Chapter 39
“Shep? He’s outside on the putting green,” Tippy practically snarls.
“We have a call with my father this afternoon to settle the matter of Shep’s ten million dollars.
Then Shep gets his money. My father gets a gimlet on his balcony over Ortega Bay.
And I get left. Shep will be on the next flight out of town. Happy fucking anniversary.”
The afternoon light coming through the windows stings with my eyes pulled this wide. “I don’t think it’s going to go that way, Tippy.” I reach inside my bag and produce the mysterious jar I’ve been harboring for days. “This was at Lemon & Fig. I think it was Gemma’s.”
Tippy’s vision zeros in on the jar and the tees of all colors and sizes—all broken, all exactly like the ones she’s keeping by her wet bar.
“He wouldn’t risk that,” she hisses, looking between me and the jar. “He was too careful. For years. That’s not—” The confusion on her face transforms to anger and then rage. “He wouldn’t be that stupid. He won.” Her voice breaks on the last word.
“He didn’t,” I say quietly, knowing it’s true.
And I think she realizes it, too, because suddenly, she’s animated. Putting her drink down and cutting across the room. “I have to call my lawyers.”
A blur of movement catches at the edge of my vision. The doors by the living room fly open, and the bowl from the wet bar is airborne before I realize Shep has snatched it off the marbled counter.
The blown glass shatters with a sickening thump as Tippy collapses to the floor. Shep lets the bowl go, glass and tees scattering near her head.
The sound of breaking glass reverberates up to the vaulted ceiling before the room falls silent for a chilling beat.
Shep takes a step forward in white, Ferragamo low-top sneakers.
Fuck.
“Este,” Shep finally says, panting like he’s just run a mile.
“Hey, Shep,” I say, and his name comes out as almost a whisper.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
He’s right. I should run. But I can’t leave Tippy.
“What did you just do?” I bleat, rushing toward Tippy.
“She’ll be fine,” Shep insists, and there’s an eerie calm to his posture as he puts up a hand to stop me. He bends down and touches two fingers to the pulse point near her neck. “See? Still breathing.”
He motions to the rise and fall of her chest as if signs of life make the fact that Tippy’s incapacitated on the floor all better. I stare at her wilted frame and splayed limbs for another second, trying to decide what I’m going to do next.
Shep moves first, lurching forward and grabbing for me with wide arms, only to meet empty air as I give chase.
Spinning on a heel, I race toward the front door, but his footfalls are coming too fast. I sidestep toward the kitchen, aiming for the garage door, but my eyes go to a golf club—amidst some abandoned collection of equipment in an umbrella holder.
With Shep close behind, I reach the club and swing around, landing a blow directly to the center of his chest.
He doubles over, stumbling back a few steps, and I swing the club in front of myself like an épée.
“Back up,” I shout, watching the menace in his face morph into something new.
Anytime Shep tries to escape, I threaten him with the club I’m wielding.
The irony isn’t lost on me that everything I’ve ever learned about golf has been against my will. But I can at least appreciate a makeshift weapon when I’ve found one.
“I just want to talk,” I say.
Struggling to regain his breath, he asks, “Why don’t we skip to: How did you figure it out?”
“Gemma was keeping a jar of broken tees. Like the ones Tippy had on your bar.”
The police should be here soon—small town, quiet force, and a murder investigation under way all but guarantee it—and I need to know what he knows about Gemma. I need to get Beau out of jail.
“I have to know what happened to Gemma,” I say, knowing it’s a risk. Knowing I might be provoking a killer. But I’m feeling braver with a golf club gripped in my fist. And I’m hoping maybe I can tap into some Simon Avery negotiation tactic.
Simon used to say all people really want is to be seen.
Connection might be my only shot at answers.
“Gemma was my friend, Shep.”
He nods, looking down at the club one more time.
He draws his hands up to his face, rubbing at his forehead, and his posture edges toward defeat.
