Page 69 of She Doesn't Have a Clue
The elevator platform had reached the top of the shaft, and Kate was now covered in cobwebs and face-to-face with Jake, who had the nerve to grin at her.
“Don’t you dare,” she said, holding up a wispy finger.
“Caught you in my web,” Jake said, his eyes gleaming.
“I hate you,” Kate said miserably.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“How did you end up in a freight lift?” Jake asked as she crawled her way out of the elevator, her legs shaking as she stood.
“Cassidy,” she said grimly, reaching for an antique armoire for support. She pulled at the sticky clumps of spiderwebs draped over her arms and shoulders, shuddering as she tried to rub them off her hands onto a velvet upholstered stool beside the armoire. “She locked me in there. I’m not sure she realized it was an elevator. I can’t imagine that thing’s been used since Russell Hempstead’s time. She probably thought it was just another secret passage.”
“Why in the world would Cassidy lock you up?” Jake asked, bewildered.
Kate sighed. “Because she’s Kennedy’s sister.”
“Ahhhh,” Jake said, nodding, before pausing and shaking his head. “Nope, I’m going to need more than that.”
“Cassidy’s dad is not her dad,” Kate said, flicking away more webs. “Her dad couldn’t have kids, and her mom really wanted them, so they made some kind of deal with Gordon Hempstead, Kennedy’s father, to get Cassidy’s mom pregnant. Apparently, Cassidy didn’t knowuntil recently. But it means if Rebecca and Kennedy are both dead, she becomes—”
“The next heir to the Hempstead fortune,” Jake said, realization dawning. “Which means she could use her access to the family funds to pay off all those debts she’s about to default on.”
“But she needed proof of paternity, and since Gordon Hempstead has been dead for almost two decades, Kennedy was the next closest thing. I caught Cassidy with a DNA test. If she can prove they’re a sibling match, she jumps the inheritance line, right to the top.”
“So, she’s our murderer?” Jake said.
Kate frowned at the mass of webs that only stretched and stuck the more she tried to extricate them from her hair. “She’s definitely a primary suspect, since she’s obviously willing to do whatever it takes to protect her secret.”
“Let me help,” Jake said, moving behind her and gently extracting the webs. “You know, this isn’t as bad as the time Charlie and I went spelunking in Chillagoe Caves in Australia. Spiders the size of your face. I found a sac of them in my bag when we got home. My mum nearly burned the house down.”
“Not helping,” Kate said miserably. “I think I ruined my dress in the elevator shaft, too, when I was holding on to the wall. It was so cute, too, and so expensive.”
She ran her hands over the frayed strings and broken sequins where the wall had scraped away the delicate design, looking down just in time to spot a large brown spider crawling down the front of her dress and disappearing into the shadows of her cleavage. She let out a sound somewhere between a screech and a dog whistle, tumbling back into Jake and wriggling in panic.
“Kate, what is it?” Jake asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Spider,” she wheezed. “Spider. Spider! Get it… get it off. Off!”
“What? Where?” Jake asked.
“Get it off!” Kate huffed, twisting her arms around to try to reach the flimsy little zipper along the back. She imagined she could feel the spider in there, rooting around, making a little web home, laying its littlespider babies. She needed out of the dress, and possibly a cleansing fire, before she would ever feel safe again. But her fingers only caught at sequins. Why did they make fancy dress zippers so tiny and ineffectual? It was like they wanted you to have to get cut out of their expensive dresses and buy a new one every time.
“Jake, get it off!” she cried, her voice still reedy and panicked. “Get it off!”
“I can’t get it off if I can’t see it,” Jake said, trying to hold her still.
“Not the spider, the dress,” Kate snapped. “Get the dress off!”
“Hang on,” Jake muttered, tugging at the zipper. “This zipper is garbage.”
“I know,” Kate said. For all she knew, the baby spiders had already hatched and were running a little spider empire in her bra.
Jake worked some kind of magic and suddenly the dress dropped to the floor in a sequined heap. The spider crawled out from the folds, scurrying off indignantly.
But Kate could still feel it crawling on her skin, despite the fact that she could now see most of her skin with the dress gone. She wore a strapless bra and a pair of highly impractical lace panties, neither of which was substantial enough to hide a small spider army. But still she couldn’t stop the feeling of something tickling across her chest, and she wriggled back against Jake on instinct, as if the friction created between them might burn away the sensation. At least until he sucked in a breath through his teeth, his hands dropping to her hips in a tight grip.
“Kate,” he choked out. “Stop that.”