by Jill Orr
“Uh…yeah.”
“Good.” I turned toward the kitchen, my beaded dress making a deliciously sophisticated swishing sound as I walked. “Drink?”
Before Ash got there, I’d dimmed the lights, put on a Spotify playlist called “Jazzy Nights,” and lit several candles around the room. My parents had given me a bottle of champagne when I’d gotten my first front-page story at the Times, and I’d stuck it in a salad bowl full of ice (I didn’t own an ice bucket) and set out some wine glasses (I didn’t own any champagne flutes) along with a small bowl of strawberries. It was not exactly Instagram-worthy, but I thought it had a certain charm.
Ash let out a low whistle. “Champagne? Strawberries? Candlelight? You better be careful, Miss Ellison, or we might not make it to the party…”
“Calm down, Romeo.” I laughed. “Holman and Lindsey are meeting us here. I thought it’d be fun to have a drink together before we go.”
That was partially true. The other part was that it had been a long time since I’d been to a party, let alone a costume party, and I was a little nervous. I wasn’t the most socially gifted person who ever walked the Earth, so I thought a pre-event drink would help me feel more comfortable in a room full of costumed strangers. I nodded to the bottle in the bowl. “Do you mind opening? I’m not sure I know how.”
Ash twisted the bottle until it made the obligatory pop and poured us each a glass. “To a year full of new experiences, new friendships, and new possibilities.”
“Cheers!”
We took a sip and then set our glasses down. The moment was artificial but sweet, and I had to fight the impulse to say something sarcastic to counterbalance it. One of my flaws had always been that I had trouble being serious in a serious moment. It was a product of immaturity, no doubt, and something I was determined to change. So as the silence between us stretched on, I took another sip of my champagne to swallow my urge to say something stupid.
Finally, Ash broke the tension. “Look at us in our fancy clothes drinking champagne by candlelight. Who are we?”
I almost spit out my drink with relief. “I know, right? I feel like a total imposter.”
“Imposter? Nah, I feel like I should be on a red carpet somewhere. I look good in this tux.”
“My, but someone has a high opinion of oneself,” I teased.
“What? You don’t think I could give Tobey Maguire a run for his money in this?” He spun around to give me the full view.
“You watched the movie!” I said, clapping my hands together. “What’d you think?”
“It was kinda sad,” he said. “But it looked like they had one hell of a party before things all went to shit.”
“Maybe we should drink to that: one hell of a party before everything goes to shit.” I raised my glass into the air.
“I’d rather drink to having a date with the prettiest girl in town.”
I rolled my eyes. “That tux is turning you into a cheese ball.”
“I’m dead serious.” Ash was looking at me the way a lion might look at a gazelle. Or Holman might look at a doughnut. He said, “I can’t remember the last time I was as proud to go anywhere with anyone as I am to go to this party with you tonight.”
“Ash—” That was maybe the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me, and I didn’t know how to respond. Luckily, the doorbell rang and I didn’t have to finish my sentence. And, double-luckily, there could not have been a more effective antidote to the intimate moment than what I saw when I opened my front door.
Holman and Lindsey stood before me, both wearing pants that I think were called knickers, drab-colored button-down shirts under even drabber vests, and flat newsboy caps. Holman had a parchment bag slung across his chest filled with newspapers. Lindsey’s accessory appeared to be dirt she’d that smudged onto her cheeks to perfect the “street urchin” look. I was both horrified and impressed.
“Whadaya know, Riley!” Holman said in that nasal tone familiar to old movies.
“Jeepers! You look swell!” Lindsey chimed in.
“Wow,” was all I could say.
Ash walked over to the entry. “Man, you guys look… wow…you really went all out, didn’t you?” he said.
Holman beamed at what he perceived as a compliment, and Lindsey patted at the base of her hat where she’d tucked up her beautiful hair. “Thanks, daddy-o,” they said in unison, and then looked at each other and laughed.
