Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER
Twenty
I needed more time to noodle upon my next suspect.
There were still a number of people who weren’t in an alibi photo, but I couldn’t just go around spraying off interrogations willy-nilly.
People would start to talk. No, I needed to be laser focused.
I needed another motive. Conrad’s habit of hoarding people’s secrets must have come back to bite him, but those secrets had died with him.
Which was a motive in itself. All I needed to know was whose secret had pushed him over the edge.
Literally.
So after I’d moaned and groaned and moped around the apartment a bit, I told Gabe, “Let’s take a weekend for us.
Let’s go somewhere and have fun and not think about murder or dark secrets or anything horrible.
” I had to solve this murder to save my nonprofit and therefore the kids who needed it—needed me—but that could wait a weekend. Self-care was important too.
He stood up a little straighter, eyes gleaming. “Where?”
I took a moment to think. I didn’t really want to go anywhere the social scene would find me.
Most of the people I’d wanted to befriend, like Kitty and Libby and John, were still shunning me, and I couldn’t be seen with the ones who didn’t, because then the former would never take me back.
And Gabe had seemed a little intimidated and stressed by our trip to Kevin Miller’s private island, so probably I didn’t want to make a grand gesture like that again (there was also the small point of me being grounded from the jet).
I was about to suggest going up to the house in the Berkshires, but stopped right before the words crossed my lips.
My parents wouldn’t be there, but it was still an Afton family home.
Same for going to the Afton Philadelphia or Afton Portland.
I took a deep breath, already regretting what I was about to say. “How about that national park you’ve been wanting to go to? The one in Virginia? We can drive there.”
“Shenandoah?”
“Yeah.” I was already mad at myself. “We can get your tent and camping gear out of the storage cage in the basement and… use it. Go camping or whatever. It will be… fun.”
Gabe’s entire face lit up, which made it worth it.
Almost. Kind of. “It’s going to be so much fun.
Sleeping in the great outdoors in all kinds of weather.
Going to the bathroom outside. Cooking cans of beans over the campfire.
Wearing the same clothes the entire time no matter how muddy and sweaty they get. ”
I did my absolute best to arrange my face so that it didn’t look as if I were about to cry. “Yes. All of that.”
A wry smile twitched at his lips. “Pom, you don’t have to do this. I knew going into this relationship that you probably were not going to be my camping partner.”
But maybe that was what was missing from our relationship.
He accompanied me for all this stuff that was second nature and beloved to me, like galas and sunning on private islands, but I didn’t do the things with him that he loved.
Like—God—sleeping in a flimsy canvas cover that didn’t totally keep out the mosquitos, all while marinating in the same sweaty clothes from your active day.
“I can be, though,” I said earnestly. “I want to be.”
I really, really did not. But I would, if that’s what I had to do. I squared my shoulders, lifting my chin, readying myself for the misery ahead.
Gabe sighed. “Look, I know what you’re trying to do. And I appreciate it. But I would rather just go hike Shenandoah with Caleb when he has some time off than go with you, knowing you hate every second of it.”
“I wouldn’t hate every second of it,” I said. “I’d enjoy being there with you.”
He leaned in and gave me a gentle kiss on the lips.
The tension in my shoulders melted, a little of the stress in my stomach easing away.
“Why don’t we do something that we’d both enjoy?
Like the Queens Night Market. I’ve been meaning to go back for ages, but we were a little distracted last summer. ”
I knew what I’d just said, but I still couldn’t keep myself from grimacing. A national park was one thing. But Queens? I’d had quite enough of Queens last year.
But this wasn’t about me. I mean, it was about me—most things were—but it was also about Gabe. I said, “I’d go anywhere with you.”
Even back to Queens. We stepped out of our car into a cool but sticky evening, the smells of grilling meat and candied nuts drifting through the air around us.
Hand in hand, we walked through a packed park, kids playing volleyball on one side of us and more kids riding bikes on the other, stands selling ices and churros and cold drinks lining the sides of this central pathway.
Ahead of us sprawled an enormous grass field lined with tents and already bustling with people.
