Chapter 11
“Este?” The sound of Beau’s voice cuts through the house, loud enough to make me jump.
I’m in my closet, sitting on the floor. After I emptied out the jar of tees—counting them, inspecting them for logos, and checking to see if there was anything else in the jar—I put the tees back in and hid the jar in my underwear drawer.
I’d keep it in my purse with the bloody pocket square, but it makes too much noise.
Now, I’m freshly showered and staring at my shoes. My eyes skim over a box of Jimmy Choos. They’re the ones Gemma admired before I gave her a pair in the same style and color.
“Hey,” he says, appearing in the doorway with a baffled expression. “Marcus is here.”
I curse under my breath. I can’t talk to Beau with Marcus here. But I’m relieved he made it. He’s a saint for cooking on such short notice.
Someone knows something. And I’ll drown this table in Pinot if that’s what it takes to flush out a secret.
“Did you let him in?”
“Yeah. He’s in the kitchen,” Beau answers, scanning my features for more information. “What’s going on?”
“Long story.” I cock my head at him. “Hey, are golf tees collectible things?” I ask, recalling the tees tucked under the cups of one of my bras.
“Maybe some are? If they’re from a well-known course? Or if they have a distinctive logo, a golfer might hold on to them. But you usually see people collect ball markers,” he says. “Golf tees break all the time. I go through a handful of them whenever I play. Why?”
Because Ford McGinnis declined to answer police questions, and Gemma was maybe carrying around a jar of golf junk.
“I saw some somewhere,” I answer vaguely. Then, I shake my head. I don’t have time to think about the jar. Which, of course, means it’s all I’m thinking about. “Get dressed,” I say to Beau. “We’re having a dinner party.”
His head quirks in surprise. “When?”
“Like, right now.” I glance at the clock on my vanity. “Everyone will be here soon. Where were you, by the way?”
“Gym.” He gestures to his athletic shorts and sweat-damp shirt. “Can we go back to the dinner party?”
“Marcus is cooking. Nora, Autumn, Shep, and Tippy are coming.”
“That’s hilarious,” he says, not believing me.
“I’m serious.”
Beau cocks his head, then steps closer and presses the back of his hand to my forehead, like he’s checking for fever-induced delirium.
I swat at his hand. “Stop it. There’s no time for jokes. There’s nothing wrong with me. Get dressed.”
“Okay then.” He smirks. “Let’s have a dinner party.” As he’s passing me toward his side of the closet, he kisses my shoulder. “You all right?” He frowns, reading me too well.
Never better. Only juggling Gemma’s murder, a bloody pocket square, a jar of golf tees, and a dinner party designed to squeeze our neighbors for intel.
By the time everyone is assembled, I’ve completely lost control of my own house.
Tippy is sprawled across my sectional, Shep’s nursing a Manhattan like it’s the cure for boredom, Autumn is monologuing about the fading craft of hand-lettered wedding invitations, and Marcus is pretending not to notice Tippy pawing at his bicep. Beau’s expression says it all.
The apocalypse has arrived, and it’s a catered meal.
Nora and I are sitting in the corner, taking it in.
“Well, Este. You did it,” she says as her wide-eyed gaze sweeps the room. “You managed to assemble the strangest dinner party in history.”
When I was a kid, my mother liked to quote Eleanor Roosevelt: “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; and small minds discuss people.” As we all gather around my dining room table, I know we won’t be debating Descartes or the duality of mind and body.
But that’s the point. I’m hoping we’ll land in the realm of something gossipy.
Petty. A hint of scandal. Anything to make sense of what happened to Gemma.
Instead, the lamb disappears, and the wine goes down fast. And what fills the air is Shep’s golf handicap, Autumn’s citrus-based cleaning routine, and a monologue from Tippy about travertine tile for a pool renovation.
Nora is no help—although, I can’t expect her to be.
I haven’t told her why I need people to start talking about Gemma.
If this is purgatory, the wine is my only reprieve.
Tippy and Shep both talk more than they listen, and they seem to be partial to rich people’s favorite pastime—one-upmanship. But I keep pouring. Every time a glass nears empty, I refill it. Then Autumn starts talking about the next wedding she’s planning.
“The bride and groom are in some kind of stalemate until their lawyers draw up the prenup,” she says. “We went to the florist last week, and I thought I was on an episode of Suits.”
