by Liv Spector
Charity Baines wore a strapless, floor-length Valentino gown in eye-popping Republican red. Her hair was teased into a stiff golden helmet that swept high up off her chemically frozen forehead. The diamonds in her Bulgari necklace sparkled magnificently in the candlelight.
Thiago and Esperanza were legendary among the international glitterati for their outstanding fashion sense, and they didn’t disappoint tonight. He wore a black velvet tuxedo, white V-neck T-shirt, and black Wayfarer sunglasses, despite the darkness of the night. Esperanza was the yin to Thiago’s yang, wearing a stark white, raw silk gown that was so ethereal it seemed like something an angel would wear. A thin gold chain around her neck was all that held the dress up. Every time the wind blew, the thin fabric pressed against Esperanza’s body, blowing back her long, black hair. She looked angelic, pure, effortlessly beautiful.
Jack wore a custom-made Armani tuxedo, looking every inch the successful billionaire he was. Senator Baines wore the same silk pocket square he’d worn to George W. Bush’s 2004 inaugural ball, one of the most treasured nights of his life. And his hair was a sculptural masterpiece as unmoving as the Lincoln Memorial. Even Seth Liss, the man who seemed to wear his slovenliness with unwarranted pride, looked half decent. Sure, the cut of his suit wasn’t what anyone would dream of calling fashionable, but for him it was quite grand.
But it was Daniel Poe who really stole the show. When he walked out, clean-shaven, wearing a perfectly tailored, slim-fit black tuxedo with a crisp white shirt and a long skinny tie the deep color of eggplant, everyone turned to look. Lila heard someone gasp. Paul Mason, ever the Brooks Brothers poster boy, broke into spontaneous applause.
Sam and Lila had been given strapless, black cocktail dresses and black stiletto heels to wear while working the party. Lila wasn’t thrilled with the attire. Tonight was the night she’d be hunting down a killer, and doing it in a tight dress and high heels wasn’t going to be easy.
Just as Lila had expected, her sister was not invited to the birthday party. But what Lila really didn’t understand was why Ava was there in the first place. So far, it seemed like she hadn’t even left her room. Was she there just as his hidden concubine? It struck Lila as wildly risky for a man as calculating as Jack. None of it made sense to Lila, but she’d been in the detective game long enough to know that the truth of a case always lay within the questions that seemed to have no answers. If she could unwrap the mystery of why her sister was actually on board, maybe she’d find out the truth about who killed Jack Warren.
Once the last course was served, the casual chatter that had enlivened the meal slowly petered out. Everyone seemed to be taking their cues from Jack, and he was being very quiet. But his silence wasn’t seething, hard-hearted, or angry like it usually was. In fact, Lila thought, he seemed almost peaceful, which was not a word she’d ever associate with Jack Warren. He sat at the head of the table, a contented smile on his face, taking slow, appreciative bites of his caramelized white chocolate birthday torte.
After the delicate dessert plates were cleared away, Jack Warren said, “I know how busy you all are. And I’d like to thank you for taking the time to spend this very special day with me.” He leaned to Sam and whispered, “Let’s serve the champagne now, please.”
Sam nodded and went over to the sideboard, where there were four bottles of champagne chilling in silver buckets.
While Lila and Sam poured the honey-colored bubbly in freshly set crystal flutes, Jack spoke. “At the height of World War One, a German submarine sank a Swedish freighter that was transporting goods to the imperial court of Czar Nicholas the Second of Russia. For over eight decades that ship, with all its glorious bounty, rotted at the bottom of the sea. When the ship was found, two thousand bottles of champagne in pristine condition were recovered. The sea had aged them perfectly. This is the most prized bottle of champagne in the world, and we have four of these shipwrecked beauties with us now. Everyone, please, enjoy.”
