Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
Savilla’s financial planner called, and since it had to do with the future of the estate, she took it. I wanted to check in with Lacy and see if she’d made any progress on the email password front, so we decided to split up for a bit.
Savilla headed downstairs and toward her room, and I started down the hall in the opposite direction toward the elevator, passing the guest rooms. I paused in front of one because I recognized two familiar voices coming from inside.
Aunt DeeDee and Joe.
I stopped in my tracks, knowing that Aunt DeeDee would not want me listening to her through a closed door.
She would tell me that if I had questions, then I should come right out and ask them.
Still, what if Joe said something to her that he wouldn’t say to anyone else, especially Charlie or his officers?
If my sneaking around helped the case, the allowance would have to be made.
I decided to stay, and pressed my ear to the door just like I’d done outside of the Media Room when I’d heard Lacy and Anton’s conversation last night.
Joe’s voice was muffled, as if he’d been crying. “I may have wanted him dead, but I had nothing to do with his death.”
The words froze me in place.
“I know, dear,” Aunt DeeDee responded, her tone sympathetic. I could almost see the gentle expression that she always gave me when I was in distress. “From my vantage point, I can see a list of folks who may have wanted to put Brett Brinkley in his place a time or two.”
“But the sheriff isn’t questioning them about dropping a diamond in his drink.”
Okay, word had gotten out about how Brett had died.
“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Aunt DeeDee crooned empathetically. “Remember that four months ago the sheriff had me behind bars at the local jail even though he knew I was innocent. I just had to be patient until he had enough evidence to clear me.”
I thought that was a pretty generous interpretation of Charlie’s actions, but I also knew she wasn’t wrong.
The sheriff was nothing if not meticulous in his investigations, so if he’d let the information about the diamond slip, then he had a reason for not holding those cards close to his chest. Besides, there wasn’t any particular reason to keep people from knowing Brett’s cause of death, and perhaps it would put the killer on alert that Charlie was hot on their tail.
Maybe it would even pressure them into coming forward with a confession.
“What I can’t figure out is how the diamond would get inside his drink. I made it. I used the ice from the bucket, and I would’ve noticed just by the weight of the tongs if I was accidentally slipping something heavier into a glass.”
I closed my eyes, trying to recall both my memory of the order of events as well as the video I’d watched multiple times.
Frustratingly, I kept getting stuck on one central image: that of Lacy’s hand hovering over his drink as she whispered in Brett’s ear.
But no, that was a mere distraction. It had to be.
“Was anyone else behind the bar with you?” Aunt DeeDee asked.
“No, and I handed the glass directly to…”
“To Brett?” Aunt DeeDee asked, after a few seconds of silence.
I knew that was wrong. I could picture exactly who he’d handed it to.
“No, no, that’s what I thought, but maybe it was to…” He took a long pause. “I handed the glass to Presley, and she took it over to Brett at the edge of the dance floor.” Joe finally breathed out.
I tried to remember exactly where Presley had been in Brett’s death tableau.
She’d handed the drink to Brett and then her figure had disappeared off-screen for a moment.
Jenna’s microphone had fed back, and I thought I’d caught a glimpse of Presley heading toward the sound board.
Had she been going for the back door of the ballroom instead?
Had Presley been deciding whether or not to flee the scene of her crime?
But no, that didn’t make sense, right? Because as soon as I was on the ground, starting CPR, Presley was next to me.
But what had she been doing? Crying, yes, but what else?
I couldn’t remember, and she’d been out of the view of the camera’s angle.
I knew this, though: Presley had not been helping me try to save Brett.
However she’d appeared or acted, she’d been the closest one to me, but I hadn’t even asked her to call 911.
Presley. My mind circled the name. She and Brett weren’t engaged, but surely he’d been planning to propose, especially after Mr. Finch died and he knew he would inherit the Rose Diamond. If nothing else, he would want to bask in the publicity the engagement would bring both of them.
My mind began to merge clips of the past twenty-four hours together as it also stretched to include the longer history of Brett and the women he’d known—and exploited.
Lacy and Savilla had both, directly or not, been victims of his blackmailing tactics, his attempt to exploit their intimacy with him.
Lacy had been emotionally and physically close to him, but Savilla’s relationship with him had been a brief, mostly physical fling.
Still, Brett had kept tangible pieces of their moments together—in photographs and on camera—and later used these to threaten both women.
Brett seemed to have a pattern, but certainly it hadn’t extended to another one of his victims, had it?
Presley’s rise to fame following Small Town, Big Romance had come right after she and Brett had won the show, but it just so happened that within a month of winning, Presley had supposedly also released a sex tape of her and Brett together.
She’d then used the momentum to start her own empire, which included fast-fashion for women with curves, and a beauty line specifically marketed to the middle-class woman.
Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian were part of her day-to-day world, and though I much preferred the American Veterinary Journal to US Weekly, even I’d heard infamous stories of Presley: How she’d rented an island and invited Beyoncé to perform for the weekend, how she’d appeared before Congress to argue for women’s rights, how she’d met the pope and told him that birth control should be provided for free to women across the globe.
Presley was not only gorgeous; she was strategic and smart.
In the media, the assumption had always been that Presley was the one to leak the video online, particularly since afterward she hadn’t filed a lawsuit or chided anyone publicly for the indiscretion.
Instead, she had figuratively leaned into the moment, going on late-night shows where she led the hosts in yoga poses as she joked about her sexual flexibility.
I’d barely watched all of this, of course, but it had been so commonplace to see her on magazine covers next to my former classmate that I’d noticed.
I had no problem with a woman choosing to do whatever she wanted with her body, but after discovering Brett’s way of using women, I suddenly wondered if Presley might have been one of Brett’s unwitting victims. Perhaps he’d been the one to release the video, and instead of hiding, Presley had found a way to use it to her advantage?
