Chapter 5. Is the Enemy of My Enemy Really My Friend?
“Maybe we should go,” I say to Harper when I meet her back at our (new) villa after my lecture’s over.
“Oh, now she wants to go,” Harper says. She got a bit of color around the pool, which I’m glad about. She’s been too much of a shut-in lately, holing up in her room and following a weird sleep schedule.
Maybe this trip will be a good thing for her, even if my life is in danger.
But not if I die. She’d be upset about that.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Why?”
“Someone left a threatening note under my plate at lunch.”
“What?” Oliver says from the doorway. His shirt is open at the collar, and I can’t help it. Even in the worst of times, I want to jump into bed with him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was in shock.”
He gives me a look. “What did it say?”
I take it out of my bag and show it to both of them.
“I think someone wants to hurt me.”
“Why?” Harper asks.
“The note’s not enough to draw that conclusion?”
“That could be part of the conference. We all had notes under our plates, right? With our group assignments?”
“What did yours say?”
“Something about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.”
“Hmmm. Oli?”
“‘The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.’”
An alarm bell goes off in my brain. “That’s from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.”
“Interesting. Who says it?”
“Can’t remember. But it’s not a threat. Mine was a threat.”
“Well,” Harper says, “actually…”
“Yes?”
She taps at her phone and nods. “Thought so. The full quote is ‘None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an afterthought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth you’re carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There’s no time for anything else.
’ I thought I recognized it. It’s from Nanea Hoffman. ”
“So, it’s not a threat but an admonition to live life to the fullest?”
“Yep.”
“Why would they be using a self-help quote at a murder conference?” I ask.
“How should I know? It sounds good?”
“That’s not … You seriously don’t want to go? What about everyone who’s here who shouldn’t be?”
“Like who?”
“Inspector Tucci. Guy. Sandrine.”
There’s a knock at the door. I turn to open it. A maid is standing there with a large pile of towels in front of her face.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. They told me to bring these.”
“It’s fine. I’ll take them.” I reach my arms forward and take them out of her arms. She’s in her mid-twenties and has what I’d call California coloring—blond hair, blue eyes, a natural tan.
“Do you need anything else?”
“No, thank you.” She gives me a flustered smile, then turns away.
“You need help there, El?” Oliver asks.
“I got it.” I put the towels down on the dining table as the door clicks shut. I can feel Harper’s eyes on me.
“What?”
“This is about Sandrine being here.”
“No, she’s just one of the symptoms. It’s about all of it. The note, the dead body in our room this morning. You can’t ignore that.”
“That was a shock,” Harper says. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
“Come on. I was just teaching this in my lecture. The first body that drops is always part of the story.”
“In books.”
“Yes, but…” I stop. What am I missing?
I was sure that the minute I mentioned leaving, Harper would announce she’d already packed our bags and that our flight was leaving in two hours. But now she’s trying to talk me out of it.
Why?
“Three hours ago, you would’ve both been happy to get out of here. What’s going on?”
She and Oliver exchange a glance.
“Yes?”
“There are at least three reasons why you can’t leave,” Harper says.
“Give.”
“There are no flights today, and maybe not tomorrow either.”
“Why?”
“If I said the weather, would you believe me?”
“Not another hurricane.”
“No, it’s something to do with a solar storm. All flights have been canceled for the next two days as a precaution.”
“Like an actual storm on the sun?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Sounds made-up. What’s the second reason?”
“I mentioned the possibility to Vicki, and she said something about a breach of contract.”
“Meaning?”
“Everyone’s paid quite a bit to be here and you’re a star attraction.”
“Don’t try to stoke my ego. I’m not even one of the keynote speakers.”
Harper rolls her eyes. “They’ve had problems with people leaving in the past, and it causes a cascade of refund requests. The org is on shaky ground as it is, so they’d rather you not.”
“And if someone kills me, what then?”
“Don’t be melodramatic, El. Who here wants to kill you? And don’t say Sandrine.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
I mean, I was, but so what? I’m not wrong to suspect her. She already murdered our friendship without provocation.
“Maybe she’s here to make up with you?” Oliver says.
“Doubt it.”
“She doesn’t want you dead,” Harper says.
“She just wants my book career dead.”
“What does that mean?” Oliver says.
