Chapter 9
“That was a good speech. It was very inspiring,” I say to Nicolette Devereaux as we stand right here in the Meridian Lounge after she appointed herself the new leader of the Second Act Society for the duration of the trip, and perhaps beyond.
“Thank you.” Her lashes bat so fast and hard it’s as if they’re butterflies struggling to take flight. “Gideon would have appreciated it. He was all about inspiring people to take action.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” I glance at the crowd still mingling around us. “Were the two of you close?”
Something flickers across her face and she forces a smile this time. “We were friends. Colleagues, really. He helped me think through my next steps after I decided to leave my practice after a quarter of a century.”
“Wow, twenty-five years is a long time to practice law.”
“Too long.” She selects a chocolate-covered cruller for herself but doesn’t take a bite. “Divorce law is brutal. You spend all day watching people destroy each other over furniture and custody schedules. After a while, it wears you down.”
“So, you decided to reinvent yourself for your second act?”
“That was the plan.” She glances around the room, and I catch something raw in her expression. “Gideon was supposed to help me figure out what came next. He had this whole process, this way of helping people discover their authentic selves.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it.
“I guess I’ll have to figure it out on my own now. I mean, the classes and the events we have planned are so great. I can’t imagine coming away from this empty-handed.” Not that I’m going anywhere.
“I’m sure you won’t.”
I take another bite of the cruller and give an involuntary moan. It’s just that good.
“So how did you meet Gideon? Through the Second Act Society?”
“Actually, a friend set us up on a blind date about six months ago.” She finally takes a bite of her cruller, and I watch her chew thoughtfully.
“It was spectacularly awkward. We had zero romantic chemistry, but we clicked as friends. Well, acquaintances really. Gideon was one of those people who kept everyone at arm’s length, you know?
He was very driven, very focused on his work. ”
“What exactly did he do? I know he ran the Second Act Society, but was that his full-time job?”
“Oh, no.” Nicolette shakes her head. “The Society was more of a passion project. His real work was in documentary filmmaking. He produced limited series for the big streaming platforms—you know, the prestige documentaries that get people talking.”
“What kind of documentaries?”
“Reinvention stories, mostly. Public figures navigating scandals, rebuilding their brands, that whole thing.” She leans in slightly, lowering her voice.
“Between you and me, I think he was drawn to people with something to hide. He had a way of making you feel safe, like he was on your side, and then he’d dig and dig until he found the crack in your armor. ”
“That sounds manipulative.” I wince as I say it, because I didn’t mean to let that slip.
“Oh, it absolutely was.” She doesn’t sound particularly bothered by this.
“But that’s what made him good at what he did.
Before the documentaries, he worked as some kind of reputation strategist—helping wealthy people manage scandals, control press narratives, make problems disappear.
He knew all the tricks because he’d used them himself. ”
“So he knew where the bodies were buried.”
“Metaphorically speaking.” She pauses. “Though I suppose literally now, too.”
I wince at the dark humor, but she just shrugs.
“The thing about Gideon,” she continues, “is that he understood power. He knew how to make someone famous overnight—or infamous. And in today’s world, reputation is everything. Lose that, and you’ve lost everything that matters.”
“Sounds like he had a lot of leverage over people.”
“He did. And he wasn’t afraid to use it.
” Nicolette finally meets my eyes. “I’ll be honest with you, Trixie.
I liked Gideon, but I didn’t trust him. Nobody really did.
He was always working an angle, always looking for the next big story.
This whole Second Act Society thing? I think he was developing an exposé about reinvention culture—about how people sell this mythology of transformation when really, they’re just running from their pasts. ”
“That’s pretty cynical.”
“That was Gideon.” She takes another bite of cruller. “He had backing from one of the major platforms. I don’t know which one, but he mentioned it was going to be huge. Career-defining.”
“Did he tell you who he was planning to feature?”
“No, he was cagey about that. But I got the sense he already had his subjects picked out.” She glances around the room.