As he lifted up his glass, everyone followed his lead. After taking a long, meditative sip of the champagne, Jack continued. “Great men are often at war with themselves. And I think as much can be said of me. I have no regrets for how I’ve lived my own life. My only regret is that sometimes this war within me had casualities. Many casualities. Elise, my wife.” He said her name softly, turning to face her. She put down her flute of champagne and matched the intensity of his gaze with her own. “There is no other creature on the planet as fierce and as vibrant as you. When I first met you, you were electric. And now, looking at you, you’re more beautiful today than you’ve ever been. To you.” He lifted up his glass of champagne and took a small sip. Then he turned to his daughter. “Josie, your free spirit, your hunger for life, and your tireless search for what is real have brought so much energy into my life and into your mother’s life. I want you to always keep that part of you alive, no matter what. It’s your magic.”
“I love you, Daddy,” Josie said as a couple of tears fell down her cheeks.
“I love you, too,” Jack said with total sincerity. Lila couldn’t fathom what was behind this transformation. And neither could anyone else.
“Cheers to you, Jack!” Clarence said.
After all the champagne bottles had been emptied and the party conversation seemed to run dry, Jack began to pace the main deck, like a tiger storming around his cage. He wanted some fresh entertainment, so he picked up his phone to call the captain. “Nash, listen, we’re down on the main deck having a little birthday party for yours truly. What do you say that you throw the boat on cruise control and you and your crew come and join us. We’ve got the makings of a real party down here.” He paused. “Okay. Great. See you down here soon.”
The crew joined the gathering with alarming speed, and kicked things into high gear. It didn’t take long before the sophisticated soiree was transformed into an all-out debauched bacchanal. And once the drugs came out and the wine cellar was raided, people started to really let loose. Daniel Poe immediately disappeared with Nash, Mudge, Pedro, and Josie into the main deck’s bathroom. Thiago blasted samba music while Esperanza began to dance with a very excited, yet clumsy Seth Liss. Paul Mason joined Captain Nash and the rest of the degenerates in the bathroom while Sam disappeared somewhere belowdecks. Everyone, it seemed, was getting into the spirit of things.
Except for Lila. As the party got more out of control, it became increasingly difficult to keep an eye on all the suspects. But, she remembered, she just had to make sure she knew where Jack was at all times. As long as he was in her sights, she was okay. And at that moment, everything was fine. Jack and Paul were smoking Montecristos with their eyes glued to Esperanza’s ass, which was undulating to the music as she yelled for her dancing partner, Liss, to “feel the rhythm in your hips.”
Then Lila saw Ben. He was headed across the deck toward her, carrying two drinks, with a smile on his face and a little salsa shake to his hips. “Finally, everyone gets to have a little fun,” he said as he put a drink in her hand. She just nodded, distracted. There was no chance in hell she was going to join in. This was the night she’d spent a decade obsessing over, and she couldn’t afford to slip up for a party. She needed to be in control. First, she wanted to check in on Ava, to see if she was still holed away in her fortress of a guest suite.
“Hey, Nicky, loosen up. It’s a party after all,” Ben said. Lila gave him a weak smile. He slid his hand across her bare shoulders and then down her arm. He leaned toward her to whisper into her ear. Before he could speak, though, a huge ruckus erupted from across the room as Daniel, Nash, Mudge, and Pedro burst onto the main deck with red noses and wild eyes. Daniel was dancing crazily, a chaos of spasmodic limbs in a fury of movement, while the others howled with laughter. It was pretty clear that they’d just sucked back an impossible amount of cocaine.
With a lit Roman candle in his hand, Pedro leaned over the railing while Mudge held on to his
feet. The firework flared and then shot out of his hand, whizzing up into the starry sky, where it loudly exploded in a shower of silver rain. Daniel and Nash cheered wildly. Daniel handed Pedro another ignited firework.
As she turned her attention from the sky to the spot where Jack had just been standing, Lila’s heart dropped. “Shit!” she said. He was gone. She frantically scanned the main deck. There was no sign of him except for his cigar, slowly burning in the heavy crystal ashtray.
“What?” Ben said. “Nicky, what’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” she lied, putting her drink down. “But I’ve got to go.”