I led them in and offered them champagne. Lindsey accepted and Holman declined, as he was our driver for the evening. Earlier in the day I told him we’d be happy to take Uber to and from the party so he could have a drink, but he’d insisted on taking his car. “What kind of gentleman takes a woman out and does not see to her safe return home?”
“Uber is ‘seeing to her safe return home,’” I’d told him.
“It’s outsourcing the job,” he’d said with more than a hint of judgment in his voice. “Besides, wouldn’t it likely be your mother driving the Uber?”
“Good point,” I said. I mean, I love my mom and everything, but having her drive me and my friends to a party was way too high school flashback for me.
We spent the next thirty minutes or so making excited chitchat, all of us careful not to bring up anything having to do with work. This was a night for celebration, and we were all determined not to let the weightier issues of the day spoil it. When it was time to leave for Toad’s party, we piled into Holman’s Dodge Neon. After a lengthy process of him putting the party address into his navigation system while Ash kept repeating, “Dude, I can just tell you where to go,” we were off.
Toad lived in a subdivision about two miles outside of Tuttle Corner. The narrow road was still snow covered from yesterday’s storm, but it was a well-traveled route, so the snow was packed down, making for an easy drive. The night was cold and clear, and the bright moon reflected off the snow, bathing everything around us in dark periwinkle. As Ash and I sat in the cramped back seat, our knees touching, he reached over and threaded his fingers through mine. An old song from Holman’s weird but oddly perfect “Roaring 20s” playlist drifted through the small car, and for a brief moment I actually felt transported to another time, or at the very least to another age.
People had often told me I was an old soul—Granddaddy, when I’d devour his old Agatha Christie novels, and Ryan, when I’d suggest we blow off a party in college to stay home and watch a movie. Granddad had meant it as a compliment, and I’m pretty sure Ryan did not—but either way the epithet had been okay with me. There’s a certain peace that comes with knowing who you are, and while I was far from Miss Confidence, USA, I’d always been comfortable with that part of myself. I dipped my head onto Ash’s shoulder as we rode in silence, enjoying the closeness as he gave my hand a meaningful squeeze.
“I think this is it,” Lindsey said as we pulled onto a street lined with cars.
“I’ll drop you ladies at the driveway,” Holman said, “so you won’t have to walk in the snow.”
For a guy who didn’t date much and didn’t often dwell on the subtleties of human interaction, Holman was being quite the gentleman tonight. I knew that must have been a testament to how much he wanted to impress Lindsey. I hoped it was working.
We pulled up to the house, and I couldn’t help but smile. White twinkle lights filled multiple trees out front, the path to the front door was lined with white-paper-bag luminaries, and music spilled out onto the street. You could also hear a roar of lively conversation all the way from the driveway, and I’ll admit I felt a flutter of nervous excitement ripple through my belly.
“You know anyone who’s coming?” Lindsey said to me as we stood on the driveway waiting for our dates.
“Ryan and Ridley,” I said, my breath visible. “And I’ll probably recognize some people from high school—but other than that, no.” I noticed she looked a little nervous. I wanted to ask how it was going with Holman, but I knew he’d be along at any moment. “Your costume looks great, by the way.”
“That was really sweet of you.”
She smiled, an unspoken answer to my unspoken question of how things were going between them. Just then Ash and Holman walked up, their cheeks red from the cold. Ash leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Um, he keeps calling me ‘old sport.’”
I stifled a laugh.
“You gals ready to bust into this gin joint and sip on some giggle water?” Holman said, reviving his old-timey voice from before.
I was about to tell Holman that he didn’t have to talk like that all night, but then Lindsey said, “That’d be the bee’s knees!” and I felt like I’d be a total wench to try to tame their enthusiasm. Lindsey was clearly trying to get into the spirit and so should I.
“Sure thing, daddy-o,” I said.
Holman’s face lit up with excitement. “Nice use of Prohibition-era slang, Riley!”
Ash, on the other hand, looked at me like I was speaking Russian.
