Chapter 33
33
4:41 p.m. Monday, November 4
R iley passed Josie in the hallway of the Santiago home. She was holding a long sharp knife and a mixing bowl of chicken salad in one hand. Riley was armed with a stun gun and pepper spray. They exchanged curt nods and no words.
They’d been on high alert since Nick and Brian had left early that morning. High alert and high annoyance.
“I hate this house. I hate this chicken salad. I hate these shoes. This isn’t even my favorite knife.”
Riley sighed at Josie’s internal hate list.
Part of being on high alert meant she’d lowered her shields to make sure she caught even the slightest whiff of incoming danger. Unfortunately, this also meant she had a front row seat to everyone’s inner monologues. If she had to hear Lily compare Griffin’s and Gabe’s butts one more time, she was going to lock the woman in Marie’s linen closet.
“Driveway is clear,” Mrs. Penny said, peering through the blinds with Miguel’s bird-watching binoculars from her perch on the writing desk under the living room window. All the items that had previously called the desk home were in a broken tangle on the floor.
Thankfully, Miguel and Marie had both gone off to work that morning to maintain the illusion of normalcy in case anyone happened to be watching their house. It was unlikely given the fact that they lived in a gated community with its own overzealous security team. But Riley wasn’t about to point that out if it meant that Nick’s mom would stay to continue her merciless siege on Riley’s already fragile self-esteem.
Griffin and Bella had called into work sick and spent the morning critiquing their Channel 50 substitutes on the news.
A deep baritone “ Ohmmmmmmmmmmmm ” blasted her, and her gaze automatically found Gabe.
He and Griffin were sitting on the couch in the living room. Griffin was verbally issuing a timeline of all the awards he’d won in his lifetime. Gabe, to his spiritual guide credit, was staring blankly and apparently chanting loudly enough internally so as not to listen.
Bella was sitting on the floor having a conversation with her dog and Burt while she painted their nails. Burt gave Riley the side-eye when she passed the doorway. She gave her dog a sympathetic shrug before moving on.
“Another golf cart!” Mr. Willicott barked from the dining room window that overlooked the backyard.
“It’s the same golf cart. It’s neighborhood security,” Josie explained grumpily for the third time.
On cue, Riley’s phone signaled a text.
Neighborhood Security : Perimeter is clear. See you in 15.
The gated neighborhood’s golf cart–driving full-time security officer had little to do besides enforce HOA ordinances and had embraced Nick’s request for frequent drive-bys.
She stepped into the dining room, making a note to find the glass cleaner and remove all of Mr. Willicott’s face smudges from the windows. “Did Brian tell you anything about what he and Nick are up to?” Riley asked Josie desperately.
“Nope. Which means either they’re busy doing whatever it is they’re doing, or he fell asleep. In which case I will put fire ants in his boxers.”
Pregnant Josie was even more bloodthirsty than regular Josie.
Lily and Fred marched into the room and saluted Riley. “Per your orders, the lunch dishes are cleaned up as is the accidental olive oil spill in the basement,” Fred reported.
“Great,” Riley said dryly.
“Also two of the four toilets in the house are clogged, but no bad guys have breached the perimeter yet,” Lily added.
Riley pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fabulous. See what you two can do about the toilets. Oh, and can you clean Mr. Willicott’s face prints off the windows?”
They saluted again. “Aye, aye, captain,” Fred barked.
Griffin scuttled past the doorway with his phone to his ear. “My credit card number? Okay. Hang on. Let me find my wallet.”
Riley abandoned the Bogdanovich twins and followed Griffin into the guest room. He and Bella had packed five suitcases of clothing and beauty supplies.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, stepping over a bag full of hair products.
Griffin beamed at her. “I won a special award for Best White Teeth on Morning TV. They need my credit card number so they can ship my trophy.”
Riley snatched the phone out of his hand. “Hello?”
But the caller had disconnected.
“How exactly did you find out you won this award?” she asked with what little remaining patience she had.
“I got a message on a dating app,” Griffin said.
She counted backward from ten slowly. “Okay. First of all, why are you on a dating app? You’re engaged.”
“Oh. It’s an old profile from this summer,” he said with a dismissive wave.
“You were engaged this summer.”
He smiled coyly. “I was? Oopsie.”
