Chapter 15
The sight of the Mediterranean mansion sends prickles of goose bumps burning up and down my arms. The once-stunning property looks dull after sitting untouched for almost a year.
It’s teetering on the verge of disrepair; the windows are dark from the lack of interior light.
Cobwebs cover every angle—from the windows to the doors and the eaves—every corner with enough leverage for a spider to swing from one peak to the next is shadowed with layers of gossamer webs.
I wonder how long the estate can sit empty before the lake and wildlife overtake the property entirely.
I picture vines reaching out their leafed arms and fingers, drawing the structure down into the water, reclaiming the land in the name of something wilder.
Sinking to the bottom of Lake Osceola wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to this place.
In fact, watching the estate disappear beneath the lake’s current might almost feel like mercy. Unfortunately, this body of water isn’t deep enough to consume this house and everything it reminds me of.
The home once belonged to one of this city’s oldest and wealthiest bloodlines—the Halls.
That is, of course, before scandal felled their generational money and tarnished their name.
Frederick “Fritz” Hall, the family’s patriarch, had buried his legal empire with years of embezzlement and fraud.
His cunning wife, Gianna, had gone further to protect her perfectly curated life from total ruin by murdering Nora’s husband and Fritz’s law partner, Will, to keep Fritz’s financial crimes from seeing the light of day.
The place might look haunted, but the house’s most formidable ghosts—Fritz and Gianna—have moved on to prison for their misdeeds.
Their kids had tried to claw the house out of court-ordered reparations but had lost in the face of Fritz’s overwhelming debt. A bank owns the house now.
Before Fritz and Gianna went to jail, I was everyone’s favorite outcast, so I’ve never been invited to this property before. I don’t feel welcome now either. Standing in front of the abandoned mansion makes me shiver despite the heavy heat of the day.
“What are we doing here?” I ask as I step out of my car.
Nora is standing next to her SUV, waiting for me with a grin on her face that is out of place on this property.
“I know these people ruined your life, but if we’re going to burn the house down, I don’t think we should do it in broad daylight.”
“Ta-da!” Her hands are out, showcasing the haunted house with a flourish. “Remember when I said I found a house?”
“Oh. No. This is not a house. This is a crime scene. This is the Hall House.”
“Not anymore. I bought it.”
“I’m sorry, you what now?” I tilt my head to the side, as if, with the horizon on an angle, buying this house might make an ounce of sense. But even at a slant, it’s a massive mistake. A multimillion-dollar impulse purchase. “You like bought-it bought it? Like, with money?”
Nora frowns. “What do you mean? I bought it. It’s mine. I own it.”
Grief does strange things to people.
“It’s a good investment,” Nora adds.
“A good investment? Now we’re listening to financial podcasts? Or did you go straight for the Motley Fool investment subscription?”
She rolls her eyes. “I mean, I have all this money now.”
The suggestion of Will brings my sour attitude to a grinding halt.
I’m not being fair. She has no idea my marriage is cracking under the pressure of Gemma’s murder. This isn’t about any of that.
It’s about the money. From the dead husband. The ghost at the feast. Of course it is.
“I’m sorry.” I soften, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m letting my bad day shade your news. But the Halls destroyed your life. What are you going to do with their house?”
She rebounds a little at my milder tone, straightening her spine a fraction. “I mean, there’s a lot of potential. It’s over an acre on the water. And the house was built in the 1920s. Property is an appreciating asset. Especially in Winter Park.”
How do I tell her therapy is the best investment she can make right now?
“It’s…” I struggle for a kind word. “It’s very big.”
“I don’t care if you think it’s crazy, Este.
” She takes a few steps toward the front of the house.
She has to hike her knees up to clear the overgrown grass and weeds beneath her feet, and it’s hard not to marvel at how fast the heat and humidity can turn things wild. A year ago this house was immaculate.
Things can get out of hand so fast around here.
One minute you’re at a party, the next minute your husband’s maybe-mistress is dead.
“I have a key,” she offers. “We could go inside?”
Under different circumstances, I would laugh and tell her that I wouldn’t set foot in that house without a bouquet of sage and a bag full of crystals to ward off all the bad energy floating inside those walls. But she’s so excited.
And sometimes you put your life-on-fire bullshit aside for your best friend.
“Yeah. Okay.” I nod.
She starts pulling at weeds as she makes her way toward the door.
