Chapter 2. Is Champagne Before Lunch Ever a Good Idea?
“I think we should go home,” Harper says once we’ve been deposited in the lounge, a once sumptuous room that overlooks the pool, with off-white marble on the floor and dark green velvet couches that have been matted down.
The wallpaper is like something out of Bridgerton—heavy gold-leaf fleurs-de-lis on a thick teal background—and there’s an ornate gold chandelier hanging slightly askew from the ceiling.
As promised, Mark instructed a waiter to bring us a bottle of Champagne. It’s a brand I don’t recognize, which makes me momentarily nervous. But then the cork is popped, and that sound always makes me happy, like a party beginning, and the first sip assures me that it’s drinkable.
But who are we kidding? I’m not that picky where alcohol is concerned.
And yes, that first glass did go down quickly.
I’ll drink this one more slowly, I promise.
“I don’t think we can just leave,” I say.
“Why not?” Oliver asks.
“Because I agreed to teach at the conference, and so did you, Oli.”
Oliver’s dark brown eyes are troubled, and his matching hair has curled in the heat, which just makes him hotter in my estimation.
I actively try not to do this, but we ended up wearing matching pale green linen shirts and white shorts.
Harper made a retching face when she saw us this morning in Miami, where we’d stopped overnight on the way here from LA.
“They should be canceling the conference given what happened,” Harper says.
“That would be a logistical nightmare and probably bankrupt them.”
“So, we’ll just wait around for someone else to die, shall we?”
Wow, Oli’s feeling salty today. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. He’s always on edge whenever he’s about to spend some time in forced proximity to Connor.
“No, we’ll be on our guard, obviously.”
Oliver pushes back into the couch he’s sitting on. I want to go and crawl onto his lap, but that’s not before-lunch behavior.
“That sounds like it will work perfectly,” Harper says.
“If you want to leave, you can.”
“You know I won’t leave if you don’t.”
I wish I could correct her. But Harper’s right. I do know this. She’s my sister and my assistant, and I know everything about her, just like she knows everything about me.
Well, almost everything. We can still surprise one another every so often.
The point is, it’s not right that she feels obliged to stay in danger when she doesn’t want to. It’s one of the many reasons I’m going to be firing her at the end of this trip.
Did that take you by surprise? Me too.
“Why do you want to stay, El?” Oliver says. “The truth.”
“What’s all this talk of leaving?” my editor, Vicki, says as she walks into the room. She’s wearing a colorful pool cover-up, a lemon-printed scarf over her dark blond hair, and large sunglasses, like a ’50s movie star who doesn’t want to be recognized.19 “The conference hasn’t even started yet.”
Sidebar. Vicki’s been my editor since my first novel. She’s also Oliver’s editor and, more recently, Connor’s.
News I didn’t take well. Oliver either.
“Vicki,” Oliver says, “what are you doing here?”
“Didn’t you read the conference materials?” I say with a glint in my eye.
Okay, I’m gloating.
“I helped organize it,” Vicki says, ignoring our sparring. “With so many of my authors here, I couldn’t resist attending.”
I watch Oliver work through that Vicki is probably here for Connor—she’s never come to any event like this for us—and then something weird happens.
Instead of scowling or gnashing his teeth or any of the other gestures he’s made since we got back together whenever Connor’s mentioned, he looks … fine with it?
But no, that can’t be.
Oliver loathes Connor more than I do.
“Plus, you’re on the editor panel,” I say, looking at Oliver with questions in my eyes.
“That’s right.” Vicki picks up the bottle of Champagne and pours herself a generous glass.
It was one of the things we’d bonded over when several editors were vying over the rights to When in Rome what feels like a million years ago. She got the book, she got me, and we’d polished off a bottle of something expensive over lunch.
I’m not saying I made a life-changing decision because of a good bottle of Champagne, but I’m not not saying that either.
“You’re brave to come here,” I say, and Oliver shoots me a look, then makes a slashing motion at his throat. “All those desperate people who’ll be trying to slip you their manuscript in inappropriate places.”
“I’m used to it,” Vicki says. “I let people down gently.”
Harper reaches for the bottle and pours herself another glass, and it’s then that I remember.
Harper’s one of the people Vicki turned down.
Not because she gave Vicki her manuscript at an inappropriate time, but because Vicki didn’t think it was good enough to publish.
Which is a massive disappointment in Harper’s life that she says she’s over, but do people ever get over that kind of thing?
I wouldn’t know.
Which sounds horrible to say, I know.
It’s not because terrible things haven’t happened to me.
Our parents died in a drunk driving accident when I was eighteen.
I delayed college to look after Harper and gave up on my dream of going to drama school.
But then, when I was twenty-five and finally free, I accidentally fell into a writing career that’s been going strong ever since.
I’ve been lucky and I’ve worked hard, and not everything has worked out the way I wanted. But I know that’s not the same as realizing you aren’t going to get your lifelong dream.
And that reality lives between Harper and me, whether we like to admit it or not.
Which is 100 percent one of the reasons I’m firing her at the end of this trip.
Right after she helps me get through this conference alive.
“What was all the fuss when you were checking in?” Vicki asks. “There was chatter around the pool.”
I can feel Oliver’s eyes on me. “The room wasn’t ready. They’re moving us to another one.”
She frowns, her Spidey sense tingling, I’m sure. “And the Champagne?”
“We’re on vacation!”
