Page 48 of Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

“Sure thing,” Natalie says. “We can go into my home office.”

“What is it that you do, Natalie?” Vera asks as they walk down a beautiful hallway that reminds her of a five-star hotel. “You are in finance? Or maybe drug dealer? Only heroin money can buy this kind of house.”

Behind her, Millie makes a choking noise, but when Vera turns around to glare at her, she averts her face and gazes up at the ceiling.

Natalie laughs. “No. Would you believe it, it’s YouTube money.”

“YouTube money?” Now Vera is truly and well confused.

“When I was, like, eight years old, my parents started a YouTube channel of me opening boxes and reviewing toys. It got really popular. I was basically earning millions every year. And nowI’m a bit too old to review toys, so I moved on to TikTok and IG, and I review other things, but really it was mostly the toy review thing that made all this possible.”

“Review toy?” Vera echoes. Her head spins, trying to grasp the concept of a child reviewing toys and getting paid for doing it. When she recalls Tilly with his toys, all she can remember him doing was, well, playing with them. She never once thought of recording him and asking him to talk about the toys. Wow, did she ever miss out on a trick there! She’d been so busy making sure Tilly would become rich by going into engineering, medicine, or law, that she’d completely missed out on social media. Tch. Vera tucks this piece of information in her back pocket. She will bring this up with Julia later. Emma would be great at reviewing toys. Like Vera, she is devastatingly honest and articulate.

Natalie’s office is as beautifully decorated as the rest of the house. A big picture window overlooks an aggressively pruned backyard. There is a small working desk, but the rest of the room is filled with easy couches and lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

“Take a seat anywhere,” Natalie says, reaching into a cabinet and taking out glasses and a decanter. “Whisky? Vera, I can tell you’re a woman who appreciates fine whisky.”

Is she? Vera shrugs and nods. Well, she might as well launch straight in. “Natalie, how you know Xander Lin?”

Natalie hands Vera a glass of whisky, and Vera wrinkles her nose at the smell. Vera doesn’t much care for Western liquors. On the odd occasion that she drinks, she prefers Baijiu—Chinese liquor that directly translates to “white liquor.” It does smell like rubbing alcohol, but it gets the job done. One shot, bam, and you’re good for the rest of the evening. Nothing like this whiskything, a wishy-washy drink if she ever saw one. She tips the glass up and swallows the whole thing in one gulp.

“Vera!” Aimes cries.

“Yes?”

“You’re not supposed to down it. Oh my god. I’m so sorry,” Aimes says to Natalie, who laughs.

“Hey, I don’t care how you decide to drink it. In fact, good idea, bottoms up!” Natalie empties her glass as well, then grimaces. “Holy shit, that burns. Wow. Okay, Vera, you’re an even bigger badass than I thought. I like you.”

“Thank you. And now, Xander Lin?”

Natalie takes a breath, setting her glass down on the table. “Yeah, so that’s the thing, Vera. That’s kind of why I asked you to come.”

Vera leans forward and, to her surprise, nearly falls out of the chair. Goodness, the whisky might have been a tad stronger than she expected. She recovers smoothly. Barely anyone notices. She hopes. “What you mean?”

“I don’t know Xander,” Natalie says.

“What?” Vera, Millie, and Aimes yell at the same time. Vera flaps at them to be quiet. Who’s the one doing the interrogating here? “What you mean you don’t know him?”

Natalie shakes her head. “What can I say? I’ve never met the guy.”

“But—” Vera’s head swims, and she’s pretty sure it’s not just the whisky. Maybe whisky isn’t as wishy-washy a drink as she’d thought. “There are picture, so many of them, of him partying here. I recognize your house from his photo. Aimes,” Vera barks, “show Natalie.”

“Oh, trust me, I know,” Natalie says. “You don’t have to showme, I’ve seen them. The thing is, in case you haven’t guessed, I hold a lot of parties. Like, literally every weekend I have a party, and midweek I have a party, and sometimes on Mondays I have a party. You know, to get rid of the Monday blues. Lots of people come to these parties, they’re really casual, and I let my friends invite whoever they want. I trust their taste. So maybe one of them invited Xander.”

“Why you don’t just ask your friend, ‘Hey, who here invite Xander to my house?’ ” Vera says, mystified at Natalie’s lifestyle. Party after party after party. Aiya, terrible habit. Once Vera is done with the interrogation, she will lecture Natalie on having too many parties.

“I did,” Natalie says. “But no one would admit it. I don’t know, I think people are feeling really bad about it or something. Makes sense, I guess, since he died.”

“Then why invite us here?” Aimes says. “I mean, not that I’m complaining. I’m Aimes, by the way. Big fan of yours.”

Natalie smiles, but it looks more like a grimace. “Um, well, I kind of…only invited Vera, and then she brought you two along. Which is totally fine! But I’m just saying, I didn’t invite all of you. And I invited Vera because I was curious about this whole Xander thing and, oh my gosh, Vera, I love your videos and I wanted to meet you in person, and I figured I’d help you out with your investigation. I mean, this is totally likeOnly Murders in the Buildingand I’m Selena Gomez and, Vera, you’re that Charles dude. Or maybe you’re Oliver? Or both. You’re like both of them squished into one fabulous character. Ooh, maybe we should do a podcast about it!”

Vera shakes her head. “Aiya, you not making sense. I don’t want to do podcast, I want to find out what happen to Xander.”

“And you can,” Natalie says. “I’m sure that out there, among my guests, there must be someone who was close to Xander. This is your chance, Vera. Get out there and start talking to people. Get them to open up to you.”

“What do you get out of this?”

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