CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 15
If You Don’t Go to Sleep, Can You Still Wake Up Angry?
I have a rough night as the wind beats against the building and howls like a wolf. When we got back to our room, I saw the evacuation order on my phone, but there wasn’t anything we could do about it. There wouldn’t be another ferry until the morning, assuming it could actually get to the island.
We had no choice but to shelter in place.
Which felt like a metaphor.
But for what?
I don’t get an answer to that question; instead, I toss and turn, wanting to wake a peacefully sleeping Oliver to make up for the fight I’m not quite sure we’re having.
He didn’t say anything while we ate dinner with Harper or on the way back to our room when we all decided to have an early night. But I know him. I know what his silences mean and what his laughs mean and what he means, except for when I don’t.
But the chaste peck he gave on my forehead after we got into bed was words enough.
You know that kiss.
The one the man gives the woman right before he’s about to say, We need to talk.
The last time someone said that between us, it was me. I said it after we’d had a bad fight—one that was so bad, I’d thought we’d broken up. And then I slept with Connor.
Oliver, understandably, didn’t take that news well, and we spent too many years apart.
Turns out, like Ross and Rachel, we weren’t on a break, just in a fight, one I picked.
And maybe that’s why I didn’t say anything last night. I’m the screwup in this relationship, and I don’t want to do or say anything that drives him away a second time.
So we went to bed in silence, and I couldn’t fall into a deep sleep. I was just skimming along its surface, and then I tumbled into When in Rome .
Not even When in Rome the book, but When in Rome the movie, bad dialogue and all.
I was Cecilia, and Connor was Connor, and we were in the first act, which meant I was reliving our beginning, those heady days in Rome where we were trying to solve the mystery of the bank robberies and the mystery of us.
But the story has changed. And it isn’t just the dialogue. Now there is a narrator, in voice-over, involved, too, making quippy/snarky remarks and casual asides, and breaking the fourth wall. 58 , 59
It takes me a minute, but I figure out who the narrator is: me . Or, more specifically, it’s my inner voice telling me not to trust Connor, not to trust any of it, to look for the hidden meaning in everything he says and does.
To look over my shoulder.
To see what— who —is standing behind me, just out of view. The person who’s behind everything.
I can’t see them, but I can sense them.
I can feel their eyes on me.
And right when they’re about to come into view, I wake up, my heart hammering, the sheets around me hot and sweaty and the glow of the bedside clock too bright in this dark room.
I try to go back to sleep, to forget, but the whole night is like that—a carousel of memories and regrets—and when the dawn starts to break, I decide that, come what may, I need to talk it out with Oliver.
I shake him gently and say his name.
His eyes flutter open.
And then he smiles. Thank God, he smiles.
“What time is it?” he asks, rubbing at his eyes with his fists.
“Early.”
“Define ‘early.’”
I prop myself up on an elbow and look down at him. His hair is rumpled and his eyes are still filled with sleep and I love this man so much it scares me.
“I’m thinking about going for a swim.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“Sure it does. You know what time I go swimming.”
“You’re an infuriating woman, you know that, right?”
I smile. “Part of my charm.”
He reaches up and kisses me. Our mouths are raw from sleeping, but I don’t care. It feels good to be close to him and erase the weird images the night brought.
He pulls away. “I thought you were going for a swim?”
“I could be persuaded to do something else.”
“What about Harper?”
“I can be quiet.”
“Can you, though?”
I rest my head on his chest, listening to the thump of his heart. “Yesterday was a lot.”
“It was.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Don’t worry so much,” Oliver says, his voice a low rumble underneath me.
“Impossible.”
“We’re fine, I promise. Not so sure about Emma and Fred.”
I sit up. “Ugh. Yeah.”
“Have you talked to Emma?”
“I thought I’d give them some time alone.”
Oliver takes a pillow and folds it under his head. “Should we be worried?”
“We should.”
“You think someone’s trying to kill Emma and Fred?”
“Not Fred. They had him incapacitated, so they could’ve done it then. Instead, they just hit him on the head and left.”
I realize I never asked Fred if he was missing anything. Like on his person. Maybe it was a robbery, because those happen in mysteries, too, when the killer wants something they can’t get otherwise. Or maybe it was a warning.
I probably forgot to ask him a lot of things.
Because I’m not a detective. I just play one in my books.
And I’ll be honest about something: I’ve given myself all kinds of skills in there that I do not have.
“What then? Why do that?” Oliver asks.
I click my teeth together. “I think it’s clear someone doesn’t want this wedding to happen. And they think that if they apply enough pressure, it will be called off.”
“Tyler?”
“He’s the most likely suspect.”
