Chapter Twenty #2
“Rhodes,” she whispered, pointing to his name on the floorplan. “Rhodes, whose office is right next to the entrance to this staircase. Rhodes, who could’ve hidden anything he wanted in his office.”
A roaring sounded in my ears. “No.”
No, no, no! Not the sweet, loving man who jumped between me and a bear, and laughed with Lily while they made terrible cookies. That man couldn’t hurt anyone.
He couldn’t hurt me.
“Babe? Babe? Sarah,” she half shouted, snapping me out of it. “I’m not saying that he did it, but we’re doing this for a reason. For the reason that you gave Mr. Layton—the poor man. If all the physical evidence is gone, the only thing to look for now is a liar.
“Rhodes said he went up to his office to get a new client contract, so if that’s what he did, we can prove it,” she insisted, shaking me.
“Because he’ll have a copy of that contract in his office.
A signed and dated contract. We’ll go up, find the contract, and rule him out.
Then we’ll focus on all the other liars. ”
“Yea— Yes,” I seized, my shoulders loosening. “It’s not like Rhodes worked that day, so a contract signed on the same day as the party proves what he told me. He didn’t lie to me.” I took off, rushing to the same back staircase. “He didn’t do this.”
Courtney chased me all the way upstairs to Rhodes’s office. He didn’t keep it locked, leaving us no barrier to get inside.
“This was my father’s old office,” I confessed.
I took in the shelves filled with dusty tomes, the ancient Persian rugs, and the massive oak desk placed beside the rear window.
“Never knew why he needed it since the only job he had was inheriting wealth, but I know I was never allowed in here growing up.”
“Not even after he died?”
“Omma locked it up after he died. No one went in. Not even the housekeepers.”
“That’s kind of sad.”
I fixed somewhere over her shoulder. “She had her reasons.”
“Right.” She clapped, snatching me out of the past. “You check his desk. I’ll check these file cabinets.” Courtney glanced at her phone. “And we have to be quick because I’ve got to open the bakery.”
“Got it.” I crossed to the desk, snatching the drawer handle and bending over to—
I froze.
“Sarah?” Courtney prompted when she noticed I hadn’t moved. “What’s wrong? Are the drawers locked?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. “I don’t need to open them.”
“What? Why? Have you decided to take him at his word?”
“Why would I do that?” Rage burned me, shaking my voice. My vision blurred staring out the window. “He’s a fucking liar.”
THAT NIGHT, LILY AND I were in the kitchen making dinner. She was the cutest little thing, standing on the stool with her tongue sticking out as she intensely concentrated on grating the cheese for the beef chili.
Rhodes walked in with his tie still on, looking exhausted from his twice-weekly commute to the New York office. “Evening, ladies. Smells like you’re cooking up something delicious.”
“We’re making your favorite, Daddy.” Lily lifted up a bowl full of nothing but cheese. “Chili!”
“Yummy.” Rhodes dropped a kiss on her forehead, then turned to me.
I made like I had had to sneeze and caught his kiss on my cheek. “How was your day?” I asked, taking my chopped onion to the pot and tossing it in. “Anything interesting happen?”
“Nothing interesting. You?”
“Yes, actually.” I beamed at him. “Courtney came over and we searched in your office to find the signed contract that sent you running upstairs during our anniversary party, but instead I discovered that the balcony to the room next door completely blocks the view to the garden, so you couldn’t have seen Agassi in the garden that night. You couldn’t have seen anyone.”
The smile melted off his face. “Sue... it’s not what you think.”
“What I think is that your recollection of events that night were incorrect?” I chirped, highly aware of the listening Lily. “Am I wrong about that, or are you?”
“You’re wrong if you’re thinking what I believe you’re thinking.”
My smile widened. I must’ve looked like a lunatic.
“What I’m thinking is what an awful time I had walking through every room on every floor of the southern corner of the east wing, where I discovered that the room where you can clearly see a man smoking in the garden below.
.. is from the window in my mother’s room. ”
“No, Sue, it’s not—”
“So what were you doing in Omma’s room at the same time as our unwanted guest?” I asked. “Were you catching up? Shooting the breeze?”
“Sue!” he barked, making Lily drop the grater.
“Or were you in there alone?”
“Daddy? Mommy?” Lily flicked between us. “What’s wrong?”
Rhodes dropped his glare quick. “Nothing’s wrong, baby. Mommy’s just playing a game with Daddy. How about you have some screen time in the living room while—?”
“No,” I sliced in. “You don’t have to go anywhere, baby girl.”