His carefully spun lies are unraveling. “You should know I loved her. Gemma was it for me. We’d found a small house in the Seychelles that I could easily afford,” he says, and the faraway look in his eyes tells me he’s already there—sweating in the sun, lounging under some thatched roof with the Indian Ocean glittering on the horizon line.
“We were going to start over. Live simply. It was all Gemma’s idea. ”
Live simply? On ten million dollars?
So that’s it. He was counting on earning his payout from Tippy’s father to take him and Gemma across the world. He was ready to check out of Casa de Tequila for good so they could start a new life under some banana leaf.
There are sirens in the distance, and I can tell from the panic rising on Shep’s face that he knows they’re headed straight here.
“Gemma loved the beach,” I say, hoping to keep him from running—or worse. I keep the club hitched over my shoulder as I add, “I bet she was looking forward to that.”
“No.” He shakes his head, too emphatically to be sane, and my heartbeat picks up as I realize I’ve hit a nerve.
“No. She changed her mind. Said she wouldn’t come with me.
That she was leaving. That she was done.
I was going to blow up my life for her and she just took it all back.
Just like that.” He snaps his fingers, with bitter anguish shading his face.
The pain in his eyes is familiar. How convoluted it can all get. How fast it can all go away. How life can change in an instant.
“I couldn’t let her leave. I—” He shakes his head like he still doesn’t know how it happened.
There are some things it’s easier not to believe. Some things your brain refuses to consider. I understand that. Sometimes, I pretend my parents are on some extended work trip—some research adventure. I pretend I can call them if I want, but I’m too busy.
Maybe tomorrow, though. Maybe there will be time tomorrow.
To keep the lie alive you have to stay busy, and I am very good at being busy.
With a riot of sound, the police come through the front door, and Shep hangs his head. It’s over, and he knows it.
Ardell is surprised to see me, fending off his suspect with a nine iron. For a beat, he stares, like his brain is scrambling to find a good reason to put me here.
I’d find out later that Delia made sure I had Chief Kennedy’s ear by the time Nora and Carol called him to share what I’d learned.
“Este, you need to step away,” Ardell says with authority, not taking his eyes—or his drawn gun—off Shep. “Go ahead and put the golf club down, too.”
I watch as a fleet of officers file in behind him, some of them rushing for Tippy as others search the house.
It should feel like relief, knowing Shep won’t get away, but all I see is that my window to help Beau is closing.
“What about Simon? Why did you kill him?” I beg Shep, taking a step back to show Ardell I’m cooperating.
The club leaves my hand, and the hollow aluminum bounces off the kitchen floor with a clattering sound.
“I didn’t have anything to do with that.” Shep shakes his head. There’s a pitch in his voice—something authentic and unrehearsed that makes me fear he’s telling the truth.
“I didn’t even know Gemma knew him,” he adds.
My heart sinks. Justice for Gemma might finally be within reach. But Beau is still sitting in jail, and I don’t have anything that will get him out.
“You know,” Shep says, “I spent all those years married to Tippy playing the part and trying to fit in. Ignoring the way she treated me like a doormat. But no one fits in with Tippy. She’s an island.
There’s nothing I could’ve done to make her care about me.
For her, it’s all about her next fling, her next trip, her next renovation project.
She talked more about travertine pool coping than she ever did about me. ”
It sounds difficult when he puts it that way—to be in a partnership with some bounty hanging over your head. A marriage that felt more like a prison than a sanctuary.
But more than anything it reminds me of Simon, showing up at the Ritz to rewrite history so he could play the victim.
Shep knew the terms he was agreeing to when he married Tippy. And he could have treated her better, could have left, could have sought counseling—or simply decided freedom was worth more than the money.
But instead, he killed my friend.
Ardell is mirandizing Shep as another officer handcuffs him. They’re hauling him toward the front door when Shep stops and looks back at me.
“I loved her, Este. She was perfect.”
And there it is. That razor’s edge. A life that could’ve been perfect. Until it wasn’t.