I look away. Talking about Sandrine makes me feel emotional, and I’ve never gone into much detail about what happened between us with Oliver. It was before we got back together, so I didn’t feel the need to download the entire saga.
Besides, what does it say about me that I either let a psycho into my life or was such a bad friend I got dumped?
“Just a theory I have.”
“What?”
I look at my shoes because what I’m about to admit is quite embarrassing. “Well, you know how Amalfi Made Me Do It has the lowest rating of all my books?”
“It’s not even out yet,” Harper says.
“I mean in pre-ratings. Like on NetGalley. It all started with one review.”
“Explain,” Oliver says.
“It’s the way it works on there. People read the other reviews before they post theirs.
People are always like ‘I agree with the other reviews’ or ‘I don’t agree and here’s why.
’ Anyway, one of the first reviewers complained about Cecilia thinking about the calories of something she ate and made it the whole focus of her review, and then the others started agreeing with her, and it wasn’t quite review-bombing, but it kind of was. ”
“What’s all this got to do with Sandrine?” Oliver asks.
“She wrote that review.”
“How? You didn’t send her the book, did you?”
I’d wanted to. To show her that her fears were completely unfounded and our books had nothing to do with one another. But I’d chickened out. It seemed too needy.
“It’s not hard to get approved on NetGalley,” I say. “Especially if you’re an author. I know she has an account.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s her.”
“And the username. It’s a bunch of numbers, but I know what they mean.”
“Like an easter egg?” Harper says like she might be laughing at me. “Like Taylor does?”
“It’s a date that’s significant to her. To something private she told me about herself.”41
“That could be a coincidence,” Oliver says.
Only there are no coincidences. Not in my life. And definitely not in books that start with a death.
“Then there’s the way it’s written. I can hear her voice. I know it’s her. I’ve read everything she ever wrote. I could even write like her if I tried hard enough.”
“So, she gave your book a bad review,” Oliver says. “That doesn’t mean she wants you dead.”
“No, but it does mean she’s messing with me.
And that’s what this feels like. Someone is messing with me.
The body, the surprise guests, the threat, even that TikToker who’s here who also gave my book a bad review.
Both of them are in my small group. Something feels off.
” My voice rises to a pitch that a certain type of man would call hysterical.
But Oliver isn’t that guy.
Instead, he walks to me and envelops me in his arms, and this is why I love him. Because he knows what I need and he isn’t afraid to give it to me.
“You okay?” he asks against my ear.
“Am I tempting fate if I say I’ll live?”
He pulls back and smiles. “We’re stuck here for now.”
I feel suddenly like I might start to cry, which is not a rational response to what’s happening, but it’s not not a rational response.
I kiss him on the cheek and walk out of his arms.
“You said there were three things,” I say to Harper. “What’s the third?”
They glance at one another again.
“If you guys do that one more time, I’m going to lose it.”
“It’s a surprise,” Oliver says.
“So you’re not going to tell me.”
The side of his mouth curls up. “That would be ruining the surprise, wouldn’t it?”
There’s something about Oliver’s tone that stops me from asking more. Because now my heart has quickened, but in a good way. I think I know what the surprise is, and even though I’m a feminist, thank you very much, I can’t help but swoon a little at the thought.
The last time we talked about getting married was at my friend Emma’s wedding on Catalina Island. We’d decided—I mean he’d decided—that proposing at someone else’s wedding was tacky, and then, with everything that happened, it hadn’t come up again.
But the furor over two massive movie stars being involved in a murder has started to die down, so maybe that’s what’s going to happen here?
That I’m not going to get murdered, but I am going to get proposed to?
And he told Harper about it. Does that track? I mean, it might.
But it also might mean that he’s going to do it in a public way, which, you might be surprised to learn, is not my thing.
Oh God, stop it.
Don’t ask too many questions, El. You want to be surprised. You want it to be romantic. Not something you’ve forced out of Oliver.
So I’m deciding to let this go, right now.
The surprise, I mean.
Not the other stuff.
“Okay, I’ll let you have your surprise, but if we’re going to stay here, then we have to at least look into the guy who died in our room.”
“Why?”
“It felt like the start of something. And if it is, I want to know. We need to know.”
Oliver sighs in resignation. “Where do you suggest we start?”
I take a beat, but I know the answer. “I know just the person.”