Her Sister's Secrets

by V. J. Chambers

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing,” she muttered. “It’s awful to speak ill of the dead. Forget I said anything.” She looked around. “Have you seen Drew?”

  “Actually, I did. I was talking to him. But then he left.”

  “Did you see which way he went?”

  I pointed in the general direction that he’d taken off in. “Maybe that way?”

  “Thanks,” she said. She started off in that direction too, but then she stopped and turned back to me. “I really am sorry about your sister. It’s awful what happened to her.” And this time, she did sound genuine.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Awful.”

  She gave me a sympathetic smile, and then turned and left.

  Huh. Well, that was strange too. Maybe I had a suspect. Sure, I didn’t have much to go on there, other than Tania was rude and didn’t seem too broken up about Violet. And maybe I was only suspecting her because I had never liked her, not even when we were kids. All the girls at that snobby prep school were mean to the daughters of the servants who went to the school with them.

  I remember one particular time that I had been absent from school because I was sick, and I was trying to ask Tania if we’d had any problems in math to do the day before, and she had turned to the other rich girls and said, “Do you hear something? I don’t hear anything, do you?”

  Childish, sure, but utterly embarrassing to me at the time.

  Anyway, maybe I didn’t exactly have a strong case against her, but I could easily picture Tania as a killer. She seemed like she had it in her, if you know what I mean.

  I decided I would go back to the kitchen and talk to Liza specifically about Tania, see if she knew anything about Tania interacting with Violet, about any arguments between them. Hadn’t Liza said that Tania used to be part of the party planning before she and Drew broke up? And why had Tania’s relationship with Drew ended anyway? All of that was very, very suspicious.

  I turned around, heading toward the kitchen, and there, right in front of me, was Jonah Fletcher. Only he wasn’t walking on the beach in rolled-up jeans with a book. Instead, he was in a tux, looking coiffed and handsome. He had a calla lily in the lapel on of his tux jacket. We locked eyes, and it was one of those things where it was too awkward to look away and pretend I hadn’t seen him.

  So, I smiled and gave him a little wave. “Uh, hi again.”

  He nodded at me. “Miss Farrow, right?”

  “You can call me Emilia,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Emilia. And I’m—”

  “Jonah,” I said. “I remember. I mean, if it’s okay for me to call you by your first name, that is. If you don’t want me to do that—”

  “Jonah will be fine.”

  “Good.” I smiled.

  “Good.” He smiled.

  And then we were quiet.

  Our smiles began to falter.

  “Well, um, nice to see you,” I said.

  At the same time he said, “Lovely night, isn’t it?”

  I cleared my throat. “Oh, very, very lovely night. It’s, um, just wonderful weather.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m keeping you from going on your way.”

  “No,” I said. “I just thought that, you know, you wanted to be on your way. D-do you?”

  He chuckled. “Well, I truth be told, I hate these things.”

  “Things?”

  “Parties,” he said. “But I come, because it’s good for business.”

  “Oh,” I said. “What business are you in?”

  “I created an app,” he said. “Maybe you’ve heard of it. Wundertime.”

  “That’s you?” I was surprised. Everyone used that app. “Wow, that’s… Wow.”

  He laughed again.

  I laughed. “Sorry. I guess I’m not very good at small talk. I need to brush up on my skills.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I always feel a bit out of sorts trying to make small talk as well. Like I said, I hate these things. You look as though you belong, however. You look stunning, and you seem right at home.”

  I looked stunning? I felt a little heat creep into my cheeks. My first impression of this guy was that he was a jerk. But maybe I was wrong.

  “But I guess you aren’t.”

  “What?” I said.

  “At home,” he said. “Right? You aren’t paying for that house yourself, and I looked up your blog. There’s no way you could afford a dress like this, no matter how nicely it suits you, so you’re not at home. You don’t belong here.”

  Okay, so maybe my first impression of him was actually closer to the mark than I had thought. “Right,” I said sarcastically, “I guess I don’t have the cash to buy my way in.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Sure, he didn’t. I smiled tightly. “You know, the truth is, I do need to be on my way. Thank you for the truly inspired conversation, Jonah. Have a pleasant night.” I turned my back on him and stalked off before he could say anything else.

  I went into the bathroom, and I looked up Jonah Fletcher on my phone. The first search result said he was a multi-billionaire. Billions of dollars. No wonder he was a jerk.

  After I put myself together in the mirror, I headed back to the kitchen as I’d planned. But Liza wasn’t there.

  I waited around for a while, asking a few of the women who came in and out with trays if they’d known Violet. But all of them were too busy to talk, and they all told me that I shouldn’t be in there, and to go back to the party.

  I didn’t go back, though.

  I left.

  I took off my shoes, gathered up my skirt, and walked back down the beach to my house.

  The dark waves lapped against the dark shore, and when I looked into the horizon, it was hard to tell the ocean from the sky, both were so black and far away. That party had been a bust. Why had I even bothered going?

  The truth was, Jonah Fletcher was right. I didn’t belong there, and it was painfully obvious. But if I wanted to find out what happened to my sister, I was going to have to figure out a way to belong. Because I owed it to her. I had to. For Violet.

