Page 90 of The Women of Wild Hill
Brigid wasn’t amused. “Let’s just head back to the party,” she said. The Old One had made herself clear.Shut up and do your job.
Seconds later, they stepped off the pier and into the company of a man in an ascot and seersucker pants who’d been patiently waiting to ambush them.
“Liam!” he called out, waving as though he’d just spotted them. “There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Another puppy killer?” Brigid muttered under her breath.
“Oh, even better,” Liam told her. He held out a hand and the man latched on to it with both of his. “Vernon Cage, allow me to introduce my date, Brigid Laguerre. Brigid, say hello to Vernon. They call him the man with the golden tongue.”
Brigid shook the man’s hand. “Porn star, I take it?” she asked. “Finally, Liam’s introduced me to someone interesting.”
Liam, who’d just taken a sip of Scotch, nearly choked on his drink. Cage responded with the practiced, professional laugh of a talk show host. “Afraid I’m neither that interesting nor that well-endowed. I’m just a humble PR man.”
“Hardly,” Liam managed to sputter between coughs. They waited until he recovered. “Vernon’s the best in the business. He specializes in crisis management. The biggest corporations on earth all have him on speed dial. He’s the first person they call whenever something goes wrong.”
“And then I call you,” Vernon offered magnanimously.
“AMN doesn’t even write the script for these things. We just say what Vernon tells us to say. He’s the man you want on your side if you’ve just dumped a tanker worth of oil on a coral reef or killed off an entire ecosystem with toxic waste from a train derailment. Remember when that CEO’s kid went on a bender and shot up a Planned Parenthood? Vernon here’s the one who turned him into a hero.”
“You don’t say?” Brigid was glad when Liam reached down and took her hand. Otherwise, she might have murdered their charming acquaintance right out in the open.
“I’ll admit, that was quite the challenge,” Vernon said with an aww-shucks chuckle.
“Makes our little incident the other night look fairly minor, does it not?”
“Which incident?” Brigid demanded.
“Darling,” Liam chided her. “Surely you haven’t forgotten that the corpse of a handsome junior senator washed up on the beach at my last party.”
“Oh, that,” Brigid said.
“It was such a tragedy. I worry she’s still in shock.” Vernon offered a sympathetic nod while Liam gave Brigid’s hand a light squeeze. “I asked Vernon to take a very discreet look into the unfortunate incident. Monitor all the social media traffic. Make sure our names aren’t getting mixed up in the story.”
“And you’ll be pleased to hear that your names are rarely mentioned in conjunction with Senator Jacobs’s death. There seem to be some rather fascinating conspiracy theories bubbling up, but they don’t involve either of you.”
Brigid’s curiosity was piqued. “What conspiracy theories?”
“Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed that quite a few important men have died in unusual ways over the past couple of years.”
“Important men die just like everyone else, unfortunately,” Liam said. “I’ve been trying to find a way around the inevitable, but so far I’ve come up short.”
Brigid’s eye landed on a conspicuous cloud of curly red hair weaving around the chignons and side parts. Sibyl stepped out of the crowd with a platter balanced on one hand. As her niece drew closer, Brigid could see the plate held bruschetta topped with what appeared to be mushrooms.
“Yes, but these men all appear to be linked by their cause of death,” Vernon was saying.
“Birds, spiders—now Senator Jacobs with the jellyfish. A lot ofpeople are pointing to that fire out on Culling Pointe a couple of years ago. They seem to think that’s connected as well. Apparently, the bushes that caught fire were an invasive species.”
“So they’re saying Mother Nature’s a serial killer?” Brigid’s laugh didn’t sound as lighthearted as she would have liked.
Vernon didn’t laugh at all. “They’re not pointing the finger at Mother Nature. Crazy as it sounds, they’ve zeroed in on a woman in Mattauk who’s known as a witch. They seem to think that she may have started a cult.”
“A witch cult, you say?” Sibyl asked as she walked up to the group. “Where do I join?”
The man looked at the young woman with the tray in her hand with utter astonishment. His face said not only that he wasn’t used to hearing the help speak, he wasn’t aware that they could.
“This is my niece, Sibyl,” Brigid informed him. She felt Liam’s grip on her hand tighten as though to prevent her from taking a swing.
“Bill Rogers begged and pleaded for her to cater the event,” Liam added. “Sibyl owns the Green Lady in Manhattan.”
