Chapter 20 #2
The sound of balls rocking against each other as they pound the sides of the expansive pool table rattles me.
Two balls roll into the pocket.
Crystal smiles.
I can’t tell if it’s about her ill-timed “joke” or about the fact that she got some balls in.
Either way, it’s creepy.
For the record, I don’t recall Crystal being this . . . obviously insane is the word I’m hunting for . . . in the past. Forgetful? Absolutely. Immature? Yes. The kind of girl who stumbled into insanely
good fortune with career success and yet still manages to forget that adults pay taxes? Yup.
“Can you turn off your phone for this, Crystal?” I say, pointing to the phone video she has propped up on the table recording
herself. It’s going to end up as a TikTok in about twelve seconds.
“What’s the magic word?” she says in a singsong voice.
“Please.”
“Can you get your boyfriend to get his foot out the door?”
I grind my teeth. I’m not emotionally equipped yet for her to talk like that about Nash and me. “Yeah. Fine.”
“No,” I hear Nash say, without seeing him. “I’m staying here, Crystal.”
“Is this because of the little incident the other night?” Crystal says, holding her pool stick at her side. “Because, correct
me if I’m wrong, but I was almost certain somebody else lit that fire. And I’m awfully convinced it might have been you.”
She shoots me a look.
“Door’s staying open,” Nash says, taking another step toward us.
I don’t dare hold out my phone to take notes with her.
She’s so intense—far more intense than any of the group I’ve interviewed so far. I’m afraid she’d snap her mouth shut. This
new, brash Crystal seems like just the type to put her foot in it because she’s too hotheaded and conceited to look where
she’s going.
“What was in the room?” I say.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” she says, wagging her finger at me. As she hoverboards to the other side of the table, she says, “Do you
really think I’m that stupid?”
“Depends. How stupid?”
“Stupid enough that if there was something in my room, and there was not, I’d tell you. All I can say is that I’m disappointed in you, Pip. I thought we were closer than that.”
Yeah.
Tell me about it.
She leans over with her pool stick for another shot. “Of course, some would say life is full of disappointing people. Fathers,
for instance.”
“Fathers? What . . . so your father disappointed you?”
She laughs, one of those humorless, heartless laughs.
Takes a shot with the pool stick.
The balls go rolling.
“You could say that. He was a reeeeeal piece of work.”
Well. At least she doesn’t have a problem with dispensing information. “How so?”
“You know how people don’t have secret daughters anymore?
How that’s one of those old-fashioned things only terrible people did in high positions hundreds of years ago because they sucked and reputation went with money?
Yeah. Well, sometimes it still happens. Or perhaps you haven’t heard my real name before. ”
“You’re Crystal Murrell,” I say automatically. I’ve seen everything on her. All of her social account names. All the contracts
she’s signed with us. Everything. I pause. “But you’re saying it’s a pen name?”
“Yep.”
“And your real name?”
She frowns. “Try this mouthful on for size. Mary Alice Givens Griffin. I know. It’s awful, isn’t it? My parents had no chill.”
The seven ball drops in and she moves around the table.
“Griffin?” I say, my brows rising. My eyes link with Nash’s. His hands are stuffed in his pockets. He’s leaning back and forth
on the heels of his boots as if poised for action at any moment. “Crystal. Mary.” I shake my head. “Are you telling me you
are Hugh’s daughter?”
She raises her pool stick. Grins.
“Secret daughter,” she corrects. “Secret daughter he was so bent on teaching to raise herself up by her own bootstraps that
he only allowed me to join this ridiculous little group of his if I changed my name.”
“Wait. But you’re not in the will—”
She laughs.
“Don’t I know that?” she says with an edge in her voice. “Don’t I know how ridiculous it is for him to go on and on about how I need to learn self-sufficiency and how ‘it doesn’t do you any favors to take the
shortcut,’ but then I join this little parade and realize that all this time he was not helping me, he was doing everything
he could to try to help you? His special Penelope Dupont princess. The little administrative genius. He was willing to do more to jump-start you into a writing career than me.”
I grip the pool table. “But . . . but . . . I’ve met your dad. At the July Fourth party—”
“Yeah, you mean my portfolio manager, Frank?” She laughs callously. “You’re so stupid. You’ve always been so gullible, Pip.
You’d believe anything. Explains a lot about why you stayed forever with that loser Michael—”
“Hey!” Nash takes a step toward her. “That’s enough, Crystal.”
Crystal immediately puts her hands up. “Alright, alright. Geez. Pip, call your bodyguard off.”
Nash looks to me and his eyes say it all. Pure fire. Give me the word and I’ll kick her out myself.
I’m good. It’s fine.
It’s more than fine, actually.
Nash standing there, putting himself on the line without a second thought. That face. That fury.
It could melt metal, that look.
“And the name’s Mary,” Crystal calls out to him as I wave him off. She smiles again at me. “Horrible name. Bland as it gets. You got a real keeper,
though, haven’t you there? Man, if I had a man like that tearing down the rainforest to make my way—”
“Why did you tell me that?” I interrupt. “What purpose does it serve you to tell me you’re Hugh’s daughter?”
“You’d figure it out soon enough. Might as well beat you to it.”
“And put yourself on the prime suspect list?”
“Over what? That he’s my less-than-average father? Oh, honey, you have far more interesting suspects to consider than me.”
“I don’t know. Jealousy is a solid reason for revenge.”
“Oh, I’ve been watching him dote on you for years now with that stupid smile on his face, but I didn’t kill him.”
“Then who do you think did it? Who’s a better suspect than you?”
She laughs. “Only everyone else here? Neena was jilted at the altar, and between you and me, I think she’s been a little cuckoo since. And of course
Jackie . . . well, you know.”
I raise a brow. “What do you know?”
“Let’s just say, Jackie hated when I found out she didn’t write her own stuff. Hated me enough to try to frame me with that
knife you found in my dresser. Yeah, I know you found it. Welcome to my world. I found it there too and didn’t know what to
do.”
“So you did nothing?”
“Should I have put it somewhere else and gotten myself caught?” She shrugs. “The reality is, just because it was found in
my room doesn’t mean I put it there.” She looks me up and down. “We all clearly can get into each other’s rooms if we want to badly enough. At any rate, if Jackie would frame me for knowing, I can’t imagine
what she actually did to the man who said he was going to tell the world. Oh wait. I can.”
I raise a finger. “So . . . you think Jackie killed Hugh for letting out her secret, and you think Jackie is trying to frame
you for knowing as well? What does that make me then? Now that I know?”
“Easy, I should think,” she says. She pops a ball down the line. “Her next target.”