Chapter 33
It’s shock. I’m in shock.
I remember the sensation from the morning Delia came to tell me my parents had died. The feeling of being hollowed out. The way my whole body shivered. The way time suddenly made no sense at all.
But I need to snap out of it, because there’s a dead body in my pool and my husband might be the reason why.
Beau crosses the deck to reach me, but as he makes it to my side, I put up a hand to stop him from coming any closer. The expression on his face tightens, as though I’ve already delivered some kind of unspoken verdict.
“Stop,” I say. “I need a second to think. Or stop shaking. Or throw up—or fucking something. I just need a second.”
A thousand impulses flood my body. I want to rush to Beau’s side. I want to know who it is. I want to run away and never come back.
The space between us seems to stretch as Beau’s eyes flicker to the hand I’ve raised to keep him at bay and then back to my face.
“Este,” he pleads.
But I don’t answer right away, and for a moment, the weight of the silence presses down on us both. My gaze drifts back to the body in the pool.
“What the fuck?” I rasp. “What the fuck happened?”
Anger—blazing and unwelcome—coils around me. I’m not mad at him. At least, I don’t think I am. But I certainly don’t want to be here—don’t want any of this to be happening.
I drop my hand in defeat, but Beau stays where he is.
“Este,” he starts again. He’s focused now. “We have about two minutes before the police get here, and we need to talk. And you need to know I didn’t do this.”
“Do what? Beau, what happened?” I look him over again, taking in the smear of dirt on his shorts and the black eye blooming above his cheek. His shirt is wet, too, and there’s a thin layer of maroon on his hands all the way up to his elbows. “What happened to your eye? Why are you wet?”
“It was raining. I fell asleep on the couch, and I thought I heard something. When I came outside, it was windy and pouring, and the body was already in the pool.” His eyes are wild, pupils dilated.
I’ve never seen him like this. “I tried to get him out. But there was—there’s blood, Este.
I couldn’t—the eye is—more complicated. It’s—”
Him?
He’s in shock, too. His hands tremble a little as he gestures.
“Who is it?” I ask, looking back at the pool. The water is murky, and the predawn light is muted. “Do you know?”
Tears well in his eyes. He wipes at his face, and his hands are covered in dirt.
Jesus. This isn’t bad. Bad would be such a treat compared to this. This is fucking doomsday.
There’s a commotion coming from the front of the house. We turn to see two police officers stalking through the side yard, looking alert with guns drawn.
I turn back to the figure in the pool. The sun is starting to rise, warming the air a little and casting fresh light, and I see what look like designer slacks—stained with blood—on the body floating on the surface of the water.
My hands fly to my mouth to muffle a scream, and my eyes dart back and forth from the pool to Beau in rapid succession now. “Is that Simon?”
“Este,” Beau says in desperation.
Did Beau kill Simon? Because I told him Simon was going to frame him for Gemma’s murder? Because Simon was never going to let the Redwood hack go?
“Oh my God,” I whisper, pain and panic squeezing my throat.
“It’s not how it looks,” Beau insists. “I came outside, and he was here. I didn’t do this.”
Didn’t he? Didn’t he light the match that burned Simon’s company down? Didn’t he hide it all from me for years? Didn’t Gemma tell him Simon would never let this die?
“What happened to your eye?” I ask, and my voice sounds dazed.
“I tried to pull him out, but the body’s too heavy—waterlogged or something. His elbow hit my eye, I fell back and—” As if he’s remembering something, Beau crosses to the Buffalo Nickel on the ground. “This fell off.”
The officers draw closer, and I look back at Beau, noticing the beads of sweat in the corners of his eyes and on his forehead. Near that crinkle of his eye that I’ve always loved.
Fuck. What has he done?
“Here,” he says, voice cracking as he presses the Buffalo Nickel into my palm. “Hold on to this for me.”
