Diamonds & Disguises

by Laina Turner

  That was quite a statement coming from Jared. He naturally had a fair bit of drama surrounding him most of the time and seemed perfectly happy with it. I raised my eyebrows questioningly.

  “Stop, I know what you’re thinking but really. He’s worse than me. Way worse. But who cares about Greg. What’s going on with you? I saw the news and have been waiting for your call. You never even texted me back. I can’t believe someone was murdered in your store. Again. That’s crazy.”

  “I never got any texts. They must have come through while I was phoneless.” I got him caught up on the murder, the mugging and everything else that had been going on. For once he didn’t interrupt me.

  “Wow, you’ve had quite the week. I still can’t believe you didn’t call me,” he chided.

  “I’ve been kind of busy.”

  “Anyway, I can’t believe Cooper actually hired help. Good for him. And good for you. You must be happy.”

  “I’m thrilled. Hopefully that means he’ll start spending more time in Chicago.” Part of me wanted to tell him about the botched proposal but I didn’t want to jinx the next one. I would just have to wait and tell that story after Cooper proposed again.

  Jared and I gossiped, and people watched and had a couple more margaritas before we called it a night.

  We were waiting for a taxi when I thought I saw Bill across the street. I thought if he was with Andrea I could introduce them to Jared. I had a feeling Jared and Andrea would hit it off and, even though I was still on the fence about her, I wanted to move past that and be friends. I felt I owed that much to Cooper. He wasn’t with Andrea, but I squinted to get a better look and it was Bill. He was with someone else I recognized, but not because I knew him personally. This guy had had his picture plastered all over the news recently and all over social media. It was the currently hot scandal. His name was Sawyer Thompson and he was on trial for money laundering. What was Bill doing with someone associated with the mob and getting ready to stand trial? Not that I didn’t believe in innocent until proven guilty, but Sawyer Thompson had quite the criminal track record. It wouldn’t look good for an employee of Cooper’s to be hanging around an alleged criminal. Did Cooper know about this? I reached for my phone but then paused. Was I starting trouble unnecessarily? Was telling this to Cooper just going to make his life more stressful—when all I saw was Bill standing on the sidewalk with this guy. Maybe Bill was asking him for directions and this was a complete coincidence.

  Just then a black town car pulled up and both Sawyer Thompson and Bill got in. So much for coincidence. After a moment, I put my phone in my purse. Not sure what to do I pulled my phone back out and called Willie. He’d know what to do.

  Chapter 16

  I’d been home for hours when I heard a key in the lock. It jolted me out of the half-asleep thing I was doing on the couch while trying to wait up for Cooper and that must be him.

  There were dark circles under his eyes, which looked exhausted when he walked through the door.

  “Can I get you something? Decaf coffee or hot chocolate? With or without Baileys?”

  He gave a tired smile that made my heart melt. “Decaf with Baileys would be wonderful if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Of course not,” I said jumping up. “You sit down, and I’ll go make us both some.”

  In the few minutes it took me to make the coffee I came back to find him on the couch with his eyes closed. I thought he was asleep until his eyes snapped open. He must have heard my footsteps.

  I handed him his mug and sat down beside him. “Everything OK?”

  He sighed. “No. And it’s really weird. The cameras stopped working for a period of time, which coincidentally was the same time as when someone tried to get into my office.”

  “I thought you had back up cameras.” Since Cooper owned a business that dealt in security, he had state of the art everything and always joked he had triple backups for the backups, just in case.

  “We do. Which makes it even weirder. Everything went blank for about ten minutes. The same ten minutes the guy monitoring the cameras got a message that there was a delivery. Which there wasn’t any delivery, so it was a purposeful distraction.”

  “This seems like quite a coincidence. Your biggest client has a security breach and now this?”

  “You’re right. And you know I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “What are you thinking?” I said taking a sip of my coffee, which was now almost cold.

  “No one could have gotten this far without knowing how we operate. Same with the client. Too many unknown factors for these things to be random.”

  “You think this is all intentional? That someone who works for you did this? Why? What could possibly be a motive?”

  “I don’t know. Anything super confidential is housed on my hard drive or stored in the cloud, only accessible with my credentials. So even if they found where important files are kept ,they wouldn’t be able to access it. And I checked. No one has even tried.”

  “There’s nothing else in your office someone might want that’s not as encrypted or whatever?”

  “No.”

  “Then what could the purpose of doing these things to Sands Security, causing these problems?”

  He rubbed his temples. “I’m at a loss. It’s not like I have any enemies…that I know of.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “To start, we’re going to shut down operations tomorrow and spend all day interviewing everyone. Although, I don’t know why someone would do this, it has to be an inside job.”

  “That sounds horrible. I’m so sorry you have to deal with it.” Not to mention it sounded like an impossible task, but I wasn’t going to bring that up. It’s not like he didn’t already know it.

  In his line of work, a security breach could damage his company beyond repair. I’d planned on bringing up seeing Bill with Sawyer Thompson. Willie had told me I should, and I knew he was right. But did I really need to drop this on him now? Though what if Bill was behind what was happening? The security breach at his big client happened before he hired Bill so that wouldn’t make sense. I felt a small sense of relief at those thoughts and decided I didn’t need to tell him. Not just yet.