“No,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. “You’ve got to stay. And then maybe later we can—”
“Please, Ben. No!” She responded so emphatically that he immediately let her go. She rushed away from him without looking back. Her heart was racing. She had no idea where on this vast and many-roomed yacht Jack Warren had gone.
Her first stop was the scene of his murder. She ran up to the second level of the yacht, praying with every quick step of her feet that he was still alive. A wave of relief washed over her as she arrived and saw there was no blood and no gun. Jack’s murder was still in the future.
Moving as quickly as she could, she ran inside the boat, headed toward Ava’s cabin. She’d go see if her sister was still safe and sound. A firecracker exploded in the sky, making Lila almost jump out of her skin. She could hear the music and the cheering of the party twenty feet below her. As she got to the hallway, she noticed that the door to Ava’s room, which had been closed since her sister’s arrival, was now ajar.
Keeping her back to the hallway wall, she slid down to the room, stopping once her shoulder was flush with the doorjamb. She peeked inside. The door to the balcony was wide open, the bed linens had been ripped off the bed, clothes were all over the floor. And the room was empty.
“Ava?” Lila said, trying to mask her voice so her sister couldn’t recognize it. There was no answer. “Ava?” Still silence, so Lila carefully entered. She checked the balcony, the closets, and the en suite bathroom (which smelled just like her sister—a mix of sandalwood soap and Nivea lotion). She even checked under the bed. Ava was gone.
“Fuck!” Lila cursed. Jack and Ava were nowhere to be seen, and the murder could occur at any moment.
Lila rushed to Jack’s room. It was empty. She ran to the scene of the crime, but there was nothing. She spent ten minutes frantically searching the endless hallways and rooms of the yacht. Her heart was pounding so fast she thought it might burst in her chest. Finally, she heard voices coming from the master suite. She ran toward the sound. Frantic to find Ava or Jack, Lila didn’t bother knocking on Elise’s door. She just burst right in.
“Holy shit,” Lila exclaimed, when she found the soon-to-be-widowed Elise Warren naked and straddling Ben Reynolds, the man who had just been trying to coax Lila into just this very position.
Ben gave Lila a wide-eyed look, but Elise, not caring if the help caught her in flagrante delicto, continued to rock and groan upon her lover. Ben said nothing as Elise moved his hands from her hips up to her breasts.
“Don’t stop,” she groaned as Lila dashed out of the room.
A sense of dread flooded Lila as she ran back to the main deck. She didn’t care about the fact that Ben, at that very moment, was having sex with Elise even though he’d had sex with her the day before. She’d known deep down that Ben was sleeping with Elise when she saw him coming out of her bathroom. What mattered was that her primary murder suspect was currently in her room riding the first officer to her own petite mort, while her husband was nowhere to be seen, seconds, minutes, hours away from his own death.
Lila tried to steady herself. It was 12:16 A.M., two hours before the police were notified. There was a chance that Elise could still murder her husband, but Lila’s gut told her that she had it wrong. A woman being happily fucked at that moment wouldn’t turn around, put clothes on, and grab a gun. It didn’t make sense.
Another firecracker exploded, momentarily turning the night sky an electric pink. She shot off toward the captain’s bridge so she could be in position to observe the murder.
Taking the stairs two at a time, she climbed to the top deck of the boat and went to open the door. It was locked. She pounded on it over and over again, but there was no answer.
“Goddamnit!” She felt her whole plan crumble around her. The panic of the moment gripped her, but she knew what she needed to do. She had to somehow get the keys to the captain’s bridge from Nash.
She rushed back down to the main deck. Nash and Poe, two of her other suspects, were facing each other across the bottle-strewn dinner table. She jumped back when she saw that Poe had a gun pointed to his head. His bulging eyes were staring at Nash. Jack wasn’t there, and Clarence, Charity, and Paul were nowhere to be seen. Thiago and Esperanza were slowly swaying in a corner on the other side of the deck, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem surrounding them.
“Do it!” Nash chanted in his now-slurred Boston accent. “Do it. Do it.”