“You’re going to need a blowtorch to clean all of this up,” I mutter under my breath.
“Fun. That can be your job.”
I shake my head. “You’re too good to me.”
The front door is an ornate, solid-wood carved wall that takes both of our body weights to shove open after Nora turns the bronze doorknob.
And as we push our way into the foyer, the sounds from outside—birds twittering and a breeze rustling through tree branches—fall away.
A hollow, eerie stillness settles over us, and we’re greeted by the muffled sounds of our feet disturbing dusty floors and the humid air trapped inside.
Even under a year’s worth of stale air and accumulated dust, the bones of the house are impressive. But there’s no amount of HGTV that could spruce up the karma of this place.
“Is there a reason you’d rather buy a house than go on one date with Marcus Campbell?” I mutter, swiping at the cobwebs crowding the space as we try to step through the rooms.
“That’s not fair.” She frowns. “The house is part of reclaiming my life. Dating is…less of a proclamation and more of a crapshoot.”
“You can’t be serious. Marcus is a sure thing.”
She shrugs. “Maybe I’m not, though. I used to be the marrying type. I let myself get swept off my feet with Will, and look where that got me.”
“Okay, Will being entangled with a bed of vipers wasn’t really your fault.”
“I never saw it coming.” She shakes her head. “Even after he went missing, I thought everything was going to work out like a fairy tale. My head was too far up in the clouds. And that was my fault.”
“Okay, but I don’t think Marcus is going to be murdered. For starters, he doesn’t have a business partner.”
She doesn’t laugh. Instead, she goes quiet for a beat, looking around the wreckage of the Halls’ old life. In a weird way, we’re all ghosts to this house. The thought sends a shiver up my spine.
“Why do you need me to date someone, Este?” she finally asks. “I know you and Beau are happy, but not everyone needs that.”
There’s a dull throb in my chest as I watch her. She’s still the girl who wants a fairy tale. But she’s walled up that place in her heart as some kind of penance for her past mistakes.
I know the feeling.
“I’m not some bridal magazine editor. I’m not saying you have to get married again. But…” I consider the question for another beat. “With Beau it was like finding a family. Something I thought I had lost. I want that for you. And the way Marcus looks at you—”
“You’re my family,” she says. “You and Beau. Marcus, too. I can have a family and keep my head out of the clouds.” After a beat, Nora says, “Should we go upstairs and see if Gianna left behind a thread of Chanel?”
She’s throwing me a line, trying to draw me into our usual humor. But for once, I can’t meet her there. I was already on shaky ground before I learned my best friend had purchased the home of the woman who killed her husband. Now, the cumulative weight sits heavy on my shoulders. I need a minute.
“You check upstairs,” I suggest, forcing a smile. “I’m going to see if there are any relics of the occult in the kitchen.”
“Suit yourself,” she says as we part ways in the abandoned house like neither of us has ever seen a horror movie. I can hear her footsteps fading upstairs.
Walking around the first level, though, I realize it’s not empty.
Not completely. It looks like most of the furniture was picked over and hauled off in some chaotic fire sale.
I walk through a cavernous space that must have been a drawing room at some point.
A sole table lamp is left on the floor amid scraps of packing paper.
Deeper into the house, the dining room is empty, and even the chandelier has been taken.
A few wires sprouting out of the ceiling and a discolored ring of paint where the light was once mounted are the only signs it had ever been there.
As I wind my way through room after room, wondering what the hell Nora’s going to do with all this square footage when she’s living here all alone, I find a pocket door at the end of a hallway and slide it open.
Holy. Shit.
My breath is jagged, stuck in the center of my chest, as I take in the room.
Unlike the rest of the house, which is littered with moving debris, dust, and untouched cobwebs, this room looks like it’s been cleaned—however haphazardly.
There’s an abandoned bottle of wine and a pair of plastic cups on one of the built-in shelves.
The cups are the sturdy kind people collect from weddings or golf tournaments, and they bear the Interlachen logo. There’s a lacy black bra on the floor.
But what makes my hands start to shake is the window seat.
I open my phone and pull up Gemma’s Instagram, holding the photo from her grid against the mirror image that’s right in front of me.
The ornate carvings of the wood-framed space are identical to those in the picture I had studied and stared at until it became a blur of pixels.
The only thing missing is Gemma. The caption taunts me.