“When in West Egg…” I trilled as I took his arm to walk inside.
CHAPTER 40
We stepped inside the house, and it didn’t even feel like we were in Tuttle Corner anymore. The entire first floor had been transformed. Toad must have moved out all his furniture, because huge centerpieces with giant white feather plumes and pearls sat on bar top tables that were scattered about the room. Muted gold and clear teardrop balloons hung from the ceiling on fishing wire, giving the effect that we were standing inside a bottle of champagne. Everyone was dressed to the nines, wearing their best twenties costumes. I’d never seen so many flappers and gangsters and top hats in one room in all my life. Everything looked so festive, it was impossible not to feel so yourself. Even Holman was scanning the room with a look of wonder on his face.
We hadn’t been in the house for three seconds before a tall, thin man in a black tux came walking toward us with his arms spread wide. “Glad you could make it, cuz!”
This must be Toad. Ridley was right—he looked nothing like a warty, swamp-dwelling creature. He was about as tall as Holman but looked like he spent much more time in the gym. He had the same coloring as Ash, but his face was longer, and he wore wire-framed glasses. He wasn’t what I’d describe as traditionally handsome, but he oozed the sort of charm that would have made good looks almost too over-the-top. As it was, he was the kind of guy you liked immediately.
He and Ash embraced and clapped each other on the back in the traditional bro greeting. “This is Riley Ellison, my date,” Ash said, “and our friends Will Holman and Lindsey Davis.”
Toad took my hand and kissed the back of it, a gesture that were he to have done it in any other setting would have been kinda creepy, but in this one was sort of fun. “Lovely to meet you. I can already tell you are far too good for my degenerate second cousin.”
I smiled and might have even blushed.
Then he turned to Holman and Lindsey, his hand on his chin as he looked them up and down. Just before the moment turned awkward, he snapped his fingers. “Newspaper boys…am I right?”
“Well done, Mr. Toad,” Holman said, shooting Ash an I-told-you-so glance. “Thank you for allowing us to come to your party.”
“The more the merrier,” Toad said as he threw his arms up in the air. He proceeded to give us the lay of the land: beer and wine were in the living room, hard liquor in the kitchen, food in the dining room. “At midnight, we’re gonna have a toast and do the traditional banging of pots andpans, so be sure to grab one off the pile by the patio door before then.”
“It wards away the evil spirits,” Holman said with a discreet nod of the head.
Toad looked slightly unsure whether or not he was joking, but raised his glass and said, “To banishing evil spirits! And annoying the crap out of your neighbors!” We all laughed, and with that, Toad was off to greet other guests.
Ash and I made our way through the crowd toward the wine and beer station. Lindsey said she wanted to try Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, the signature cocktail of the evening, so she and Holman went in search of the kitchen. The music was loud, and I could barely hear Ash ask me what I wanted to drink. “Whatever you’re having!” I shouted. A few minutes later he was back with two bottles of beer.
The next couple of hours were a blur of drinking, laughter, and conversations starting with, “Tell me again what your friends are dressed up as?” Ryan and Ridley showed up at some point—she looking ridiculously stunning in a gold-fringe flapper dress, and he dressed like Al Capone, complete with a toy machine gun and stick-on black mustache. Eventually, the 1920s music was replaced with more current selections, and the large living room turned into one giant dance floor. Ash, as it turned out, could really dance. I probably should have been embarrassed at my lack of coordination, but I’d had just enough beer not to care. Holman and Lindsey mostly stood off to the side, talking and watching the dancers, but they looked like they were having fun in their own way.
It was about eleven when I excused myself to go to the bathroom. There was a long line at the closest one to the living room, but I remembered Toad saying there was a powder room off the kitchen. I made my way over there and was glad to see there was only one person ahead of me in line. As I waited, I checked my phone and saw I had gotten an email from Sheriff Clark. It was probably the copy of Flick’s phone records. There was a little voice inside my head telling me not to open it, that whatever was in there could wait. I was supposed to be taking the night off from thinking about this stuff. But then my little voice started fighting with another little voice that pointed out that Sheriff Clark had gone to all the trouble of sending it and it wouldn’t take but two seconds to open it. Maybe I should just peek real quick and see if anything jumped out at me. I looked around (as if anyone knew or cared what I was doing) and clicked on the attachment.
