Chapter 14

"Oh, good, you found us," Nicole says. "Damien said I was taking chances again, but you're smarter than you look."

"What are you doing here?" I ask in a seething undertone, not bothering to pretend to be polite.

"Come in," she says. "Chop, chop. Don't let in all that warm air. You'll run up poor Mike's air conditioning bill."

It's no coincidence that she's here, at the exact place Declan was supposed to show up. She expected me to come with him. She's trying to intimidate me, or maybe him. This woman is like a magician, or someone who has read Machiavelli too many times.

I feel Declan shifting on his feet beside me. Is he going to call her out for kidnapping his dog?

But he obviously doesn't want to be drawn into whatever's going on here, because he just asks, "Is Mark here?"

She laughs. "Shit, I've been calling that guy Mike for the past ten minutes. Yeah." She swings a thumb over her shoulder, drawing my attention to the shoulder bag drawn tightly across it. "He's showing Damien his garden in the back. They're talking about dirt. Sometimes Damien really takes things too far."

At least she hasn't accused Declan of murder yet, or admitted she's a private investigator. Because something tells me that Declan might take off if he knew that. There's something he doesn't want people to know, and he wouldn't want to live next door to someone with a proverbial shovel collection.

Declan nods without speaking and then takes the starters from me, easily holding one set in each hand, proving once and for all that he definitely didn't need my help. "Thanks, Claire. Are you okay here?"

With her, he means.

I could tell him no. I want to tell him no, but I find myself nodding like one of those desk toys. "Yeah. Sure. Thank you for the help."

He nods once to Nicole. "Nicole."

"What about those stick shift lessons for the Jeep?" I blurt out.

"Stick shift," Nicole repeats, bursting into laughter as if she's a twelve-year-old boy with an addiction to dick jokes.

He nods to me, ignoring her. "We'll talk."

But I'm pretty sure he doesn't mean it. Finding her here set off his internal alarms. He may not know what's going on, but he knows something is, and he doesn't like it.

I watch him go, feeling regret and something almost like panic. It's stupid, since he's barely told me anything about himself, but I feel like he's the only person I trust here, in this unfamiliar place, and he's walking away from me. Leaving me with her. I'll need to be careful with him. The last thing I want to do is start relying on someone who's so hot and cold, someone who has secrets so big most of his life seems to revolve around hiding them.

"What are you doing?" I hiss to Nicole.

"What am I doing?" she says, waggling her eyebrows. "You've been here less than twenty-four hours, and you're already trying to lock that player down. I admire your hustle."

I glance at the back of the restaurant, trying to make sure no one can hear me, then whisper, "You're the one who keeps pushing us together. You kidnapped his dog this morning."

She laughs. "Hardly. The mutt showed up at our back door, and I let him in, as any concerned citizen would. It's not my fault your boyfriend's never heard of a leash. Besides, we need to talk to him. He's a person of interest—"

"The dog?" I ask in disbelief.

She rolls her eyes. "Declan, and you're the obvious person to befriend him. It was a well-thought-out maneuver."

"Well, he's not going to talk to me now," I say. "He thinks you're up to something."

"Correction," she says, lifting a finger. "He knows I'm up to something. But rattling him was only part of the reason I came here."

I glance around at the fancy dining area, taking in the square tables with the fancy chairs and dishware set out, ready for diners who won't show up for another several hours. "You wanted some lunch?"

"Very funny," she says with a sharp-edged smile. "No. We ate some of your crack muffins before we left. Damien and I had a few questions for Mark. But I did know Declan was supposed to make a delivery, and I wanted to catch him off-guard. Did you see the look on his face?" She angles her head, studying me. "That fine man is hiding something, and it's not just his stick shift. I love it when people try to hide things from me."

I shrug, my pulse racing for reasons I couldn't name. I know she's right, but I guess I'm hoping his secret is something mild—like he's on the run from hundreds of dollars of parking tickets or selling contraband honey. But in the back of my mind, I know it must be something bigger. "That doesn't mean he did anything bad. You hide a lot of things. No one in town seems to know you're a private investigator…or that you're Dick's daughter."

"How much did you tell your boyfriend?" Nicole asks with a hard look.

"Only the second part."

"Good. Keep it that way. I like to keep my own dirt packed down neat. But that doesn't mean I don't want to dig up everyone else's. We're all hypocrites, Claire. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. You ready to visit the old lady?"

I glance at the back, frowning, but the door steadfastly stays closed. "Aren't we going to wait for Damien?"

