Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

ANTHONY

According to the clock sandwiched between the urns and the portraits, five minutes have elapsed since my talk with Rosie. We’re all sitting in the living room now, most of us with drinks in hand. The exception is Damien, who says he doesn’t drink on the job. His wife seems to have no such compunction.

Rosie looks a bit nervous now, perched on an ottoman in the far right corner of the room, nearly hidden by the Christmas tree. She has a glass of whiskey, but she keeps playing with the purple streak in her hair, lifting it to her lips and ruffling it through her fingers. My gaze tracks the movement helplessly.

My mother is, at her own request, double-fisting.

“Could Roark be behind this?” Jake asks, drawing my attention away from Rosie.

Edmund Roark is Jake’s former employer—a con artist and thief whom my mother apparently had an affair with over thirty years ago. As potential culprits go, he’s probably a better guess than Nina, and I’m not sure why the possibility hadn’t already occurred to me.

Likely because I’ve always made a valiant effort to stay out of my mother’s love life.

“Probably not,” Nicole says with a snort. “We’ve been keeping that dude running scared. Damien’s friend hacked into his Alexa, and we’ve made it do all kinds of crazy shit. Just last night it started playing ‘I Can See You’ at midnight.”

Damien gives her a fond glance. “She likes Taylor Swift more than you’d think.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Rosie puts in, leaning forward. “We could have a lot of fun with that for The Love Fixers.”

“Let’s not get off-track,” Damien says, looking at my mother. “Is there anyone else who might hold a grudge against you?”

My mother laughs appreciatively, setting one of her drinks down on a side table next to her. It’s one of the vintage Smith House pieces—old wood. Tired looking, but thick and sturdy. Everything in this house looks about two decades past retirement. “At least three quarters of this town. They loved my husband Adrien, and they loathe me. Most of them still think I killed him. None of them think I deserve to live in Smith House. So we’ll have to cast a wide net, I’m afraid.”

“What about your other husbands?” Nicole says after taking a sip of her drink. “Anyone hold a grudge related to them?”

“Mark kept to himself, and Tony was a miserable bastard,” she says of her first husband, whom I’m named after. “No one liked him.”

I hold back a laugh. “Thank you for that.” Turning to the P.I.s, I ask, “If it’s someone who holds a grudge against my mother because of what happened to my father or one of her other husbands, why wait so long? Mark died at least ten years ago.”

“Fourteen,” my mother corrects.

“Because this obviously has something to do with your inheritance,” Nicole says with a cat-like grin. “The three husbands jab is a false flag.” One of her shoulders lifts. “Probably. It’s totally possible for someone to hold a grudge for thirty-plus-year. This old dude once asked Damien and me to help him find dirt on his former mailman.” She raises a hand. “Now, I know what you’re going to say. You think the mailman was banging his wife. Nope. Nuh-uh. His issue with this dude was that he always went to his house last. That’s the grudge he’d been hanging onto for thirty years. Anyway. I’m guessing whoever’s behind this knows you’re looking for a wife and doesn’t want it to happen. Who loses if you get the money in the trust?”

I chew on this news, welcome—because I don’t want someone gunning for my mother—and unwelcome—because if there’s anything I despise, it’s being the center of gossip. “Nina might hold a grudge,” I admit, even though my mother already threw out the possibility.

“Oh, I’m guessing she absolutely does,” Nicole agrees. “And I very much look forward to interrogating the shit out of her. Who else, though? Who gets the money if you don’t?”

“There’s a list in Adrien’s will,” my mother says. “I’ll have to consult the copy I keep in the safe.”

“Yeah…we’ll need a copy of the original from his attorney’s office,” Nicole says. “No offense.”

My mother shrugs, probably because she’s suspicious enough to have made the same request if the positions were reversed. “That can be arranged.”

“And you should put a list together too,” Damien tells me, “of people who might hold a grudge against you. Because, odds are, this has everything to do with you.”

“This is how it’s going to go down. We’re going to invite all of the suspects to Anthony’s wedding,” Nicole adds with a grin, hoisting up her drink. “It’ll be a human game of Clue.”

Damien makes an amused sound. “It’s your dream come true, Nic. The old man in red is really coming through for you this year.”

“Yes, it’s a true Christmas miracle,” my mother says dryly.

“I guess this means you’ll have to extend a personal invitation to Nina and that blond blowhard,” Jake tells me with a quirk of his brows.

I sigh. “That’ll be a joy.”

I haven’t had the displeasure of speaking to either of them since the very uncomfortable five-minute phone call Wilson saw fit to make me before he and Nina went public with their affection. He asked for my blessing, and I told him I hoped he married her. Given he thanked me five times, I’m guessing he didn’t understand what I meant.

“Simon too,” my mother says with a sniff, referring to my father’s best friend and second-in-command at Smith Investments.

She’s never liked Simon, probably because he used to worship at my father’s feet even though he must have known Adrien Smith was not exactly what he appeared to be. Possible, also, because he offered to be Husband Number Four a mere two months after Mark died in a plane crash. His wife had divorced him six months prior, and he’d claimed it was “perfect timing.” She, needless to say, had disagreed.

“He doesn’t think much of you,” she continues.

“Thanks, Mother,” I say dryly.

