“Um …” I began, ever eloquent.
“I can’t believe it,” he whispered, more to himself than to me.
“Felix—”
He continued, “I mean, the affair with Santos. I can believe that. Now that I think about it, it fits. He never brought any girlfriends home when I was growing up. He never talked about women.”
“Then why would he marry Amber?” My curiosity overcame my social ineptitude.
He shrugged. “For the publicity, if I had to guess. The label hadn’t had a big hit in a while. Sales were slumping. But their marriage was huge news. Everything spiked after that.” He said it as if it were a no-brainer: Record sales down? Marry a movie star.
“Then what’s so hard to believe?”
“That he’d allow her to blackmail him—or that he’d resort to killing her. That’s not dad’s style. He doesn’t shy away from a fight.”
I hated to be the one to point it out, but I figured it would be better coming from me than from Detective She-Devil Sullivan. “Unless he was trying to protect you,” I suggested in a soft voice.
His head snapped back and he searched my eyes with his. “Me? What do you mean?”
I cleared my throat. “Like you said, your dad isn’t exactly a shrinking violet. But he lived a closeted life for who knows how long? The most reasonable explanation is that he wasn’t sure how his sexuality would affect you. And if the protective shell he’d worked so hard to create was threatened … I don’t know, Felix. I don’t have kids. But I understand the instinct to protect them can be overwhelming.”
My eyes actually filled with tears as I thought of Felix’s father denying his own sexuality to protect his son and, inevitably, contrasted that behavior with my own parents, who turned their backs on their three daughters and left us to clean up their expensive mess. Get a grip, Rosemary. Felix needs a friend right now. You can blubber about your bad luck later.
His lower lip trembled. “Do you really think that he could have killed her—to protect me?”
“Maybe?” I ventured.
At that moment, the uniformed officer who’d accompanied Detective Drummond poked his head out the back door and swiveled his head toward us. “Sir, Detective Drummond said you can have five minutes with the suspect. Understand that I will remain in the room and he will be restrained in handcuffs.”
Felix’s entire body sagged. “Thank you, officer. But I’ve changed my mind. I don’t need to speak to him.”
The police officer cocked his head. For a moment, I thought he was going to try to convince Felix to talk to his dad but then he nodded. “That’s your call.” And then he was gone.
That left me to do the convincing. “Wait a second. I didn’t say your dad did kill Amber. Just that you should consider the possibility. Don’t turn your back on him. You should talk to him, Felix.”
“I just … can’t. Not yet.” His eyes met mine with a pleading look, and I remembered he was barely into his twenties.
I opened my arms to hug him, and he stepped close to me. I could feel his heart racing through his thin shirt. I rubbed his back in a constant, circular motion until the rhythm of his heart slowed to something less frantic than a hummingbird’s.
9
I slinked into the kitchen in a pair of boxers and an oversized UCLA tee shirt, both borrowed from Felix. The quiet, spotless space with its gleaming appliances and wide expanse of counters looked completely different in the pre-dawn light, approached from the rear stairs as a well-rested overnight guest rather than through the employees’ entrance as a harried, if highly paid, worker bee.
I was standing on tiptoes on the cold terrazzo reveling in the feeling when a voice drawled, “So how do you take your coffee?”
Felix. I immediately crossed my arms in front of my chest in embarrassment and wished I’d taken the time to get dressed. “Uh, just some hemp milk, please. And thank you.” Another new sensation—Felix waiting on me in this kitchen.
He quirked his lips into a smile and crossed the kitchen to the refrigerator. “You’re out of luck. I tossed all of Amber’s stupid food yesterday afternoon.”
I tried not to react visibly to the casual meanness of his action. “Oh?”
“Yep. The cops took everything they considered evidence. What was left went into the garbage.” He leaned into the fridge and reemerged holding a glass container. “Full fat cow’s milk. Want some?”
“Uh, sure. Just a splash.”
He handed me a glazed mug filled with coffee and then leaned closer than was absolutely necessary to pour in the milk. Rows of goosebumps rose on my arms in reaction when he brushed my shoulder.
“Are you cold?” He gave me a look that took in my bare legs and the thin tee shirt.
“No.”
“That shirt looks good on you. You should keep it,” he remarked, letting his gaze linger.
I considered and rejected several responses. I took a long swallow of coffee and shifted my weight from side to side. Finally, I said, “About last night …”
“Thank you for staying,” he said, lowering his eyes so that his long, thick eyelashes seemed to brush against his cheeks.
A wave of warmth rushed over me, washing away my snarky, embarrassed discomfort at standing, barely dressed, in the kitchen with a man who somehow managed to look delectable when he rolled out of bed.
“You don’t have to thank me.”
I nearly spilled my coffee in surprise when he grabbed me and wrapped me in a tight hug. After a moment, he pulled back and kissed me on the forehead, letting his lips brush gently over my brow.
It was a tender moment. Or, at least it would have been, if Alayna hadn’t chosen that precise time to burst into the room, banging and clattering cleaning supplies in her wake.
We both jumped.
