Her Sister's Secrets Read online

  “Oh, um, I don’t know if I can help with that,” she said.

  “Because you don’t want to release the information?” I said. “Well, it’s nothing bad. I just, uh, I actually want to send the person renting that house a little something. I ran into them the other day on the beach, because I was looking for my dog? And they had found him, and they told me where they were staying. But I’ve gone home now, to New Jersey, and I’d like to send them a thank-you gift, so if you could tell me who it was—”

  “Oh, that’s sweet,” she said. “But the truth is, I’m actually a free agent here. I can show the house to prospective renters. There’s a lock box for a key when it’s empty, and I have access to the code for it. But unless I broker the deal, I have nothing to do with who’s renting it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Huh. So, how would I find out who did?”

  “Well, that house is listed with the Colebird group. You should call them.”

  “Great,” I said. “Thanks.”

  We hung up. I looked up the Colebird group and called them. I gave them the whole sap story about the dog again.

  “Oh, how sweet,” said the woman I was talking to, echoing Lisa. “Unfortunately, the person who rented that out has been insistent on absolute privacy. Rented it sight unseen, contacted us through email, and paid with cashier’s checks mailed to us. We have no idea who it is.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “You let someone do that?”

  “The money spends,” she said. “And, yes, we’re quite willing to be discreet with our clients if we need to.”

  Grr. “Well, thank you anyway,” I said.

  “Sorry we couldn’t be more helpful.”

  * * *

  Well, this was crazy. I had an idea of who might have rented this house for me, and I was going to go and try to get the answers out of him.

  Only thing was that I didn’t know exactly where Jonah Fletcher lived. I knew he was down the beach from me, though, so I thought I’d just go looking. Knocking on doors. Typically, I wouldn’t do something like that, because it sounded mortifying, but I was about out of patience with everything about this situation.

  Why bring me out here and taunt me with answers, and then answer nothing, and then say everything was revealed? What kind of insane mind game was this?

  So, I got dressed, and I started down the beach.

  At the first house, an elderly woman with a tiny white poodle in her arms opened the door. “Yes?”

  “I’m looking for Jonah Fletcher,” I said.

  “I… I don’t know who that is,” said the woman, looking worried.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thank you for your time.” And I walked away from the door, leaving her there confused and concerned.

  The next house looked closed up for the season, and I figured someone used it for a winter house and hadn’t come down to Florida yet. I knocked on the door anyway, but no one answered, so I moved on.

  The way these houses were set up, there was clever landscaping in the form of thick foliage and undergrowth that separated them from each other. The houses were all on top of each other, but it didn’t feel that way, because they seemed very secluded. Even the beaches were portioned off with rocks and plants. The barriers were all very natural in appearance, so it seemed organic. But as I walked down the beach, I could see that it was carefully orchestrated. It was smart. After all, these houses were crazy expensive, and no one who plopped down that kind of cash for an oceanfront house on the Gulf wanted to be staring into their neighbor’s backyards.

  The third house I came to almost looked cute. It was a one-story bungalow tucked into a grove of palm trees. It had its own two-tiered pool in front. As I got closer, I could see that the house was actually quite a bit bigger than it looked from the beach. It was probably something like my house, designed for couples, with only one big bedroom. I traipsed up to the door and knocked.

  Jackpot.

  Jonah Fletcher answered. He was wearing a linen shirt over a pair of jeans, and he smiled when he saw me. “Emilia Farrow. What a surprise.”

  “Hi,” I said. “I’ve come to talk to you. I need answers.”

  “Um, all right,” he said, looking amused. “Won’t you come in?” He stepped out of the way.

  I walked into his house, which had an open floor plan, like mine, the kitchen, dining room, and living areas all bleeding into each other. The furniture wasn’t like mine, though. My house was decorated with this very airy, beachy feel, whereas this place was all leather and black and modern, rounded edges. It was very masculine. It made me feel a little off kilter.

