Page 23 of The Bridesmaid

I walk across the room, sit astride him. Kiss his mouth. The cocaine high hasn’t dropped away yet, and I want him to stay.

‘You’re so smart,’ I say. I can feel his gun digging into my hip.

‘Nightclubs are ten percent furnishing and ninety percent PR,’ he says, with a small smile. ‘Smoke and mirrors.’ Leopold loves bragging about his business knowledge.

His cell rings and he stands, literally levering me off. I push the frown away as he takes the call.

‘Hello?’ He listens for a few minutes, his face growing increasingly dark. ‘OK.’

He hangs up and turns to me. ‘Goddamn NYPD have decided their lives aren’t glamorous enough.’

‘What do you mean?’

His mouth sets in a tight line. ‘Those clowns won’t admit they can’t find the killer, so they’re coming after Adrianna’s bridesmaids.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Something about access to a storage closet.’ He hesitates. There’s a pained expression on Leopold’s face.

‘What is it?’ I ask impatiently. I hate it when people make me guess their feelings.

‘Adrianna’s bridesmaids,’ he says slowly. ‘They can be trusted, right?’

Is he actually admitting he might have got something wrong? I tilt my head.

He twists at the edge of the linen sheet. ‘It’s just. People … girls … they get obsessed with Adrianna,’ he says. ‘You’ve seen it. It’s … crazy.’

Of all the people who will never understand devoted fandom, Leopold is top of the list.

I put my hands up to cup his face, long white fingers sliding around his smoothly shaved jaw. He lets me take the weight for a moment.

‘It’s just like you first said,’ I assure him. ‘NYPD are messing it up. Looking for clues in the wrong places.’

‘You’re right.’ He pulls back, nodding. ‘I picked the bridesmaids. Nothing gets past me.’

Leopold looks thoughtful. ‘It’ll take the cops a few hours to get warrants. If this wedding has any chance of going ahead, you and the other girls need to be out of the city by nightfall.’

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Then I guess I’d better go. If you want Simone’s death story leaked, I have a date with a magazine editor.’

Chapter Nineteen

HOLLY

The room has been sealed, and Fitzwilliam, Ortiz and I have gloved-up and are hunched over the pile of metal poles. At least a hundred of them at quick count.

Close proximity to Fitzwilliam means I’m forced to inhale gulps of his lemony aftershave. Everything about him is crisp, and richly scented. As though wealth has left a physical imprint on him.

‘Guess these scaffold uprights must have been part of the wedding demo,’ says Ortiz. ‘How sure are you that it’s blood on that pole?’ she looks at me.

‘You’ll want to test to confirm,’ I say. ‘But … See by the way it’s dried in striations? There’s a weak ionic reaction with the steel in the scaffold pole. That’s typical of an iron-rich fluid, like blood.’

I take off my studded backpack, and begin laying out my equipment at careful right angles. My portable spectrometer. A UV light. Bloodstain-detecting reagents, and a swabbing kit.

Fitzwilliam’s eyes widen. ‘You carry those in your purse?’ He’s eyeing the heavy metal box of the spectrometer, with its funnel-shaped aperture for analyzing samples.

‘I use it for work. It’s less weird than carrying a gun,’ I tell him, wielding my swab and dabbing the pole.

‘Ignore Fitzwilliam,’ says Ortiz. ‘He’s afraid of technology. An AI ate his grandma.’