If that was true, it would certainly have sown seeds of animosity in her relationship with Brett early on.
“It couldn’t have been her,” Joe said quickly, even though Aunt DeeDee wasn’t accusing Presley of anything. “I know her. We’ve become… friends. She didn’t do it.”
This seemed as good a time as any to make an entrance. I knocked, and after a few seconds of silence, Aunt DeeDee came to the door, her eyes lighting as I entered the room.
“I couldn’t help but overhear you talking about Presley,” I said, trying not to indicate how long I’d actually been listening outside the door.
Aunt DeeDee stood between Joe and me, looking back and forth a couple of times before her eyes landed on Joe. “You should tell her,” Aunt DeeDee prodded.
I raised an eyebrow as I studied this man in the same black slacks and white shirt he’d worn last night, but now they were crumpled and stained.
Joe hesitated before speaking. “I know you took the CD I made of Brett on the show,” he said, surprising me.
It was embarrassing to be caught, yes, but more than that, I wasn’t sure that my filching of a CD warranted the accusatory tone.
“I mentioned it going missing to DeeDee, and she told me that you think I had something to do with Brett’s death. ”
I glanced at my aunt, frowning. She could read me, knew that I didn’t appreciate her sharing anything with Joe, much less that I’d borrowed something that belonged to him. But her lifted chin said it all—she trusted people, and maybe I should learn to do the same.
“I know it looks like I’m obsessed with Brett,” Joe said. “But the CD was something I was hoping to surprise him with this weekend, though I’m not proud of it.”
“Why wouldn’t you be proud of surprising Brett?” I asked.
Joe’s eyes darted to Aunt DeeDee, and she signaled for him to continue.
“I was planning to do a little viewing party of Presley and Brett’s best moments on the show, and then we were going to tell him in front of everyone, including his cameras, that Presley and I…” He cleared his throat. “That the two of us are in love.”
The news wasn’t exactly shocking, but I realized that the plan smacked of what Brett had been planning to do to Presley by being caught on camera with another woman—Lacy—in order to boost the drama in his show.
Except in this version, Brett would’ve been the lovelorn boyfriend cast aside so Presley could be with a man less rich, less famous, less everything.
A huge embarrassment, and one that might’ve doomed his show before it had even aired.
I wondered suddenly if Brett had recently gotten wind of Presley and Joe’s plan and decided to take matters into his own hands by embarrassing her before she could embarrass him.
“I was going to get even with him for everything he did to me in our first semester of college, planting steroids in my locker, getting me kicked out.” Joe stood behind the one chair in the room, his knuckles white as he gripped the back of it.
“Brett changed the course of my life, totally for the worse, but then Presley and I happened to meet when Big Romance came to The Rose for the home visit. Brett was talking strategy that morning with Mr. Finch, so Presley stopped by the Morning Brew where I was dropping off a batch of coffee I’d roasted.
It was like love at first sight, but Presley… she was afraid to leave him.”
She was afraid for two entire years? I wasn’t an expert on relationships, but to me, that sounded more like Presley leading Joe on rather than actual fear.
“Why would she be afraid?” I didn’t ask the real question, which in my mind was, How could Brett have anything worse on her than a sex tape?
“Brett was manipulative, threatening, vindictive. Presley thought that if she left him, then she would lose her public persona, her business, and…” He hesitated as if trying to believe the words coming out of his mouth, “… opportunities.”
“Opportunities?” I asked, still suspicious of this reasoning. I caught Aunt DeeDee’s eye and saw the skepticism on her face as well. Presley Lombardi may have been a victim but she was also very much playing two lovers against one another.
“Advertising deals, future reality TV gigs, product partnerships,” Joe answered, losing momentum as he spoke. He hung his head as he realized how he sounded – like a classic case of a cuckold. All three of us could see it.
“And you’re still sure that Presley didn’t have anything to do with Brett’s death?
” I asked, trying to tread gently so as to not overwhelm him with the realization that seemed to be settling across his brow.
Surely, we could all see that Presley had more than one motive—feeling threatened by her own boyfriend, the potential publicity that could come from a TMZ-worthy announcement of her tragic loss, and perhaps even secretly wanting to be with Joe.
For the cherry on top, Joe had just confirmed that Presley had had opportunity to slip the diamond in his drink by taking Brett’s glass to him.
The question remained, though, of how the diamond might have ended up in Presley’s possession.
Joe shook his head, but he didn’t defend Presley this time. Instead, he let his eyes fall to the floor for several beats.
I knew well the struggle of whether or not to trust your own perception in a relationship, so I felt for him. Fortunately for me, I never expected Charlie to be on the wrong side of a murder investigation.
Joe looked straight at me. “Presley is a very spiritual person,” he said, seemingly apropos of nothing. “That’s why I really don’t think… oh God, have I gotten this all wrong?”
I glanced from Joe to Aunt DeeDee as I tried to parse out his meaning: Presley was a good person, a spiritual person, so surely she couldn’t also be a killer.
“Listen, this is the real reason that I don’t think Presley killed him.” Joe stopped, seeming to carefully consider his next words. “She said she… she wants to contact Brett.”
“Contact him?” I repeated.
Next to me, Aunt DeeDee went rigid. She was a fairly liturgical kind of Baptist, but she believed enough in the woo-woo supernatural that she’d forbidden me from playing with Ouija boards at sleepovers.
She wouldn’t even let me go to the palm reading booth at the county fair when I was thirteen.
Contacting a dead man was certainly not on Aunt DeeDee’s bucket list.
Joe swallowed hard. “Presley told me that she wants to do a séance. Tonight. She wants to ask Brett who killed him.”
I laughed out loud before I could stop myself, but then I realized that he was dead serious.