Looking at the private investigators, she continues, “He was Adrien’s best friend and he works at Smith Investments with Anthony. He’d love nothing better than to show my son up. He shows him up every chance he gets.”

“Yes,” I say. “But we’ve been working on a huge deal together. He knows I plan on investing a big chunk of my personal inheritance into it to save the company. Three-point- five million. So he should want me to get married.” I feel Rosie staring at me, but I force myself to go on. “He’s actually the executor of my father’s will.”

“Intriguing,” Nicole says. “Go on.”

“I know he’s worried about me finding a wife in time, because he keeps trying to set me up with his daughter, Rachel.”

“And what’s wrong with Rachel?”

A million reasons flit through my head, like a murder of crows taking off, but if I said any of them out loud I’d probably sound like a dick. She thought Mexico was separated into New Mexico and Old Mexico. She talks about shopping, sometimes for hours. She only eats salad, dressing on the side. So I settle for saying, “I’ve known her since I was four. We didn’t like each other then. Time certainly hasn’t improved things. The only reason he’s taken a pause on setting up very awkward surprise ‘dates’ is because he knows I’m working with Jake.”

She rubs her hands together. “You know what? He’s still going on the list. Maybe he’s pissed that you didn’t go for his daughter so he could rub you out and get all of the money.”

“Oh, he’s not nearly enterprising enough for such a thing,” my mother says. “Lazy. He’d prefer for someone else to make the bread so he can eat it. But I see your point.”

I feel Rosie’s intense gaze again. This time, I give in and look at her, soaking up the expression in her eyes. There’s a hint of humor, and I can practically feel her thinking wouldn’t it be better to give this all up and move to Scotland?

Yes. Fucking yes.

But I can’t. I just…can’t.

“I’m assuming I should hire private security?” my mother queries.

“We’ll take care of that,” Damien says.

I don’t dispute the necessity. The security guard my mother usually hires is capable, at most, of boring someone to death with stories about the red kidney stone he had. I guess he had it made into a pendant for his wife. She wears it, whether out of obligation or bad taste is anyone’s guess.

“Splendid,” my mother says. “This wedding keeps getting more interesting.”

“Wouldn’t it help if I had a bride?” I shoot another glance at Rosie. She’s sipping her drink, but she lifts her flattened palm to her head and gives me a quiet salute, as if to say she’s on the case.

I’m surprised to discover I still have it in me to smile.

Jake shoots me a surprised look from the sofa he’s sitting on with his girlfriend. It’s not used often, and although Mother brings a cleaner in once a week, it has a perpetually dusty look. “Does this mean your meeting with Leigh didn’t go well? She thought the arrangement was a go.”

Rosie waggles her brows at me. It’s obvious she assumes my lunch companion made a pass at me, which is categorically false.

A strained feeling grips my chest. I don’t want to directly lie, especially not about something like that, but I also don’t want Rosie to suspect…

I don’t know what she’d suspect, actually, because I don’t fully understand why I did it.

“Uh, I don’t think so, man,” I hedge. “It just wasn’t a good fit. Nothing personal.”

He looks like he’s going to press me—he knows, same as I do, that Leigh is everything I asked him to find. But Lainey steps on his foot. It’s subtle and underneath the coffee table—old, big. Still, I witness it, and judging from his wince, he feels it. I’m not sure what it means, but I’m grateful when he drops the subject.

I feel someone staring at me, and I know without looking that it’s my mother, noticing everything I’d prefer for her not to. I definitely don’t return the glance.

“I’m going to help him,” Rosie says, swiveling for a better look at Jake. “This situation requires a woman’s touch.”

“You’re edging in on my job, aren’t you?” he asks with obvious amusement. Shifting his gaze to me, he adds, “Be careful, man. This one’s a shark. You definitely don’t want to make any deals with her—I made that mistake in poker last week, and I lost all of my Goldfish.”

Of course she’s a shark. She’s someone who knows how to move people like they’re chess pieces on a board. My father did too, but Rosie does it in such a way that you feel damn lucky she bothered to include you in her machinations.

My gaze finds her again, taking in the soft lines of her face and those big blue eyes, I feel that tugging in my chest again—like I’m being shaken awake after a long nap. “I’ve already lost one bargain with her. But I still feel like I got a good deal.”

“That’s what a good con artist can do.” Jake pantomimes pointing to his eyes and then her.

She rolls his eyes at him, then says, “You’re just jealous because I’m going to succeed where you failed.”

“Care to make it interesting?”

She looks like she’s humming with the desire to do just that, and even though it’s my fate they’re making a sport of, I smile when she says, “Do you even know me?”

“What does the winner get?” Jake gestures to me. “A date with Anthony?”

“Bragging rights,” Rosie says. “ And the loser has to buy a round of drinks for everyone in this room.”

My mother finishes her first drink and lifts the second with a beleaguered sigh. “Well, let’s hope one of you comes through. It’ll be embarrassing for all of us if Anthony has to stand at the altar alone. Because I’d say this decides it—he will be getting married on New Year’s Eve, come hell or high water. We certainly can’t let this lunatic win.” Giving a careless wave of her hand, she says, “Elaine, you might as well fetch the extra wedding invitations. It sounds like we’ll be needing them.”

“Mom, she doesn’t work for you anymore,” I point out.

My mother sniffs dramatically. “My life is being threatened, along with your fortune. As far as I’m concerned, you all work for me.”