“Whatever. Moving on. Why would a legitimate organization be contacting you through a dating app instead of your work email or your agent or your lawyer to tell you that you won an industry award?”
Griffin patted her arm like she was a child. “Business is done on the apps these days. It’s not like it was ten years ago when you were in your prime.”
“How have you not been murdered yet?” Riley wondered out loud.
“Just lucky I guess.”
“Show me the message,” she said, handing his phone back.
She rolled her eyes over Griffin’s shoulder as he scrolled through a full inbox of DMs from “sexy singles” before opening a message. “Here it is. Completely legitimate,” he said.
Riley ran her tongue over her teeth. “This message is signed by Mimi Mappenberger.”
He nodded vigorously. “Uh-huh. She’s the award lady.”
“Her username is PaybaxRHail.”
“Mine is FamousTallnRich,” he said proudly.
“Griffin, Mimi Mappenberger—the woman you were going to give your credit card information to—is Kiki Knappenberger. You cheated on her five years ago.”
He pursed his lips and tried to furrow his brow. “Hmm. Doesn’t ring any bells. You’ll have to be more specific.”
“You cheated on her, and she started the Griffin Gentry Sucks Support Group, which meets once a month to discuss all the ways you’ve screwed people over.”
He gasped. “Griffin Gentry Sucks? Why would anyone say something so mean?”
“Why would a grown man go through life selfishly taking what he wants from people and then discarding them?”
“Are you saying I’m not getting a trophy for my teeth?”
“No, Griffin. You’re not getting a trophy for your teeth.”
Riley’s phone vibrated, and she yanked it out of her pocket. It was a call from Nick.
She pointed at Griffin. “Do not answer any calls, texts, or messages until I say it’s okay.”
He grinned and tried to slide an arm around her waist. “You just want me all to yourself, don’t you?”
She knocked the wind out of him with a swift elbow to the gut, then answered her phone.
“Please tell me you caught the bad guy and I can leave these people to destroy your parents’ home,” Riley said by way of a greeting.
“Almost, babe. I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“It’s probably dangerous,” he cautioned.
“As long as it’s dangerous outside this house, count me in.”
“Yay! My house,” Griffin said, bouncing in the back seat when Riley parked Nick’s SUV in front of his place. “I love my house. I can take a shower with my expensive shower gel and style my hair with my expensive sculpting mousse. Then I’m going to put on an expensive fresh suit and eat something yummy for lunch that someone else makes for me.”
“Why are there so many cars here?” Josie frowned. The driveway and most of the cul-de-sac were lined with vehicles.
“Maybe they’re throwing a surprise party for me,” Griffin suggested hopefully.
“Who’s they ?” Riley asked as they got out of the vehicle.
“I don’t know. The worker people who do stuff for me? Maybe they were worried about me after I almost heroically died yesterday.”
“I doubt that,” Josie muttered not far enough under her breath.
The front door opened, and Nick sauntered outside.
“What’s going on, Nick?” Riley asked.
“You’ll see,” he said with the patented Nick Santiago charm.
“No. You’ll tell us before we walk in there, because we’ve spent the last thirteen hours suffering mental and emotional torture,” Josie said, stepping up until her nose nearly brushed Nick’s sternum.
“Okay. Geez. I’m Thin Manning the case.”
Josie looked at Riley.
Riley looked at Nick. “You didn’t…”
His smug grin delivered both dimples. “Oh, but I did. Come in and see for yourself,” he said, gesturing them inside.
“What’s Thin Manning?” Josie asked as they headed toward the back of the house, where a disgruntled ruckus was in full swing.
“I’m scared to guess because if it’s what I think it is…” They turned the corner and entered Griffin and Bella’s library. “Oh, hell.”
It was what Riley thought it was going to be.
All their top suspects and a few of their unlikely ones were seated in neat rows on the folding chairs Nick had insisted on buying.
Josie whirled around to face Nick, who was grinning. “Did you seriously put every suspect we have in the same room and then have us deliver the guy at least one of them is trying to murder?”
“Pretty much. Yeah.”
Josie nodded. “Cool. I like it.” She waved to Brian, who was across the room next to the patio doors with his laptop plugged into Griffin’s TV.
Griffin strutted into the room. “Surprise for me! Thank you, everyone, for throwing me this special party.”