This makes Shep laugh. Actually laugh—one sharp, almost surprised bark of amusement.
Everyone at the table starts, but Tippy doesn’t look up from her wineglass. She just mutters, “Nine more days,” into the rim of her drink as she takes a gulp.
I tilt my head in her direction, wondering if she’s going to say anything else, but that’s when Marcus hops up to start to clear the table. Nora and Beau are quick to join in.
Shep takes this as his opening, standing up and brandishing a handful of Cubans from his jacket pocket. “I’ll be outside if anyone wants to join.”
Oblivious to my misery, Beau and Marcus walk out to the kitchen with hands full of dishes as Shep shows himself out to the pool deck to smoke a cigar. Tippy excuses herself, asking where my bathroom is, leaving Autumn and me at the table.
“I’m sorry. I should have known better than to talk about prenups in front of Tippy. I keep hoping she’ll let go of that countdown of hers.” Autumn’s still staring at the empty table.
I raise an eyebrow. “Countdown to what?”
Autumn sighs. “Their ten-year anniversary. It’s some kind of milestone in their prenup. If they make it, Shep gets ten million dollars—a million for every year.”
I blink. “So she wants out, and he won’t give her the satisfaction?”
“Pretty much,” Autumn says. “She’s hoping he cheats. But he’s been biding his time, on his best behavior for years, hoping she snaps. It’s a real romance for the ages.”
This is why I’ve stayed out of the gossip mill until now. These people are insane.
She turns toward the men on the porch and then back to me. “Thanks again for having me. Gemma always talked about you with such awe. Sounds like your friendship went way back.”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat, and I have to remind myself Autumn doesn’t know anything about the secrets I’ve left in California.
After a moment, I say, “Tippy said Gemma quit Lemon & Fig?”
Autumn nods. “Yeah. I tried to talk to her about it. Maybe she was really sure about the job interview.”
“That would only have been the start of a series of interviews,” I think out loud. “Why would she have quit this soon? Do you think she found something else?”
But that can’t be right. She emptied her apartment out. Was she running from something?
“Maybe it has something to do with the man she was with on Marcus’s security cameras before she died,” Tippy says as she returns to the table, dropping into her seat with a graceless plop. “I heard Marcus had to hand over all the footage they have to the police.”
There was a man with Gemma?
My head swivels in her direction so fast it’s a miracle I don’t pull a muscle. “What?”
Looking surprised by her own words, Tippy reaches for one of the wine bottles on the table and topples her full water glass, sending a flood over the tablecloth and what plates and silverware are left to be cleared.
We are all on our feet, racing for napkins in a frenzied effort to keep the water from spilling onto our laps.
“Sorry,” Tippy says with a giggle.
At first, I think she’s a little too toasted, but as I take in the loose, lazy quality to her gestures, I upgrade “too toasted” to “fully blitzed.”
She’s a goner.
“Thankfully”—Autumn perks up—“washing tablecloths is something of a specialty of mine. Este, want me to throw this in the laundry for you?”
“I’ve got it,” I say.
But Autumn’s already in motion, snagging a few glasses to help with clearing and pulling up the tablecloth. I pause only for a moment to see a sly smile on Tippy’s face.
“What did you say about the security footage, Tippy?” I ask, hoping to keep the desperation I suddenly feel from bleeding into my voice.
Tippy waves a sloppy hand. “It’s nothing. Just gossip.”
I study her.
Is she being intentionally obtuse? Or is she too drunk to know what she’s saying at all?
Before I can arrive at a conclusion, though, my phone dings with a text from Polly.
8:47 P.M.
I see Marcus’s car in your driveway. Please tell me he cooked.
To keep her afloat in the sea of mung beans that is Ms. Dowling’s palette, I slip Polly meals here and there. I message her back.
8:49 P.M.
Meet you at the usual spot in one minute.
I grab the covered plate from the warming drawer and start out toward the pool deck, walking down to the hedges where I know Polly will be waiting.
She’s looking at her phone until I call her name, and her face lights up with enthusiasm.
“Ohmygod. I’m starving.”
I lift the plate and say, “I come bearing lamb shanks.”
Polly winces. Her eagerness washed away with disappointment in an instant.
“I’m kidding. I had Marcus make you a chicken quesadilla.”
