Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Charlie was asleep almost as soon as he lay his head on the pillow next to mine, and I followed him into that sweet abyss in what seemed like seconds.
My conscious and subconscious were churning over so many things as my eyes closed: that I needed to be alert and awake enough for Mr. Finch’s will reading downtown where Savilla was about to find out I was her half-sister, that Lacy and I needed to find Brett’s email password before midnight tonight, that Monday’s decision about the fellowship recommendation was less than forty-eight hours away.
And that didn’t even include solving a murder.
I woke to the sound of the door closing and sat up straight, gripping the sheets to my bare skin and calling out the first thing that came to mind. “Who goes there?” Apparently I was a maiden living in a medieval castle.
There was no response, so I leaned over and poked at the other side of the king-sized bed, hoping Charlie would come to the rescue, but his place was empty and the bed cold. His clothes and his holster were gone too.
I dropped my head into my hands, rubbing away sleep from my eyes as I realized that I’d likely heard the sound of the door hitting Charlie on his way out. Great.
Any doubts about our relationship that I’d managed to quell last night came roaring back with a vengeance.
I took my own advice and let myself play out The Worst. He was probably on his way to find Deputy Wright and tell her that he’d been wrong to sleep with me in the early morning hours.
He was probably going to confess his love to her and propose before the end of the day.
They’d have a baby within a year. Life would still go on.
I reminded myself to breathe as I felt for the Tiffany lamp on my side of the bed and pressed to switch on the now-electric light bulb. When it brightened, I spotted a note.
Meeting with Wright this morning to discuss case. —Charlie
Oh God. That did nothing to dispel my ridiculous fears. A man of few words sounded romantic and brooding until you received a note like this.
After the sleep of the dead, he’d walked out the door without a kiss or a goodbye, and he was heading straight for a woman with beautiful eyes and dark hair, and more importantly, with an address that wasn’t hundreds—much less thousands—of miles away from him.
I crumpled Charlie’s note into a ball and threw it across the room.
I pulled the down comforter over my head and was contemplating hiding out in my room all day when a knock sounded at the door.
“Who is it?” I scrambled out of bed, grabbed the jeans I’d worn yesterday, and pulled them on as I went to look through a peephole that didn’t exist.
“It’s Savilla,” the voiced called. “I have clean clothes if you want them.”
I opened the door to find her standing in a brown leather skirt with a matching fitted top and boots. She looked amazing, nothing like the host of a party where a man had died last night.
“I thought you might want a few things.” She held up an outfit and let it dangle from her hands. It was a pair of soft worn jeans and a flannel shirt, and I caught the scent of linen detergent. She knew me.
“That would be great actually. Thanks.”
I took the clothes and started to close the door, but she put out a hand.
“Don’t be silly. You get dressed, and I’ll drive us into town. I cleared it with Charlie.”
“Into town? Why?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Um, for our meeting.”
“Our meeting?”
Savilla crossed her arms and looked at me as if she wasn’t sure why I kept repeating her words. “With Mr. Froble.”
I was startled. I didn’t think Savilla knew I would be present at the reading of her father’s will.
“You’re the unbiased witness,” Savilla said matter-of-factly. “That’s what Mr. Froble told me when I checked to make sure that he’d heard from the prison about Mommy and StepMommy’s visit.”
The words were coming at me so fast that I struggled to keep up with the meaning behind them.
Not only was I disoriented from just a few hours’ sleep, but waking up to an empty bed had put a nail in whatever coffin I’d wanted to crawl inside.
My mouth tasted sour, my headache had only dimmed with sleep, and all I craved was the biggest cup of coffee known to man.
“I can wait in your room or out in the hall,” Savilla said with an expression that told me she wasn’t planning to leave.
I let her wait inside while I brushed my teeth, showered, and changed into the clothes, which fit perfectly.
When I emerged from the bathroom, Savilla added mascara and lip gloss to my face like I was a helpless pageant contestant, and as soon as I’d slipped into my boots, Savilla shoved me out the door.
“So, Mr. Froble told you that I’m…” I let the words trail off, hoping she’d finish them.
I noticed then that Savilla’s cheeks were flushed, her hair had a couple of flyaway strands sticking out in different directions, and her hands were constantly moving.
She’d either had a lot of coffee or she was nervous. Maybe both.
“An unbiased witness,” she repeated, forcing a smile.
“And that’s common at a will reading?” I asked, hoping I didn’t make her suspicious, but also wondering if she still hadn’t figured out that there might be another reason I’d been invited – namely that I was related to her.
“I’m glad you’ll be there. It’s the first time I’ve seen Mommy and StepMommy after their sentencing.”