I scanned the document, which listed the date, phone number, and duration of each call. There were no names associated with the numbers, so until I could cross-check the phone numbers on the internet, this list offered little information. I saw my own phone number on there a couple of times; the last entry was from the day before Flick was killed. My heart ached at the memory, but I pushed past it.
There were several calls in between the one to me and the end of the log to what looked like two numbers, both with a 252 area code. I recognized that as Greenville, North Carolina, which was, not incidentally, where both the Claremores and Megan Johanning lived. Megan’s call had come to my phone as Blocked Caller, so I had no way of knowing if one of these numbers was hers, but I did have Shannon’s number from the records I’d received from Hudson Falls. A quick toggle over to my outgoing calls confirmed that one of the 252 numbers was indeed Shannon Claremore’s. I started to get that excited-slash-nervous feeling I got when I was onto something. Flick had called Shannon Claremore, which means she lied to me when she said she didn’t know him.
The woman in line behind me tapped my shoulder, prodding me to look up. The bathroom was free, and now there were at least four people in line behind me. I stepped inside the small powder room with only one thing on my mind: Who did the other number belong to? I knew I shouldn’t be doing this now, that I should wait until tomorrow when I could attack this with a clear head and a plan, but patience had never been my strong suit. Leaning against the sink, I keyed in the other 252 number, the last phone number Flick ever called. I held my breath as the phone rang. After three or four rings, I heard the distinct click of someone on the other end of the phone, though no one spoke.
“Hello?” When I got no response, I covered my ear with my free hand and tried again. “Hello? Who is this?”
“Happy New Year, Riley.” The voice was unmistakably Megan Johanning’s.
“Megan?”
“That’s a real pretty white dress you’re wearing.”
Darkness edged in on my field of vision, an
d for one brief moment, I thought I might black out. “Where are you?” I asked, my voice a hoarse, urgent rasp.
“Let’s just say I’m nearby.”
“What—why—” My mind was frantically trying to make sense of this and having a hard time with it. “It was you…” I thought of the car that had been following me earlier. “You won’t—”
“YOU,” she said, her voice slicing through me, “would do well to be quiet and listen to me. I’m giving you a chance to avoid any future unpleasantness. Drop this whole thing, Riley. Stop looking into Shannon Claremore’s past. Stop the investigation into Mr. Flick’s accident. Honor Albert’s memory by letting this go.”
“Don’t you dare say his name!”
“Why not?” Megan said calmly. “Albert and I made a deal. Your safety was his main concern, his last request, if you will.”
I was vaguely aware of someone knocking on the door and voices. Hurry up! C’mon! But it felt like I was rushing through time at warp speed—everything around me faded into the background as I struggled to hold onto what she was saying. Granddad’s last request.
“I gave him my word that you’d be safe,” Megan continued. “I’d hate to have to go back on it.”
Someone outside the door started to knock loudly. “Hey, are you almost done? C’mon!”
“Is that a threat?” I asked, the fear in my voice obvious even though I was trying to sound tough.
“I don’t make threats,” she said. “You know that by now. You’ve already lost two people over this situation. It would be such a shame to lose anyone else—that handsome boyfriend of yours? Or your partner from the newspaper? He drove you all there tonight, didn’t he? It’s a dangerous business driving on New Year’s Eve. So many accidents…”
My knees literally buckled, and I had to grab the sink for balance. The pounding on the door was getting louder.
“But how?”
She made a tsk-tsk sound. “People always underestimate the physically disabled, don’t they? When they look at us, they only think of the things we can’t do, not what we can. For instance, some of us can drive far better than we can walk. And the hand controls on cars these days result in amazing precision.”