“You owe me a copyedit.”
“Oliver’s doing it, right, Oli?” I point to him with my glass.
We wrote a book together that’s a thinly veiled account of the last murder we were involved in, three months ago on Catalina Island.
We agreed that we’d each do one of the boring after-draft tasks—the copyedit, the proofread, and the second-pass queries, all things designed to make you hate your book because you’ve read it so many times by then you’re convinced it’s boring and terrible and obvious.
“I’m halfway through,” Oliver says. “It’ll be in your inbox by next Friday.”
“Excellent,” Vicki says. “So, leaving? Why? Give me.”
Vicki tends to speak in abbreviated sentences like she’s dictating texts.
“It wasn’t a serious discussion,” I say. “Just the usual grousing before we realize we’re in paradise and we shouldn’t be complaining about anything.”
“Who’s complaining?” Connor says as he enters. “And I wouldn’t quite call this hotel paradise. It’s seen better days. Not up to my usual standards.”
Maybe Harper’s right and we should leave.
I close my eyes and say a quick Serenity Prayer.
I have to accept the things I cannot change. But why?
“No one’s complaining,” I say. “Connor, did you know Guy’s the head of security here?”
Connor shakes himself like he’s heard an off note. “Guy Charles?”
“Do we know another Guy?”
“He’s the head of security?”
“That’s what I just said.”
He cocks his head to the side. “How do you know this?”
Oops.
“Oh, um, there was a slight issue in our room and he came to resolve it.”
“A slight issue?”
“Nothing serious.”
“Serious enough to call in the head of security, but not that serious? Eleanor, please. You can do better than that.”
“There was a dead body.”
“Harper!”
“You started it.”
“Are we ten?”
“Someone’s dead?” Connor says. “And Guy’s behind it?”
“No,” I say. “We don’t know who’s behind it. The police say it’s a suicide.”
He touches the brim of his fedora. “That’s not very likely, is it?”
I squint at him. Damn, he’s still hot. “Why would you say that?”
“You’re here, for one.”
“That’s enough of that, Connor,” Oliver says lightly, but not with the usual bite of his speaking-to-Connor tone. “You were the one who was in business with Guy, not Eleanor.”
“Right,” I say. “And come to think of it, what are you even doing here? Your book isn’t a mystery, it’s a rom-com.”
“I’m one of the keynote speakers.”
“One of?” Harper says. “Isn’t there usually just one?”
“My invitation clearly stated—”
“But why were you invited?” I say. “That’s the question.”
“You’re just mad it wasn’t you.”
I mean, he’s not wrong. When I saw he was giving a keynote and I wasn’t, I was pissed.
Because this is a murder mystery conference, and there aren’t any murders in his book.
Not that I read it. I just assume.
Okay, okay, I read it.
It was … good?
“Fine. FINE. Maybe we should go home.”
“Seems like a good plan when the bodies start dropping,” Harper says. “I’ve always wondered why people didn’t do that in books. Like, if people are dying, why don’t we all just scatter? Why wait around to see who’s next?”
“Boring,” Vicki says. “And not the point of the beginning of a book. At all. Establish the tone and character of the people and environment. Set up a hint of mystery. Don’t give the whole gambit away.”
I smile at her. “Do you want to give my lecture?”
“Not a chance.”
“Damn.”
“Is someone going to fill us in on the details?” Connor says.
I give a big sigh and then do my best. Our arrival; the body; how the bellhop fainted, uh, dead away. The police arrival, the hotel manager, and then Guy.
“And he didn’t explain what he was doing here?” Connor says.
“No, but you know Guy. He’s not big on talking.”
“He’s up to something.”
“You don’t say.”
“How did we end up here, Vicki?” Harper asks. “Is the conference here every year?”
“No,” Vicki says. “It changes location. There’s an executive committee that organizes it. Several locations were suggested, I believe. We chose this one.” She finishes her glass of Champagne, then looks at it, like she’s surprised she’s holding it.
“Who’s on the committee?”
“I am, along with a half dozen others.”
“How did we get picked?” I ask.
“The publicity department pitches you for lots of conferences. The committee chooses who attends. You all had an in there.” She winks.
A chill runs down my spine at the words “publicity department” because a woman named Marta, who used to work in the publicity department, was involved in a plot to kill me six months ago.
But there’s zero chance there are two murderers in the same publicity department. Right?
I mean, publishing is broken, but not that broken?
“You’ll see, Connor,” I say. “You get invited to a lot of things like this, it’s not sinister.”
“Yes, thank you, Eleanor. I have been around publishing for ten years. I know all about what happens at book conferences.” He leers at me and I turn away, praying Oliver didn’t see.
I get a flash of the last time I slept with Connor.
It was at—surprise!—a book conference.
Why haven’t they invented a delete button for our brains yet?
“Yes, fine. Well, maybe you’ll have more luck than me getting Guy to tell you what he’s doing here. And in the meantime, I think we have a lunch to get to?”
Harper stands, a bit unsteady on her feet. “Good idea, I’m—”
“My goodness, why are you all, how do you say, gathered in this room?”
I close my eyes and count to three.
Because maybe if I do that, this will all turn out to be an illusion.
But no, when I open them again, there he is. Inspector Tucci. The police officer from Italy who I can’t seem to shake out of my life.
And maybe it’s something I should’ve felt before, what with the dead body and all.
But now I … wait for it … have a bad feeling about this.