So that was the reason for the nerves. “You haven’t visited them in prison?”
Guilt washed over her face. “I was too… I don’t know. It was all too much.”
Knowing her mother and stepmother had plotted to kill her father—and succeeded—would be too much for anyone.
I stopped and took her hand, giving it a quick squeeze and meeting her eye. “I’ll be there the whole time.”
Savilla squeezed my hand too and lifted her chin. “Thank you.” As we reached the stairs, she changed the subject. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I kept replaying everything with Daddy, how he died. I think that seeing Brett brought it all back.”
Her sleepless night had been worse than my reality show dreams.
Tears welled in Savilla’s eyes as we started down the stairs side by side, and she sniffled several times as she ran a hand along the wall. “It’s just… today I’ll find out if Daddy left all of this to me, and I have no idea what to do with it.”
“Do with it?” I repeated weakly. “I mean, you live here, right? At least part of the year.”
Savilla frowned at me as if I could never understand the plight of the enormously wealthy, which was fair.
Momma had always said that the richer someone becomes, the less secure they feel, a sentiment I’d tried to debate several times.
But maybe she was right. Maybe having and maintaining all of this opulence created burdens I didn’t comprehend.
I’d never expected to know that kind of dilemma, though I did wonder if Mr. Finch might’ve left me some little piece of his wealth.
I wasn’t desperate for money like I’d been during the pageant, but I couldn’t deny that cash offered options that a lack of it did not.
The pageant winnings had helped so much, but after paying off Momma’s house, paying back Aunt DeeDee for the debts she’d incurred from Momma’s experimental treatments, settling with the credit card collectors, and covering all of my expenses for a final year of school, I only had about ten grand in the bank.
According to my professor, the fellowship in San Diego came with a low but livable salary, or when I graduated, I could get a job with an established practice, but unless I wanted to go into debt again, I couldn’t open my own practice without another influx of cash.
I kind of hated that this was where my mind went as I entered the main vestibule next to my secret half-sister, but practicalities mattered.
The two of us paused as we took in the view from the wide windows at the front of the house. There were my blue mountains, the haze already burning off as the sun rose higher in the sky.
“A man died here.” Savilla breathed out as she turned away from the windows and her eyes scanned her home. Her tears were still coming, and I wondered suddenly if she was emotionally stable enough for the day ahead.
“Have you eaten anything this morning?” I asked, channeling Aunt DeeDee.
Savilla shook her head, but I wasn’t sure if she was answering me or still stuck in her train of thought.
“Brett died only four months after my own father died. Here, at my home.” She reached out a hand and grabbed my forearm.
“What if Presley is right? What if there’s some kind of curse? On The Rose?”
The statement caught me off guard, but I supposed October was the season to think of scary things going bump in the night. I tried to reassure her with logic.
“Your father died because three people”—three people very close to him, I wanted to add but didn’t—“were determined to get revenge on him, and Brett died because… well, we don’t know, but I’m one hundred percent sure it’s not because of a curse.
” I stole a glance at her. “You don’t actually believe in those kinds of things, do you? ”
Savilla wiped away tears and studied the ground for a moment as if weighing her answer. “Presley told me last night that she’d been thinking about breaking up with Brett for a while, that she’d even contacted a shaman who told her that she needed to get out of the relationship while she could.”
The idea of a relationship shaman sounded on-brand for Presley. “Were those her exact words?” I asked.
Savilla looked straight at me and then nodded. “She told me that I should meet with this lady, talk to her about my… troubles.”
The last word rankled me even though I knew the response wasn’t fair.
Savilla might not have many visible troubles as far as I understood, but she did have numerous family issues.
A frustrated mother and a vacuous stepmother who’d actually been sisters working together to kill Savilla’s father.
That was enough to keep any therapist employed for years to come.
This wasn’t the thing that bothered me the most about our conversation, though.
It was Presley and her desire to get out of her relationship with Brett.
I’d learned that people’s murderous intentions could spring from all sorts of reasons, but if the pageant investigation had taught me anything, it was that the impulse often came down to love or money.
Presley, presumably, had once loved Brett—maybe even still did—but she’d also seemed very cozy with Joe last night, whether it was because she was acting as his agent, which I found doubtful, or something more.
But if Presley had simply left Brett, a rising star, for Joe, a no-name, part-time, aspirational actor/caterer…
how would that decision look to the public?
Wouldn’t Presley get more sympathy and publicity by tragically losing the man she loved and, after an appropriate amount of grief and time, falling into the arms of an Ordinary Joe?
Maybe that was reason enough for both Joe and Presley to want Brett dead sooner rather than later.