“Could be anyone here, really. That’s the thing about this group—everyone’s reinventing themselves for a reason.
” She takes a moment to give a good look around the room.
“And those reasons aren’t always pretty. ”
“Agree,” I say. “You mentioned that you went out on a blind date with Gideon. Any prospects on the romantic horizon for you? A cruise is a great way to meet people. Just saying.”
She laughs, and this time there’s genuine warmth in it.
“Honestly? I’m terrible at dating. Never married, twice engaged, and both times I called it off at the last minute.
After spending twenty-five years watching marriages implode, I have a hard time believing in the institution.
But I’m also tired of being alone.” She sighs.
“Hence at least a part of my second act. I’m trying to figure out if I can actually let someone in, or if I’m destined to be the woman who dies surrounded by cats and legal briefs. ”
“That’s an honest answer.”
“I’m too old to pretend anymore.” She brushes a crumb from her blouse.
“The thing is, Gideon understood that. He was good at getting people to open up, to share their vulnerabilities. And then—” She stops, her expression darkening.
“Well, I guess we’ll never know what he planned to do with all those secrets. ”
A commotion erupts near the refreshment table.
Nettie has apparently decided to see how many donuts she can stack on a single plate, and a small crowd has gathered to watch this architectural disaster in the making.
“Eleven!” someone shouts as Nettie carefully places a glazed donut on top of the teetering tower.
“And here we go,” I mutter under my breath. “My friend has never met a challenge she couldn’t turn into a circus,” I say to Nicolette with a sigh of resignation.
“She’s going for twelve!” Bess calls out, though she sounds more alarmed than encouraging.
Nicolette and I watch as Nettie reaches for a chocolate frosted donut with the concentration of a brain surgeon.
“This is going to end like a bad game of Jenga,” I say just below a whisper.
“Twelve!” the crowd chants. “Twelve! Twelve! Twelve!”
Nettie positions the twelfth donut with painstaking care, and for one glorious moment, the tower holds.
Then physics remembers it exists.
The tower gives one dramatic wobble—then detonates.
Donuts explode outward in a sugary avalanche.
One cannonballs into a cup of coffee with a heroic splash.
Another clocks Silas Rowen square in the temple before ricocheting off his perfectly styled hair.
A third does a long, humiliating slide across the polished floor and parks itself neatly against Quinn Riddle’s sensible black shoe as if it meant to be there all along.
The crowd erupts in riotous laughter and applause.
Quinn does not look amused. Come to think of it, neither does Silas.
But that doesn’t stop Nettie from taking a bow. “Thank you, thank you! I’ll be here all week!”
“That woman is a menace,” Nicolette says with a laugh.
“That woman is my best friend,” I say, shaking my head.
“Then you’re braver than I thought.”
We share a laugh at that one.
Bess helps Nettie gather the fallen sweet treats while Marina pitches in, though she’s laughing so hard she has to wipe tears from her eyes.
I quickly scan the room for my handsome plus-one and find him chatting away with Quinn Riddle while some blonde wraps herself around him like a vine.
“Oh, she’s a dead woman,” I mutter, taking a step that way before I realize that blonde is indeed a dead woman.
I frown over at the man-hungry ghost. It seems she’s more interested in catching a man than a killer.
My eyes flit into the sea of bodies, all talking and laughing as if their fearless leader wasn’t brutally taken off the planet less than twenty-four hours ago.
Twenty or so of them are still trying to retrieve donuts from precarious places and out of coffee cups, which somehow feels more solemn than the official moment of silence we didn’t get.
Sugar on the floor, a killer in the crowd, and a ghost hitting on my husband.
Welcome to Day Two of the Emerald Queen’s Icelandic adventure.
I bet somewhere in this room, wiping powdered sugar off their fingers and pretending to mourn, is a killer who thinks they’ve gotten away with it.
But they haven’t met me yet—or have they?