by Linda Keir
“Our bar scene is still catching up, but I should have plenty of well-heeled customers who are looking for a showy bottle.”
“And you’ve got it displayed prominently?”
“Right up front in the locked cases with high-end Scotch and cigars.”
Preston pondered a moment and then said, “Close your eyes.”
Puzzled, Ian did as he was told. He heard a bottle’s neck tap the rim of a glass and then a single glug as something was poured.
“Open,” said Preston, handing him a crystal tumbler with a pinkie finger of amber liquid. “And drink. I guarantee you’ve never had anything like it.”
Ian lifted the glass to his lips and drank. It was bourbon, but not one of the smooth, ultra-aged single barrels that were currently so popular. It tasted familiar, but he couldn’t place it. And, if he was being honest with himself, it was just okay.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Old Forester. 1953.”
Ian suppressed a chuckle. “That tumbler looks like something from my grandparents’ bar.”
With a flourish, Preston produced the bottle and set it down on the counter so Ian could see for himself the vintage label and original price tag. “You sell these bottles one at a time, and all the details matter. They make better bourbons today, but you’re not selling them the best bourbon. You’re selling an experience: drinking as time machine. The buyer gets to taste it the way it tasted back then.”
Sipping again, Ian had to admit that seeing the old bottle sparked his imagination in a way that the blind tasting had not.
“People are paying hundreds of dollars for a single cocktail made with all-vintage pours. This stuff is by definition limited edition. There’s more of it around than you’d think, but the prices aren’t going to get any lower.”
“So, basically, you’re saying it’s a training issue,” said Ian.
“I’d be happy to schedule a session with your team the next time I’m in St. Louis,” said Preston. He grabbed a tumbler and poured himself a splash of the Old Forester. “I’ll come to you and work with your staff. Selling is selling. At some point you gotta grind it out.”
Ian knew the man had a point. But the clock was ticking on Simon’s loan. Just how long would the grind take? And how long could he keep his financial struggles secret from Andi?
For as long as she’d kept her secret from him?
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll show you my stores, and we can do dinner,” said Ian.
“Perfect,” said Preston as they clinked glasses. “Here’s to meeting you in St. Louis!”
Chapter Nine
“I can’t believe Dallas Walker’s body was in his car at the bottom of Lake Loomis this whole time!” Georgina exclaimed, missing the exit from Lambert Field toward I-70, easy enough to do even if she were looking at the road and not incredulously at Andi.
Georgina had offered days ago to pick Andi up, saying she had a home-shopping client to see in the Central West End, anyway. Translation: she wanted the freshest gossip from Glenlake. Andi couldn’t have canceled without giving her a full report over the phone and trying to explain why she preferred to take an Uber.
“Shocking. Isn’t it?”
“Crazy.”
Somehow, Andi felt shakier than she had all weekend. She wanted to think it was due to Georgina’s sharp U-turn, or the entitled way she piloted her snow-white Range Rover through traffic, but recounting everything to Georgina had made the reality of Dallas’s reappearance that much more, well, real.
“How weird is it that no one spotted a submerged car for so many years?” Georgina asked, checking her coiffed strawberry-blonde hair in the rearview mirror. Her bangle bracelets, straight off the display shelf at her Ladue Road boutique, jangled as she cut off a Ford Focus. “People swim there.”
“He wasn’t found anywhere near the swimming area,” Andi said. “It was on the other side of the lake.”
“So he drove his ridiculous car off that cliff?”
“That’s the working theory,” Andi said, unnerved that Georgina knew that much about the wooded area.
“He was always so moody and distracted. Don’t you think?”
“I guess,” Andi said, the low roil in her guts bubbling to a simmer. “But this year’s writer in residence and his class are spending the semester looking into it.”
“Say what?” Georgina asked, fumbling for something in the center console and missing the exit for the Inner Belt. “Shit!”
“It’s just as well. I-70 to Kingshighway is quicker.”