I want to wait for Declan, actually. But if I say so, she'll make another smart-ass remark, and I'm suddenly exhausted—as if she has a special way of siphoning my energy.

"Damien's a big boy." Her smile grows wider. "A very big boy. And he's going to see if he can catch a ride with your boyfriend. Get him talking. Speaking of Declan…I think it would be better if we let him sweat it out a little. You know, let him wonder if it's just a coincidence that we showed up here to talk to Mike, or if we're keeping tabs on him for some reason. A little paranoia is good for the soul."

"You're not normal," I mutter under my breath.

She laughs again, sounding genuinely amused. "Why the fuck would anyone want to be normal?"

"I want to be normal."

"Then you're lucky you have me around to make sure you never get what you want."

I want to tell her to fuck off. Maybe I could set off on my own to look for the lawyer's office or that storefront Declan mentioned. But I don't, of course. I hate myself for it, but I follow her out to her car like I'm a little duckling who imprinted on an asshole.

She whistles a tune as she drives, not bothering to make conversation, so I'm the one who has to ask, "What are we going to say to Mrs. Rosings?"

"I'm gonna leave that to you," she says carelessly, her gaze trained out the windshield.

"Excuse me?" I say, alarmed. "You're the private investigator. I'm just—"

"An out-of-work personal assistant. So I'll bet you're really good at bullshitting people and getting them to do what you want."

I'm taken aback for a second, because I'm the person who always goes along with things. I'm the agreeable one. I'm nice, aren't I? But she's right. I've had to be commanding for Agnes—to get her the unreasonable things she wants—and I never struggled to make demands on her behalf. Why am I so more willing to take a stand for other people?

Nicole pulls up beside a stone wall with a gate, behind which a mansion looms. There's street parking in this part of town, or at least she decides there is—because she parks the car at the curb.

"This is where she lives?" I ask, impressed.

Way to go, Mrs. Rosings.

"Yeah," she says, studying it. "Ugly, isn't it?"

It is, kind of. But ugly in the way that only a really expensive house can be—the grandeur giving it an air that goes beyond ugly. It has wood siding with piping, as if it's an oversized cake, and an asymmetrical window that provides a view of a spiral staircase.

"Well, let's do this," she says, removing a sheaf of papers and a small box from her cross-shoulder bag before reaching for her door handle.

"What's that?" I ask.

"A bequest from Dick. I hope to Christ it's a golden mold of his dick. Damien wouldn't let me open the box."

"Is that the will?"

"Yeah." She gives it a shake. "Want to see it?"

She says it so easily that I immediately distrust the offer. "Did you…do something to it?"

Surprised laughter gusts from her, as if she's delighted by my accusation. "Like what? Are you worried I used it as a Kleenex, or are you asking if I doctored it and printed it out at Staples?"

"The second."

"I didn't do anything to it. Swear on our father's grave. But if you don't believe me, and I wouldn't if I were you, then you can pay a visit to his lawyer. Very sweaty guy in Asheville. I'll give you the address and you can go tomorrow."

I think of the Jeep. I think of Declan offering to give me driving lessons. I say, "Can I borrow your car?"

"I gave you the Jeep."

"You know I can't drive stick. Hell, you probably knew before you ever met me. It's like giving a person who's allergic to peanuts a snack pack from Planters."

She laughs. "Hardly. It's giving my sister an excuse to get lessons from Hot Stuff."

"I don't think he's going to follow through," I say, trying not to sound too sad about it. "He offered before he knew you were stalking him."

"Oh, he'll follow through. But sure. You can borrow the car, or Damien will bring you if you're worried about driving on the highway."

I am, but I don't want to tell her that. "Where will you be?"

"I've got plans. I'm going away for a few days. Damien'll be around if you need anything."

Rather than ask follow-up questions she almost certainly won't answer, I take the will from her and start paging through it.

"There's a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo," she says. "Page seven is where it gets good."

I flip ahead and find the page of bequests. Sure enough, it's written there in ink. His house, car, and insurance policy, divided between his biological daughters. His dog, to Declan. This random box, to Dahlia Rosings.

"Flip the page," she says.

I do, and find confirmation that a DNA test verified that I'm his biological daughter.

I look up at Nicole, and find her watching me with eyes like mine. It sends a shiver through me. "He didn't leave a note for me or anything, did he?"

"If he did, I haven't found one," she says, giving me a smile that would look sympathetic on anyone else. "It's like I said, he didn't know he was going to kick it. I think he was just paranoid. Guilty conscience and all that."