She stared at us. “Oh, sorry,” she said in a tone that was anything but.
I would never have said Alayna and I were besties, but we were friendly. We got along pretty well and had always looked out for one another when Amber was rampaging. But the way she curled her lip me made me think I had badly misjudged our relationship. Then it dawned on me that my behavior, not to mention my attire, probably seemed wildly inappropriate.
I smoothed down my hair. “It’s not how it looks,” I told her. I flashed Felix a desperate glancing, hoping he’d chime in in agreement, but he just leaned back against the counter and drank his coffee. He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes crinkled in amusement.
He clearly wasn’t going to be any help.
I turned back to Alayna.
She shot me a blank look and said, “It’s none of my business. Are you working today?”
I hadn’t thought it was possible to feel more intensely uncomfortable than I already did, but her question ramped up my discomfort to eleven on a scale of one to ten. Her question reminded me that I was Felix’s father’s employee—a small fact that made my appearance in the kitchen at no o’clock in the morning tangled in an embrace with Felix while wearing his tee shirt and boxer shorts (which she no doubt knew, considering she did the laundry) seem like something out of a soap opera. Or, even worse, one of Amber’s movies.
“Um, no,” I mumbled, unable to meet her eye or stop myself from blushing. “In fact, I need to go. I’m meeting my sister.”
I rushed past her and ran up the back stairs two at a time. I threw on my wrinkled clothes from the day before and gathered my hair into a low, messy ponytail. I grabbed my shoes and purse and flew back down the stairs. I was out the door and starting my car before Felix or Alayna had a chance to say another word.
* * *
Sage, however, had lots of words to say. Once she was finished gaping at me fish-like, that is.
“You … you slept with him?” she whispered, leaning across the table.
I nearly sprayed my mimosa all over the tablecloth. “What? No, I slept over. He didn’t want to be alone,” I choked out the words in a hurry.
“Oh.” She sipped her drink and considere
d my answer. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I think I’d notice. I hope I would, at least.”
She laughed at that. Sage’s laugh is infectious—sunny and real. Before I knew it, I was laughing, too. Sitting there in the fancy pants restaurant she’d chosen for brunch, with fresh-cut flowers, crisp white linens, and delicious mimosas, I felt like my carefree former self, the Rosemary who existed before crushing debt, a soul-sucking job, and suspicion of murder clouded her days.
Her laugh died down gradually. Her eyes sparkled conspiratorially and she said, “Well, good for you for not taking advantage of him during his time of emotional need.”
If she only knew.
After we’d left the scene of his father’s arrest, I figured he’d drop me at my car and then go lick his wounds in private. That’s what I’d have done. Instead, when we reached my car, he hadn’t killed the engine. He’d put the car into park and turned to me with what can only be described as a beseeching look. “Rosemary, stay with me. Please.”
Five simple words. Two very short sentences. But there’d been no resisting his desperation; he was like a lost little boy. So I’d agreed to stay subject to certain ground rules: I was there to provide moral support and company only. I would sleep in the guest bedroom next door to his room. He’d agreed readily to my stipulations. But I had a suspicion that if I hadn’t laid out the rules, we’d have had a very different night.
“Hello? Did I lose you?”
“Huh?” I looked up. Sage was waving her hand in front of my face. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. But snap out of it. This is probably my only free window of time before we go back East. Let’s take advantage of the fact that Chip and Muffy want to present the picture of the All-American family at the press event.”
“Having a nanny is un-American?”
“Attachment parenting consultant,” she said, correcting me out of habit.
“Even better.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Apparently, their media consultant thinks my presence would alienate Chip’s base.”
“He has a base to alienate? Is he a golfer or a politician?”
“Whatever. It’s a day off for me.” She waved away the topic. “Let’s talk about you.”
“Me? I don’t have anything interesting going on.”
The waiter materialized with blueberry ricotta pancakes for me and house-made yogurt and granola for Sage. Sage, apparently having not picked up any Southern manners during her time in South Carolina, didn’t bother to wait until he finished refilling our water glasses to call me out.
“Right. Nothing interesting in your life. Accused of murdering your movie star boss, canoodling with her smoking hot son, and flirting with the police officer assigned to investigate the case. Just another ho-hum weekend in the life of a holistic chef, huh?”
Her sparkling laughter only intensified when the eavesdropping waiter got so wrapped up in her recitation that he let the ice water flow over the edge of the glass and pool into a good-sized puddle on the table.
“I think it’s full,” I told him, pointing to Sage’s glass.
“Oh! Oh, geez. I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention,” he said as he mopped up the water with a white cloth. Then, as devoid of shame as any aspiring actor ought to be, he stared right at me. “You worked for Amber Patrick? Is it true her husband did it?” he breathed.
I fixed Sage with a dirty look before answering him. “Mr. Patrick’s in custody. I don’t know what, if anything, the police have charged him with,” I said diplomatically. The Los Angeles Times had run a short article, barely more than a barebones blurb, that morning. Detective Sullivan had been tight-lipped, and the article had been short on details, including the fact of the Patricks’ respective extramarital activities. I figured the entertainment media would dig those up soon enough.
