The Heiresses

by Sara Shepard

  A siren blared outside. Rowan winced, worried it might wake up the girls, but there were no sounds from their bedrooms. James picked up a little glass bird from the windowsill. It was a souvenir from James and Poppy’s honeymoon in Thailand—they’d found it in their suite, and Poppy thought it would bring them good luck.

  He made a small noise at the back of his throat. “It’s just so fucked up,” he said in a choked voice. “How could this have happened?”

  Rowan’s chest tightened. “I don’t know,” she whispered. A plastic sippy cup in a wire rack next to the sink suddenly tipped over. When she looked up again, James was quietly staring at her from across the sink. He took a breath, and then said, “How are you doing with everything?”

  Rowan’s gaze instantly snapped to the floor. “You shouldn’t think about me in all this.”

  “I shouldn’t?”

  The words hung there. The possibility fanned out in so many different directions. But when Rowan looked around, all she saw was Poppy—her collection of takeout menus and wineglasses and organic cookbooks. Pictures of Poppy and James and the girls. Grocery lists and reminders in Poppy’s neat script.

  “I should go,” she blurted, shooting across the kitchen in seconds flat. She reached the door and began to unlock it, struggling with the latch. James, who had followed her, leaned in and did it for her easily.

  “Thank you so much for helping with the kids.” His voice cracked.

  Rowan slung her bag over her shoulder. “Of course. Anytime.”

  He stood, hands in pockets. After a beat, she started out into the richly carpeted hallway. Tell me to stay, she willed silently, surprised at the ferocity of how much, despite everything, she suddenly wanted that.

  But a few seconds went by, and James didn’t say a word. “Okay,” Rowan said, brushing off her hands. “See you soon, James.”

  “See you soon,” he said quietly.

  The elevator dinged and swept open. James still didn’t shut the door, and Rowan still couldn’t ask the question. And so she gave him a clumsy little wave, rode the elevator all the way to the bottom, and then went back to her apartment, alone.

  9

  On Wednesday morning, Aster, dressed in a lace minidress with bell sleeves, stepped out of her town car onto Hudson Street. Men in bespoke suits carrying crocodile briefcases swept busily past, not giving her a second glance even though the dress showed off her Pilates-toned legs. The air had a crisp, fresh quality about it, and everything buzzed with an unfamiliar sense of purpose. Aster realized why it was so foreign: she hadn’t been up this early in years. Everyone was rushing off to a job—something she’d never had to do.

  Until today.

  She stomped along the sidewalk, glowering at the other worker bees headed to their offices. She glanced around for reporters too. The police had just released the details of Poppy’s murder to the press that morning, and Aster knew it wouldn’t be long before the circus began.

  Murder. When Aster shut her eyes, she kept imagining the grotesque scene of someone bursting into Poppy’s office and shoving her over the balcony. She tried not to think about it, but her brain kept pushing the scene further, imagining Poppy’s spine snapping when she hit the pavement, her organs exploding, her beautiful eyes popping from their sockets. Someone so good, so beautiful . . . destroyed.

  That message on the website stayed with her too. One Heiress Down, Four More to Go. What if someone was after them, all of them? But why? Out of jealousy? And how on earth could the cops not know who was running that site? Wasn’t everything hackable, these days?

  Something cold brushed Aster’s arm, and she screeched and whipped around just in time to see someone in a trench coat disappearing through a metal door in an alley. Her heart pounded in her ears. Had that person touched her intentionally? Was she walking around Manhattan with a target on her back?

  When her phone buzzed with a text, she jumped again. But it was only Clarissa. Good luck today! it read. You okay?

  Of course I’m not okay, Aster thought. What a ridiculous thing to ask. But instead she just wrote, I’m holding up. It was sweet of Clarissa to check in, at least.

  Do you get a lunch break? Clarissa replied. We could do Pastis?

  Aster’s heart sank. Poppy had been planning to take her to Pastis today. Maybe, she typed back, just as her phone started to vibrate with an incoming call. She frowned at the name on the screen—Corinne. Taking a breath, she hit answer.

  “Good, you’re awake,” Corinne said in a clipped voice.