“What about that cat thing?”
“Mrs. Winter shouldn’t have given it food. And why would anyone poison her ? There wasn’t any suggestion the plate was meant for Fred, right?”
Another question I never asked.
And maybe Mrs. Winter was the intended victim. If we’re dealing with a sociopath, he wouldn’t care who he hurt just as long as the wedding didn’t happen.
But he’s not going to get Emma back like that.
Then again, does logic apply to sociopaths?
Oliver sits up with an idea. “What about Fred’s phone? The one you took?”
“I haven’t looked at it yet.”
“That’s not like you.”
I pull a face at him and then get up, pulling his T-shirt over my head from where it lies at the end of the bed. “I was distracted last night. Let’s look at it now.”
I go to the chair in the corner where I put my dress, and fish the phone out of its pocket.
It is a burner phone, one of those low-tech, pay-as-you-go devices that look like cell phones from the 1990s or the ones drug dealers use in the movies. Black, with a keypad and a small gray screen. No one’s watching a TV show on this device.
It has a password on it, but something tells me Fred didn’t put much thought into setting that up, and this assumption proves to be right.
I punch in 0000, the factory setting, and the phone unlocks.
“I got it opened,” I say to Oliver, waving it at him with pride.
“What’s in there?”
I navigate through it. He’s received texts from three people. The most recent one is the one from José that he mentioned yesterday, but there are two other numbers that he’s received regular messages from.
The text from José says: This is José, the electrician. I heard you wanted to discuss what happened at the hot tubs? I can meet you at 5 in my office. And then there’s a photo of a hand-drawn map to the basement on a napkin. Fred had responded with a thumbs-up emoji.
“What are you doing?” Oliver asks.
“Calling José.” I dial the number, and it rings twice, then cuts off. “No answer.”
“It’s, like, six in the morning.”
“Aren’t electricians up early?”
“Okay, weirdo. What else is in there?”
I check the other texts. The ones from a 209 area code are just a series of times and locations, like 11AM VB and 6PM Pier , with Fred once again responding with a—you guessed it—thumbs-up emoji.
The texts from the third number are a conversation about money, and as I read it, it becomes apparent that it’s between him and Tyler.
I tell Oliver what I found. “That’s one mystery solved, anyway.”
“What’s that?”
“How Connor knew the number to Fred’s burner. He was texting with Tyler from this phone.”
“Why?”
“No idea. Maybe he didn’t want Emma to know.”
Emma is totally someone who’d check her boyfriend’s texts.
“Trust but verify” has always been her motto.
“Are they fighting in the texts?”
“Yeah, it’s all about money. Looks like Tyler has him on some payment plan, but he’s missed a bunch of installments...” I keep reading.
The first text to that number is from Fred and says “new number.” Tyler had responded with an amount that made my eyebrows rise to my hairline. Fred had agreed, but more recently, he’d been asking for more time, and saying he’d have it soon. And then in the last couple of messages, he shifted to saying that he just didn’t have it and didn’t know when he would.
Tyler responded with a string of expletives.
And then.
Fred: Tyler, if you don’t stop harassing me about this I’m going to have to tell everyone what you’re doing.
Tyler: You wouldn’t dare.
Fred: Watch me.
Tyler: You’re doing the film for scale. 60
Fred: You’ll be hearing from my agents about that. You can’t offset a personal debt against what production owes me.
Tyler: Just watch me.
Fred: Why are you being such an asshole?
Tyler: Pay me now or you’ll regret it.
That was the last message, sent a couple of days before filming started. A threat? A statement of fact?
None of it is good, and it raises a lot of questions.
Like why the hell won’t Fred just pay him?
And what happened between then and now?
“How did José get the number?” Oliver asks. “And why did he call Fred, of all people?”
“I have no idea.”
“If it even was José.”
“Right. Plus, there’s the other messages.” I show him the ones with the dates and locations. “Was he having an affair?”
Oliver’s forehead creases. “He was meeting with someone. But look, not for a while.”
“When was the last one?”
He scrolls through the texts. “Four weeks ago?”
I purse my mouth. “When he got engaged to Emma.”
Our eyes meet.
“It doesn’t have to be that,” Oliver says.
“I know. But...he doesn’t have the money he owes Tyler, and he says he’s going to get the money, but then he doesn’t...It doesn’t look good.”
“You think he’s marrying Emma for the money?”
“It’s possible. But why does he need it?”
I pick up my phone and google “Fred Winter net worth.” “It says he’s worth fifty million dollars.”
“Those sites aren’t always accurate.”
“I know, but...even if it’s half that, he’s clearly in some sort of money trouble. What did he spend it all on?”