The waiter turned and sauntered away, a little deflated by the lack of juicy details. I continued to shoot daggers at Sage.
“Sorry,” she mumbled into her champagne flute.
“Forget it. What did you mean though, about flirting with a police officer? Are you talking about me and Detective Drummond?”
“No, Rosie, you and Detective Sullivan,” she deadpanned.
“I’m serious. I wasn’t … I didn’t … I’m not flirting with that cop,” I finally managed to stammer.
“Oh, come on.”
“I’m not,” I insisted. I dug into my pancakes. “But I’m curious why you think I am.”
“For one thing, he’s supposed to be a professional hardass. You’d expect him to keep his distance from a … um, suspect. But he didn’t. He came mooning around to try to help you.”
“Maybe that’s because he knew I was innocent, Sage.”
She shrugged and swirled her yogurt around with her spoon. “Maybe. I just thought I picked up on a vibe. Anyway, I notice you aren’t protesting the canoodling with Felix part.”
“Mainly because I don’t know what canoodling means,” I told her. I leaned back and drank in the wonderful normalcy of sitting in a nice restaurant, catching up with my sister over a meal someone else prepared, and let a wave of yearning for my old life wash over me.
“Me neither,” Sage admitted with a laugh. “But it’s what Mom always used to say when you were making out with Thor Martin down on the dock instead of practicing your violin like you were supposed to be. So I figured it fit.”
“Oh, Thor. That poor guy. I wonder if the other podiatrists make fun of his name.” You know your parents screwed up when I think your name was ill advised.
“Doubt it. Mom said he goes by T. Charles now.”
I narrowed my eyes. Sage was the quintessential middle child, focused on personal relationships and connections. You know that friend you have who knows everyone and is always putting together Friend A, who needs to buy a house, with Friend B, who just happens to be selling one? And if they find they need a realtor or lawyer or building inspector, no worries, she’s friends with one? Yeah, that’s Sage. In addition to her network of friends, she maintains our family ties, too. She sends birthday cards to the most distant relatives and attends any and all family reunions. And now she’d mentioned our mom twice in the space of a minute.
“When was the last time you talked to Mom?” I asked with all the subtlety of Detective Sullivan.
She immediately dropped her eyes and stared at the tablecloth. “Last April. Same as you and Thyme.”
I just finished my drink and waited. Sage has always been a terrible liar; she can’t even manage a decent lie of omission. And after approximately twelve seconds of silence, she cracked. “She does email me every once in a while.”
“You’re in email contact with Mom?” I said, wanting to be absolutely sure I’d heard her correctly.
“I wouldn’t call it being in contact. Maybe once every other month, she sends me a very short email to let me know that she and dad are okay and to ask about all of us. That’s it,” she said in a hurry.
“Tell me you’ve handed these over to the cops, at least.” I still really couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“Well, no,” she admitted. “But I don’t think they’d be useful to the authorities, Rosemary. She doesn’t say anything about where they are. And I think she’s using burner email addresses.”
I cocked my head in disbelief. Our mother, who just months earlier was possibly the last person in North America to maintain an AOL account and use a dial-up connection, was now suddenly floating around somewhere in international waters, accessing the Internet and creating disposable email addresses? “Really?”
“Really. Thyme thinks …” she trailed off and finished her mimosa in one large gulp, looking slightly green as she realized what she’d done.
“Oh, Thyme knows about this? Has Mom been emailing her, too?” I couldn’t manage to keep the hurt out of my voice.
“No, just me, Rosie. I swear.” She reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “I told Thyme about the emails to s
ee if she could figure out how to find them, and she said it looks like Mom’s masking her location through a series of proxy addresses.”
I laughed in complete disbelief. “Okay, sure. So, I’m just curious—why did you and Thyme decide to keep these innocuous, untraceable communications a big secret, hmm?”
She cleared her throat and took her time forming an answer. “Mainly because we knew it would make you mad. Madder, I mean. You know, Rosemary, you’re really angry with her and Dad.”
“Wait. You’re not?”
“Of course I am. Thyme is, too. But not like you. I think we both can understand that they did a really crappy thing, but that they were probably in over their heads and panicked.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “They panicked? They’re adults. Adults who racked up a half-million dollars in debt and waltzed away, making it our problem.”
She was chewing on her lower lip. “Well, to be fair, we made it our problem. We could have refused to take over the resort and let the creditors have it. We chose to try to save it.”
“Do you regret that now?”
“No, of course not. We agreed we didn’t want to see the place paved over. It holds too many memories to let it go without a fight. Not to mention, I really think that we can turn it around and make it profitable once we dig ourselves out from the hole we’re in.”
I exhaled in relief. “Then what are you trying to say?”
“We have to own our decision. And using our energy sending negative vibes into the universe directed at Mom and Dad isn’t really helpful.”
I sighed and pushed my plate away, suddenly not hungry. “You think I’m judgmental. Is that what all that hippy-dippy lingo is getting at?”
“You have a finely developed sense of right and wrong,” she answered, the consummate diplomat.
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