Dare You

by Jennifer Brown

  I let out an exasperated breath. “Fine.” I grabbed his elbow and flashed the biggest, fakest smile I could muster. “Better?” I asked through my teeth.

  “Definitely scarier.”

  “Good. That’s what I was going for.”

  INSIDE, THE TESLA estate was more like a museum than a house. Everything was marble and crystal and gold plated and soft leather and braided rugs. And old. We grabbed two numbered paddles out of a basket at the front door and mixed into the crowd, trying to blend in the best that we could. Which wasn’t easy. Everyone else looked like they’d gotten lost on their way to the Oscars.

  “Who are the Teslas anyway?” I asked. “And what on earth did they do for a living?” I watched a crystal teardrop shiver from the bottom of a chandelier above. I noticed soft classical music and peered into the room behind me, where a string quartet earnestly played.

  He shrugged. “Not much, actually. Old money.” He leaned to one side to let a waiter with a tray of canapés pass. “Really old money. I know who they are because about three times a month some idiot or another tries to rob the place. Security everywhere. Why they think they won’t get caught is beyond me.”

  “Well, at least the idiots are giving you job security.”

  “Point taken.”

  I rubbed my hand up my bare arm, feeling chilled. “This feels more like a cocktail party than an estate sale. Or like . . . a cotillion.”

  He grabbed a crab puff off a passing tray and popped it into his mouth. “There are appearances to keep up. Don’t want the world thinking you need to sell off Mumsy and Puppaw’s art to keep the family afloat after they’re gone.”

  “You really think they died?”

  He shrugged. “Well, not together. But this isn’t exactly a garage sale. People this rich generally don’t auction off their own things. They contact private buyers. If they’re auctioning off everything, someone important kicked the bucket.”

  “How sensitive of you.”

  He waved his paddle in front of his face. “It’s not really all that sensitive to be here bidding on their furniture, either, though, is it?”

  I thought about it for a few minutes, listening as the quartet changed songs. There was a bar in the corner and suddenly I was dying of thirst and needing a cigarette and really, really wanting to get out of the incredibly uncomfortable sandals I was wearing. “It seems so morbid to be snapping up their whole lives like a bargain-basement sale.” I picked up a statuette of a shepherd. His nose was chipped. “What if these things really meant something to them?”

  He took the shepherd out of my hand and placed it back on the table. “If it makes you feel better, my guess is the family is keeping the really good stuff and selling off the rest here.”

  I trailed my finger along the intricately carved table. “If this is the rest, I would love to see the good stuff.”

  We milled around in the crowd, trying to stay in the background while looking for familiar faces. There were a lot of old people there. Like, a lot. Detective Martinez didn’t want us to stand out, but we had to just by age alone. Probably everyone there was wondering how such a young couple could afford to step inside the Tesla estate, much less buy something there.

  Detective Martinez scored us a couple of sodas at the bar. I’d found an empty chair near the front door and was scowling in it, wishing the straps of my shoes weren’t so damn tight and the top of my dress wasn’t so damn loose and I had a damn plan for being here in the first damn place. He held a fizzing cup out to me.

  “Root beer?”

  “Fancy,” I said. “Who needs all that expensive champagne that looks so delicious and classy, anyway?”

  “For all we know, this is imported from France.”

  I made a face. “French root beer?”

  “Drink it or don’t.”

  I took it and drank. He sat next to me. His leg rested against mine, and I didn’t like that I noticed it right away, but I noticed it right away.

  “So you see anyone you recognize?” he asked.

  “No. You?” We peered into the crowd, which had gotten bigger. The quartet had begun to play louder to compensate.

  “Not yet.”

  “Wait.” I noticed a woman wearing a prim peach dress with delicate blue flowers and standing near a fountain in the center of the foyer. Her silvery hair fluffed and frizzed around her shoulders, which were slightly stooped. Something about her looked familiar. I leaned forward, willing her to turn around. Eventually she did. “That’s the woman from the store.”

