“You’re not making a lot of sense. Tell me what’s going on, Peggy.”
“A few days more, Ariel. That’s all I ask.” She walked over to the door.
“Peggy—?”
“Be patient and everything will work out, you have to believe.” She shut the door behind her.
I picked up one of the throw pillows and flung it at the door as hard as I could in frustration.
I was sorely tempted to just pack up and go—the police and the Swanns be damned.
The Swann family were some of the most aggravating people on the planet.
I couldn’t wait for the day when I wasn’t one of them anymore.
Resigned, I opened my laptop and started checking my emails, answering the ones from clients that couldn’t wait until I was back in the city, deleting spam, and then an email from a potential client with a big country estate in Westchester triggered the memory of the pictures I’d taken on the grounds yesterday, before—before everything happened. The patterns on the lawn might be something they’d like as a color palette for that enormous living room with the big picture windows. I grabbed my phone, found the connecting cable from my shoulder bag, and plugged my phone into the laptop. The pictures almost immediately started downloading into my photo program—I hadn’t realized I’d taken so many. There were well over two hundred of them. I waited until the download was complete, then started working my way through them.
“What people don’t realize,” I heard my old college roommate, Ashleigh, saying, “is that photographers literally take thousands of pictures rather than simply looking through the lens and waiting for the conditions to be right. They discard all the bad ones. That’s why digital photography has changed the business, Ariel. Before, the cost of film was prohibitive, and photographers also had to know how to develop their film themselves to save even more. Now if you want a good picture, you just take as many as you can and then sort through them later. You’ll be surprised at what the camera can catch that you didn’t see.”
There was, of course, more to being a good photographer than that, but it was an excellent crash course for me. I used to spend a lot of time trying to frame the shot and getting everything right before snapping the picture, but now I just pointed the lens and just snapped away rapid-fire. And Ashleigh had been right—I was often surprised at what I found when I downloaded the pictures. I’d had some of my pictures mounted and framed, and I’d begun to love taking pictures as a hobby. It was also incredibly helpful for my work—I could take a lot of pictures of rooms and houses I was working on, at different times of the day, to understand how light worked in the rooms and what designs would best work with the light to create a comfortable atmosphere for my clients.
And someday, when I had more time, I planned on taking some classes, to learn about lighting and angles. I enjoyed taking pictures—why not learn how to be the best photographer I could?
Something else you could have done when you were a Real Housewife of Sea Oats, I thought as I clicked on the first picture and began scrolling through, choosing which ones to keep and which to discard. I found the ones I was thinking about sending to my client about halfway through the roll, and moved them into a folder that I gave her name. I kept working my way through the other pictures, discarding most of them—there wasn’t anything else I could have used them for—and then, when I was getting near the end of the sequence I stopped and stared at the computer screen.
Was that—Angus?
I clicked to enlarge the image.
I remembered turning slowly and holding down the home button, snapping rapid-fire photos while I turned 360 degrees, not paying attention to anything other than the light and shadows, how the shades of green changed depending on the lighting and how they contrasted yet blended together—that was what I was trying to capture in the images, and I’d focused on that, not noticing anything else, not paying attention in my single-mindedness.
But yes, that was definitely Angus I’d caught in the picture. He was standing just at the corner of the hedge maze, turned away from me, facing someone—or something—just out of the range of my lens. His facial expression—I focused on that part of the image and blew it up even larger. Of course, the larger the image became the blurrier and more pixilated his face became, but the look on his face was unmistakable. He was angry.
I leaned back against the pillows and thought back.
He hadn’t seemed angry when he talked to me, had he?
I tried to remember our exchange. He’d startled me, and he had seemed strange to me—happy to see me, but also trying to tell me something.
The truth is in the center of the maze, Miss Ariel, in the center of the maze.
I hadn’t heard arguing voices, either. I hadn’t heard anything at all before he’d startled me—and I’d heard Charlotte and Peggy quite clearly before I’d seen them. So if he’d been angry and arguing with someone, they’d been whispering, or talking so quietly I couldn’t hear them.
Which was also odd.
And he hadn’t seem angry at all during our brief interaction, at least not so I’d notice. I’d been thinking about Charlotte and the confrontation we’d just had, stinging from her absolute lack of concern about my presence. Just thinking about it again made my face flush. Leave it to Charlotte—out of all the possible dramatic scenarios I’d pictured when thinking about seeing her again, she’d reacted in the one way I’d not anticipated.
Complete indifference.
No matter what anyone says, the opposite of love isn’t hate…it’s indifference.
Yes, our marriage was over, except for the legal formalities.
My eyes were dry.
I’d reached acceptance.
That was progress, wasn’t it?
I picked up my laptop again, staring at the picture.
Angus had been murdered shortly after I’d taken it. And yes, the more I looked, the more I was certain, he was angry, all right. I could tell by the way his arms were positioned—he always gesticulated with his arms when he was angry.