  Aster took a few steps toward the Saybrook’s building. “Unfortunately.”

  “Are you at work yet?”

  So this was a motherly reminder about coming to work. “I’m just outside,” Aster snapped.

  “Okay. Just making sure,” Corinne said, and Aster gritted her teeth. “I should warn you,” Corinne went on, another phone ringing quietly in the background on her end. “The vibe here is a little . . . weird.”

  “Weird?” Aster stared up at the stone building that had housed her family’s business for almost seventy years. The spot where Poppy had fallen was still blocked off with yellow tape. Someone had left flowers just outside its borders. Trying to shake the image of Poppy’s broken body, she pushed through the double doors—and froze in place. The lobby was bursting with NYPD officers and police dogs. Everyone seemed stiff, alert, and very on edge.

  “Christ,” she whispered into the phone.

  “The police are keeping reporters away from the building for now.” Corinne’s voice was solemn. “But we’d better get ready for a lot more questions.” She sighed. “Good luck today.”

  “Thanks,” Aster said, caught off guard by Corinne’s rare touch of kindness. She hung up and headed to the turnstiles that led to the elevator, only to learn that she couldn’t pass through them without an ID card. Aster had no idea that their office, that any office, was so secure. Did they actually think people would try to sneak into work? And how could someone have broken in here to kill Poppy?

  “It’s okay, Miss Saybrook,” said the security guard, scanning his card to let her through. “I’ll make an exception for you.” Aster gave him her best model smile in thanks. He must have recognized her from the ad campaign that was still plastered everywhere.

  She stepped into the elevator and rode up to the eighth floor, where she was supposed to meet with HR so they could tell her where she was actually working.

  “Aster?”

  Danielle Gilchrist stood in the foyer, wearing a white, green, and orange color-block dress and expensive-looking wedges. Her red hair hung straight and shiny down her back, and a jumble of chunky bracelets lined her arms.

  For a moment, Aster wondered in confusion what her old friend was doing here. Then she noticed the purple-and-silver folder with the Saybrook’s logo on the front. “Welcome to the Saybrook’s family!” Danielle chirped. Of course—Aster remembered now. Mason had gotten Danielle a job in Saybrook’s HR after she graduated from NYU. The thought made her stomach churn.

  “I’m already in the Saybrook’s family,” Aster said, taking a step back.

  Danielle colored for a moment, then recovered. “Right. It’s just a figure of speech.” She turned on her heel. “Well, come on. Might as well get started.”

  She opened the door to a big conference room that overlooked the Hudson. On the walls were pictures of old Hollywood celebrities wearing Saybrook’s diamonds. Aster remained in the doorway, finally understanding what was going on. “Wait. You’re doing my orientation?”

  Danielle nodded as she logged in to the computer and pulled up a PowerPoint. “Yeah, it’s company policy. Everyone has to go through orientation. Even an actual Saybrook.” Then she smiled. “You were at Badawi the other night, weren’t you? I love that place.”

  Aster shut her eyes. She’d avoided interacting with Danielle for so long. She turned the other way if she saw her on the street, steered clear of parties if Danielle was on the guest list. Anything to avoid
thinking about that summer. But all at once, a memory flooded back to her.

  “Hey, Aster.” Thirteen-year-old Danielle Gilchrist sauntered up to Aster on the beach in Meriweather. Aster had always known Danielle—she was the caretakers’ daughter—but this summer she was different. “Got any Robitussin?”

  “Why would I carry that around?” Aster asked haughtily.

  “Because it gives you a great buzz,” Danielle answered. “You’ve never tried it?”

  Now it was Aster’s turn to feel stupid. She shook her head. Danielle turned toward the shore. She was pretty, Aster suddenly realized—tall and thin, with long, wavy red hair and blue eyes. “I’m going to steal it from the drugstore, I guess. Want to come with?”

  They drank Robitussin that night, and Aster got loaded for the first time. They snuck into Corinne’s bedroom to read her journal, which was as boring as they thought it would be. “She’s very . . . organized, isn’t she?” Danielle asked, glancing around the fussy bedroom with a smirk. Aster giggled. “You mean anal.” It felt good to laugh about her sister. Corinne might have been Aster’s protector when she was younger, but as they grew older, she had begun constantly telling on her. And it wasn’t as if Aster could talk about Corinne with any of her cousins.