“What?” My gaze drops to the coin and then lifts back to him. “You say it like you’re going to war or something, Beau. What happened to ‘We’ll figure this out’?”
“Look at me, Este.” He uses his hands to make a show of how spectacularly suspicious he looks right now. “They’re going to arrest me. And they might lie to you to get you to say something that will help them.”
Would they be lying?
“Keep the coin for me,” he implores, his face taut with worry.
My mind jumps to the Buffalo Nickel Clause. When I told him about Simon, the coin absolved me. He gave me acceptance. And he’s never asked for anything in return. But now, he’s calling it in.
“Did you do this?” I plead with him, already fearing I know the answer. “If they’re arresting you, don’t you think—”
“No,” he promises again. “I didn’t kill Simon.”
But it’s not the same as not being behind it.
The way he skirted the truth of the hack when I confronted him flies up like a roadblock.
I don’t know if I can believe him.
And if I tell him that? It will mean the end of us. Maybe not today or next week. But no matter how long the timeline, we’d always be able to trace the collapse of us back to this moment. This hairline crack of doubt, slowly widening until everything gives out.
I look at him—studying carefully. And I see the man I fell in love with in the laugh lines by his mouth, formed with countless smiles and inside jokes. He’s always let me be exactly who I am. Even now, he’s not begging or pushing or cajoling. He’s waiting for me to decide.
But I see the cracks, too. The dirt on his clothes. The blood on his arms. The panic in his voice. The ghost of a bruise starting to form on his face.
Did he do something he can’t undo?
Something irrevocable must have happened. Because Simon Avery is floating facedown in the pool we sip cocktails in on Sundays.
Everything’s been unraveling since Gemma died. And I don’t know why.
I don’t know what Beau’s done. I know what I’m going to do, though.
“A Buffalo Nickel Clause,” I say in a faint whisper. “I’ll take care of it.”
And I’m not just talking about the chain.
The officers who arrived first separate Beau and me to get our statements, ushering me to our living room and Beau to the dining room.
Within minutes our backyard is crawling with uniformed officers, and as the sun continues to rise, the higher-ups in the Orange County Homicide Squad have been dispatched to the scene.
Most of the police activity stays central to Simon and the swimming pool.
Detective Ardell arrived around the same time as the homicide squad. His neighborly demeanor dissolved quickly as he took in the scene. He explained that the investigation is contained to the pool area as if that should be comforting. As if my life isn’t falling apart right in front of me.
“The officers can only search in the house if there’s reason to believe a crime occurred inside, which would require a warrant,” he added, glancing in Beau’s direction in the dining room.
That was hours ago, and Beau and I are still separated.
No one is talking to us, but I listen for sound bites and stray conversations.
I heard one of the officers say that it looked like Simon’s neck was broken.
No one says murder. But everyone knows what this is. The blood in my pool. The stains on Beau’s shirt. The stern expressions on the officers’ faces. Everything about this scene is damning.
I want to tell them about the Redwood hack, and Simon harassing me. I want to tell them I think Simon killed Gemma.
But then who killed Simon?
Bringing any of it up just piles more motive on Beau and me. So I shut up, speaking only when spoken to.
Never my strong suit. But worth it for the right cause.
A cop with salt-and-pepper hair and a name tag that reads Powell bombards me with questions. What time did I go to bed? What time did I wake up? When was the last time I saw Simon? And Beau?
With the Buffalo Nickel tucked into the inside pocket of my shorts, I tell him everything I know about what happened overnight, which isn’t much. Our security cameras went out with the power, and any surveillance of what happened during the storm is lost.
Turns out, I was wrong about the generator not being a real problem today.
I wonder what Beau is saying. He’s sitting a stone’s throw away in the dining room, waving his hands with conviction about something I can’t hear.
I wonder if it’s good or bad that Ardell is the one to question Beau.
They’ve always seemed to get along, and Ardell shows favor to the people he likes.
Still—maybe because of his willingness to show bias—I don’t trust him.