The crowd went silent, and then someone started booing. In less than five seconds, the entire room was booing Griffin.
“Um, Nick?” Riley said.
Nick stopped booing. “Yeah?”
“I’m not sure this was a good idea.”
“It’s a great idea. Trust me.” He glanced around the room. “But, uh, just in case things go slightly south, I want you to stick close to me. And if things go really far south, hit the floor and crawl out the front.”
“I never should have gotten you those movies,” she said.
Nick cupped his hands. “Everybody shut up,” he shouted over the booing.
“Are they saying woo or boo ?” Griffin asked with a frown.
The booing continued until Nick climbed up on the coffee table. “Listen, people! The sooner you shut up, the sooner we can all get out of here.”
Josie and Riley exchanged looks and took a step in front of Griffin.
“You might start with why you gathered us all here,” Griffin’s next-door neighbor Belinda said. She had a margarita in hand.
Claudia Mendoza, Channel 50’s ex–news anchor, leaned in. “Where did you get the booze?”
“I brought it from home.”
“Smart,” Claudia said.
“You’re all here because someone is trying to kill Griffin Gentry,” Nick announced.
The room finally went quiet as the suspects started giving one another sidelong glances.
“Kiki Knappenberger,” Nick said, pointing at the GGS founder, who was casually going through Griffin’s desk drawers.
Everyone gasped.
“What?” Kiki asked. Dressed in tight jeans and a designer top, she didn’t look the least bit concerned about being named a suspect.
“Five years ago, Gentry cheated on you. And you never got over it,” Nick said.
“I wouldn’t say that .”
“You started a Griffin Gentry Sucks Support Group and have been stalking him and pranking him for years,” he pointed out.
“She just tried catfishing him for his credit card number less than an hour ago,” Riley added.
“Great. She’s the almost murderer. Can the rest of us go home now?” Chupacabra asked. She was wearing a violet workout set and doing squats next to the last row of chairs.
“Ah, Chupacabra Jones,” Nick said.
“Damn, that’s a great name,” someone whispered.
“You just so happened to sign on as Bella Goodshine’s personal trainer mere weeks after your second cousin lost his limo driving job thanks to Griffin Gentry.”
Chupacabra paused in the bottom of the squat. “It’s a coincidence.”
“Yeah. I don’t believe in them,” Nick said. “Especially not when you and your cousin have been meeting with Bret Michaels.”
The crowd gasped.
“Not the Poison one. The lawyer one,” Nick said. He pointed to his cousin. “Brian, fire it up.”
The TV turned on to reveal a photo of the personal trainer entering a building.
“I believe this is you, Chupacabra Jones, and your cousin with a substantially less cool name walking into the law offices of Bret Michaels. You took this job to get access so you could gather evidence for your cousin’s countersuit against Gentry,” Nick said.
Chupacabra stood up and crossed her arms, making her biceps bulge. “So what? The dude committed insurance fraud. I’m just evening the score.”
“Good for you,” Kiki said, flashing her a double thumbs-up.
“But what are the odds that your family’s pockets can outlast Griffin’s legal budget?” Nick asked. “Maybe your lawyer bills were adding up, and you were still no closer to bringing your nemesis to justice. So you decided to bring him to justice on your own.”
Another gasp rose up from the gathered suspects.
“Just a side note. You guys might want to hold the gasps for the end, or you’re gonna hyperventilate,” Nick suggested.
Chupacabra’s nostrils flared. “Bull. Shit. You better watch what you’re accusing me of, Santiago.”
Griffin poked his head over Riley’s and Josie’s shoulders. “I don’t like this surprise party. Where are the balloons and the ice cream cake?”
“Oh my God. Here,” Josie said, fishing a handful of gummy dick packets out of her pocket. “Eat these and shut up.”
“Oooh! Trophy candy!”
“Who’s next?” Nick asked, scanning the crowd.
Wilfred Peabody, the jeweler, shifted uncomfortably on an overstuffed ottoman and avoided eye contact. Betty and Tyra, the adoptive moms, were next to him.
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t have time for this,” Claudia announced, hitching her purse up her shoulder. “I’ve got real news to cover at Channel 49.”
“Claudia Mendoza, ladies and gentlemen. Claudia was originally a morning news anchor for Channel 50 until Gentry’s father gave her the ax and put his son in her chair. Isn’t that right, Claudia?”