Poe let out a wild scream as he pulled the trigger. A firework exploded in the sky, making Poe yell even louder. But the gun just clicked; the chamber was empty. Poe’s hand shook violently as he put the gun down on the table. Lila saw that the weapon was the snub-nosed .38 with the cherrywood grip that she’d seen Nash get in St. Barts—the gun that would soon be drenched in Jack Warren’s blood. The murder weapon.
Poe slid the pistol over to Nash. “Your turn now,” he said. His face was a ghostly white, and his pupils were so dilated that you could barely see his ice-blue irises.
Nash picked up the gun and put it to his temple. Another firework exploded. Pedro and Mudge, who was no longer wearing pants, howled like wolves at the momentarily electric-pink night sky. Nash and Poe continued to stare intensely at each other.
It was like being in a fever dream, and Lila needed it all to stop. She needed to gain control of this night. She didn’t know where Jack was, where Ava was, and she couldn’t risk someone killing Jack when she wasn’t there to witness it. Even though she knew this broke Teddy’s number one rule, Lila decided she needed that gun, for now, just until she could regain control of this future crime scene. So, without pausing to second-guess herself, she snuck up behind Nash and snatched the gun from his trembling hand.
Both men turned to look at her, wide-eyed and amazed.
She turned the gun on them both. “Nash, I need the keys to the bridge.”
“Look,” Poe said, pointing a finger at Lila. “I told you an angel would come. If you test God, he sends an angel. A beautiful angel has descended from on high to tell us we won’t die tonight.”
“Keys! I need the keys.” Lila felt hot tears come to her eyes. She was running out of time.
“Does that mean that I am chosen?” Nash asked, standing up. His eyes were wide and his face was filled with a beatific radiance. “Does that mean I’ve been touched by God?”
Lila stepped away, still gripping the gun. “What the fuck is going on here?” she asked no one in particular.
Nash fell to his knees and began to weep as Poe began reciting biblical passages. “ ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’ ”
“Don’t worry about them,” Pedro called out to Lila as he crouched over a pile of unlit fireworks. “They’re both tripping their asses off. Took three tabs each. Give them a few hours, they’ll come around . . . I hope.”
She leaned over Nash’s body, searching his pockets for the keys, but there was nothing. All he did was roll around the floor and girlishly giggle. She wasn’t going to get the keys and she was desperately running out of time. She stepped away from the two men as they began to writhe around the main deck in the grip of major hallucinations. Could eithe
r of them commit murder in a state like this? Lila knew it was more than possible. LSD could make people do crazy things. But she couldn’t wait around listening to them blather on about communing with the divine. She needed to find Jack Warren. She needed to find her sister.
With the gun in her hand, she bolted from the deck and ran up the stairs, back to the crime scene. The whole time she was rushing, hoping it wasn’t too late, she heard Teddy’s voice in her head telling her not to take the gun. You’re messing with fate. You’re interfering with the past, she heard him say. But she tried to push his nagging voice out of her mind. His cautionary words weren’t what mattered now. All that mattered was the throb of panic in her veins as she came to the horrific realization that everything had slipped out of her control. She felt like she was drowning, and the gun was the closest thing to grab on to.
Gripping the rail of the staircase with one hand and the gun in the other, Lila rushed to the second deck, leaping up the stairs three at a time. Just as she neared the top, feet away from her destination, she saw them: Jack covered in blood and Ava standing there, with her back to Lila.
A soul-shattering scream ripped out of Lila’s mouth as her worst fears came true in an instant. Her sister was the killer. Startled by the sound, Ava whipped her head around. Lila saw that her face and torso were covered in blood. Just as the two sisters locked eyes, Jack staggered away from Ava, lost his balance, and plummeted a hunded and fifty feet into the sea.
CHAPTER 25
IN ALL THE ten years she’d spent thinking obsessively about this very moment, nothing could have prepared Lila for what she saw. It was so surreal, so unexpected, that she couldn’t process it. Her sister was the killer. She felt like she was having an out-of-body experience, floating above herself and her beloved sister. She’d gone back in time to prove her sister’s innocence, only to find out Ava killed Jack after all.