From the couch, I watch the forensics team cordon off our yard with police tape, preparing to pull Simon’s body from the pool. My stomach turns as Officer Powell’s radio crackles with the news that the coroner’s arrived.
With the doors to the pool deck shut, most of what’s going on outside is muffled. But I watch the steady hum of movement as early afternoon arrives. They pull a privacy screen across the deck, blocking our view as they lift Simon from the water.
Simon.
I knew that chest. That man. I knew him so well, I could predict what he wanted for lunch based on the way he lifted his eyebrows. He was terrible and complicated and someone.
I wanted him to leave us alone, but not like this.
I can’t see much—only the shadowy outlines of people moving behind the screen.
But the moment they turn his body over, I feel it. The static in the air shifts. The air inside the house sharpens. The officers become more tense, more focused.
“What’s that? What happened?” I ask Powell, sitting up straight to get a better view.
Someone says something about “blunt force trauma” at the same time I see an officer checking a cabinet in the outdoor kitchen and calling his colleagues over.
Ardell must notice the shift by the pool, because he leaves Beau, telling him to stay put as he steps outside.
Powell follows my gaze, and we watch as a gloved officer pulls a canvas bag out of the outdoor kitchen.
Shit. The tote bag.
I never moved it. My stomach lurches as the wine bottle, the Interlachen cups, and Gemma’s bra are laid out on a table.
And now a gloved officer is handling the items with careful fingers, like they’re artifacts from some lost world.
I try to tell myself it’s fine. Those things could belong to Beau and me. But I know everything in that bag has at least Gemma’s and my prints.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
An officer steps through the pool door, holding up the bra. “Is this yours?”
I want to say yes, but it wouldn’t help to lie. Gemma’s fingerprints and DNA are on it.
So I shake my head in resignation. “I found it—” I start to tell the truth, like it might help. But I realize it’s just as bad. I’ve been harboring evidence. “I think it’s Gemma Klein’s.”
As he leaves, he and Powell exchange a nod. Then, Powell turns back to me, folding his arms at his chest like suddenly he’s a warden standing guard.
“What the fuck is happening?” I curse under my breath.
“I’m sorry,” I mouth to Beau as our eyes lock, and I hope he can tell it’s not about the swearing.
Whatever Beau did or didn’t know, the police finding the evidence from the Hall House is on me. My hasty Hall House snatch and grab might be the final piece of evidence they need.
The police have been icy to Beau since they arrived and saw the body and his black eye. But now, they have a thread to pull. And I’m the one who gave it to them.
Ardell’s back inside. “Beau, I’m going to need you to come down to the station with me,” he says. And the tone of his voice makes it clear this isn’t an invitation.
“Are you arresting him?” I take a step toward Beau, wishing I could grab his hand, so we could both run. When Ardell stiffens, I stand down.
“I’ve got enough probable cause to arrest him for Simon’s murder. We’d like to ask a few more questions about Gemma Klein, too. If he’s willing to come down to the station quietly, we’ll skip the handcuffs.”
“Beau—” I start, my voice trembling with a mix of fear and defiance.
But Beau shakes his head, cutting me off with a quiet nod toward Ardell. “It’s okay, Este, I’ll call my lawyer when I get there.”
The resignation in Beau’s eyes says there’s nothing else to be done. The threat we’ve been fending off for days has finally caught up to us.
Beau stands, and for a moment, it feels like I’m seeing him off to war. Only the expression on Ardell’s face and his hand on his service weapon’s release tell me I can’t hug my husband. So we make eye contact in a wordless goodbye.
“Thanks, Beau,” Ardell says. “Appreciate your cooperation.”
The blood drains from my face as they step toward the door. Ardell moves out of the way so Beau can walk out first. I’m shaking as I watch them weave through the sea of police vehicles in the driveway, heading for Ardell’s cruiser. An excruciating few seconds later, Beau disappears inside.