“I hate going that way,” she said—suburban white St. Louis code for I’m afraid to drive through the north side and most city neighborhoods in general.
“It’ll be fine,” Andi said. As much as she’d grown to love St. Louis, she still struggled with the often inscrutable, yet seemingly hardwired, socioeconomic, racial, and religious stratification that kept St. Louisans from venturing out of their various bubbles, both psychologically and physically.
“Looking into it how?”
“He’s a journalist, and they’re investigating what happened as some kind of project. Cassidy’s actually in the class.”
Georgina chuckled. “How about that for history repeating itself?”
“Meaning what?” Andi asked, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.
“Just that you took all those writer-in-residence classes yourself.”
“Like mother, like daughter, I guess,” Andi said with as much lightheartedness as she could muster.
Georgina applied the Bobbi Brown lipstick she’d finally wrested from the console as she exited the highway. “I assume she knows you were in Dallas’s class senior year?”
“Of course,” Andi said.
“Including the fact that he was quite the hottie?” Georgina asked, sounding like the seventeen-year-old version of herself.
“I didn’t think that little bit of information was necessary,” Andi said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Did you really think he was hot?”
“Didn’t you?” Georgina asked.
“I wasn’t the one who flirted with him all the time,” Andi said, feeling the words catch in her throat.
“I flirted with everyone back then,” Georgina said. “Thank goodness you played matchmaker for me when you did. If you hadn’t, who knows how much wilder I would have been?”
Georgina lived the good life with her successful lawyer hubby and their passel of ginger-haired kids. Andi had set it all in motion. She’d sown the seeds for Georgina to get together with Tommy Harkins during senior year by pointing out that he was always stealing glances at her during poetry class. She’d fixed Georgina up again in college when she came down from Trinity for a weekend visit. William was a cute, smart fraternity brother of Ian’s with a weakness for sassy redheads. Georgina had a weakness for cute guys.
Just as Andi expected, it was love at first sight.
“What does Cassidy think about our once-beloved Dallas?” Georgina asked.
“Beloved? Speak for yourself,” Andi forced herself to say, giving her a playful punch on the shoulder. “You and he never . . . ?”
“For god’s sake,” Georgina said. “He was our teacher.”
“Our hottie of a teacher,” Andi added, copying Georgina’s tone.
“So you admit you had a huge crush on him, too.”
“I—”
“Don’t try to tell me you didn’t stare at him like a lovesick cow from the beginning of class until he . . .”
Disappeared. The unsaid word hung in the air between them.
“I’m not sure how you noticed, given how busy you were having the world’s stormiest relationship with Tommy.” Knowing she had to say something to divert Georgina from going there, she added: “And, by the way, I saw him at parents’ weekend. He goes by Tom now.”
“Seriously?” Georgina’s voice increased by an octave. “How does he look?”
“Like he’s definitely not the one who got away.”<
br />
“Too bad, so sad,” said Georgina breezily. “So back to your schoolgirl crush on Dallas—”
“Georgina, stop it. The man’s dead. It’s a tragedy.”
“I just remember wondering if you broke up with Ian because you were hoping Dallas would notice you.”
“Hardly,” Andi forced herself to say. “I decided I was too mature for him and felt impatient, smothered by his high school–boy nonsense.” She laughed as they turned into Portland Place. “That damn poetry class had me thinking I knew everything.”
“Little did we know we knew nothing then,” Georgina said with uncharacteristic poetry as they pulled up to the house. Back then, Andi would have laughed had someone told her that despite being from Beverly Hills, her adult self would be continually awed by the grandeur and sheer beauty of her 1904 World’s Fair–era limestone mansion. She felt relieved to be home, away from Glenlake. Just the opposite of how she’d felt as a girl.
“Too bad Sylvie dropped off the grid,” Georgina said.
“Or you’d already be on the phone with her?”
“Pretty much,” Georgina said with a sly smile. “It’s too interesting a story to keep to myself. With all those wacky theories about what happened to him, can you believe he was right there all along?”