  I remembered the phone call she’d been making when I’d walked in. She’d been telling whoever was on the other end that she would be here, and that she would send one of the boys to take care of something that had been lost. I stood and craned my neck. We’d already guessed the lost something was Rigo’s cane. Please, God. Please let Rigo be the boy.

  There was a ringing noise, and slowly everyone quieted. All you could hear was the quartet, which had softened its music to exactly match the tone of the crowd. Impressive. A man in a shiny blue suit stood two steps up the central spiral staircase, holding a bell.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. He had a slight accent that I couldn’t quite peg. Posh New England, maybe? Was it possible for Ivy League to be its own dialect? “Thank you for coming tonight. My father would be proud. As promised, all the money collected tonight will be sent to children’s charities, as was his dying wish.” There was a smattering of applause and some murmurs of appreciation, and Detective Martinez raised his eyebrows at me as if to say, See? I told you he kicked the bucket. The man rang the bell again and held up his other palm to quiet the room. “In order to maximize our donation, we have brought in a few items from some other local estates, so you’re in for a real treat. We have some very sought-after pieces from some very well-known estates.” More light applause. “In just a few moments, we will begin the auction. If you’ll join us upstairs, you will find plenty of seating for all of you.” He ducked his head, muttered another quick thanks, and began climbing the stairs, a tail of wine-carrying guests following him, excitedly chattering, their paddles tucked into their handbags or clasped under their arms.

  I looked back where the Basile woman had been but could no longer see her. I stood and scanned the crowd, my fancy “French” soft drink forgotten on a coaster on what was probably a zillion-dollar end table. “Damn it. She’s gone.”

  “She’ll be up there,” Detective Martinez said. He stood and placed his hand on the small of my back. I noticed that, too. “Shall we, Muriel?”

  “Muriel?”

  He shrugged. “Seemed like an appropriate name for tonight.”

  “Oh, okay . . .” I thought about it. “Chauncey.”

  “Chauncey? Do I seriously look like a Chauncey to you?”

  “And I look like a Muriel? Chauncey is a family name. You were lucky you didn’t get Kensington or Palmer.”

  We joined the crowd, allowing ourselves to be swept up the stairs. When we got to the top, and the crowd mobbed itself in the doorway of a cavernous room, he leaned so his breath was tickling my ear.

  “Well, if I have to be Chauncey, then forget Muriel. You’re officially Seraphina.”

  I thought it over. “Actually, I kind of like it.”

  THE TESLAS HAD a bona-fide ballroom right there in their house. A ballroom. I’d never known anyone who had a ballroom in their house. Not even the Hollises had a ballroom. I didn’t know what young Mr. Tesla was planning to do with the house after the estate was all sold off, but if he was smart, he would never let this house go. A fucking ballroom!

  Every inch of the ballroom was wood, polished so hard it looked like ice. I wanted to kick off my sandals, put on a pair of socks, and skate from one end of the room to the other.

  A humongous chandelier that made the ones downstairs look like night-lights dominated the center of the room. The central air kicked on, and the crystals swayed and tinkled in the current. At one end of the room, someone h
ad set up a short riser with a podium. Behind it were carts and boxes, which I assumed were filled with the items for sale. At the other end of the room was a table with a cash box. There must have been a hundred folding chairs lined up facing the riser, and Detective Martinez and I parked ourselves at the end of a row near the back. He fanned himself with his paddle and peered around as silently as I had been. I was guessing he didn’t see a lot of ballrooms in his circle of friends, either.

  “We’ll have to bid on some things or we’ll look really suspicious,” I said.

  “We can’t afford anything here, I guarantee it,” he whispered back.

  “But why would we come just to sit here? We’ll bid early and get out before it looks like it will even be close to final.”

  “You’re paying for it if we end up accidentally buying some gold-plated toilet roll cover or something.”

  “Whatever.”

  The chairs around us filled in and eventually everyone got settled. I thought I caught a glimpse of the woman in the peach dress but lost her again, and before I could nonchalantly stand up to stretch or use the restroom or anything that might get me a better view, young Mr. Tesla stepped onto the riser and rang the bell again.