  Willie said he would see if he could find anything out about Bill and Andrea, so I’d wait to hear from him. I didn’t want it to look like I was against Bill and trying to find reasons for Cooper to be suspicious.

  “Any more news on the murder?”

  “No. I’m trying to put it out of my mind. Leave it to the police.”

  He glanced at me with a slight look of disbelief on his face. I couldn’t exactly blame him. He knew I wasn’t normally content to sit on the sidelines. Which of course I wasn’t, but I couldn’t see any good to come of bringing it up.

  “Can I use your laptop for a minute?”

  Crap. I also hadn’t told him about the mugging. I’d genuinely forgot about that. How crazy were things that I could forget about something like that?

  “Um, I left it at work. I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t think you took your laptop to work.”

  “I don’t usually but I did today, which is why I forgot it. I forgot I brought it to work, so I didn’t bring it home.”

  I hated lying to him, but he accepted that answer. Of course, because he didn’t expect me to be lying. Now I’d held three pieces of information from him in as many minutes and I felt horrible.

  “I’m going to some party on Saturday with Bess Anders,” I said to change the subject.

  “Do I know her?”

  “No. She’s a customer at the store. I’m going because it will be good for business.”

  I started talking about what I was going to wear when I noticed his eyes fluttering. He was asleep. Probably as much from my boring talk about clothes as from his stressful day and the Baileys.

  I got up quietly and covered him with a blanket, turning off the lights. I knew if I woke him, he’d probably insist on going
back to the office and he needed his sleep.

  Chapter 17

  “Presley Thurman,” I said when I pulled up to the gate and the guard asked me my name.

  He looked at some papers on a clipboard. Presumably with the list of names of the people allowed to pass the gates. It made me wonder what they did to the people who weren’t on the list. Did people try to get in if they knew they weren’t on the list?

  For a minute, I was nervous he would tell me he couldn’t find my name and to leave, but that didn’t happen. I soon found my way up the long winding drive. It was beautifully lined with trees and flowers and at the end opened up to the clubhouse and several other buildings that all seemed connected. I found a spot that said guest parking and pulled my car in. I parked my poor beat up Kia in between a Lexus and a Tesla and grabbed my bag with pictures of the masks to use as visual aids and headed up the cobblestone walkway to the main building, which was gorgeous to look at but not the easiest to navigate in heels.

  When I walked in the building, I went over the concierge who directed me to the meeting room and I headed down the hall in that direction. I started to get nervous. Not sure if it was because I was presenting my idea or because I was hoping to question some potential suspects of Susan’s murder. Probably a combination of both.

  “There you are, Presley. I wondered if you were here yet,” Leigh called out. I could see her standing outside a doorway of what I assumed was the meeting room. I looked at my watch to see if maybe I was late. She made it sound like she’d been waiting forever but my watch said I was fifteen minutes early.

  I refrained from rolling my eyes and instead put a smile on my face. “I’m here, ready to present,” I said cheerfully. I was happy to address the committee, because this would be great exposure for my business.

  The gala would help bolster Silk’s reputation and might get me the information I was looking for on Susan’s murder. A double win in my eyes.

  “We’re still waiting on some others, but help yourself to some coffee and introduce yourself to some of the ladies.”

  “Thanks.” This was perfect, I thought as I sat my stuff down and headed over to the table where the coffee pot was. Having time to mingle might give me the chance to meet Kitty and Theresa. If they were here and if I could figure out who was who. Except for Leigh, I didn’t recognize anyone here upon first glance.

  I pulled out my phone and went to the pictures. I had the foresight to screenshot images of Kitty and Theresa from their Facebook pages when I looked at them the other night and glanced at them to refresh my memory of what they looked like. I scanned the room again. One blond woman caught my eye. It might be Kitty, but I couldn’t see her face clearly as someone stood in between us. I walked over in that direction and when I got closer, I could tell it was her. She was talking to another woman so I could easily go up to them and introduce myself and join the conversation. This might be my chance.

  I topped off my coffee and headed in that direction. I’d just reached them and started to introduce myself when Leigh called out for all the ladies to take their seats. Dammit. Oh well. There was still time. That’s what I get for wanting more coffee, I thought.

  Leigh spoke for a while on the details of the event and I did my thing showing the mask options and telling them the idea of one hundred different ones and needing to show the ticket before being allowed to purchase one. The response was positive, which was a good thing since I’d already ordered the masks.

  Leigh had been confident they’d love them, and she wasn’t wrong. Leigh adjourned the meeting after a few more topics they needed to discuss and announced the staff would be bringing in some pastries, more coffee and iced tea and to please stay and socialize. So it was now or never. I needed to talk to Kitty and Theresa before they left.

  Kitty was standing about two feet away from me, so I went up to her first. “Hi, Kitty. I’m Presley Thurman,” I said, holding out my hand which she took hesitantly.

  “Yes, I know. Leigh introduced you less than two hours ago,” she said sharply.