  Danielle slept over that night, and the next morning she was scribbling furiously in a notebook. “What are you doing?” Aster asked.

  “I always write down my dreams,” Danielle said in a matter-of-fact voice. “And then I analyze them for symbolism.”

  As the summer wore on, Danielle introduced Aster to vodka, prank calling, and how to get a fake ID through the mail. They spent every night whispering secrets and dirty jokes and watching French films that made Aster blush. They snuck over to Finchy’s, the bar across the island, and claimed to be sisters, letting scruffy older guys hit on them and buy them shots of well whiskey that burned their throats. They stayed in touch all the next year, texting about boys they had kissed and parties they had gone to, and their grand plans to live on Bleecker Street together when they turned eighteen. When they both got into NYU, they signed up to be roommates.

  But then Saybrook’s needed a new face for its brand, and Aster seemed just the girl. Mason was enthusiastic about it, which was enough to persuade Aster—maybe this was her path. A week before she set off for Europe for the photo shoots, she was back at Meriweather with Danielle, on the beach outside the estate. Danielle took a sip of the vodka-lemonade Aster had mixed for them in her family’s kitchen. Then she said, “My mom told me the weirdest thing today. It made me think twice.”

  “What was it?” Aster asked awkwardly. She always felt uncomfortable talking about Danielle’s parents. They fought constantly—Aster could hear them yelling from the estate—and this summer the fights had grown even more heated. Danielle was certain they were headed for divorce.

  “Just weird stuff,” Danielle said, tracing a blue-painted toe through the sand.

  “Come to Europe with me,” Aster blurted out. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? “I’ll be going to Paris, London, and Milan. I’ll pay for everything, just come. You could use some time away from here for a while.”

  Danielle’s eyes were hard to read behind the Gucci shades Aster had bought for her. She twirled the diamond tennis bracelet Aster had given her as a birthday gift around her wrist. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on,” Aster begged. “We can drink sangria by the bucket, hook up with European men, tan in Saint-Tropez . . .” She trailed off as something up the bluff caught her eye. Aster’s father was standing at the edge of the patio, gazing at them.

  Aster half waved, thinking her father was looking for her. But Mason seemed to peer right through her. Aster glanced up again and realized he wasn’t looking at her at all—he was staring at Danielle. She turned to her friend and realized that Danielle was wearing nothing but a skimpy string bikini. Danielle had untied the top strap while they were tanning, the fabric precariously clinging to her chest.

  An oily feeling filled Aster. But by the time she looked up the bluff, Mason was gone.

  Now Danielle cleared her throat. Aster shot up. The past didn’t matter; it was a long time ago. “Let’s get this over with,” she said flippantly, walking into the conference room and sitting down. “Do your thing.”

  Danielle plopped the folder on the boardroom table, then looked at Aster as if she wanted to say something. Aster pointedly turned away.

  After a beat of awkward silence, Danielle cleared her throat and launched into a speech about Saybrook’s employee policies. Then she dimmed the lights, and a movie came on the screen. Classical music played as the words “Saybrook’s: A Family Legacy” appeared. “I’d like to walk you through the rise of the late Alfred Saybrook,” Donald Sutherland’s voice intoned. “His father, Monroe, opened Saybrook & Browne’s Jewelers in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1922. It was a local establishment, mostly dealing in gold. Monroe never had plans to expand.”

  Up popped a picture of the store that Aster’s great-grandfather opened near Beacon Hill. The 1920s storefront was modest, with old-fashioned script in the window and impossibly tiny diamonds in the display cases.

  Aster glared at Danielle. “I already know all this.” Her grandfather used to tell this tale all the time.

  Sorry, Danielle mouthed, but she didn’t stop the DVD.

  “Monroe died from tuberculosis in 1938,” Sutherland went on. “Alfred was forced to take his place.” Next appeared a photo of Alfred in front of the store. A very young Edith—a teenager, probably—stood next to him, her arm looped through his elbow. Even though the photo was black and white, it was clear that she was a blonde, and that she was wearing dark lipstick. “But before long, World War II began, and Alfred bravely volunteered to fight.”

