Chapter 27 #2
“I doubt it,” Savilla said. “Why would they be? And I can’t imagine who else might’ve known to look here.”
Despite its spaciousness, the room was cozy.
The wallpaper only came to the wainscotting midway up the wall, and it was gray, almost silver, with tiny stalks of lavender interspersed across it.
In addition to the desk and work station, there was a grated fireplace, one wide single window that looked onto the front lawn, and a set of chairs facing one another.
“This used to be the quarters for the head lady’s maid,” Savilla said, studying her father’s workstation without touching anything on it.
An assortment of empty brooches, bracelets, earrings, and even a couple of crowns, lined the otherwise empty table.
It looked as if he’d been preparing to set stones into various pieces.
“He converted it when I was four or five, around the time Nanny Kate came to live here with us. I think it was the only place he could find peace and quiet with her and StepMommy roaming the halls. But then, a few years ago, after I graduated, he and StepMommy started living in New York most of the time, so we were only here once or twice a year. Anytime we came back to visit, though, he always spent time in his office. I think it gave him something to do, especially when he started losing so much money.” Savilla inhaled deeply as she surveyed the room.
“He must’ve been in such distress, knowing things were getting bad. ”
“And Glenda and Katie had no idea?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t know either until he said I should take out a life insurance policy on him. He always said things were fine, just fine.”
“That must’ve also been when he started selling off gemstones,” I added, as I spotted a large rectangular leather volume with Accounts engraved on the front.
I picked it up and turned through the pages to find rows of numbers dating back to the fall of 2023.
It was a much more in-depth version of the accounting that I’d found in a pocket-sized ledger in his apartment this past summer.
“The financial guy told me that Daddy was a bit paranoid, kept all of his accounts by hand, said he didn’t trust anything online,” Savilla told me as she ran a finger down a page of numbers. “He obviously wasn’t fully in his right mind, he couldn’t have been.”
I sat down and tracked the depleting numbers while Savilla followed my hand.
There were eight accounts across three different banks, labeled by acronyms that I could guess—based on the couple of finance classes I’d taken in college—meant things like checking, savings, money market, index fund, and bonds.
The accounts were much too small for an estate of this size, and the withdrawal rate from them had been massive.
With a quick estimation, it appeared that Savilla—and I—had less than a hundred grand in all the accounts combined.
This was still a sizable amount for someone who’d been raised by a mother who was a small-town nurse and an aunt who designed fashion for a living, but even I knew it wasn’t enough to sustain a place like The Rose long term.
As soon as one of the dozen or so industrial-sized boilers, heaters, or air conditioning units failed, The Rose would be sunk.
Savilla’s eyes began to well, though I wasn’t sure if it was because she missed her father or because she had no idea what she would do next with a property this size—and only enough money to keep it going for another few months without money coming in to maintain it.
These were certainly rich-people problems, but it was still a decision Savilla had to make on her own, unless I agreed to somehow help her.
I hesitated only a moment before putting an arm around her, and Savilla rested her head against me.
I pictured Momma’s face buried in Aunt DeeDee’s shoulder when we’d gotten the news that the treatment was no longer working.
She hadn’t wanted me to take the burden; though back then, I’d resented what I’d viewed as Momma pulling away from me.
In my brief time of having an actual sister, I thought I might better understand now.
While I hadn’t been raised in the same household as Savilla, I’d come of age in the same community at the same time as her. We’d had very different socioeconomic upbringings, but we’d both had two strong women—who had been sisters in fact—directing our lives and soothing our heartaches.
I squeezed Savilla tighter, and after a few moments, she lifted her head, wiped her eyes, and looked at me with gratitude.
“I just remembered… The last time I was up here, Daddy actually talked about Brett while he was removing stones from that piece there…” Savilla gestured to a necklace with one very large center setting and a row of smaller prongs running up both sides of the gold, all the way to the clasp.
It was like a version of the Hope Diamond necklace that I remembered seeing on display in Washington, D.C.
, when our class had taken an overnight field trip there in seventh grade.
Other kids hadn’t been interested in that part of the Museum of Natural History, and to be fair, I’d liked the exhibit of the stuffed prehistoric animals more.
Still, I’d appreciated the low lighting and the soothing classical music of the gem exhibit amid the overstimulating chatter of my peers.
I recalled pressing my face to the glass, marveling at the sparkling blue center and the stories the curator told of the many people who’d owned it and come to unfortunate ends.
“Are you thinking of the time we saw the Hope Diamond?” Savilla asked, almost as if she could read my mind. “You and I were the only two interested in it.”
“Were we?” I tried to recall Savilla’s middle school face pressed to the other side of the glass box as we stood in the rounded corridor in the museum, a domed ceiling rising above us.
She’d been in my life for all of it, and for that, I was grateful, especially now that I knew of our actual connection.
Savilla was family, and she was also invested in this case for more than one reason: It was her father who’d been killed four months ago and her home where Brett had died.
I could take a chance and fully include her in the investigation, or I could keep trying to manage pieces of it on my own. I glanced at her again, and I practically heard Momma’s voice: Sometimes you gotta take a chance and trust people.
I had no time to make a pro/con list, so I studied Savilla’s eyes, which seemed guileless enough.
“Listen.” I held her arm. “What I’m about to tell you is privileged information. It could help us figure out who killed Brett, but you have to keep it to yourself, understand?”
Savilla nodded and crossed her heart. “Hope to die,” she said, before catching her word choice. “You know what I mean.”
After allowing myself one more second’s hesitation, I told her everything: from the items I’d found in Joe’s locker, to the video of Brett’s death, to him blackmailing Lacy, to the coroner’s report.
Savilla’s face was a study in concentration as she fingered one of the necklace settings. “The Rose Diamond killed Brett Brinkley?”
I nodded. “Someone stole the diamond—or at least found where it was located—and dropped it in his drink, knowing that Brett was the kind of guy to down his glass of whiskey on the rocks in a single gulp.”
“Okay,” Savilla said, thinking out loud. “The killer knew Brett well, and they knew our house well too. They’d mostly likely been to the estate, likely at the 2023 pageant, when the stone went missing.”
I ran through the list of suspects still at the house. Who had been here during the pageant two years ago? My mind stumbled over the obvious—Savilla, Lacy, Aunt DeeDee—but I refused to believe any of them had taken the diamond. That left Brett himself.
Or someone hiding in plain sight. Someone who knew The Rose’s secrets better than any of us realized.
Someone who might be watching me piece it all together right now.