  Wasn’t she a ray of sunshine. “Yes, well, I wanted to say hi and tell you I love that dress you’re wearing. Is it Chanel?”

  She seemed surprised I knew my couture because she raised her eyebrows and looked to be thinking about whether to grace me with a comment or not when she apparently decided she would. My lucky day, I thought, doing a mental eye roll.

  “Yes, it is. From their new line.”

  “Of course. You have excellent taste.”

  Kitty smiled a little and I sensed a bit of a thaw. Nothing like a compliment to open the door.

  “Your wedding ring is gorgeous.” I’d thought a lot after receiving the invitation to come to this meeting how to best approach Kitty and Theresa in order to get a sense of how they felt about Susan and if their dislike was enough to commit murder. I needed to get on the topic of marriage and see if they gave anything away by their answers or demeanor. I could see Bess looking at me out of the corner of her eye and she gave a little smile. She knew exactly what I was up to. No great surprise since she’s the one who gave me their names in the first place. She seemed to be enjoying this.

  “Thank you.”

  “How long have you been married? My boyfriend and I are getting to that stage so lately I’ve been fascinated with other people’s marriages,” I rushed to add when she gave me a funny look. I hadn’t thought it that strange of a question, but maybe it was against some social protocol I didn’t know about.

  “Thirty-two years,” she said but it sounded forced like she didn’t really want to talk about it.

  “Wow. That’s a long time. What’s the secret? I mean how do you stay loyal to one person for all those years?”

  I could tell she didn’t like that question. She bristled a little, but she knew that not answering my seemingly innocent question would make her look bad. Something I was counting on.

  “Tolerance.”

  “Oh. Tolerance for what?” If I hadn’t already talked to Bess about this, I would have thought tolerance an odd answer but under the circumstances it didn’t seem odd at all.

  “Excuse me. There’s someone over there I have to speak to. It was so nice to meet you.”

  As she abruptly walked away Bess walked over. “So, did she admit to killing Susan?” she whispered.

  “Ha. No, but she did say the secret to a long marriage was tolerance and then got out of the conversation as fast as she could.”

  Bess chuckled. “None of us like to admit our lives aren’t perfect.”

  “Can you introduce me to Theresa?” I said. I figured since she found it amusing I was asking questions she wouldn’t mind helping and it would hopefully make Theresa a little more willing to talk than if I just walked up to her cold.

  “Sure. C’mon.”

  We walked over to where Theresa was standing with a few ladies. Kitty being one of them and she walked away as we walked up. She clearly didn’t want to talk to me, but luckily no one else seemed to notice. Though that didn’t mean she killed Susan. Just that she didn’t want to answer any more of my questions regarding her marriage and who could blame her?

  “Ladies, I know Leigh already introduced her to the group, but I wanted you to meet Presley. I personally love her store. If you haven’t been there you absolutely must go there. The fall styles are divine.” Kitty stood a few feet away and heard Bess’ comment and I couldn’t read the expression on her face, but there was something in what Bess said that piqued her interest.

  The ladies were very sweet telling me how much they liked Silk, which was nice, but I wasn’t as interested in what they had to say about Silk as I was talking to Theresa who wasn’t saying anything. She stood a little behind the group.

  “Have you been in before?” I asked her. “You look familiar.” That was a lie. I never saw her in Silk before, but I figured it was a good conversation starter.

  “Isn’t Silk where Susan Milford was murdered?” one of the women who I believe Bess in
troduced as Beth said and I cringed a little.

  “Oh, that’s right,” one of the other ladies said. “Were you there when it happened?”

  This was just what I didn’t want to happen, though I knew it was a risk. Of course it would be an interesting topic of conversation. They knew Susan. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. I was actually a little surprised when Leigh introduced me and no one mentioned it.

  “So sad what happened to Susan,” someone murmured, and the women started chatting about Susan and how horrible it was that she died.

  “Were you friends with her?” I asked Theresa. Thinking the question didn’t seem so out of place since now it was the topic of conversation.

  She shook her head. “I barely knew her.” I caught the other ladies glancing at one another at that comment, which made me wonder why. My guess is there was something they knew that I didn’t about Theresa and Susan.

  “She was friends with Kevin, wasn’t she?” Bess said.

  I didn’t miss the glowering look Theresa gave her before answering, which made me assume Kevin was her husband and maybe he was too good of friends with Susan for Theresa’s liking. “I wouldn’t say friends exactly.”

  Bess gave a knowing look that didn’t sit well with Theresa, as she excused herself and walked away. Leaving, I assumed as she walked out the meeting room door. Well I was two for two in failing to get any information.

  “That wasn’t very nice, Bess,” one of the ladies said.

  “It’s not a big secret Susan was keeping the company of several of our husbands. Theresa needs to wake up. Instead of pretending it didn’t happen she needs to use it to her advantage.”

  “Bess!” one of the ladies exclaimed and looked at me and back to Bess. It didn’t appear she was too happy about Bess airing dirty laundry in front of me. Honestly, I wish I didn’t have this information.

  “She already knows. I told her. Now, who wants to try another one of those divine desserts?” Bess said and walked over to the table where the staff had sat down an assortment of pastries.