  In the next photo—the same photo Mason kept in his study—Alfred was in a military uniform, standing with his friend Harold. “Edith kept the store running in the States as best she could, though times were tough—no one wanted to buy diamonds during the war. And then things changed. While Alfred was overseas, he found . . . this.”

  A yellow stone appeared on the screen. Yeah, yeah, Aster thought. Not that she didn’t adore the giant, canary-yellow Corona Diamond, which her grandfather had found at a bazaar in Paris. But she’d practically come out of the womb knowing about it.

  The video went on to discuss how the Corona Diamond elevated the company to a new stratosphere. Alfred opened a flagship store on Fifth Avenue and office space down in TriBeCa to grow the business. Soon Saybrook’s Diamonds became the place to go for engagement rings, anniversary bands, and tennis bracelets. Celebrities flaunted their diamonds on the red carpet. Dignitaries bought jewels for their wives. There was a famous shot of Jackie Kennedy wearing a Saybrook’s pendant to a presidential ball, and a quote of her saying that Saybrook’s was the only place worth going for something precious.

  “Alfred Saybrook’s death rocked the international jewelry community,” the voiceover said, showing a picture of Alfred shortly before his death five years earlier, wearing his trademark black suit and wing tips and little round glasses. “But now, the business is stronger than ever, and Saybrook’s stands by Alfred’s principles of integrity, quality, and craftsmanship.”

  Then the screen went dark, and the lights came up. Danielle cleared her throat. “Um, I hope you found that informative.”

  Aster stared at her. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s in my HR script.” Danielle ran her hand through her long red hair, her expression unreadable. “Look, I know you don’t want to be here, but it really is a good company to work for. And I’m sorry about Poppy,” she added.

  Aster made a small noise at the back of her throat.

  “And I heard about . . . you know.” Danielle’s eyes darted back and forth. “That it might be a murder. I’m usually at work early, but I had food poisoning the day . . . it happened. If only I’d been here, maybe I’d have seen something.” When Aster didn’t ans
wer, she sighed. “I hope it didn’t have anything to do with the issues at work . . .”

  Aster cocked her head, wondering what Danielle meant. But she didn’t want to owe her anything, so she stood. “So where am I working again?”

  Danielle glanced at Aster’s paperwork. “Private client group,” she said, directing her to the elevators. “It’s the by-appointment end of the business for high-net-worth clients looking for one-of-a-kind pieces. You’ll be working for Elizabeth Cole.” A strange look crossed Danielle’s face, but Aster decided not to ask about that, either.

  Private Clients was one flight up and demarcated by transparent double doors. Inside, the music was a little louder, and there was a well-stocked bar cart and several crystal snifters in the corner. Nice, Aster thought, inspecting the spread. They had Hendrick’s Gin and Delamain cognac and three types of infused vodka. Aster inched over and began to unscrew one of the lids. A little nip would definitely take the edge off what had already been a very crazy morning.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  A woman with ash-blond hair, narrowed gray eyes, and a fitted black suit marched toward Aster. There was something familiar about her, Aster thought. She’d probably met her at a Saybrook’s party. She’d met most everyone in the Saybrook’s world at some point or another. “I think I’ll take this too.” She plucked the iPhone out of Aster’s hand.

  “Hey!” Aster protested.

  “No cell phones at work.” The woman started back to what must be her office. “I also don’t tolerate overly strong perfumes, leaving early for any reason, or outfits like that.” She glowered at Aster’s lace dress, fixating on its short hem.

  Aster pulled her knees together. “It’s Valentino.”

  The woman stared at her. “I’m Elizabeth Cole. As of today, you’re working for me, and I don’t care what your last name is.”

  Elizabeth marched into a large office decorated in white and gray, all clean lines and sharp angles. Three walls were lined with pictures of her posing with various high-profile clients—mostly stuffy businessmen Aster didn’t recognize, but Steven Tyler was in one, and Beyoncé in another. Dramatic floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk looked out over the Hudson River, which was gray right now, under an overcast sky. It matched Aster’s mood perfectly.