She snorted. “That’s old news. I’ve moved on. I don’t even think about Griffin anymore.”
Nick winced theatrically. “I wish I could believe you. I really do. But then how do you explain this?” He pointed to the TV screen, where a blurry photo of Claudia sitting behind the wheel of a vehicle in a parking lot appeared.
Riley recognized Mr. Willicott’s artistry in the blurriness and crooked composition.
“You’ve got me. It’s true. I drive my own car,” she said acidly.
“I guess you also do your own vandalism?” Nick asked.
A series of slightly less blurry photos appeared on the screen. Griffin pulling into a handicapped parking space in the same parking lot. Griffin and Bella exiting the car. Claudia, now wearing sunglasses and a ball cap, approaching their empty vehicle. And finally Claudia scraping her keys down the driver’s-side door of the shiny red sports car.
The suspect in question shrugged carelessly. “He parked in a handicapped spot. He’s an asshole and deserved to have his car keyed.”
“Very true,” Nick agreed. “Where did you spend Christmas last year?”
She frowned at the change in questioning. “With family in Colombia. Why?”
“This tidbit hasn’t been released to the public yet, but these two men who chased Gentry down and shot at him?” He pointed at the new picture on the screen. “They were contract killers extradited to Colombia after their arrests on charges of murder.”
“That’s like saying, ‘Gee, I know you went to kindergarten in Texas. You must know my third cousin Fred in San Antonio,’” Claudia said in a mock baritone. She crossed her arms and drummed her fingernails on her biceps. “If you’re seriously suggesting all Colombians know each other or that I had anything to do with this, you’re as dumb as your client.”
“What I’m suggesting is you have as good a motive as anyone else in this room.”
“Then you’re a dumbass,” she muttered.
“We’ll see about that,” he said before turning away from her.
“Is it smart for a small business to piss off local media?” Josie wondered.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Riley whispered back.
“Henry Wu,” Nick called.
“Who?” Josie asked.
“Him,” Riley said, pointing at Griffin’s assistant, who was trying to blend in with a large potted palm.
“Uh. Present. I guess,” Henry said.
“As Gentry’s personal assistant, you have access to the house. In fact, you’re the one who let all of us in. Isn’t that true?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“And as Gentry’s personal assistant, how much money do you earn?”
Henry looked around as if searching for an escape. “Well, nothing so far. I’m an intern. My parents think internships are character building.”
“Even though you’re on call twenty-four seven? Even though you missed your grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday party to capture a spider that turned out to be a set of fake eyelashes on Gentry’s bathroom floor? Even though you had to cancel the date you finally landed with the hot guy from the gym because your boss needed you to mop up the barbecue sauce he spilled all over the kitchen floor on a Saturday night?”
Tyra and Betty shook their heads and tut-tutted. “You’re a monster,” Betty said to Griffin.
Riley was in agreement.
Griffin’s mouth was too full of gummy candy dicks to respond.
“You got payback though, didn’t you? Starting with the chest waxing,” Nick said, pointing at the TV.
A photo of Griffin’s hot-pink G appeared.
Titters of laughter rose up. Henry looked down at his feet and shoved a hand through his hair.
“But pranks weren’t enough, were they? You personally adjusted the studio light that fell during Gentry’s interview, didn’t you?” Nick pointed at Brian.
The image on the TV shifted to time-stamped video footage of Henry setting up a ladder on set and climbing it about an hour before Griffin and Bella’s interview. Only his legs were in view, but when he climbed back down, he was smiling.
“I swear, I didn’t sabotage the light. I mean, I did. But not how you think. I double-checked that the filter on the light had a green base tone to mess up Griffin’s tan on screen. I always do that because it makes Griffin mad, and then he gets another spray tan, which just turns him more orange.”
“Henry, Henry, Henry, you expect us to believe that you didn’t cut through that mounting cable after everything Gentry has put you through?” Nick asked.
“Honestly, none of us would blame you,” Belinda told him sympathetically.
“It wasn’t me! I swear,” Henry insisted, sweat coursing down his face. “Maybe it was the lighting guy? I saw him adjusting it after me and thought maybe he saw what I’d done. I swear I didn’t cut the cable. I didn’t want to kill him. I just wanted him to look bad!”