  Jonah shut the door behind me. “What kind of answers do you think I can give you?”

  “Why do you have two houses?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you have two houses on Siesta Key?”

  “No, I just have this one.” He gestured around.

  I put my hands on my hips. “I think you’re lying about that.”

  “Why would I lie to you? What do you care about all this, anyway?”

  “Yesterday, I was at Captain’s, and you were there too, and I heard you on the phone, talking about your two houses.”

  He took a step back. “You were eavesdropping on me?” He wasn’t angry. He sounded surprised and a little intrigued.

  “I didn’t mean to. You were talking loudly.”

  “But you saw me out and didn’t come to say hello?” He stroked his chin. “You didn’t want to talk to me?”

  “Well, I was having a bad day yesterday. It was pretty awful all around. I guess you heard about Roman Wainwright?”

  “Yes, quite a tragedy,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were close to him.”

  “I’m not. Wasn’t. He was actually a really terrible man, and it’s probably better for the world that he’s dead, but that’s neither here nor there. You’re trying to get me off the subject.”

  “I assure you, I’m not,” he said. He folded his arms over his chest and surveyed me. “I have to admit, I can’t figure you out. I keep thinking I know what you’re all about and then you go and do something like this. Tell me, how is it that you are in that house down the beach? Is that a friend that’s rented it for you or—”

  “Don’t play dumb,” I said. “You’re part of this.”

  “Part of what? I really have no idea what you’re talking about. But you seem angry with me, and I seem to make you angry more often than not. The time we spoke at the Wainwright party, you stalked off, because I must have said something wrong. And now, there’s something about houses.” He rubbed his forehead. “I can’t understand any of it.”

  “Well, let me spell it out for you then.”

  “Please do.”

  I opened my mouth to speak.

  And was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringtone.

  Jonah held up a finger and took the phone out of his pocket. He looked down at it. “One moment, I really have to take this.” He put the phone to his ear. “Fletcher here. What’s up?” He listened, his brow furrowing. “You have got to be kidding me.” He didn’t sound pleased. “God damn it.” Head hunched over, he went out the front door. He shut the door behind him, leaving me in here all by myself.

  I waited, doing nothing, for a while.

  But then the moments started to tick by, and he wasn’t coming back inside. I went over to the window and saw him down by the pool, talking animately into the phone, gesturing with one hand.

  I wondered what had happened. Maybe I could open the door and listen in…

  I tried it, opening the door a crack. But he was too far away. I couldn’t hear anything. I could have maybe sneaked out and gotten closer, but then he probably would have seen me, and maybe he would actually be angry if I was eavesdropping on him again, this time very purposefully.

  Instead, I started wandering around his house. I walked over the black and white patterned rug and sat down on his leather couch. It looked cool, but it wasn’t actually very comfortable. I
surveyed the coffee table, which was covered in an array of Men’s Health magazines. I riffled through them, but they weren’t anything I was interested in reading.

  I got up off the couch and went into the kitchen area. There were dishes in the sink and crumbs on the counter. I guessed he wasn’t big on cleaning up after himself. Or maybe he hired someone to come in and clean up after him and they hadn’t been here in a few days. I didn’t know.

  I started opening drawers. I liked kitchens. I wanted to see what the knives looked like, what kind of cooking gadgets he had. But the third drawer I opened didn’t have anything like that in there.

  Instead, there was a gun.

  It was black and blunt and small. A pistol.

  I’d never seen a real gun before.

  Okay, so, some people live out in the country or whatever, and they have guns to shoot chickens or whatever it is they do, so maybe to someone like that, a gun would not be a big deal, but this was not a chicken-shooting gun. This was a handgun. There is one use for handguns, and that’s shooting people. And okay, yeah, I guess some people had them for home defense or whatever, but I was not that kind of person.

