Chapter 29. Are We Finally Going to Get Some Answers?
Are We Finally Going to Get Some Answers?
Sandrine, Connor, and I bicker for a few minutes about how we should get to Vicki and then decide on the easiest course.
Transparency.
I know, right? It’s not our usual MO.
But there’s been too much that’s happened in the last forty-eight hours to risk it.
The four of us sneak back to our respective rooms. When Oliver and I get to ours, we fill Harper in on what we found. She’s shocked at our conclusions but not at the connection between Elizabeth and Shek. She’d heard the scuttlebutt, too. I don’t reproach her for not telling me.84
It’s not the time for once.
Instead, I step outside and find the officer stationed at the edge of the path, watching our clutch of doors, and tell him I need to speak to Vicki.
There’s some resistance, but if you know anything about me by now, you know I don’t give up easily. He eventually picks up his radio and calls his superior, and Oliver, Harper, and I are escorted back to the main building. The one where I was interrogated yesterday (was it really just yesterday?).
Time has ceased to have any meaning.
Vicki’s in the small blank room with Officer Rolle.
She’s tired, worn down. Her hair looks like it hasn’t been washed or brushed in days. She’s wearing the same dress she was when I last saw her. Also yesterday.
Before she ran from me. Before she was hidden away with her secrets and conclusions.
“I didn’t know,” Vicki says when she sees me, her eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t understand.”
“What?” Officer Rolle asks, exasperated.
“What Elizabeth was writing,” I suggest, taking a leap toward a conclusion I arrived at on the walk here. “Right?”
Vicki nods. “The book I turned down.”
“What was it about?” Oliver asks gently.
“A mystery writer who decides to kill off a perceived rival when she learns she’s dying. But it was a jumbled mess.”
“Is the rival a woman?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“And she’s jealous of her success?”
“Yes. But also, the man she’s in love with had a thing for her. The motivation was muddy in the book—it was one of the issues with it.”
“Did he remind you of Shek?”
Vicki’s eyes widen. “I didn’t think of that.”
“But you did realize. Something I said when we were drinking at the bar…”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“You told me about Brian.”
“But you knew about him.”
“About him, yes, but not his name. You said it, and … I know him. I knew him.” Her voice rises to a frantic pitch.
I pat her hand, trying to calm her as she continues.
“Something clicked together in my brain, and I just knew. But I’d been drinking.
I couldn’t just make an accusation like that.
I wanted to ask Elizabeth. I wanted to check.
But before I got there, Inspector Tucci found me.
I told him enough for him to think I was in danger and I guess you know the rest.”
“How did you know Brian?” I ask.
Her tired eyes turn to mine. “He’s the person I hired to help Elizabeth finish her book. She must’ve got him involved in all of this somehow…”
“You’re saying Elizabeth is behind it?” Harper says. “Everything that happened?”
“Yes,” Vicki says. “She must be.”
“But she’s dead.”
Vicki shakes her head sadly. “I think she killed herself.”
I turn my head sharply to Officer Rolle. “Is this possible?”
He frowns. “I am not sure … Of course, given everything that has happened, we assumed she was killed. No note. Nothing obvious to climb up on near where we found her … But yes, she could have stood on the bed and swung out…” He stops, grimaces. “It is possible.”
“But why? It can’t be because Shek flirted with me ten years ago. I didn’t sleep with him. I didn’t steal him from her.”
“Oh, no,” Harper says, her hand flying up to cover her mouth.
“What?”
“Sandrine.”
“Sandrine, what?”
Harper is white. “She slept with Shek. She told me. She thought it was funny. You know how she is.”
“Oh my God.”
“And Shek was into her. He wanted to have a real relationship, not just a fling…”
“Did Elizabeth know?”
Harper shrugs. “Maybe not the details … Maybe she knew enough, but got the person wrong? She thought it was you the whole time?”
“Jesus.”
We sit in silence for a moment, puzzling it out.
“How did she get everyone here?” Oliver asks. “She wasn’t on the organizing committee…”
“I kept her in the loop,” Vicki says. “She wanted to know how the planning was going.”
“Did she make suggestions about who to invite or where to hold it?”