Henry looked more than a little green around the gills, and the suspects sitting in front of him took notice and spread out.
“A likely story,” Nick scoffed.
“Aw. My candy’s gone,” Griffin said, holding up the empty baggie before throwing it on the ground. “What’s everybody talking about?”
“You being a pencil-dicked moron who deserves to be tortured and publicly executed so I can piss all over your corpse.” Ingram Theodoric III rose from his seat in the front row, face ruddy with rage.
“Oh, hi, Gingham! Haven’t seen you on the pickleball court in a while,” Griffin said cheerily.
“It’s Ingram and you know it, you trust-fund fungi!” Ingram started toward Griffin, which meant he was actually starting toward Riley and Josie since they were standing between him and the man who had stolen his girlfriend.
Nick jumped off the coffee table and put himself in Ingram’s path. “And there’s the man of the hour. Mr. Ingram Theodoric the Third, everyone.”
“I thought I was the man of the hour?” Griffin complained.
Josie turned and shoved her hands into the news anchor’s hair. She ruffled them back and forth. “Go fix your hair, you dumb little idiot.”
The messy-haired Griffin headed toward the powder room down the hall.
“Step aside and let me finish this,” Ingram snarled.
“Looks like the boss caught his killer,” Josie mused.
But Riley frowned as Nick slapped a hand to Ingram’s chest. Something didn’t feel right.
“I’d love to, man. But you see, I can’t. Because I was hired by this tangerine pain in my ass to find out who is trying to kill him. And if I let you get your gin-soaked hands on him, I won’t get paid,” Nick said.
Twin veins in Ingram’s neck pulsed dangerously. “Fine! Then I’ll go through you.”
Riley heard a faint thump upstairs, but no one else seemed to take note. They were all watching Nick and Ingram’s standoff.
“Let’s talk about why you’ve been at the top of the list from day one,” Nick said.
Riley’s nose twitched, and she surrendered to the vision, willing the chaos around her to disappear.
The clouds enveloped her in warm blues and pinks before breaking open before her.
“ Did Griffin get taller? ” A bodiless voice echoed around her.
There was something flying toward her. A thin silver object rotating end over end. The light from Cotton Candy World caught it and glinted off the razor-sharp tip.
“ He looks taller ,” another voice noted, floating through the ether.
The object was still coming at her in slow motion. Riley put her hand up and caught it.
It was a knife. But not just any knife.
She snapped out of the spirit world. “Wait! Griffin, stop!” He turned around, hands in his hair.
“Now what? I need to fix my award-winning hair.”
“You said the first threat was stabbed into your pillow in your bedroom, right?” Riley asked.
“That’s right. It was very scary because that pillowcase had my face screen-printed on it.”
“What kind of knife was it?”
“Where are you going with this, Riley?” Josie asked out of the corner of her mouth.
“I don’t know. One of those surgical knives doctors use,” Griffin said.
“A scalpel?” Riley asked.
“You’re stepping on my big reveal, Thorn,” Nick warned.
“It wasn’t Ingram,” she said. “I mean, I know it looks like it should be him since he’s a drunk, and he stole his ex’s dogs, and he shoots antique rifles at his neighbors and is generally a scary human being.”
“I’ll show you scary after I’m done with Gentry…and this guy,” Ingram snarled, gesturing toward Nick.
“Talk to my girlfriend like that again, and I’ll remove your face and give you a colonoscopy with it,” Nick warned.
Riley ignored them. “Griffin, when you were on medical leave, was it from the accident at the airport, or was it because you had some kind of plastic surgery?”
“Aw, man,” Nick grumbled.
“Plastic surgery?” Griffin’s laugh was laced with anxiety. “I would never. I was born handsome. I’ll have you know I would have won Cutest Baby in Dauphin County if it weren’t for the Kraker twins.” With another nervous giggle, he backed toward the powder room door.
“Griffin,” Riley began.
“Gentry,” Nick said at the same time.
“Bye!” Griffin said and slammed the door. They all heard the snick of the lock.
“I’m going to destroy Griffin Gentry,” Ingram growled.
“Not if I get to him first,” a new voice from the back of the room announced.
“Now you can gasp, people,” Nick said as he edged his way between Riley, Josie, and the newcomer holding the gun.