I moved on to the next picture and yes, same facial expression, his arms in a slightly different place. He was arguing with someone.
I hadn’t heard anything, so whoever he was arguing with, they’d kept their voices down. Why? They couldn’t have known I was there, or that anyone could overhear them.
Why was it so important to both of them to not be heard?
I kept moving through the pictures, and then—the very last one.
There was a shadow there, someone standing very near to Angus, but the image wasn’t clear. I tried blowing it up to a larger size, but was frustrated. Blowing up the picture only made the image blurrier. I copied the image so I could try some of my limited photo editing skills on it later, but I was certain identifying the person was beyond my capabilities.
But surely the police would be able to do something with it? Didn’t they have computer techs working for them?
I looked for the cop’s card but couldn’t find it at first, finally finding it crumpled up inside the front pocket of the jeans I’d worn yesterday.
There was an email address.
I was about to start attaching the images when my door opened and Kayla slipped through, shutting it behind her.
She looked like she’d just woken up, and that was even more annoying than her coming into my room without knocking. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her skin still glowed, even in the crappy lighting in my room. She pulled the red-blond hair back from her face into a ponytail and was wearing a Hamilton sweatshirt with the neck cut so it fell over her bare shoulder, and the rest cut off just below her breasts to show off a flat stomach, a navel pierced with a diamond stud, and a waist so tiny I hoped it meant she lived on nuts and berries only. Her jean shorts were cut incredibly short to show off her long, tanned legs. She had a catlike face, coming to a pointed tip at her chin, and her greenish-hazel eyes were also catlike. She had a snub nose, pale pink lips, and a wide mouth, everything on he
r face hanging from prominent cheekbones. She was beautiful, I supposed, in an aesthetically pleasing way, and I could see how those features would pop in photographs. But she didn’t do anything for me.
She yawned as she ungracefully plopped down on the end of the bed where Peggy had so recently been sitting. “Morning.” She stretched and smiled lazily at me. “You don’t have anything to eat in here, do you?”
I laughed. “No, why would I? Just go down to the kitchen. Maeve’ll make you something to eat.”
She made a face. “That housekeeper woman doesn’t approve of me. She thinks I’m lazy.”
I smothered a grin. Maeve had definite ideas about working hard, and more than once I’d heard her lecture Bast about sleeping late. “She won’t let you starve even if she thinks you sleep too late,” I said. “Don’t you have early morning calls as a model?”
“I can never fall asleep before three.” She yawned again. “I just nap if I have an early morning shoot, and then nap during the day whenever I can.” She giggled. “But if I have a choice I’ll sleep all day.”
“You and Bast are definitely suited for one another,” I observed.
“We are,” she replied, giving me an impudent grin. “That’s why I’m going to last and the others didn’t. Bast and I understand each other. That’s why most couples fail—they don’t understand each other.”
“Really,” I replied, but she had a point. Charlotte and I had never understood each other, had we, and look at where we’d found ourselves.
“Once Bast gets his money troubles under control, we’re getting married.” She hugged her knees, and looked about thirteen years old. She gave me a sly look. “I love him, but”—she hesitated—“but I’m not going to take on all that debt. I’m keeping my money separate from his.” She tilted her head defiantly. “He’s not very good with money.”
“That’s smart of you. And you’re right, he’s never been good with money.” I wondered how much she knew about what was going on at Sea Oats. “Do you know the details of his money trouble?”
She sighed and collapsed back on the bed, the cut-off sweatshirt rising up over her rib cage and exposing the bottom of her firm breasts. “He borrowed money to invest in some company, supposed to be some sure thing—a dating app, or something like that—I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it other than I gave it to my financial adviser and he said for me not to give them a cent, it was too risky, and I told Bast that but he wouldn’t listen to me.” She gave me a look. “Because I’m a model, and you know, models are stupid so no one ever listens to us.” She rolled her eyes. “I may not have a degree or gone to college, but I’m not stupid about money.” She licked her lower lip. “I grew up poor and I’m not ever going back to that.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“Modeling is hard work.” She sat back up again, the sweatshirt settling downward. “Sure, you have to be pretty, and be photogenic, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
“I never said it was.”
“And I work too hard, and I’ve worked too long, to let my husband get his hands on my money.”
“Do you plan on keeping working after you marry Bast?” It was hard for me to imagine Bast getting married, but he could do much worse than Kayla. Marrying her might be the best thing for him, in fact.
“He’s so bad with money I’ll have to, won’t I?” She laughed, like the sound of tinkling glass. “But that’s fine. I don’t mind supporting us both.”
“Supporting?” I stared at her. “It’s that bad, then?”
