Chapter Forty-One
“Your boyfriend is very good-looking,” Brigitte said, startling Juliette where she’d been left stranded at the front desk after Charlie and Katarina departed.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Juliette said shortly.
“Not with that attitude,” Brigitte murmured.
“If this is where you give some big speech about risking it all for love or whatever bullshit people believe when they’re in a happy relationship, you can save yourself the effort.”
“I’m not your fairy godmother,” Brigitte said, looking offended. “Figure it out for yourself or don’t, what do I care?”
“Good,” Juliette muttered, glancing sidelong at her. The woman could have at least attempted some enigmatic quote from Sartre or Jung or someone.
“It is, though,” Brigitte said absently. “Worth it. With the right person.”
“And Troy is the right person?” Juliette asked, looking at her askance again. “The guy has serious anger management issues. And even if he didn’t kill Brad, he could have and I would have one hundred percent believed it. That’s your right person?”
“Am I so perfect?” Brigitte asked, lifting one brow just enough that she conveyed skepticism without causing a single wrinkle. “Are you?”
“That’s the problem,” Juliette groused. “I’m not perfect. I’m nowhere near it. But I like my imperfections. I know them. I’ve come to peace with them. I don’t want to have to learn how to be someone nicer, softer, more self-actualized, for someone else. I like me.”
“So why do you assume everyone else won’t?” Brigitte asked.
“I…” Oh, what the fuck? Years—YEARS—of therapy, and this fake supermodel just blew her brain wide open in a way her parents and a steady slew of counselors never had.
Because Brigitte was right. Juliette did assume people wouldn’t like her, because they often didn’t.
They found her too difficult, too demanding, too masculine, too driven, whatever other misogynistic bullshit her male coworkers never had to deal with.
“This conversation is already boring me, but I will give you one last piece of advice. If you truly like yourself—truly do—then you accept the people who don’t.
Not because they’re right, but because they’re not right for you.
If champagne tried to taste good to everyone, it would be juice.
And if it decided not to give a fuck at all, it would be vinegar.
There’s a delicate balance to being champagne. Be an acquired taste.”
“Have you considered ethically ambiguous reality show life coach in your list of careers?” Juliette asked. “Because you would be dead brilliant at it.”
“I know.” Brigitte sighed. “So, do we call the police now?”
The security guard dragged Chipper into the entryway, the golf pro red in the face from struggling.
“You can’t hold me like this! I told you everything I know.
I took a manuscript, and I’m not even sure that’s a crime.
Technically it wasn’t breaking and entering, because the power on the yacht had glitched or something and the locks had all disengaged. ”
Now that Chipper mentioned it, the lights had flared in the middle of Warren’s speech.
Juliette had attributed it to the halos she’d been seeing as a result of the digitalis dosing at the time, but what if it hadn’t been?
All this time she’d been assuming the microphone had shorted out and caused the electrical shock, but that would have been too imprecise for the killer.
Too many other people had touched the microphone—Brad, Brigitte, June, Clayton, Warren—for the killer to know exactly when it would short out and kill Warren.
Unless they had timed a power surge for exactly when they knew Warren was holding the microphone.
Someone who knew his schedule that day, down to the second.
“If someone wanted to knock out the power on the yacht, or cause a surge like that that glitched out the electronics, how would they do it?” Juliette asked Brigitte.
Brigitte shrugged. “From the wheelhouse, I suppose. But the door has an electronic lock on it. You would need a code.”
“Who had the codes?” Juliette asked.
“I didn’t, if that’s what you’re asking,” Chipper offered.
“The codes are specific to each individual using them,” Brigitte said, ignoring him.
“Warren insisted. He never trusted anyone. They kept an access log in an effort to keep the crews or other club members from ‘borrowing’ the yacht. Very tightly controlled. I remember because June complained when Warren had her access code rescinded because she tried to take the yacht to Spain one year.”
“Probably thought they’d try to hock it for parts,” Juliette said. June might not have had access, but if Warren had a code, she bet she knew who he shared it with. His gal Friday.
Juliette kept flipping through the manuscript as if it might hold the answers.
There was a photo of Warren and his second—or third?
—wife at the groundbreaking for Pacific Pines, alongside a version of June and Robert Piedmont that still managed to look fresh-faced and hopeful.
Pre-embezzling and fraud, most likely. And there was another couple there, with a little boy held stiffly between them, no more than two or three.
The caption identified them as Phillip and Charlotte, the couple that June Piedmont claimed Warren had cut out of the club when their finances had gone to ruin.
But it also identified the little boy standing with them, presumably their son. Clayton.
“The third family,” Juliette whispered. Of course.
He’d told her as much, when he said the club didn’t hold fond memories for him.
The third couple was Clayton’s parents. What if Clayton had never forgiven Warren for ruining his parents’ lives?
He said he’d left the club before Brad’s time of death, and the security guards on the front gate had confirmed it.
Unless …
Who better to know the sneaky ins and outs of a place than someone who had literally grown up here?
“Can we see the security camera footage of the day Brad was killed?” Juliette asked.
The guard shrugged. “Sure, but like I said, the cameras through this hall were disabled.”
Juliette shook her head. “I want to see the rest of the club.”
It took several hours, two more superfood smoothies, and half a bottle of eye drops for them to find him, but finally they did.
He’d been clever, sticking to blind spots in most of the camera’s paths—extremely clever, clever enough to orchestrate two murders—but he’d missed one motion-sensor camera on the service entrance by the pool.
It was only a second, but the camera captured Clayton Westminster slipping back into the club only ten minutes before Brad’s time of death.
“That sneaky son of a bitch,” Brigitte said, sounding almost appreciative.
“We only installed that camera a week ago,” said the security guard. “We were having trouble with somebody getting into the dumpsters and stealing stuff. Turned out to be raccoons. Nobody but me and the boss knew it was there.”
“But it’s not enough, is it?” Brigitte asked.
“Not to nail him,” Juliette admitted, though the pieces were starting to come together.
Clayton had done too good of a job covering his tracks, but there had to be something she could find.
Some loose thread he’d forgotten to snip.
A thread she could use to make a noose and hang him with.
“Brigitte, I don’t suppose I could ask you for one more favor? ”