Constance
“We’ll stay here all day. No one will know. The police can’t talk to us if they can’t find us.”
We couldn’t talk to the police in this state anyway, with the guilt still sprayed all over us like sea mist.
“Because that’s not going to make us look suspicious at all,” Lou said. “The three of us hiding from the police.”
It was hard not to agree with her. “Right. The same three girls who attended a party where they stood out like dad sneakers at fashion week.”
Marnie grimaced.
“What?” I said.
It seemed unimaginable that things could still get worse.
“We weren’t really supposed to be on the yacht,” Marnie said.
Lou froze. Last night’s mascara was smeared under her eyes and she looked like she’d been punched in both eyes with perfect symmetry.
“I don’t really want to ask, but I feel like I have to,” I said.
Marnie sighed. “Ben was going to be there, with Dorian Fisher. I couldn’t let it happen. And remember, I thought both of you could help me get to him.”
“But we were on the guest list,” Lou said, sounding terrified. “The bouncer checked. She looked at our IDs. I didn’t dream that part.”
“We were on the guest list she held in her hands,” Marnie said, carefully. “The guest list that my boss asked me to print out and deliver to the yacht manager.”
“Let me guess: You didn’t just print it,” I said.
“Guest lists are a fluid thing,” Marnie conceded. “You often have to make last-minute adjustments.”
Lou and I exchanged a look.
“Just for shits and giggles,” Lou said. “How many people would know that you were the last person to, um, fiddle with that stupid list slash piece of evidence that will most certainly take us down?”
Marnie made a face. “More than zero.”
I wanted to throw myself onto the floor and let my head crash against the concrete tiles. We were all supposed to go home first thing tomorrow, but the police would never let us leave the country now.
“I can’t keep spinning around in circles,” I said. “I’m going to get us something to eat.”
“I’ll come with you,” Lou said. “I’m starving.”
I shook my head. “You should stay here. Try to rest. We need to be sharp.”
“I feel like we’re in the witness protection program or something,” Lou said. She sounded delirious. “Like we have to lock ourselves in a safe house until the bad guys are apprehended or something.”
“You’re holding a piece of jewelry that the whole city is looking for by now. We’re the bad guys.”
Marnie let out a yawn. She looked like she could barely stand anymore.
“That’s a very sexist phrase anyway. Remember who did the really bad thing, here?”
Silence settled between us. We had no idea what had happened to Odetta Olson.
Marnie pulled a few decorative cushions from a shelf and arranged them on the floor as a makeshift bed. By the time I walked out, both girls were lying down, eyes already closed.
I’d come to the boutique enough times to have noticed the supermarket around the corner. It was less than a ten-minute walk, but I felt like I was going in slow motion, my legs moving through wet tar as my brain went in overdrive.
There was a camera in the top left corner by the door, and I couldn’t help but look straight into it.
So instead of going to the police to report the murder you witnessed early this morning, you went shopping? I imagined a faceless police officer ask me in a cold, dark room. Is a pack of chips more important to you than a man’s life, Miss Griffin?
But whatever I was feeling—despite all the worries pecking at my brain like angry birds—there was one small thing that brought me relief.
Odetta Olson must be feeling a million times worse.
For all we knew she might be in police custody; maybe they wouldn’t need our help at all.
She might have already confessed. Whatever we were facing was nothing compared to what awaited her.
But what if I was wrong about that? She was a very wealthy, famous woman who must have lawyers on speed dial.
And then there was the rage I’d witnessed in her, the determination to do what she did.
She was a woman on a mission. There was no stopping her.
I roamed the aisles, filling my cart at random—bananas, five different types of chocolate cookies, individual portions of cheese, and small bottles of orange juice.
I walked through the entire store, browsing stationery, books, cleaning products, like I had nowhere else in the world to be.
In the toy aisle, a young mother spoke on her phone while her toddler was on the floor, pulling Lego boxes off the shelves.
The mother hung up. She crouched down and entered what seemed like a tense negotiation with her son, who was now determined to rip open one of the boxes.
“Arrête! Arrête!” the mom repeated, her face reddening.
She gave me an ashamed smile, as if I were judging her. If only she knew how happily I would have swapped places with her. In the few seconds she looked my way, her son bolted out of the aisle with one of the Lego boxes. She went running after him, leaving her shopping cart behind.
She’d left her bag on the baby seat, fully unzipped, her wallet poking out. Not just her wallet, actually. She’d dumped her phone in it too, and it was still lit up.
My heartbeat quickened. The girls and I had agreed we wouldn’t use our phones to search anything about Dorian or Odetta. We had no idea how much the police would look into us, our whereabouts, our messages, our internet searches. We’d keep our digital tracks clean, if nothing else.
But I was dying to know.
I raced to the cart and quickly grabbed the woman’s phone, flicking to the web browser before the phone locked. Then, I waited until I was two aisles over—in the pet food section—to throw all of my burning questions at the internet.
But nothing came up when I searched Dorian’s name, or Odetta’s.
Same when I entered the yacht’s name. If Dorian’s body had been found, the news wasn’t out yet.
The toddler ran past me, his mom on his tail, but she was too busy to notice that I was holding her phone.
Which meant she didn’t know it was gone.
A minute later, I closed the web page and put it back in her bag.
It only occurred to me as I was paying for the food that the store would have cameras everywhere. They would have captured me taking some stranger’s phone. Hey, at least I’d given it back. I couldn’t say the same about the multimillion-dollar necklace I’d accidentally stolen from a dear old friend.
I wanted so badly to text Laila and check how things were going.
Did Clapard know she was the employee who’d mistakenly ended up with it?
Even if she wasn’t responsible for that piece, she was in charge of the other Clapard jewelry.
How much trouble would she be in if they found out she’d left the safe open?
That she hadn’t even noticed several pieces going missing?
When I arrived back at Marielle’s shop, Lou and Marnie were both asleep. There was no way I’d be able to stop the tornado of thoughts in my head long enough to do the same.
Instead, I sat on the floor and started going through my loot. I’d already torn through one of the packets of cookies when I decided I needed to do something else with my hands, or else I was going to make myself sick.
I put the cookies down and scrolled through Instagram instead.
My screen filled with pictures of Cannes, celebrities getting ready, the red carpet being cleaned up for tonight’s all too important closing ceremony.
It was only a couple of hours away now. There were stylists rolling carts full of clothes across hotel suites, makeup artists lining up their tools on vanities with sea views in the distance, hairstylists pinning strands of hair into place.
All clues that the ceremony was going ahead as planned, which confirmed that Dorian’s body hadn’t been found yet.
But someone must have noticed he was missing.
His security guard and his assistant at the minimum. Why weren’t they speaking up?
Cracking open a bottle of orange juice, I flicked through to Odetta Olson’s account. She hadn’t posted in over twenty-four hours, not even at the party. There wasn’t a single clue that she’d been there.
She had to be in hiding, waiting for the police to come knocking, if they hadn’t already. And even if they weren’t already questioning her, she had to know it was coming.
Where was she now? In bed, tucked inside insanely expensive white sheets, sick to the bone over what she did?
Maybe she’d fled the country, praying she’d be back home before they pulled Dorian out of the water.
Or maybe she’d turned herself in and the news would break any second now.
The ceremony would be canceled, Dorian’s death plastered everywhere instead.
So many questions.
And then, right there on my phone, I got an answer.