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Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Since I know you can’t possibly be this eager about the wedding ceremony, I assume we’re going back to the murder attic?” Jake asked as Kate practically sprinted up the stairs toward the fourth floor again. She was really getting her cardio for the weekend.

“I need to check the photos on Richie’s phone to confirm Marcus’s claim that he was in the spa after he argued with Rebecca,” Kate said as they climbed the ladder into the attic, picking up Richie’s phone where she left it on the armchair and scrolling through his camera roll as Jake changed into his wedding outfit. “Well, Marcus was right about one thing, at least. Seems like Richie and Steven hosted some kind of after-party down in the pool room. Ah, there’s Marcus in the background. He looks super pissed, so this must be after he talked to Rebecca. He is in a towel, though. And it looks like he’s going into some kind of side room and—Oh! Okay, well that is a penis.”

The pictures got decidedly more R-rated from there, bare chests and other parts, groups of wedding guests swimming in what looked like an underground pool. Kate checked the metadata on the pictures, disappointed to find that they spanned far beyond the time frame of the poisoning window last night. Richie and Steven were in most of the photos, as was Marcus a good hour after he entered the steam room, looking like a cooked potato. But Rebecca was conspicuously absent. Which tracked with Richie’s timeline that she left the pool room after arguing with Marcus. But how did she end up drowned, and who did the deed?

“Unless you’re planning on showing up to the ceremony in your sleuthing sweater, you should get changed now,” Jake prompted, gently taking the phone from her.

“Wedding, right,” Kate said, frowning over her suspects list as she dug through her suitcase for her dress for the wedding. “The photos from the party seem to prove Marcus was in the steam room when Rebecca was killed.”

“Doesn’t that alibi out Richie and Steven as well, then?” Jake wondered.

“I guess it does.” Kate grunted, wrestling herself into the strapless bra from the previous evening. “And to your point, Kennedy has a rock-solid alibi for the time her aunt was killed.”

“Being poisoned and unconscious, you mean,” Jake supplied.

“Yes,” Kate said. “Except that Marcus said something interesting about Kennedy. He said that she lured him here to the island by promising to talk to Rebecca about giving his family’s business back. But when he got here, suddenly she’s talking about it being a bad time because the situation changed.”

“Which makes sense, if Rebecca blindsided her about the historical society,” Jake said.

“It would make sense, if she’d been blindsided,” Kate said, shimmying into her dress. She wouldn’t have time to fix her hair or even contemplate makeup, but it hardly mattered, considering they’d be doing the ceremony in the dark at this point. “But what if Kennedy somehow found out about her aunt’s plans before this weekend?”

“You mean somebody on the board snitched to her?”

“Think about it. Rosary peas aren’t naturally occurring here, and I certainly haven’t seen any in the house or on the grounds. Which means whoever brought the poison was prepared. So maybe Rebecca thinks she’s hoodwinking her family, making the big announcement last night. But what if one of them already knew? Like, say, a real estate lawyer? Or her heir? Or a disgraced cousin desperately seeking a cash infusion to stave off her food truck debts?”

Jake turned around in surprise. “You think all three of them were in on it?”

“They all stood to gain from Rebecca’s death, didn’t they?” Kate reasoned, wincing as she worked her feet back into her high heels. “Kennedy would lose access to the family fund and the island where all the precious memories of her parents are, Richie would lose his inheritance, and Cassidy would never get the opportunity to inherit at all. But with Rebecca out of the way, Kennedy takes over and stops the deal with the historical trust. And, as head of the board, she can approve Richie’s request and have Cassidy reinstated in the will.”

Jake gave a low whistle, his gaze traveling up the length of her bare legs and back down. He blinked, clearing his throat. “That’s a helluva motive for all three.”

“I need to talk to Kennedy,” Kate said. “If I can get her to admit she knew about the deal before Rebecca’s speech, that proves she had motive. And if the three of them were in it together—Kennedy providing the distraction, Richie and Steven sabotaging the house, and Cassidy doing the deed—then all we need to figure out is where they actually drowned Rebecca. There’s got to be some kind of physical evidence there.”

“I’ve got your evidence right here,” Jake said, holding up Richie’s phone. When Kate looked at him in surprise, he gave a shrug. “What? You told me to be a Blake, I’m being a Blake. I went through his text history, and listen to this one from Steven: ‘You know what Rico will do to me if this deal doesn’t go through. We need to take care of your aunt this weekend, or else.’ And this one, from Cassidy, sent yesterday morning: ‘R can’t stand in my way any longer, I’ve made sure of it.’ Sounds like the hatching of a plot to me.”

“See, now you’re getting into the spirit.” Kate grinned. “Let’s go talk to the bride.”

Kate and Jake hurried down to the main floor, suddenly aware of how much time had passed since Abraham’s announcement. But it hardly seemed to matter if they were late or not, because it felt like the house was under assault from the storm outside, the wind finding its way into all the cracks and weak points a hundred-year-old house halfway through renovations will have. The lights flickered more noticeably now, like a heart monitor tracking the last pumps of a dying muscle.

“Seems kind of ludicrous to be trying to hold the ceremony now,” Kate said, unconsciously pushing in closer to Jake as the long shadows of the house took on a more sinister feel. “Shouldn’t we, I don’t know, be seeking emergency shelter somewhere instead?”

“On an island like this? The whole thing could go underwater. The only safe place is somewhere else entirely.” He glanced at her as her fingers dug into his arm, her eyes gone wide. “I mean, we’ll be fine. This house has seen its share of storms, I’m sure. Nothing stands for a hundred years without taking a few beatings.”