“Not that I recall.”
“How did she do it, then?”
“A useful idiot … Guy,” Oliver says. “She must’ve given Guy the idea. It never made any sense that he thought of all of this himself. Or Connor either. Neither of them is likely to come up with this kind of plan.”
“Did she know Guy?”
“I’m sure they met over the years. He’s been to lots of conventions, hasn’t he? Especially with his book?”
“I introduced them,” Vicki says, her voice small. “At ThrillerFest. We all sat at a table together for the awards banquet a couple of years ago.”
“So they knew one another,” I say after a beat. “And I don’t think he ever said how he learned that Marta was here. And he didn’t tell us Marco was here, though he must’ve known.”
Oliver snaps his fingers. “If Elizabeth was feeding everything to Guy, it works. She told Brian to come here and get on staff to be a second set of eyes and ears so she didn’t have to trust Guy.
She didn’t tell Guy her whole plan—why would she?
Brian could figure out the layout. Install the things she needed installed—microphones, maybe, and that device that almost killed us in our room. ”
“What are you referring to?” Officer Rolle says.
“Oh,” I say. “We didn’t tell you.” I explain about the heavy object setup to take us out. “That needed someone on the inside.”
“Does Brian seem like someone who would go along with murder?” Oliver asks Vicki.
“I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“But that’s why she killed him,” I say. “Because he wouldn’t.
Maybe she didn’t tell him the full plan either.
Just that she wanted to create some intrigue and scare some people.
Or test out her theories for her novel. Whatever she needed to say to get him to go along with it.
But he figured out that she was going to do something more than that.
I bet he wanted out. He got caught going through Guy’s room on purpose so he’d get fired and get out of here before anything went down. ”
“So, Elizabeth killed him?” Oliver says.
“No, she was on our flight. It must’ve been Marco.
Elizabeth must’ve been in contact with him, too.
Oh! The lights were turned out during Elizabeth’s speech.
She said she told her concierge to do it, but Marco did it.
I saw him. What if that was the plan all along?
Did anyone check with the concierge? Either way, Marco could’ve intervened to make sure it was him because he knew the plan.
And then Guy was killed. Marco was there.
He killed Guy. She must’ve given him the device …
She had a copy of my book. She talked about the things you could learn on the dark web yesterday when we were speaking to Officer Rolle … She planned all of it.”
“Why do any of it, though?” Harper says.
“Because of Shek. When he died … that was the final straw. She blamed me, just like Ravi did. She blamed all of us.”
“So she formulated a plan,” Oliver says. “She tracked down Marco. She enlisted Guy. She told them each what they wanted to hear. Guy enlisted Connor and told him what Elizabeth told him to. That he’d found Marta, and that they needed to turn her over to Inspector Tucci to be safe.”
“But Guy’s plan was to get free of the Giuseppes.
Like Connor thought he was doing when he helped plan the robberies.
He’d use us as bait, and when they took it, they’d be arrested and take their secrets to prison.
Plus, he’d get a book deal out of it. He even had his ghostwriter on the spot to write it all up. ”
Oliver nods in agreement. “Exactly. Meanwhile, Marco gets his revenge. And there are enough suspects around that no one’s going to suspect him or even know who he is. Maybe they weren’t even going to kill Connor, just leave him as the last suspect standing so he’d take the fall for all of it.”
“I was the target. The note. All the people who hated me here … All the suspects point to me.”
“Yes,” Oliver says. “But something went wrong. Brian didn’t do what he was supposed to, so he had to go.
Marco must’ve put all those things up in his room at Elizabeth’s suggestion to divert suspicion.
And they killed him in our room so we’d be moved to the presidential suite where that mechanism over the bed could kill us at the right moment. ”
“Why not put us in the presidential suite to begin with?” Harper asks.
“That would be suspicious. Why give us the royal treatment? No, we got a regular room, only Elizabeth got something special because she’s Elizabeth Ben. But Guy was suspicious anyway. He wasn’t as dumb as they thought…”
“Elizabeth was getting rid of her co-conspirators one by one,” Oliver says. “But not Marta?”