  “We’ll get started right away,” he said. He bowed his head to a sweaty, red-faced man, who took his place behind the podium and introduced the first item.

  I had never been to an auction before, so I had no idea what to expect. But generally speaking, it was mind-numbingly boring. Piece after piece of ugly, overrated art was brought to the forefront of the riser, and paddles sprang up while the man behind the podium rattled off numbers so fast it made my head spin, like someone had whirled a color wheel in front of me.

  I bid on a painting of some geishas sitting by a river, a mantel clock with a couple of fat cherubs lounging across the top of it, and a silver candelabra that shone like the sun under the chandelier.

  “Silver?” Detective Martinez whispered, elbowing me in the side. “Are you nuts?”

  I held up my paddle a second time. “That way if I accidentally win, I can bludgeon myself and put me out of my misery.”

  He pushed the paddle down, against his leg. “Stop. I will bludgeon you for free if it means that much to you.”

  I pried the paddle loose and held it up one more time, just to spite him. “I think I might actually prefer life in prison to this,” I hissed. Two women sitting next to us shot us angry shut up looks. I let the paddle rest on my lap, satisfied, and another bidder won.

  There were two matching vases and a tapestry and more paintings, and I got so bored I stopped bidding, leaving Detective Martinez to do it for me, stress-sweat running down his temples and into the collar of his shirt. After each sale, an assistant carried the won item to the sale table and the bidder got up to pay for it. The crowd began to thin as winners left with what they’d come for.

  “Our next item,” the man behind the podium said, “is a mother-and-child statue. Solid brass, circa 1920s. I’ll begin the bidding at—”

  But I heard nothing else he said; my brain flooded with bumpy gray and black, with fireworks of pain and confetti surprise. The colors were framed by fuzzy gray, a memory.

  My fingers went up to the side of my head, felt the scar there.

  Vanessa Hollis had come at me with a statue. A brass statue of a mother and child. She’d tried to hit me with it, and when she’d failed, she’d thrown it at me. You nosy bitch!

  I’d seen it on the poster, of course. But there was something about being in the same room with it that made the whole room dip and sway. I elbowed Detective Martinez.

  “We’re up,” I breathed.

  “What?” Detective Martinez was right at my ear.

  “That statue is from you-know-where.”

  “What?” he said again, but he sat up straight, his attention drilled directly into the auctioneer’s voice.

  The statue sold fast, to a pudgy woman two rows ahead of me, who’d won the vast majority of the items, her jewelry clicking approvingly every time she raised her paddle. I melted into my chair, feeling numb and dizzy and scared all over again. Wanting nothing but to get the cane and get out of there.

  The auctioneer banged his gavel, and his assistant approached with the next item.

  “This Maori Koruru mask is hand carved out of wood, its eyes inlaid with paua shell . . .”

  Dru.

  Oh God, Dru.

  I remembered barging into Dru’s apartment, drugged and beat up and terrified. Luna had brought me to Hollis Mansion and I had escaped and gone straight to his apartment. That was the day he’d taken the camera card from me. It was the first time I’d seen his apartment in the light. And the first thing I noticed was the tribal mask that hung on the wall next to his kayak.

  The same tribal mask the auctioneer’s assistant was holding up in the air right now.

  “Hey.” Detective Martinez shook my shoulder. “What’s up? You look pale. You okay?”

  I didn’t even feel my mouth open, but the words somehow came out anyway. “That was Dru’s. I’m okay. I’ll be okay.” It seemed to take forever for the mask to sell. It was, after all, really ugly. But my hands twitched around my paddle, longing to buy it just to keep one last connection with Dru. Could I do it? Could I wake up every morning looking at that mask? Could I spend each day with a reminder of what had happened in that backyard literally staring at me? I thought about it too long. The gavel sounded, and I watched as a man in a gray suit made his way to his newly acquired prize. I instantly felt regret.

  And then I felt a nudge on my knee. Martinez was nodding toward the stage, where the assistant was holding up the next item for bid.