  * * *

  I was nervous about meeting with Drew Wainwright the next day. I wasn’t even sure what we were going to be doing, so I didn’t know what to wear. Should I try to dress up and impress him? I needed to get information from him, and I thought that he’d be more likely to talk to me if I looked pretty and approachable, so I settled on one of the sundresses that was hanging in the closet.

  Well, okay, I tried on every single one of the sundresses first, and then I finally settled on one that was white with little blue flowers all over it. It was a frilly little girly thing, but it came down to just below my knees, so I felt covered in it. It was comfortable as well.

  Then I had to decide on shoes.

  I wasn’t sure what to do.

  Should I dress the outfit up with heels and jewelry, or should make it more casual with a pair of flip flops?

  In the end, I decided on flip flops since I was going to be walking across the beach again.

  It was hot and humid at 11:00. I brought a bottle of water with me, and I took my time getting over there. I didn’t want to look like a sweaty mess when I arrived.

  But when I got there, I realized I didn’t even know where to meet him. We hadn’t talked that through. Should I go to the front door, or should I sneak into the kitchens again?

  My first inclination was the kitchens, but that was part of the problem with my approach the night before. If I kept behaving as if I didn’t belong here, by going into the servants’ entrances, then I never would belong. So, instead, I hiked up and around the house to the front door.

  Swallowing hard, I rang the doorbell.

  Then I waited.

  I waited a while. I was about to ring the doorbell again when it was opened by a woman who looked to be a housekeeper or something. “Hi,” she said. “If you’re selling something, o
r you’re with the Jehovah’s Witnesses—”

  “I’m here to see Drew,” I said. Really. This sundress? Would a Jehovah’s Witness wear something that showed so much skin?

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, come in, then.”

  I stepped into the foyer of the house. It was minimalist and elegant, with beige walls and decor. Hanging from the ceiling was a chandelier that resembled protons rotating around an atoms’ nucleus. There was a wall fountain, water softly traveling over a flat jagged stone like a moving painting.

  “Who should I tell him is here?” she asked.

  “Emilia,” I said.

  She nodded and then disappeared into the house.

  The air conditioning was cold. I rubbed my bare arms. If we were going to be spending our time inside the house, I was going to freeze to death.

  But then Drew came out into the foyer. He was wearing a pair of swimming trunks with an unbuttoned shirt on top, and he seemed very uncovered to me.

  I looked away, feeling a little flustered. Drew Wainwright was kind of… toned and tan. And, wow, those were very defined stomach muscles. I swallowed.

  “Hey, you’re here,” he said.

  I looked back up at him, forcing myself to look at his face, not his body. “Yup,” I said.

  “Great,” he said. “I was thinking we could go out on the boat. It’ll be more private there. We can talk without worrying about anyone bothering us.” He gestured at the bare foyer as if there were zillions of prying ears all waiting to spy on us.

  “Oh, okay,” I said. A boat ride sounded nice.

  “You want to follow me in your car, then?” he said. “We’ll need to go down to the marina, and if you wanted to go back home from there, you could.”

  “Well, actually, I walked here, so…”

  “You walked here. From where?”

  I pointed in the direction of my house. “I’m staying next door. I, um, I wanted to be close to where Violet was working.”

  “Smart,” he said, nodding. “That way, you can immerse yourself in her world.”

  I nodded. “Exactly.”

  “All right,” he said. “Well, then, we’ll ride together.” He flashed me a white-toothed grin.

  I looked away again. What was wrong with me? I was usually not thrown so off-kilter by attractive men. Of course, they usually weren’t half-dressed, and I usually wasn’t alone with them, and they usually weren’t inviting me to go on rides on their private boats.

  “Come on.” He headed for the door outside, and I followed him.

  He crossed the driveway to his Lexus LX, and he opened the passenger side door to take out a cooler. “Just move this so you can sit here,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  We got into the car and pulled out of the driveway.

  I knew it wasn’t a long drive to the marina, but I wondered if we shouldn’t use the time to talk about Violet. “So,” I said. “This might be a weird thing to ask, but about Tania Freeman?”

  “No, I don’t want to talk about Tania,” he said.

  “Oh, I just wondered if—”

  “Okay, maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe I will have to explain it all to you. You probably have questions. But let’s wait until we’re out on the water with the sun on our faces. It’ll all be much easier to deal with at that point.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s fine.” I guessed that was fine. He had put that in a really weird way. I did have questions. I had told him I wanted to speak with him because I had questions, but the way he’d said that made it sound like it was a separate issue. What questions would I have about Tania?

  He turned the music up in the car, just a hair too loud to comfortably talk over it. It was some pop band that had been popular when we were in high school. I knew all the words to the songs, and it was easy to bob my head and think of an easier time, back when none of this had mattered, when both my mother and Violet were alive.

  But soon enough, we reached the marina, and then we were occupied with getting the cooler on the boat and getting the vessel out on the ocean. Drew grabbed the boat’s keys from a hiding place under a cushion on one of the boat’s bench seats, which seemed awfully trusting to me, leaving the keys right there on the boat, but I guessed it was safe enough.

