shit, and by my own sister at that.
Not that this hasn’t happened before.
I just can’t get her back for it because if I do, the Connor thing is definitely popping out.
And I’m saving that information for an emergency.
Oliver checks his watch. “We should get to dinner. But first, everyone put their cell phones on the table.”
“Why?” Harper asks.
“You know the rules.”
“That doesn’t seem prudent given everything going on, does it?”
“It won’t kill you to give up your phone for a couple of hours, Harper,” Oliver says.
“Everyone keeps saying that,” I say. “But yeah, things can kill us. Like your phone. Which almost did .”
“Okay, okay.” Harper looks at the phone in her hand. “Goodbye, Rebecca.”
“You named your phone?”
“No, I named your work phone. She’s the one who answers Crazy Cathy when she starts to email me incessantly.”
I start to laugh. “You’re the best.”
“I know.” She puts the phone down on the table and pats it. I put mine next to it; then Oliver does the same.
We’re ready.
For what, remains to be seen.
Cocktails are on the veranda, which faces the club’s private beach. Everyone is dressed up and happy under the setting sun, and I wave hello to those I know as I search for Emma.
Like the night before at Shutters, I find her in the middle of the crowd.
She’s dressed in white but not a wedding dress, and she’s talking to Simone and Tyler with her jaw clenched.
Which means she’s in trouble.
Not that they can tell. I’ve just known her long enough to know.
Once, when we were small, we ended up at some grown-up party her parents were throwing. Our parents had put us in matching sundresses, and we were expected to “use our manners” and answer questions politely. Emma had gotten caught in a conversation with an older guy who was saying how beautiful she was—she was ten!—and he could help her go places. Her jaw was clenched in that same way. I ran up and saved her by being rude, and we laughed and laughed while our parents looked on disapprovingly.
Later, when we were older and she was going to lavish parties for meetings with producers, she always used to bring me along, and I’d watch her face, and when her jaw got tight, I’d sweep in and ask some stupid question, and maybe she wouldn’t get the part, but she also never ended up as one of those terrible stories in a documentary about young women in Hollywood.
So I know what I have to do now.
I kiss Oliver on the cheek and I walk up to her.
“This is my cue,” I say, and she turns to me, startled, with a kind of wild look in her eyes, and then she laughs.
She leans closer to me. “You always know. How do you always know?”
“What’s going on?”
“Fred’s missing.”
Ah, shit .
51 I definitely did this.
52 It’s true, by the way. Men are happier married; women are not. Married men live longer; married women do not. You do the math.
53 Yes! The definition of ironic is something “happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this.” Phew.