Page 10 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
Marla filled their glasses, raising hers. “This weekend is about getting back on track. Eye on the prize. Onward and upward. And the free booze, obviously. To the weekend!”
“To the weekend,” Kate echoed, sipping her wine. She could certainly cheers to getting back on track. She’d burned so many bridges the last few months—cancelling book tours at the last minute, asking for deadline extension after deadline extension, ignoring even her own mother’s calls. She’d thought she had torpedoed her friendship with Marla along with the rest of her life, but maybe this was a chance to piece together her shattered existence, starting with the two people in this room.
“Here you are!” Abraham said, looking slightly put out as he appeared on the threshold. He glared in disappointment at Marla and theopen bottle on the table. “I am afraid those are for the rehearsal dinner, and you are not meant to be in here, Ms. Lynch.”
“Just… inspecting the goods,” Marla said, her lips quirking as she polished off her wine.
“You two, with me!” Abraham announced, turning on his heel and marching out.
“Guess that’s our cue,” Kate said reluctantly, setting her glass down. “We’ll see you at the rehearsal dinner, though, right? We can sit together.”
“Mmm, seating for all meals has been carefully arranged by our illustrious hosts, thank you,” Abraham said, shooing them along.
“Don’t worry, Valentine, you know I always find you,” Marla said, giving her a wink as she shamelessly cracked open a new bottle of wine. “Maybe we’ll even find the good booze!”
“We will!” Kate promised as Abraham dragged her away, her spirits already buoyed by their conversation.
“This is Jean-Pierre,” Abraham said as they reached the main hall and an impeccably dressed young man joined them, his curly hair arranged in an artful bouffant. “Jean-Pierre, this is Ms. Valentine.”
He made meaningful eyes at his assistant, whose only response was a thorough, almost insulting perusal of Kate’s full figure.
“Oui?”he said, drawing it out.“Comme c’est intéressant.”
“Indeed,” said Abraham, his brows going up and down. “Miss Kennedy selected your room especially for you, aren’t you so lucky? See them to her room, please. I need to check with Henri about the hors d’oeuvres.”
“Tell him not to touch my bruschetta,” Jean-Pierre said. “He knows what I’ll do to him. Upstairs, you two. Quickly, if you would.”
Jean-Pierre moved awfully fast, and Jake, with his perfectly taut glutes and calves, was right behind him, leaving Kate to bump along with her rolling case in tow. They’d disappeared by the time she reached the second floor, and she stood helplessly on the lush wine-dark carpet looking in either direction for them. Of course, in this house she was more likely to run into the twins fromThe Shininginstead.
“Hello?” she called. “Jean-Pierre? Jake?”
Kate wandered down one stretch of hallway, passing a room with aplaque that readZebra Suiteand wondering how literally they meant it. Probably very literally. The hallway was deathly quiet, which was why the low hum of conversation from a room several doors down caught her attention and drew her forward. Maybe it was Jean-Pierre and Jake. She moved gratefully toward it.
“She’s pushed me to this, Richie,” said a tightly controlled voice. “If she torpedoes this deal, I’m fucked. You understand that, don’t you? Tell her she needs to listen to me. Otherwise, she won’t like what happens next.”
Kate halted, body tilted toward the door, ear cocked at a prime listening angle. The voice was definitely not Jake, and lacked Jean-Pierre’s accent, which meant this was a private conversation among strangers. A normal person, respectful of boundaries, would quietly move on. But this was another side effect of writing murder mysteries—she assumed all tense, private conversations were meant to be eavesdropped on. Like the bathroom conversation Loretta “overheard” inA Dark and Stormy Murder, when Loretta was trapped in the bar during a hurricane with several patrons, one of whom ended up strangled in the supply closet.
“If there’s anything she doesn’t respond well to, it’s threats,” said a much younger voice, presumably the Richie in question. “You’re pushing her too hard, Steven. Give her time.”
“Time is the one thing I haven’t got!” said Steven, his tightly controlled voice losing some of its edge. “It has to be this weekend. Rico is on my back. This is my last chance.”
“Fine, fine,” said Richie, sounding bored. “Can we go to the party now? Gomez Addams down there was real stingy with the pour.”
“There’s still the rehearsal dinner to get through,” said Steven.
“Such a helicopter daddy,” Richie said, but his tone was playful. Teasing.
“Don’t let your aunt catch you,” said Steven.
“My aunt is a prude,” said Richie, his tone dancing between bored and playful. “You’re not a prude, are you, Stevie?”
“Talk to her, Richie, I mean it,” said Steven, his voice stiff. “Before it’s too late.”
Chapter Six
“There you are!” someone announced so loudly from the other end of the hallway that Kate jumped away from the door like it had spontaneously erupted into flames. Jean-Pierre huffed from his position near the stairs, waving impatiently. “We continue up, yes?”
“Yes, sorry,” Kate whispered, hurrying away before Richie or Steven could catch her snooping. She caught the barest glimpse of the men as they moved toward the door, one in a plain navy blazer and the other in a more festive herringbone affair, but she couldn’t see their faces. Kate wouldn’t be able to identify them unless they kept their jackets on. Not that she planned to do any identifying, but Loretta had taught her that tense conversations about money never ended well. It certainly hadn’t for Blake the bartender when the wealthy woman who willed her fortune to him wound up dead.