“Yesss.” Polly tears the foil off the plate to find a still-warm, grilled-to-the-perfect-crisp quesadilla and devours an entire triangle before she speaks or maybe even breathes.
I guess this is what they mean when they say it takes a village. You never know when you’re going to have to help your neighbor’s child stave off an iron deficiency.
After the first triangle, she exhales and her shoulders drop a few centimeters.
But she’s still quiet, almost evasive, like there is something on her mind. And I wonder if those seventh-grade girls are bothering her again.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
She shrugs as she starts on another triangle.
“You want to talk about it?”
She shrugs again.
“Tippy Schaeffer is at my house for dinner. So you can’t be having a worse day than me. It’s not allowed. Sorry. I don’t make the rules.”
Polly’s expression borders on stricken as she scoops the last two triangles off the plate and hands it back to me.
“You’re making me nervous, Pol.”
“I don’t know…” She takes another bite, like she’ll need the energy to talk. “My dad dragged me to some dinner party yesterday. I hate it when he does that.”
I answer with a slight nod, and for a moment, I can see myself in the corner of a bar in the Garden District, pretending to read as I watched Aunt Delia charm the chef of some local haunt.
It’s easy to remember the bubble of her laugh and the way she waved a hand like a conductor as she spoke.
When she wasn’t looking, I would mimic her gestures, the swirl of a fingertip or the way she held a wineglass.
Playing at being elegant and removed, just like she was.
“I was the only kid there. It was awful,” Polly says, pulling a face.
“Oh. Ew. Sounds like child labor. Want me to help you file a report?”
She doesn’t laugh like she usually would, though. “The grown-ups only ever ask me how school is going and then ignore me. And I’m not allowed to bring my phone because my dad says it’s rude.”
“You’re not missing anything,” I say, thinking of my own dinner party. “A lot of the people here are out of their minds. Too many years of huffing aerosol sunscreen fumes or something.”
She makes a faint sound, like maybe she’s laughing or agreeing. I wait for her to keep going, but she stares at the quesadillas in her hand for a long moment until she finally says, “They all kept talking about that girl. The one at Marcus’s restaurant? You know, the one that they said got killed?”
“You don’t have to be scared, Polly. The police are going to find out what happened. You’re safe.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not that.”
There’s another long pause, and now, her reticence feels ominous.
Because I see it—the fear in her eyes, sharp and unflinching.
Fear like that doesn’t belong in the eyes of someone so young.
It should come later, when she learns more about the world.
But Polly’s fear unlocks something feral in me, a dread I can’t soothe with logic.
This must be how Aunt Delia felt, holding me after everything fell apart.
I want to make Polly the promises Delia made to me—to tell her the world is a worthy place, that the fear will pass. But I don’t know if it will.
And then the words burst out of her, like she’s been holding her breath for hours.
“I heard these two ladies talking after dinner. They were in the kitchen, by the back door, and one of the dads there was asking my dad about some brand of clubs or something. And I was sitting in the living room, waiting to leave. And they didn’t see me, because when you’re the only kid at the party you’re basically invisible.
But I overheard one of them say the night Gemma died, she left the party with Beau. ”
She looks at me, terrified of how this confession will land. I hold my face steady.
Tippy said Gemma was with a man on Marcus’s security footage.
“I’ve told you before, gossip’s basically verbal backwash,” I say, aiming for nonchalant but feeling my throat tighten. “Remember when Claire Maguire tried to convince you she was Sabrina Carpenter’s cousin? People say dumb shit all the time. Usually for attention.”
But as I speak, I’m somewhere else. My mind is caught in a loop, turning this information over and over.
Is Beau’s name already in some police file? Why were they together that night? Why didn’t he tell me?
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I insist. “But thanks for telling me.”
We stare at the grass under our bare feet for a second before I remember my house is full of guests, and I’m not sure how long I’ve been gone. “I better go back inside and say good night to Tippy and the rest of my dinner guests.”
“Okay. Will you thank Marcus for me?”
“You got it.”
I watch her disappear through the hedges. For a minute, I’m frozen as the rumor sinks in, settling under the collar of my shirt and itching where it lies.
Gossip like this will have legs and teeth in our small community.
Beau and I always did have bad luck with parties. But this is about as bad as it gets.