“All excellent questions,” Oliver says. “But if this is about paying Tyler back, and he’s going to get his money from Emma, then why the threats to the wedding?” Oliver runs his hands through his hair, then mats it down.
“You’re right. Tyler should want the wedding to take place.”
“Except he’s in love with Emma.”
“Maybe Fred owes money to someone else? Maybe that’s what those texts are about? They’re pretty dry for an affair.”
“But smart if you don’t want to get caught because then you can make that exact point,” I say.
“We could just ask him, I suppose.”
“Does that ever work?”
“Isn’t that what Connor does in your books?” Oliver says. “Ask questions?”
I don’t take the bait. We’ve just made up.
“Maybe I’ll ask him over tennis this morning,” I say.
“Gah, is that still happening?”
“It’s on the schedule.”
“Before or after the murder?”
I pick up a pillow and toss it at him. He catches it without effort. “If someone is going to get murdered today, we should make hay while the sun shines.”
“That’s a terrible mixed metaphor.”
I climb onto the bed and push him back. “Let’s save the editing for later, shall we?”
He smiles at me and I cover his mouth with mine, and the few clothes we have on peel away as the day breaks.
But you don’t need to hear about all of that.
So I’ll just say:
And, scene.
Later, ahem, but not that much later, I slip into my swimsuit and head down the steep path to the beach. It’s eerily quiet, only the birds in the trees greeting the day, and the clank of halyards on the boats that are still anchored here as they rock against the increasing surf. The umbrellas I spotted yesterday have been tucked away, and the beach is empty of beach chairs. The sky is still clear and blue, but there are dark clouds on the horizon, pregnant with rain. I can’t smell it yet, but I can feel like it’s coming, like I felt in my dream last night.
Like someone’s watching me.
Maybe someone is.
I check over my shoulder.
There isn’t anyone behind me but a cat. It might be the same one from yesterday that almost died.
Sprinkles? Sparkles? I wish I were better with names.
We stare at each other for a moment, and then it darts off into the bush.
If it was the cat that almost died, it seems to have bounced back.
But cats have nine lives.
People only get one.
I put my towel down on the sand and do a running start into the water. I don’t like to get in by inches if I can help it.
The water’s cool, but I’m used to that. I swim straight through the chop out into the bay, passing the boats, getting my rhythm, four strokes and a breath, four strokes and a breath. I do ten minutes out and then stop, treading water. I take in my surroundings. The beach already looks far away. And the current’s taken me toward Avalon Bay. I can see the dock we landed on yesterday, and the high street. There’s a small clutch of people on the dock and a ferry pulled up next to it, but the rest of the town seems deserted.
Given how all of this is going, that’s probably the last ferry before the storm hits. And the smart people on this island are taking advantage of it and getting the hell out of Dodge.
Not me, though. But I’m having my doubts.
I feel very alone out here.
I don’t usually feel that way on the water, but I can’t help it this morning.
The texts, the threats, the odd series of events all jumble through my mind.
And then there’s that word: “murder.”
It’s one thing to write about it. Another to be its object.
I know. I almost was.
And I recognize the feeling I have now as an echo of what I had then. Like having a sixth sense for danger. Like a metal detector for black thoughts.
It’s all around me and I’m alone out here.
Someone could grab my foot and pull me under, and no one would be the wiser.
I freeze, doing that countdown in my head that I did yesterday at lunch.
Because one thing David and I have in common is that our thoughts tend toward writing.
And if I were writing this, it is the moment when something terrible would happen.
Right about...
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The shouts carry over the water from the dock. I wipe the water from my eyes to see who’s speaking. Tyler is there with Fred. They’re waving their arms at each other, but I don’t hear any other words. I try to swim closer, but I’m too far away, the words I heard a fluke of an air pocket.
Fred reaches for Tyler’s arm, and he tugs it away.
But while Tyler is unsteady on his feet, Fred shoves him so that he tumbles over backward and falls into the water with a loud splash.
There’s a shocked circle of onlookers around them, and then the ferry blasts its horn, and everyone rushes to get on.
Fred’s standing over Tyler on the high ground of the dock, while Tyler struggles to pull himself onto the dock. He says something that’s swallowed by the breeze.
And then the world quiets down and I can hear what he says next.
“If you come near me again, you’re dead.”
58 Breaking the fourth wall is when a character speaks directly to the audience. Like I’m doing now.
59 I have no idea what the first, second, and third walls are. The walls of a set? And the fourth is the camera? That’s probably it. But how does that apply to books? Hmmmm.
60 Scale is the basic minimum that an actor can be paid depending on a film’s budget.