"You said he worked in construction. Why would he be paranoid?"

"Maybe he built a lot of shit houses and worried a beam would hit him, or a pissed off homeowner."

But from the way she says it, I know there's more to it.

"Was he in some kind of trouble?"

She snorts. "What trouble wasn't he in? I told you, a lot of people thought he was a dick. He liked to gamble, plus he screwed up a bunch of building jobs. Messed around with a lot of women, including married ones. We might be looking into this for months."

The thought is oppressive. What am I going to do if I'm stuck in Marshall for months? I think again of that empty storefront, but without any money to rent it out, it's as inaccessible to me as an open storefront on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Still. If I do stay, I'll have to get some sort of job. I've never had this much free time loom before me ever. While my mother was a free spirit, she left most of my parenting to my father, who believed idleness was a gateway drug to harder stuff. So I worked hard in school, and out. Running bake sales and fundraisers and cookie exchanges. And then I started working for Agnes, and my entire life was devoted to making hers easier. When I think about it, my whole life has been a long stream of working, of building things for other people. It's terrifying to consider all that free time, waiting to swallow me.

Maybe Lainey will come. I don't want her to get fired—that's a toxic wish—but I do want her here. I want to feel less alone. My mind flashes to Declan—to the way he smiled at me earlier after he tried my muffin. But my mind is stupid. Declan's told me ten different ways that he doesn't want to get mixed up with me, and I should be smart enough to listen.

"Well, let's do this thing," Nicole says, climbing out of the car and leaving me with the will. I tuck it under my arm and get out too, just as she's pressing the buzzer at the gate.

"Hello?" asks a familiar voice.

"Hey," Nicole says. "We're Dick Ricci's daughters. We're here with a bequest from his will."

The gate buzzes without her saying anything else, not that I'm surprised. Mrs. Rosings is a woman who clearly doesn't think much of social niceties. Maybe she believes she's above them. I also get the sense that she's bored, same as I've been, and eager for something to happen.

"Why do you think she has such an extensive security system here in Marshall?" I ask Nicole as we walk toward the house. "Doesn't seem that dangerous."

"She's rich. Rich people always think someone's going to nab their shit." She shrugs. "And you know what, a lot of the time they're right."

The front door opens as we reach it, and Mrs. Rosings peers out at us with a shrewd expression. She's in another of those rich people caftans, only this one is a deep emerald green. Nicole led the way to the door, and she's a person who has much more natural command than I do, so it doesn't surprise me that Mrs. Rosings notices her first.

"Well, let's have it," she says, holding out her hand.

Nicole gives the box to her. Then she steps on my foot—a little too hard—and I clear my throat. "Hi, Mrs. Rosings."

The older woman's gaze shifts to me, and the only sign that she recognizes me, and cares that she does, is a slight widening of her eyes. She laughs, then shakes her head. "When you're as old as I am, life loses the ability to surprise you. You've managed what I'd thought impossible. You're Dick's daughter, too?"

"So I'm told."

"Well, come in. Both of you." Her eyes twinkle. "Might be that I have a glass of gin for you. I know how you like to drink in the middle of the day."

Nicole grins at me. "Look at you, getting a reputation as a lush."

I could say no. I could object that I'm not a day drinker, but instead I find myself saying, "That sounds like just the thing. Thank you, Mrs. Rosings." And no shit, ten minutes later, we're drinking gin fizzes in a fancy drawing room—a drawing room!—that would put Agnes Lewis to shame, from the crystal chandelier to the fireplace that obviously hasn't hosted a fire in at least two decades, because no soot would dare leave a mark. I'd already surmised that Mrs. Rosings is rich—but this goes beyond rich into the territory of filthy rich.

Above the never-used fireplace are two framed photos—one of a woman with black hair and big green eyes, the other of a handsome man with a strong jaw and brown eyes. Her kids?

"So, have you discovered that the boy you were publicly fornicating with lives in town?" Mrs. Rosings asks me, mischief in her eyes.

Fantastic. Nicole turns toward me with a grin. "I knew it."

"Let's not exaggerate," I say. "Declan kissed me. Once. We thought the plane might be going down." No need to tell them about the other times he kissed me, or the way I can still feel his hard body pressed against me.

Mrs. Rosings makes a sound of disagreement and sips her gin fizz. I have to admit, she can make the hell out of a drink.

"Speaking of fornicating," Nicole says, and if I had any energy left to stop her, I'd really try. "I've heard you and our father were doing the dirty deed before he died."