“When he catches you in the perfect light…”
A low-pitched whine builds in my ear. I want to believe I’m wrong. But she was here last week. That’s her bra. And her wine. This is the window seat from her post where she found “the perfect light.”
Who the fuck did she meet here? And how did she get in? Why is her stuff here and not in her fucking apartment?
And then a smaller, more reticent part of me wonders: Does Beau know the answers to any of these questions?
As much as I hate myself for wondering, the thought is too big, too loud, to force back as it claws its way to the forefront of my mind.
Acting on impulse, I snap a photo of the window seat and then race to grab the cups, wine bottle, and bra, stashing them in my tote bag.
Then, I pull the cardigan at the bottom of the tote up and over the cups and bottle, to obscure them from view.
And as soon as I’ve done it, a sinking regret engulfs me.
What the fuck did I just do? Why am I holding more possible evidence?
If any of this gets dusted for fingerprints, it could help us find Gemma’s killer. The next thought comes quickly and unbidden: But what if Beau killed Gemma? An affair gone too far? An accident gone horribly wrong?
That’s crazy. Impossible.
“Este?” Nora’s voice carries from the other side of the house. “You have to see this wine cellar.”
I move to find her, but my steps are slow, my thoughts heavy. The stolen evidence in my bag thumps against my hip. A dull, insistent reminder that I’ve crossed another line.
I should have left the bra and wine bottle alone. That would have been a smart move. The safe move. But it’s too late for that. Now every piece of evidence from that room has my fingerprints on it, too.
Not to mention the jar of tees in my closet and the bloody pocket square in my purse. I’m fast becoming the unofficial curator of a Gemma Klein library of clues.
If Beau has anything to do with this, I’m carrying around enough evidence to be considered an accomplice.
—
“Kyle J tomorrow?” Nora suggests after we’ve toured the grounds. Thoughts of the window seat churn in my stomach, but I let her believe the idea of HIIT is the reason I pretend to vomit on my sandals.
“Yoga or I riot,” I say.
She laughs and then looks back at the house.
“Do I need to be worried you bought the Hall House?” I ask.
“No,” Nora assures me. “It’s just a house. The history of this place is actually kind of fascinating. I’m getting the original plans from the city, and then, I am going to do a full restoration. I’ll hit every antique shop from here to Maine until it’s restored to its original glory.”
“And you’re sure?” I ask.
Nora looks at me. “You don’t have to worry. I promise.”
I hug her, squeezing a little harder than usual, and I want her to come over for dinner. I want all of us to drink by the lake at sunset, for everything to go back to the way it was.
But I can’t have that yet. I have to ask Beau about the window seat.
“All right, deal.” Nora pushes her sunglasses on. “What about Tuesday? I heard Ford is doing some charity pro-am up at Interlachen. He’s recruited some other golfers from the tour to join. We could go and throw loose napkins at Carol Parker?”
“I know you’re kidding, but if you swap pro-am with drinks, you’ve described my perfect afternoon.” Then my thoughts stumble. “Wait. Ford’s still in town?”
“I mean, he’s not on the tour. He’s Polly’s dad. Where else would he be?”
My mind drifts to the scraps I’ve managed to round up. “He’s divorced, right? Not married?”
Nora frowns. “I think only his publicist knows the answer to that question. It sounded—”
“Complicated,” I finish for her as I turn toward my car, Autumn’s words about Gemma’s secret relationship sour on my tongue.
“Let me know about the pro-am thing?”
“Sure,” I say as I climb into my driver’s seat and pull away with a wave.
But in the hollow quiet of the drive home, visions of Gemma and the window seat and Autumn’s revelation about some married guy tangle together and then split apart. Questions about what Gemma was doing at the Hall House and why her apartment was empty take turns luring me down dead ends.
Gemma was in the Hall House a week before she died. Was that the only time? Or was the Hall House some kind of secret meet-up spot for Gemma and the “him” from her Instagram photo?
A thought slams into me so hard I grip the steering wheel tighter.
Ford. Divorced? Complicated? A pro golfer with a squeaky-clean image and an abandoned mansion rendezvous point?
Everyone seemed to know the Hall House was empty. The property had been untended for so long, even the Garden Club ladies stopped wringing their lace-gloved hands over it. The house’s well-known neglect would have made it the perfect meeting spot for an affair.
Is that why she had a jar of tees?
The idea is so vivid, I almost miss my turn home. Beau isn’t Gemma’s married boyfriend. He would never do that.
But what about Ford?