“He borrowed a ridiculous amount of money and had to use his shares of the company as collateral for the loan.” She shook her head, the ponytail bouncing. “Poor Bast, it’s always bothered him that Charlotte is so smart and successful. He’s always trying to prove he’s just as good at business as she is, and that’s going to be what ruins him in the end, you know? If he would just accept that he is good at different things and would stop trying to prove himself, he wouldn’t get into these messes she has to bail him out of, you know, and then he wouldn’t have to try to prove himself again, and it’s this whole big cycle of failure and it’s going to keep going until he breaks the cycle.” She crossed her arms. “I’m going to get him to stop, you know.”
“I thought the company trusts were set up so he couldn’t do this?” Charlotte had told me once that her grandfather had set up everything so that the capital was always preserved, no matter how bad the mistakes the members of the family made. He’d done this because his two brothers had blown through their shares of the family money in a matter of years, winding up broke and living off his largesse. Maybe something had changed, or Charlotte hadn’t explained it completely to me. I’d never understood all the ins and outs of how the trusts and the company worked. It was complicated, and I was glad my own work responsibilities didn’t include managing the business side of the firm. Hollis once told me her brain was a spreadsheet and her heart a calculator, and she was right. Hollis might not have been the most creative or talented designer in the world, but she was one of the smartest, building up a brand that made her firm one of the most sought-after interior design firms in the country. She was also planning on expanding that brand into furniture design as well, but that was still on the drawing board.
“I don’t know. I don’t think Bast knows for sure, but all I know is he owes a lot of money, and if he doesn’t pay the money back the bank is going to take his shares of the company.”
And if someone was trying to take control of Swann’s by buying up shares…Bast’s block was significant enough that Charlotte wouldn’t be able to keep control.
No wonder she was so stressed.
I bet Roger could explain it all to me better. He’d been an investment banker, after all, and when some of the Swann’s stock was taken public he’d handled it all, making himself a small fortune in the process.
“What are you looking at?” Kayla was staring at my computer screen.
I closed it. “I took a lot of pictures of the grounds yesterday when I was out walking,” I replied casually. “I was just going through them.”
“That looked like Angus.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “That’s kind of creepy, don’t you think? Right before he was killed and all? What was that blurry shadow?”
“Nothing, probably.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Maybe you took a picture of the killer!”
“No,” I replied, keeping my voice calm. “And even if I did, it’s too blurry to make out.”
She got up. “Well, I’m going to go brave the kitchen.” She paused at the door. “Keep an eye out for Bast, won’t you?”
Chapter Seven
I’d grown up in a world as far divorced from Sea Oats and New York City as possible. I was the only child of two parents who’d never left Kansas before I was born, and considered big cities dangerous and scary places. The suburban town in Kansas where I’d spent almost my entire childhood waiting to escape was the kind of place most politicians, trying to drum up populist support, called the real America—even though they spent as little time there as they could, rousing the rabble until their votes were secured, disappearing again until the votes were needed again. Neither of my parents had gone to college, and didn’t think I needed to go; what I needed was to find the right man to marry and father my children. My going away to school in New York and deciding to settle there was as alien to them as my coming out to them and when I’d married Charlotte.
I hadn’t spoken to either of them in years. There wasn’t any point. They believed I was going through a phase I’d wake up from one day, find a nice man, and be a good little housewife with a house full of grandchildren for them. There was nothing I could say that would convince them otherwise.
They’d die waiting, apparently.
My mother might not have a college education, and might have been mired in her religious belief that people like me were going straight to hell when we died, but she could be wise about some things. She
’d always told me that facing my fears, for example, was better than just worrying about them. The reality is never as bad as you can imagine it, she always said to me, whether it was apologizing to a friend I’d wronged or breaking up with whatever boy I was going steady with, or talking to a teacher about a failed assignment.
So when I heard the roar of a car in the driveway and looked out to see the little red convertible MG parked out in front and Sebastian climbing out, I knew I had to go down and face him.
Facing him couldn’t be any worse than facing his sister had been.
Sebastian Swann, like his sister, had always been a handsome man; when he was a child he was so breathtakingly pretty he could have modeled. From the pictures I’d seen, he’d never had an awkward phase, either, when his face was covered in pimples or his arms and legs had grown crazily out of proportion to the rest of him, or had to wear braces to straighten his teeth. No, Sebastian had been blessed by Mother Nature from birth, and he also had an older sister and an older cousin to baby and spoil him, make much of him, make him feel like he was special and the rules didn’t apply to him.
And people had always treated him better because of his looks.
Everything had come easily to him because he was so exceptionally good looking, and having money didn’t hurt, either. It was one of the sad secrets of our modern society that life was often easier for those of us with the good fortune to be better looking than others. Beauty brought privilege with it, just as money did.
The privilege could be subtle, and unnoticeable: little things like getting served first at the bar, or getting helped almost immediately in a department store, with sales clerks hovering over you, or the unawareness of how easy it was to get a cab to stop for you on a busy street during rush hour. It could also be blatant: having teachers fawn on you and favor you, how popularity always seemed to go with the beauty, how people were always ready to do you favors and carry your books and walk you home or buy you a drink.
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