Page 25 of Deadly Little Scandals
“After I show y’all the nursery,” Sadie-Grace said as she led us through the party and up the stairs, “you three can help me practice my toast. I’m the hostess. I have to toast Greer and the baby.”
“The baby,” I emphasized, “who does not exist.”
Right on cue, we came to the threshold of the nursery. I’d thought the situation with Greer’s “pregnancy” had already reached maximum ridiculousness, but as I took in the infant wonderland spread out before me, I could only conclude that I’d been wrong.
“It looks like Pottery Barn Kids threw up in here.” Campbell was, as ever, a sensitive soul.
“It’s lovely,” Lily corrected. And itwas. The room was fully furnished, complete with an antique rocking horse, a mobile, window treatments, and framed pictures above the crib. The walls had been painted a very pale blue. The changing table was already outfitted with supplies.
“Greer does know she’s notactuallyhaving a baby, right?” I said.
Sadie-Grace rose to the tips of her toes, a sure sign her anxiety levels were rising, too. “Maybe?”
I could sense arond de jambecoming on.
“You need to tell your father the truth,” Lily told her yet again.
“But he’s sohappyabout the baby….”
“Forget Greer.” Campbell had clearly expended the sum total of her ability to pretend to care about the nursery, the “baby,” or Sadie-Grace’s family drama. “Who wants to know what I found out about the Lady of Regal Lake?”
That wasn’t what I’d expected when Campbell had suggested we’d come up here.
“The who?” Lily responded.
“That’s what people are calling the body we found. The Lady of the Lake. She’s female, obviously.” Campbell stepped into the nursery and turned back to face us, like a player on a stage. “The authorities think the storms we’ve been having dredged her up. I heard they dated the remains back a couple of decades.” Campbell met my eyes. “Female,” she reiterated. “Dead around twenty years.”
It took me a moment to realize what she was getting at.Twenty years ago, Ana Gutierrez left town. Her family hasn’t heard from her. There’s not a trace of her online.
“Am I missing something here?” Lily asked, looking between Campbell and me.
“What could you possibly be missing?” Campbell asked innocently, knowing quite well that her tone would stoke Lily’s interest more than quell it. “Aside from my brother, who I’m pretty sure has only been to visit you twice in the past two weeks.”
“Where did you hear about the body?” I asked Campbell, saving Lily the trouble of trying to come up with a retort.
Cam toyed with the ends of her hair. “The local sheriff’s department is trying to keep a tight lid on the investigation, but they’re a total podunk operation, and since my family has been exiled to living at Regal full-time, I’ve taken the opportunity to make some friends. Deputy-type friends.”
I waited for Lily to realize that Campbell might have a reason beyond having discovered the body to want an inside look at the investigation, but that didn’t seem to register. Without another word to Campbell, Lily turned her back on the conversation and walked over to get a closer look at one of the window treatments.
Cam’s comment about Walker must have really gotten to her.
“Nice fabric,” Lily commented, touching the curtains. “What’s the nursery theme?” In true Taft-woman style, she answered her own question. “Geometric shapes. It’s understated, as themes go.”
“I wanted elephants,” Sadie-Grace replied. “And possibly giraffes, but Greer said—”
“That her entire pregnancy is a hoax?” I suggested.
“Is that really your biggest concern right now?” Campbell stepped up behind me and whispered directly into the back of my head, her voice too low for the other two to hear. “Not the fact that the body we found could be the girl my dad knocked up?”
Ana’s family hasn’t heard from her,I thought.That doesn’t mean she’s missing.But still, the muscles in my stomach tightened, and a ball of nausea rose in the back of my throat. What if Campbell was right?
Female, dead twenty years.
“Sawyer.” Lily was staring out the window. She turned to face me, looking a bit like she’d just taken a rapier to the gut. “Do you know who I just saw walking up the sidewalk?” Another question to which I was quite certain she would supply her own answer.
Lily didn’t disappoint. “Your mama.”
ore than once since the night of my debutante ball, I’d thought that if my mom had been up front with me, I could have gotten past the choices she’d made when she was my age, regardless of how messed up those choices were. But she’d lied to me about it. It was hard not to feel like that made me just one more person Ellie Taft was willing to manipulate and mislead and use.