Mrs. Rosings purses her lips. "What a woman does in the sanctity of her own home is her own business." She glances at me. "What she does in an airplane, next to other people, is everyone's business."

"Of course," I demur. "We're just trying to piece together what happened to him at the end."

She plays with the rim of her drink, peering off into the distance. "It's natural to want to make sense of something senseless, but sometimes the story is as simple as it seems. Dick liked to drink and take pills that weren't prescribed to him, and he wasn't half as good at home improvements as he believed himself to be. The stairs in that house are uneven, and he tripped."

"Were those pills prescribed to you?" Nicole asks pointedly.

Well, shit. I half expect Mrs. Rosings to kick us out, but she actually laughs. "Yes, in fact. The authorities told me so. I have arthritis. It wouldn't have been the first time he'd stolen my pain medication."

"But you kept going back for more?" I mutter. I can relate to that more than I'd like after seven years of Agnes yelling in my face and telling me to stay late, again. Of her asking me to do menial tasks for her just so she could watch me squirm.

Mrs. Rosings smiles again, her lips barely tipping upward. "There was something about him. A certain charm. It was intoxicating."

Nicole gives me a knowing look that I'd rather not interpret.

There's a buzzing sound, and Mrs. Rosings pulls a phone out of the pocket of her kaftan and frowns at it. Shaking her head, she stuffs it back in. "My personal assistant quit, and it's impossible to plan a wedding on one's own. It's almost enough to drive a woman to drink."

There's something ironic about that, given that she's sipping down gin at lunchtime, but it would take a stronger woman than me to point it out. Besides, something else has captured my attention.

"You're getting married?" I ask. Does her fiancé know about Dick?

"No need to sound so aghast," Mrs. Rosings comments with polite amusement. "Although I'd certainly be within my rights if I wanted to get married again, I never will. Why clip your own wings? It's my son who's had the fool idea to get married, and he and his fiancée need all the help they can get."

An idea sparkles in my mind, and before it has a chance to crystallize, I blurt, "I have to be in town for a month. I can work for you temporarily. My father's an event planner, and I've helped him out for years."

Or at least my resume says so. But I've also helped Agnes Lewis plan dozens of high-profile events. This can work. I can make some money while staying at the cabin and fulfilling my end of the will. I won't have to face that void of free time.

"Your father was Dick Ricci," Mrs. Rosings says flatly, "and although he was not a man without talents, I wouldn't have trusted him to plan a child's birthday party."

"I won't argue with that," Nicole mutters—and I wonder, again, what it was like growing up with him, for as long as she did grow up with him.

"Not that father," I say. "The man who raised me. And I worked for Agnes Lewis in New York City. Directly. I was her assistant for years."

This captures Mrs. Rosings's attention. "And you could secure the proper references, I suppose?"

I consider this for a moment. I won't be getting any recommendation from Agnes or Doug, that's for damn sure, but I have a couple of friends at the office, and they've been texting me real-time updates about the morning show incident. "Yes, of course."

She gives a doubtful shrug. "Sure. You can start on Monday." She points a rigid finger at me. "But no drinking on the job."

"Even if you offer?" I ask, lifting my glass as if to cheers her.

"I won't. So you might as well enjoy that."

I provide Mrs. Rosings with the direct contact information for my friends at Agnes Lewis, and Nicole and I leave soon afterward.

Back in the car, my half-sister gives me a shrewd look. "Nicely played."

"I figured I could use something to keep me busy while I'm here."

She flinches and then whistles through her teeth. "You actually want to help some spoiled rich kid plan his wedding? And here I thought you'd found an in with Mrs. Rosings so you could find out what's in the golden cock box."

I shrug. "She didn't kill him. You heard what she said. She'd have no reason to kill him. Besides, if the cops already talked to her about the medication, then they must have considered the possibility and thrown it out."

She waves a finger at me. "You're too trusting. The rich rarely get held accountable for doing fucked-up shit, and this lady is clearly loaded."

I don't know what kind of life she's led, other than that Dick was her deadbeat father, but she's hard and flinty. Would I have been like that if I'd known him? Would we have been different if we'd grown up spending time together?

I clear my throat, trying to focus, and ask, "So you're going away tonight?"

"For a few days. Like I said, Damien will take you to see the lawyer. You can pull some intel on Mrs. Rosings, and when I get back, we'll be golden."

"Have you gone through Dick's stuff yet?" I ask haltingly.

"We'll do it when I get back," she says. "I saved all the fun stuff so we could do it together."

I'm terrified to find out what she means.