Chapter 19
Five Days Before the Hurricane
“Este,” Nora whines. “This is insane.”
“My dead friend mailed back the dress I lent her. Insane is my baseline right now,” I whisper back. “All I need you to do is wait here.”
“Why?” Nora crosses her arms as she looks between me and the side door to her old garage. “What if someone sees you?”
“I don’t have time to explain it all right now. Polly’s at tennis and Ford’s at the pro-am charity tournament.”
And I need to know if the broken tees in a jar in my closet match the brand Ford uses.
“Okay, then why are we whispering?” Nora asks, finally matching my hushed tone.
“Polly’s nanny, Ms. Dowling, might be home. And I’m not entirely sure, but I think she has the authority to ground anyone, including me.”
When Nora lived in this house, I knew it like the back of my hand.
And lucky for me, I enjoyed a front-row seat for all of the move-logistics coordinators and home decorators who unpacked Ford and Polly’s house, giving me a perfect view of the cache of sporting equipment they spent hours organizing in the garage.
“Wait here and whistle if someone pulls into the driveway,” I whisper.
“Who whistles? I don’t know how to whistle.”
“Then chirp like a bird. I don’t care. Just be my lookout.”
“All right.” She shoos me toward the garage. “But hurry.”
As I creep toward the side of the house, I’m hoping no one ever repaired the faulty latch on an outside door leading into the garage.
Nora always complained about Will’s forgetfulness.
And Will would counter, “Who has time to think about the doors outside of the doors? If someone wants to swipe the Gatorade Mia keeps in the outside refrigerator, let them.”
And as I jiggle the door handle now and feel the latch’s weak grip give way, I say a little prayer of gratitude for Will’s memory and push into the McGinnises’ garage.
The room is dark, and a faint odor of motor oil and cardboard hangs in the air. I turn on my phone’s flashlight and leave the outside door open for some extra light. Then I book it toward the shelves on the opposite wall, searching for golf tees.
Carefully sorted boxes of golf balls and chipping targets sit next to towels and rangefinders.
My eyes scan past regripping kits and club-cleaning tools before I finally land on boxes of tees.
A flash of Gemma flirting with Ford the night she died runs through my mind as I prop my phone up on a shelf so I can compare a picture of Ford’s tees to the brand in the jar.
What if something went wrong between Ford and Gemma? Was he the complicated married guy she was seeing?
I need something to shake loose the story of what really happened. When I see that every tee Ford owns is the same matte white, though, my shoulders slump. The tees in Gemma’s jar vary in color and in some cases material—some are wooden while others are plastic.
I’m reshelving the tees when I hear a faint cawing sound coming from Nora that would be funny if it didn’t send a bolt of panic through me. Before I can drop the tees and run, the light snaps on, illuminating everything around me.
“Fuck,” I hiss, dropping the boxed tees in shock.
“Este Walker?” Carol Parker crosses her arms. “What are you doing?”
This is not ideal.
“Carol.” I try to smile and sound nonchalant as I reach down for the box of new tees I’ve dropped. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“Ford forgot the autographed pin flags. He asked me to come get them,” she says, eyes cutting to the box of tees in my hands. “Didn’t expect to find you shopping.”
As if things couldn’t get worse, Ms. Dowling appears behind her in the doorway, arms folded in the exact same pose as Carol’s. Neither of them has to say a word for me to know I’m fucked.
I knew I should have called Carol to settle the debt on her lawn maintenance after the TPing. But now, it would look like I’m trying to bribe her.
Wait. Should I try to bribe her?
No. No. I have to find a noncriminal way out of this one.
“Oh,” I start, grasping in thin air. “Ford asked Beau to bring him a fresh box of his tees, but Beau forgot. He’s already up at the club. I thought I’d save everyone the back-and-forth.”
“Exactly,” Nora calls from the other side of the door.
It’s barely helpful, but I know she wants nothing to do with this house. So this actually is the best she can offer.
I don’t even know if Beau is at the club, but I’ll have to worry about that later. I need to get out of here.
“Ford certainly was forgetful today,” Carol offers from the doorway.
There’s a skeptical look on Dowling’s face. She’s definitely going to ask Ford about this. But she hands over a box of tees.
“Thanks,” I squeak as I turn to exit the same way I came in.
“We’ll let Ford know you stopped by,” Carol calls behind me in a way that makes the menace crystal clear.
“What the fuck?” Nora murmurs as we fast-walk away from Ford’s house and toward her car.
“I bet somebody’s finally going to remember to fix that latch now” is all I can get out.
As we tumble into Nora’s car, I’m breathless.
“Well, that couldn’t have gone worse if I had lit a match,” I mutter.
Nora swivels in her driver’s seat to look at me. “Are you ready to tell me what we’re looking for?”
The car falls quiet again. Carol has exactly what she needs to ruin me, and I have nothing. Something about Ford’s neat rows of white tees feels like proof that Gemma wasn’t his secret, which means I’m back where I started—chasing a ghost.
“I mean—I’m already in up to my eyeballs on all of this, but you’re not.” I think of all the possible evidence I’m holding on to. “I can’t tell you this thing, because it could hurt you. And I don’t know where this leads.”
“I’m a big girl, Este.” She turns in her seat to fully face me. “I’m a whole-ass widow and I’m not yet thirty. There’s not a lot that scares me anymore.”
“If what I have means something,” I go on, thinking of all the Gemma pieces I’ve found, “and I tell you what it is, you could be an accessory. I could get you arrested. We could end up trading HIIT classes for prison-yard calisthenics.”
“Okay,” she deadpans. “So I get arrested. We’ll trade lipstick tips through plexiglass. Tell me anyway.”
“How will I visit you in jail if I’m already behind bars?”
We hold eye contact for a long beat, because she has to be sure.
“Tonight,” she adds, “we’ll google how to make prison wine. Maybe prison champagne, if we’re ambitious.”
“I really do love you,” I whisper, tears threatening.
“Spit it out, Walker.” She waves for me to hurry up. “I can’t take the suspense.”
“I found a bunch of stuff that I think might be Gemma’s,” I blurt. “Some of it from Lemon & Fig and some of it…” I take a big breath. “Some of it is from the Hall House.”
She looks stricken.
“I really didn’t want to tell you that part. You deserve for the rest of your life to be mess-free.”
“No one gets mess-free,” she says softly.
And I can see that the myth of my perfect life is fading away for her.
“Beau and I are not some perfect couple,” I say. “He’s hiding something from me, and I can’t figure out what it is. But”—I reach into my purse and pull out the pocket square I’m still harboring—“I found this, and he says the blood is Gemma’s.”
There’s a hiss in the air as Nora lets out a big breath.
“I thought Ford was involved,” I continue. “Or maybe knew something about what happened to Gemma. And now Carol has enough dirt on me to bury me.”
“That’s not true.”
“You know how quickly people can turn on someone around here. Especially vandals who break into their neighbors’ garages. She might pin me to the top of Ardell’s suspect list with the gossip firestorm this could kick off.”
Nora processes for a moment. Then, she nods her head and throws her car into drive.
The sudden motion makes my stomach dip. “What are we doing?”
“We’re going to the club. If Ford doesn’t know what happened to Gemma, maybe someone at the club does.”