As Georgina finally unlocked the car doors, Andi replayed the conversation she’d had during the stickball game with Mrs. Henry, who had been her favorite teacher and dorm mom, and the only one who’d ever come close to filling the hole where her real mom was supposed to be. She was now the grandmotherly head of the English Department.
I know this is going to sound bad, Mrs. Henry had said with a sigh. But we wouldn’t have cared about Dallas at all if he drove away and lived his life, so I don’t know why we’re making such a fuss now. The visiting writers are good for the school, but they’ve always been more trouble than they’re worth.
“Welcome home!” Biz said, greeting Andi in the foyer with the lukewarm hug she had long ago learned was her mother-in-law’s bony equivalent of the bosomy embraces given by her Jewish relatives.
Biz and Georgina greeted each other with polite air-kisses and an even lighter embrace while Rusty, the family’s middle-aged Irish setter, startled Andi by wetly licking her fingers before she could pull her hand away.
“Wonderful to see you,” Biz and Georgina told each other, practically in unison, followed by the expected “You’re looking well.”
“You were so sweet to fetch Andi from the airport,” Biz continued, smoothing her silky gray hair as if buoyed by the obligatory compliment. “I called for pizza from this charming little place off Euclid, and it was just delivered. Will you stay for lunch, Georgina?”
Andi knew her mother-in-law didn’t actually mean it. She habitually ordered a bit less than enough, even without accounting for a guest, but would never be so impolite as to not extend an invitation.
“Sounds delicious, but I have a trunkful of clothing I have to bring over to a client,” Georgina said, raised well enough that she’d never dream of imposing.
Possibly having smelled the pizza, the twins came bounding down the stairs, looking, however improbably, taller than when Andi had left on Friday. They were trailed by their slightly out-of-breath but still handsome grandfather, whom Owen took after. Whitney, with her straight light-brown hair and elegant posture, was already a dead ringer for a teenage Biz.
“I always forget what a trek it is from the third floor,” Cope said, absentmindedly carrying a Ping-Pong paddle and waiting for Whitney and Owen to hug Andi before greeting her himself.
“Can you imagine how hot and sweaty it would have been to dance up there, back in the day?” Georgina asked.
Once ballrooms, the big open areas that spanned the top floor of most of the grand old homes in the neighborhood had long ago been transitioned into studies, art studios, or rec rooms—primarily due to the impracticality of throwing a big party two stories above the kitchen. That, and the inability to properly cool or heat such a large, drafty room in what was effectively the attic.
“It’s always been a perfect space for the young people to be with their friends,” Biz said politely but dismissively, letting Georgina know she’d uttered the definitive word on the subject.
Andi was less concerned about Georgina’s opinion of the third floor than the too-grown-up side-eyes and smiles Owen and Whitney exchanged. There was little chance they wouldn’t get into Glenlake, but given Owen’s predilection for boyish risk-taking and Whitney’s budding beauty and popularity, she shuddered at the possibility of having to play third-floor parent patrol throughout high school parties.
“Cassidy says hi to everyone,” she said, trying not to get ahead of herself.
“How was the weekend?” Biz asked.
“And how’s that writing center coming along?” Cope added, speaking over her. He’d finally resigned from the board of trustees just as the fund-raising campaign for the newest campus building was getting underway.
“Of course it was great to spend time with Cassidy, and the writing center is nearing completion, which is just going to make the campus that much more—”
“Get to the interesting part!” Georgina interrupted.
“There’s an interesting part?” Owen asked sarcastically.
Whitney raised her eyebrows. “Is it about Cassidy?”
“Not exactly,” Andi said.
“They found—” Georgina blurted, before thinking better of it. “Sorry. It’s your news.”
“It’s no one’s news, exactly,” Andi stated. “Do you remember Dallas Walker?”
“Familiar name,” Cope said as though leafing through a mental file of everyone he’d ever known. “Wasn’t he one of the writers in residence way back when?”