“I can’t believe you’ve lived in the city most of your life and you’ve still never been here,” Gabe said, craning his neck over the line of people ahead of us waiting to go through the security gate. “It’s one of my favorite places in the city. Only open during the spring and summer.”
“You’d rather come here than go on another Jackson Heights food tour?” I asked. Aside from the whole catching-a-murderer thing, that was the only other time I’d come out to Queens with him. It had been fun, honestly. The food had been amazing. I perked up.
“The thing is that when we went to Jackson Heights, we only got to try, like, four restaurants,” Gabe said.
“Here, everything you order is only a few bites, so you can try food from a whole bunch of different places, and everything is also less than six dollars. And there are cuisines from all over the world, ones you never see in restaurants, even here in New York.”
“Great,” I said enthusiastically. “I’m excited.”
The market grounds smelled like we’d stepped inside a kitchen where they were boiling broth and baking pastries and roasting meat over an open fire.
I wiped sweat off my forehead, not even minding that the fumes would stick to me because they smelled so good.
I did grimace, but only because I’d sighted the bathroom facilities, and they were all Porta Potties.
The one time I’d been to a concert and those were the only facilities available, I’d instantly had the family assistant call and make sure I could go backstage.
Somehow I suspected similar accommodations would not be possible here.
But I could just purposely not have anything to drink tonight, and hopefully avoid having to use them.
I was already eyeballing the Native American fry bread stand.
I pointed. Gabe craned his neck with childlike enthusiasm, popping up and down on his toes.
Thumping pop music from a DJ played in the background. “There first?”
In quick succession, we ate fry bread topped with maple syrup and strawberries, then Afghan dumplings, Korean corn dogs, and a Sichuan treat called ice jelly that was sweet and chewy and icy and fruity and like nothing else I’d ever had before.
“I kind of want one in the other flavor, but I don’t really want to wait in that line again,” I said, eyeing the Sichuanese stand.
It was a shame I hadn’t known ahead of time about the line situation.
I could have hired a few people to handle that for us.
I opened my mouth, ready to voice the thought to Gabe, because maybe there were a few people out in the park who’d want to earn a few extra dollars by standing around, then closed it, because that was not the spirit of the outing.
Then opened it again. “We really have to try that Transylvanian ice cream cake thing. It could be fun to do something like that at the bakery.”
“It would,” agreed Gabe. Then frowned a little, looking over my shoulder. “Hey, Pom, isn’t that—”
“Oh my God, Pom? What are you doing here?” Lips hit both my cheeks as hands wrested me roughly to one side. That impressive tonal combination of genuine, sweet surprise and fake dismay could only belong to one person.
I widened my eyes, not even bothering trying to match it. I’d spent years concocting my own mix of what I hoped would come off as pleasure to the less attuned listener, but also annoyance to those who knew what to look for. “Persimmon! What a surprise! Out here in Queens?”
She was beautifully dewy in a jumpsuit from The Avenue’s last-season collection patterned with climbing ivy, which made me feel a little conscious of the way the meat sweats were already soaking through my ecru sundress.
She said, smoothly, “Kevin wanted to try it, and I was all for it. Queens is the new frontier.”
“Is it so new?” I said. “I’ve been out here quite a few times already. But it’s so nice to see you here.”
Translation: I was here before it was cool. Which was technically true. Kind of. I mean, Gabe had dragged me here. He’d grown up here. Did that mean Gabe was more in the know than me?
Before I could wrestle with that discomfiting question, Kevin Miller caught up to his girlfriend, panting with the effort, probably because he was old. “Pom, Gabe, so nice to see you.” He smiled at us with a mouthful of gleaming white teeth. Veneers, definitely. “Isn’t this place grand?”
He probably had a chapter in one of his stupid books about how waiting in lines as a poor child gave him the grit and strength of character to rise above the streets to the skyscraper where he could look down on everybody else, blah, blah, blah. “So grand,” I said. “I love Queens.”
“Have you tried the yak yet?” Kevin asked. To be 100 percent honest, I wasn’t sure what a yak was. But before either of us could answer, he clapped Gabe on the back. “Come on. I’ve been dying to try it. Let’s go get in line.”