“Okay, well you clearly have not read ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ then,” Kate muttered.

“Whatever happens, there’s a fully stocked wine cellar, right?” Jake said with a shrug. “There are worse ways to go out.”

“How do you do that?” Kate asked.

“Do what?”

“Stay so calm, when everything is complete chaos? How are you not freaking out?”

“I’ve been all over the world, yeah?” Jake said. “Ferrying Wall Street types on their version of an Eat, Pray, Love tour. Rich boys with high adrenaline thresholds looking for an extreme experience they can brag about to their dates back home. And I’ve got to make them feel like they’re always facing danger without actually ever letting them be in danger, which is easy when you’re designing a roller coaster. But, in my experience, things rarely go how I think they will. That’s the nature of Mother Nature. I nearly lost my pinkie toe to frostbite in Nepal, had a shark try to bite my arm off in Tahiti, and was sicker than I’ve ever been in my life in Borneo. If I tried to control everything, I’d be a mess. So, I’ve learned to embrace the chaos.”

“But I don’t want to embrace the chaos,” Kate said, shaking her head. “I want to… to organize the chaos.”

Jake chuckled. “It’s chaos, Kate. By its very definition, it can’t be organized.”

“Only because no one’s tried hard enough yet,” Kate said with grim determination.

Jake let out a full-bellied laugh. “That’s what I love most about you, Katey cakes. Your unshakeable belief in your organizational skills.”

Kate had a lot of questions about that off-the-cuff statement, but they had found their way to the sunroom and the guests were already packed in the crowded arrangement of chairs. It was sweltering, even from the hall, so many warm bodies putting off heat in such a small space. Sweat tickled Kate’s underarm, blooming into the silk backing beneath the sequins. She’d probably have to toss the dress by the end of the weekend; there was no saving silk from sweat.

Abraham and Jean-Pierre had made a valiant attempt to re-create the fairy forest magic from the tent outside, but due to the small size of the room and the large number of people trying to fit into it, the efforts felt more constricting than transportive. Glass butterflies knocked people in the forehead, several guests had to use the roots of the trees as seats, and the glass pond was propped up in one corner, tilting perilously as each person squeezed past it. Kate could only imagine how the exotic fish were faring in their underground tank outside.

“I’ll find us some seats,” Jake said, moving into the thick of the crowd.

“Hey,” Marla said, appearing beside Kate during a rolling peal of thunder. Kate jumped, startling Marla right back.

“Marla!” Kate exclaimed, the shortness of breath making her sound huffy. “Where have you been?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Marla shot back. “I’ve been all over this nightmare house looking for this evidence you swore would just be lying around somewhere, but I haven’t found shit. I got trapped in a weird cabinet that I’m ninety-nine percent sure was a medieval torture chamber at one point, and I startled an entire family of living possums in a bedroom that was full of vases and vases of dead flowers. Meanwhile, you’re nowhere to be found, and apparently the whole house is about to lose power during a massive storm, so yeah. It’s been a less than ideal day for me.”

“Oh, Marla, shit, I’m sorry,” Kate said. “I was… I was investigating, too. I guess our paths just… never crossed.”

Except that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Kate had done plenty more than just investigate , and she’d been so busy with Jake and interrogating new suspects and Rebecca’s untimely body drop that she’d once again forgotten all about her friend. This was supposed to be their weekend to reconnect, to find the magic of the Nights of the Round Table again. And instead, Kate had done what she’d always done, focused only on herself.

“Marla, I really am sorry,” she reiterated when Marla didn’t answer. Marla stared hard at the crowd of gathering wedding guests, but Kate knew where her anger was really directed. “I swear I won’t forget you this time. I promise. I’m so close, I know it.”

Marla looked to her in surprise. “Did you find something? The champagne glass? A new clue?”

Kate shook her head. She could hardly get into Rebecca’s murder here in the open. “Not exactly, but mark my words. I’m going to find the killer before this day is out.”

“Ahem!” said Abraham, drawing everyone’s attention to the back of the room. Or maybe it was the big crash of thunder that rattled the windows in their frames, or the fantastic flash of lightning just before that silhouetted him like the big reveal in a murder mystery. Whichever event it was, all eyes turned to the back as he held up what looked for all the world like an old iPod. “Would everyone stand, please?”

He tapped the screen and a tinny, plodding version of the wedding march fought a losing battle for attention against the furor of the storm outside. He stepped to the side, frantically pressing the volume button as if it wasn’t already at top level, as Juliette appeared on the arm of the first groomsman.

“Is that an iPod?” Jake whispered.

“Should have used that megaphone,” Kate murmured, preoccupied with the bridesmaids coming down the aisle. Each one gave her a warning look like she was going to jump up and declare her love for Spencer any second now. Cassidy was the worst of them, outright glaring at Kate as she paced down the aisle on Eric’s arm.

The crowd turned to the windows at the back with hushed breaths. Even Kate couldn’t help tipping up on her heels to catch a glimpse of Kennedy as she stepped into the sunroom. There was something so magical about the moment the bride appeared. And Kennedy was no different—pale, but radiating joy, her dress a gorgeous satin with a draping skirt that made her look as if she’d stepped straight out of an old Hollywood film. She smiled, eyes fixed at the front of the room, holding on to Simon Hsu’s arm.

They were really going to do it, Kate thought. They were really going to make it through this damn ceremony.

Which was when the lights dropped out, everybody screamed, and a sharp crack shattered the floor-to-ceiling window directly behind Kennedy.