“They found his car in Lake Loomis early last week. With human remains inside.”
“He’s dead?” asked Biz sharply, with a quick glance at Cope.
“They think it’s him, but they still have to make sure,” Andi said.
“That’s freaky,” Whitney said.
“Even more freaky is the fact that your mom and I knew the dead guy,” Georgina told her. “He was our poetry teacher when we were seniors.”
“He disappeared in the middle of the year,” Cope said, nodding with the memory. “That was quite the headache.”
“Wait a minute,” Biz said, waving her hands. “Back up. He was found . . . in the lake?”
“By a group of students attempting to revive the Freshman Plunge,” said Andi.
“Things like this don’t happen at Glenlake,” muttered her mother-in-law.
“And all this time we thought he’d just taken off somewhere,” added Georgina. “I mean, he seemed like the kind of guy who might do that.”
“So cool,” Owen said, visibly excited by the prospect of a body and a mystery entering their lives. “I can’t wait to be at Glenlake.”
“Speaking of ‘cool,’ I’m afraid I’m going to have to reheat the pizza,” Biz said.
“And I should go,” Georgina said, pulling her phone from her purse along with her keys.
As soon as they’d said their goodbyes and thank-yous, and the door was firmly closed behind Georgina, Biz rolled her eyes. “That girl is just like her mother. She’s going to be on the horn with every single person who’s ever gone to Glenlake by the time she gets home. Thank goodness they didn’t have cell phones back then.”
It was true. Fortunately, while Georgina could be trusted to broadcast any and all information that was dropped in her lap, she wasn’t any more intellectually curious now than she had been back then.
Which was something Andi could use to her advantage.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to.
Chapter Ten
“Quiet and don’t move,” Cassidy admonished Tate in a mock-scolding voice, worried as she did that she sounded like a schoolmarm.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, confirming her fears in that honeyed Georgia drawl that had sou
nded so stupid in ninth grade but was sounding sexier every day.
Cassidy flipped open her laptop and launched Skype. Mom was online, so she initiated a video call.
Tate wiggled his big toe in the hollow of her knee and nearly made her drop the laptop just as Mom’s face filled the screen, eyes a little unfocused, suggesting she couldn’t quite see her yet. Cassidy composed herself just before their eyes met.
“Hi, Mom!” Chipper, cheery Girl Wonder at Boarding School.
Tate rolled his eyes. Cassidy tunneled her vision. Mom was at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, her large evening glass of wine not quite out of frame. Parents’ weekend had been only two weeks ago, but she looked older. More tired, anyway.
“Hi, honey. How was your day?” Then, without waiting for an answer, she lifted her head and called offscreen, “Ian! It’s Cassidy!”
They made out-of-sync niceties for a few seconds until Dad showed up, standing a couple of steps behind Mom, his face shadowed in the dimly lit kitchen.
“Hi, Cassidy.”
“I’m calling about the Mystery of the Waterlogged Poet,” she said. “It’s now officially part of my homework.”
“Great,” both of them said in slightly offbeat Skype unison.
Mom slugged wine. “Is it a mystery?”
“It’s an investigation. Mr. Kelly said the Lake County Sheriff’s Office is ‘working the case.’ He’s hoping to get one of the detectives to visit our class to talk about it.”
For a moment, neither of her parents moved, making Cassidy think the stream was frozen.
“I was wondering if you could tell me more about what Dallas Walker was like. I mean, if he didn’t go missing until two-thirds of the way through the school year, and you guys both had stuff with him, you must have known him pretty well, right?”
Tate looked up from his own laptop to mouth, Smooooth.
Yes, it was an abrupt transition, but she figured they’d had some time to process and remember since she’d first questioned them at brunch. Besides, Mr. Kelly had told the class that reporters elicited the best answers when they avoided beating around the bush and got right to business before their subjects had time to prepare. Since she didn’t have any real subjects, and her parents were her only sources of firsthand information, she might as well practice, right?