  “. . . genuine silver ball handle . . . ,” the auctioneer was saying. “. . . missing gemstone . . . quite the find . . . discovered wrapped in a blanket tucked in a corner in an attic . . .”

  Detective Martinez and I exchanged looks. Rigo’s cane. We didn’t know how it had ended up here. Why hadn’t Rigo taken it with him? Why hadn’t the Hollises destroyed it? How was it that someone had found it, thought it was sellable junk, and sent it off to an estate auction? None of that mattered at the moment. All that mattered was that we get our hands on it now.

  My paddle flew up without my even realizing it, but I was quickly outbid by a couple in the front row and someone else a few rows behind that one. I held up my paddle again. And again. And again. And again, until Detective Martinez finally pushed my arm down gently. I didn’t have the money to pay for this. And I knew what he was thinking—let someone else have it, and I would just have to figure out a way to get it from them.

  The gavel sounded and a man stood to claim his prize. He was tall, lanky, had a head full of thick, dark hair, and had a perma-frown on his face. He came back to his seat and the auctioneer moved on to the next item. Was he one of the boys?

  Shit. Now what?

  Suddenly the air got very heavy, and I was sure I was being watched. I could feel it—the Hollis threat, the Hollis presence—hovering around me, pressing on my lungs. They were in Dubai, but the memory of everything that happened that night would never leave. “Can we go?” I whispered.

  “They’re not done yet.” He gestured toward the stage with his paddle. The auctioneer mistook the motion for a bid. Detective Martinez winced and clasped the paddle in his lap again.

  I grabbed his sleeve and pulled. “I really want to go.”

  “Just a few more minutes, Nikki. We’ve got to be patient. We want to keep that cane in our sight.”

  “This is stupid,” I whispered, getting angry now. “There’s a difference between being patient and wasting your time. We lost. Let’s go so we can figure out what to do.”

  The two women shushed us again. I slumped back in my chair, knowing that I was sitting in my chiffon dress like it was a pair of sweatpants, and not caring at all.

  “The next item,” the auctioneer said. And then blah, blah, blah, a bunch of stuff I didn’t hear. And then a word. The one wo
rd that would grasp my attention every time. “Rainbow.”

  I jolted upright. He was holding the painting I’d seen in the poster. A melancholy painting of a bunch of men in a rowboat on a raging sea; the shadow of their ship going down in the background.

  “What did he say?” I hissed at Detective Martinez. He was scrolling through text messages on his phone.

  “What?”

  I pointed toward the auctioneer. “What did he say about that?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t listening.”

  I shoved his shoulder with a frustrated grunt and leaned forward, poking my head next to the lady in front of me. “Excuse me,” I said. She shot me an annoyed look. “What did he say about that painting? Something about a rainbow?”

  She gave me a You classless rabble look and then whispered haughtily. “It’s a reproduction of Ivan Aivazovsky’s The Rainbow, of course. Mint condition, but just a print.”

  The Rainbow.

  Rainbow.

  Peyton’s escort name. Peyton’s tattoo, which instructed me to Live in Color. The decoration on the box in her bedroom where I’d found her old cell phone. Rainbow.

  Everywhere that there was a rainbow, there was a clue. A clue from Peyton, left specifically for me.

  I grabbed the paddle off Martinez’s lap and raised it in the air.

  He gave me a confused look. “What are you doing?”

  “I need that painting.”

  “Why?”

  “Just trust me on this.”

  Fortunately, I was the only one who bid, so the auction was over quickly and cheaply. I practically sprinted to collect my painting. I could almost feel it vibrating in my hands. I didn’t know how I knew, but this piece of art was a message from Peyton. It had to be.

  Just as I reached my seat—a very curious-looking Martinez staring at me with all kinds of questions in his eyes—the man with the perma-frown stood, holding the arm of the woman in the peach dress, who carried the cane protectively.

  And they’ll have it? You’ve made sure? she’d been asking when I’d walked into her shop.

  They’d gotten what they’d come for, and they were leaving with it.