  I didn’t know a lot about boats, but Drew’s seemed impressive. It had a little cabin beneath the deck, with a bedroom and a kitchen and a sleek circular couch around a glass table. I didn’t get a chance to look around there too much, though, because Drew just grabbed some glasses and a knife (“for the cheese,” he explained), and then went back up to the deck.

  Cheese? There was cheese?

  Actually, there was an entire lunch in that cooler of his. He said it was just leftovers from the party, because the staff hadn’t had time to make anything fresh today, and that he was sorry.

  Sorry? For bringing all this food?

  There was a pitcher of bloody marys as well. He poured one for each of us and unwrapped celery sticks to garnish them with. He clinked his glass against mine. “To Violet.”

  “To Violet,” I said. And then I felt choked up. I had to look away.

  When I got myself together and looked back at him, he was on the other side of the boat, settling himself into a chair. He put his drink in the cup holder on the chair’s arm, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. There was another chair next to his. I guessed I could go sit next to him. But he hadn’t invited me. I took several long gulps of my bloody mary, hoping to get some liquid courage to know what to do in this situation. But that turned out to be a really stupid idea, because the bloody mary mix was pretty spicy, so I started coughing and nearly spilled my drink.

  Drew sat up. “You okay?”

  I nodded, still coughing.

  He started to get up.

  But I gestured at him with one hand to sit back down. I turned my back, looking out at the sea, glittering in the late morning light, and I got myself under control. When I turned back, he was perched on the edge of the chair, looking concerned.

  I made my way over to him and sat down. I put my drink in a cup holder as well. Maybe that was enough of that for me. I wasn’t used to drinking so early in the day.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I like my bloody mary spicy.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. I looked down at my dress to make sure I hadn’t somehow spilled on it. But it was pristine. I took a deep breath. God, I felt like I was making a fool of myself. “Is it okay to talk now? Can I ask you about Violet?”

  He sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s all so hard to talk about.”

  It was? “You and Violet were close, then?”

  He gave me an odd look. “Yes. Of course we were.”

  Of course they were. What? “You got close planning parties, then?”

  “Maybe it started that way,” he said. He got up out of his chair and went to the railing on the deck. He gripped it. “You want to go swimming?”

  “Swimming?” I was completely thrown. Again.

  “Yeah, it’s great out here. The fish sometimes nibble your toes, but it doesn’t hurt or anything. It just kind of tickles.”

  “I came out here to talk,” I said.

  “Don’t you like to swim?” he said, turning to me.

  “I just… I thought we were going to talk about Violet.”

  “Can’t we work up to it?” he said. “You know, relax for a little while? Because if what you’re saying is true, if she was…” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Killed. If she was killed, then it makes it all so much worse.”

  “I guess I didn’t realize you were so affected by all this,” I said.

  “How could I not be?” He glanced at me, shaking his head. Then he picked up his glass and drained the rest of the bloody mary in one long draught. He set it back in the cup holder and walked past me, heading down below the deck again. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder.

  I sighed. I got up. I followed h
im. But as I went down the steps behind him, a horrid thought occurred to me. Maybe Drew should be a suspect as well. Maybe he had killed Violet. He’d reacted so strangely when I’d floated the idea last night, and then he’d immediately tried to get me alone, and now he wanted to go swimming, so that he could drown me too.

  I felt cold all over.

  I paused at the bottom of the steps. Why had he done it? What could his motive possibly be? Maybe Violet had discovered some terrible secret about him and she’d threatened to tell, and he’d felt as if he had to keep her silent.

  “Emilia?” called Drew’s voice from the bedroom in the cabin. “Come in here.”

  My pulse started to race. What could I do? I was stuck out on a boat with this man, and I couldn’t very well just jump off the boat and run for shore. No, my best bet was to play along and not let him know that I was suspicious. And no way could I get in the water with him. I had to stay on the boat.

  I sucked in a breath, one that was supposed to steady me, except it didn’t work. And I called out, “Coming,” as brightly as I could. Then, slowly, I forced myself to put one foot in front of the other and to walk across the floor through the kitchen/living room of the boat. The rooms were just as elegantly designed as the Wainwright house itself, with everything in a harmonizing light blue and cream color scheme, but the boat was a little messy. I guess Drew didn’t have servants in here cleaning up after him.

  The door to the bedroom was ajar.

  Carefully, I put one hand on it and pushed.

  The inside of the bedroom was revealed. The king-sized bed wasn’t made and Drew was standing next to it, rummaging through a cabinet full of various articles of women’s clothing. On the shelf above it, I saw a stick of women’s deodorant and a bottle of perfume next to a tangle of necklaces.

  “Aha,” said Drew, coming up with a woman’s one piece bathing suit. “This was Violet’s,” he said. “It’d probably fit you, don’t you think?”

  “Violet’s?” I said. He was casually admitting to me that Violet was on his boat? She must have left in on here when she drowned…

  Except. Wait. That didn’t work. Because Violet had been found in a bathing suit, and it wasn’t that one, which meant that she would have had to have been on the boat another time, and left a bathing suit here, and…