I opened the drawer by the stove, took out the iPad, and handed it to Lily. She happily turned on her show and went back to grating without missing a beat.
Rhodes did not look pleased. “Afraid to be alone with me, Sue? Seriously?”
“Why were you in Omma’s room?”
He hissed through gritted teeth. “I wasn’t in her room.”
“Then why did you lie about seeing Reynard in the garden?” I snatched up the garlic and tossed it in. Yes, I was adept at angry cooking. All the nights I argued with Daniel over a boiling pot made me the expert.
“I didn’t lie. He was there.”
“Then the only way you could’ve seen him was if you were in Omma’s room. You’re spinning me a tale again!”
“No, I’m not! You can also see the garden from the room next—” Rhodes choked, eyes bugging.
“A-ha!”
He goggled at me. “A-ha? Did you just a-ha me? What kind of murder mystery show do you think we’re in now, woman?”
“The kind where you’ve been caught in a lie.” I dumped the tomato paste in the pot. “So tell me what really happened, or I’ll keep imagining the worst.”
He blew out a frustrated breath, scrubbing his face. “Can we at least speak privately—?”
“No.”
Rhodes threw up his hands. “Fine, you win—here it is. That night, I did go up to the third floor, but I did it so that no one would see me take the servants’ staircase down to the second.”
He said it so readily, my breath stopped.
“Hera, help me, Rhodes,” I croaked. “What did you do?”
“Not that,” he cried. “Baby, please, believe me. Not that.”
“So why did you sneak around your own house just to contrive your way into a room you had no business being in? Please tell me the innocent reason for that behavior.”
“It wasn’t innocent.” Rhodes’s face was etched out of stone. “Your mother was blackmailing me. I went in there to find the proof she was keeping on me, and destroy it.”
If anything could’ve dropped my jaw to the floor like a character in a Saturday morning cartoon, Rhodes just said it. “You—”
“Daddy, what’s blackmail?”
We swung around, landing on Lily’s smiling, curious expression. We’d both forgotten she was there.
“It’s uh... It’s when you get bad news in the mail.”
“Oh no, Daddy, are you okay?”
He smiled soft. “I’m just fine, baby girl, but I need to talk to Mommy alone after all.”
“No, don’t—”
“Take your iPad into the living room.” Rhodes spoke over me. “We’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”
“Okay.” She hopped off her stool and scampered off, leaving her auntie high and dry.
Rhodes was less than fazed at my glare. “You want to have this conversation? We’ll have it, but not in front of Lily.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to spin more fairy tales in front of Lily? Kids love fairy tales.”
“It’s not a lie, Sue.”
“Of course, it’s a lie!” I hissed. “There’s no way my mother was blackmailing you. She can’t have been because you told me that the investigators turned up nothing! You’ve never done anything wrong, so how could my mother blackmail you? Huh? Huh!”
Rhodes fell back against the counter, shoulders slumping. The look of him said it all.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was caught off guard when you brought it up. I’m just so fucking tired of this mistake haunting me!”
“The truth,” I demanded. The ground beef, salt, and pepper were next in the pot. I stabbed more than stirred it as I stared him down. “Now.”
“Okay, okay. This is the truth. When we came up with GloryBoi, we couldn’t get the money we needed to get it off the ground, or pay out the initial winning bets,” he began.
“Micah’s parents had no money to give us.
Alex’s parents wouldn’t let him have early access to his trust fund, and my family wasn’t going anywhere near a gambling app.
Not after what my dad’s addiction did to our family,” he said.
“So we heisted a ten-million-dollar diamond necklace, fenced it through some shady contacts I knew courtesy of my dad, and then we invented an anonymous angel investor.”
I blinked. “I beg your pardon? Did you just say heist?”
He cringed. “I did, but I’m using it loosely.
I’m Rhodes Newbury of the Chicago Newburys,” he mocked, rolling his eyes.
“My name and family connections have gotten me into the wealthiest homes in New York, Lantana, and Chicago.
Back when we were at Columbia, I rolled with a particularly douchy group of rich fuck boys.
“We partied at each other’s places every weekend, and there was one guy—Max Thompson—who couldn’t resist bringing out the family jewels while he made a drunken fool of himself.
The necklace was just hanging there around his neck while he snored on the pool table,” Rhodes cried.
“Micah said we should just take it, and Alex distracted everyone so we could. I was so desperate to make GloryBoi work and save my dad from himself, that I would’ve done anything—and that’s what I did. Anything.”
I nodded slowly, taking it in. “What happened when Thompson woke up and the necklace was gone?”