“Maybe Marta really was out of it. She said she wasn’t involved. She could be telling the truth.”
“Then Inspector Tucci died, but that also wasn’t the plan.
He pretended to die. That must’ve thrown her.
Made Elizabeth panic a bit. And then Marco got caught, and you went missing, Vicki.
Everything was spinning out of control. So she decided to end it.
She always planned to be the last victim.
That’s what you said her book was about. Oh! Curtain…”
All this time, we thought we were in And Then There Were None, but it was Curtain all along. Curtain plus The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, where the narrator did it.
And oh, shit. Elizabeth even talked about Curtain to me. She told me. She was laughing at me. Watching me spin in circles, trying to figure out what was going on. Leaving me clues so I’d know it was her if the plan didn’t work out …
But how?
What’s the clue I’m missing?
What happened in Curtain?
If I’m remembering it right, there was a series of unsolved murders, and Poirot gathered the suspects at Styles to expose the murderer.
But when he couldn’t, he ended up killing the murderer himself, knowing that he was going to die anyway.
Four months later, Hastings received a manuscript from Poirot that explained everything.
Elizabeth was sick, Vicki said. Waiting on a diagnosis. But what if that wasn’t true? What if she knew all along she was dying?
How would she tell us?
“The last chapter of Elizabeth’s book,” I say to Vicki. “Do you have it?”
She nods grimly. “Elizabeth sent it to me after I told her the book wasn’t going to get picked up. She said I should read it after the weekend was over and see if it changed my mind.”
“She wanted us to know,” I say. “If it didn’t work out … she wanted me to know it was her.”
“Why?”
“We’ll have to read it to find out.”
When Officer Rolle releases us, we head back to the pool area, where the rest of the conference seems to have gathered to eat, having been released from their rooms now that it’s safe.
Even though I slept for a few hours last night, I’m exhausted.
My eyes are like sand, and I just want to dive into my bed and never surface again.
The light hurts, too, even though it’s beautiful and innocent.
How many times has this sun risen through this sky and sparkled over this beach?
It will go on setting and rising. I won’t be here to see it.
But first …
Sandrine is sitting at a table with Ravi. Stefano is being talked at by Crazy Cathy. The people in my small group are milling around, showing each other memes on their phones and gossiping about the industry.
“It all looks so normal,” Oliver says.
“The calm after the storm.”
“I guess.” He reaches for my hand. “I think we should turn down all further invitations from now until further notice.”
“I agree.” I squeeze his hand, feeling that unfamiliar weight of the engagement ring on my finger.
I’m filled with lingering fear, but also disappointment in myself.
I need to stop crashing through this world.
I need to stop. Cut the circuit. Remove myself from all of this and settle down with my good man and good life and appreciate it.
I’ve been grinding for ten years. I’ve had a lot of success.
But what has it gotten me? Too many people who want to see me dead, that’s what.
And I have to take responsibility for that.
I’m the common denominator in these stories. Someone said that to me. Maybe I said it to myself.
No, it was Sandrine, wasn’t it?
I can start there.
I let Oliver’s hand go and walk toward her. “I’m sorry, Sandrine.”
She looks up in surprise. “What?”
“I said I’m sorry. For not being there for you. For being self-absorbed. For not noticing that you were drowning and being a bad friend. I’m sorry for all of it.”
Sandrine seems at a loss for words, as is everyone else around us.
Then, finally: “?a suffit, El,” she says.
“You forgive me?”
She shrugs. “It can’t ever be the same.”
“I know that. But I don’t want you hating me. I don’t hate you.”
“I never hated you.”
My throat closes because it’s hitting me that there isn’t anything left to save here anymore. You can’t go back to trusting someone after they’ve betrayed you like we did to each other. There’s too much water under the bridge. Too many things have been said that we can’t take back.
But it was important to try anyway.
If I’m going to do this—move on—then I have to mean it with my whole chest.
I have to leave nothing behind to regret. So this was a good first step.
I can do this. I can become a different person and move forward with Oliver without my past weighing me down the way it has been for too long.
“Is that an engagement ring?” Connor says behind me, a note of jealousy in his voice.
Or maybe not.