Page 85 of To the Grave

Imade two more calls to VIPs Friday morning and was on hold for the third when I got a text from Wolf saying he and Jace had reached the university library. I didn’t want to get my hopes up about their mission, but I really hoped they found something about Michael White, because other than going to Mac, we were out of options.

And none of us had high hopes for Mac coming clean. Whatever had happened between him and my mom — between all of them — was clearly something he didn’t want to talk about. I couldn’t imagine he’d be happy that we’d all been digging into his past, even though in a way, it was my and Jace’s past too.

If the leads we had on Michael White and Jace’s dad were cold — and they were — the mystery surrounding the missing girls was frozen solid. We hadn’t heard from Aloha about Blake’s phone, the only connection we had to Mr. X, and every day I held my breath, wondering when the next girl would go missing.

Sometimes there were articles in theBulletinand other local papers and blogs, criminal experts weighing in on whether the last missing girl was connected to the others, the ones that hadbeen murdered by the Mob families from Aventine. Theories abounded on the Blackwell Falls social media group and on true crime boards, but nothing that didn’t sound ridiculously improbable, and every day that passed without another missing girl, I didn’t know whether to keep holding my breath or start to exhale.

A male voice came on the line. “Miss Hammond?”

“Yes?”

“I apologize for the delay.” The man’s English was accented with French. “Monsieur Laurent will be right with you.”

“Thank you.”

The line went silent again and my gaze went to the window. Dark clouds were brewing over Blackwell Falls, the season’s first nor’easter on its way in. I thought about Wolf and Jace, hoped they were home before the worst of the storm hit that night. I didn’t normally work Fridays — Diana had started calling me in more often as we got closer to the opening of the resort — and I was looking forward to being back at the house with Otis, curled up on the couch and waiting for Jace and Wolf to come home, hopefully with news about Michael White.

I glanced at the spreadsheet on my computer. The VIP I was waiting for was Jean-Luc Laurent, a Parisian tech genius who’d bought villa number five. He was fond of horses, Formula 1 racing, and fashion, and the pictures I’d found of him online showed a dark-haired man in his forties on horseback, behind the wheel of a race car on a track in Italy, and sitting in the front row at more than one show during more than one fashion week in more than one country.

Olivia had been extra careful in choosing the appointments for his villa, explaining that fashion aficionados were the hardest to please. They understood quality, ran their hands over the surfaces of the wallpaper in their home, took notice of the stitching on their sofas. I’d sent Monsieur Laurent a brief,complete with pictures and renderings and links to some of the products used in his villa. My call was to get feedback, an effort to head off a potential problem later on when it would be too late to fix it.

I looked at the other names on the list, an assortment of names from all over the world. After Monsieur Laurent, I would be five down with five to go.

“Good afternoon, Mademoiselle Hammond.” The voice that interrupted my thought wasn’t the voice of an assistant. This was the voice of an unmarried multimillionaire who probably sent dozens of roses to the women he took to bed, the voice of a man who owned a private yacht in the south of France. “I apologize for the delay. It’s never good form to keep a lady waiting.”

Oh god, was he flirting with me on the phone? Ew, no. This was a business call.

“It’s no trouble at all,” I said, trying to keep my voice crisp. “Do you have some time to go over the brief? I emailed it to you last week.”

“Of course,” he said, his voice as smooth as cognac. “We have all the time in the world.”

Chapter 57

Ruth

Iwas nervous as I got in my car and pulled down the driveway. It was dumb. It’s wasn’t like I hadn’t had sex before.

But this was different. This was a whole night away with McSexy, an adult getaway to the city, complete with nice meals and a hotel suite and actual sex with a much-older guy. He could be with any girl in the world, so I couldn’t help wondering… why me?

I mean, I’m not going to lie, I was kind of the shit at Blackwell High. I knew the boys lusted after me, knew some of the girls hated me. Daisy had been fucked by Blake’s death (the initial accusation that she’d done it hadn’t helped), but it was far enough in Blackwell’s rearview that it hadn’t affected my popularity at all. If anything, it added to my mystique: tragic Ruth Hammond whose brother was murdered by his best friends but still managed to be a star pupil and lacrosse player, who was elected homecoming queen and class president.

Poor little rich girl.

They could keep their pity, but I’d take the popularity. God knows I’d lost enough. I wasn’t going to protest about getting a little something for all the shit I’d been through.

Anyway, being popular at a podunk high school and fucking around with podunk guys wasn’t the same thing as spending the night in the city with someone like McSexy, and I was definitely nervous as the gates to my house closed behind me.

I had the urge to turn the car around, lock myself in my childhood bedroom with a bag of Doritos, spend the night bingeing TV.

But it was too late for that. McSexy would be waiting. If I didn’t show up now, he’d realize I was a stupid rich girl from a tiny town who had no business seeing someone like him.

The sky was turning dark and I was suddenly glad he’d told me to meet him at that stupid bar so we could drive into the city together. We were supposed to get a big storm and even though I was a good driver and had never even been pulled over (I’d only had my car a few months, but still), I was glad someone else would be doing the driving.

My phone dinged from the holder in my dashboard and I glanced at it in time to catch a text from Daisy.

Hey! Just checking in. How was Thanksgiving?

It wasn’t the first text she’d sent since the spa day that was supposed to be a birthday present but that had turned into an interrogation about my life, like Daisy had any right to the details when she was hardly ever around.

---