  You know, I figured that if a person was breaking into my house to steal stuff, they were desperate, and they probably needed help in some way, so I didn’t think that I was going to just shoot because they were in a bad place. Maybe they were addicted to drugs or maybe they had mental issues or maybe they didn’t have any family support. I didn’t know, but shooting a person was not something I entered into lightly.

  But. Who knows? Maybe if you were rich, you worried more about this stuff, because you were targeted more. So, maybe there was absolutely no reason not to have a gun. I mean, maybe a thief would be more likely to hurt a rich person, because—like I’d realized earlier—we unrich people had a tendency to dehumanize them.

  I slammed the drawer shut.

  Violet had been drowned, not shot. But a person with a gun was a person who’d already made a determination that—under the right circumstances—he’d take another person’s life.

  That kind of freaked me out.

  “Emilia?”

  Oh, hell, he was back in the house. I scampered out of the kitchen to where he was, by the door. “Um, sorry, I just was looking at your kitchen. I like kitchens because, you know, I cook and stuff.”

  He looked me over. “Right.”

  I smiled. “You know, it was good seeing you, and maybe we’ll run into each other another time.” I started for his door.

  He grabbed my arm. “Wait, you’re leaving.”

  I froze. “Let go of me,” I said in a tiny voice.

  He dropped his hand immediately. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s only that you said you were going to spell it all out for me two minutes ago. Remember?”

  “Oh, right.” I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I twisted them together. “Well, that was just silly of me. Because if you rented that house for me, you wouldn’t tell me just because I came and confronted you about it, so I don’t know why I thought—”

  “What?”

  “There was no reason for me to come,” I said.

  “Emilia, I didn’t rent that house. When I said I had two houses on the phone yesterday, I was talking about my house up north and this one.” He pointed to the floor beneath us.

  Sure, he’d say that now. Now, he possibly knew I was onto him. And he had a gun. “I think I’ll just go. I’m sorry for bothering you.” I found the door knob and turned it.

  “Don’t go,” he said. “You know, I’ve actually wanted to invite you over here, and now you’re here.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “To be, uh, friendly, I guess.” He cocked his head at me. “Did I do something? Because I could swear you’re not angry now, but frightened.”

  I laughed a high-pitched laugh. “Don’t be silly. I’m fine. I just want to go home.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Would you, um, maybe consider coming back?”

  “What?”

  “For dinner,” he said. “Come over for dinner.”

  “Really?” Okay, what the hell was this? Why did he want me to come over for dinner?

  “Really.” He smiled. “I would like that a lot.”

  He would? Why? Because he wanted to kill me? Because he had rented that house so that he could turn me into his sex slave? Because… I didn’t understand Jonah Fletcher at all. I licked my lips. “Tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I have plans tonight. But maybe some other time.”

  “Sure,” he said. “When?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ll have to check my schedule.” I inched out the door. “But we’ll get together. We will. It’ll be fabulous.” I shut the door in his face. And then I walked down to the beach from his house at a very steady, very even pace. I was not going to run.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Back at home, I locked the door, and then I remembered that there was a hollow rock outside with a key, so I went out and got that.

  If Jonah was actually renting the house, though, he probably had his own key.

  I paced and then I picked up my phone and dialed Phin.

  He didn’t answer.

  I left him four voicemails, explaining everything that had happened recently.

  Then I decided this was ridiculous. Why was I doing this to myself? The Host had said that all was revealed, so whatever sick game the Host was playing, whoever the Host was, it was over, I supposed. I didn’t have any answers, but I wasn’t sure why I was sticking around this place any longer.

  It had probably been Roman Wainwright. He’d probably killed Violet. And he was dead now. I’d never be able to get a confession from him or anything like that. Sticking around here, doing more digging, it would ultimately prove fruitless.

  I went up into the bedroom and began searching through the closets for suitcases.

  I didn’t find any.

  So, I went back downstairs, into the kitchen, and grabbed a back of trash bags. I marched back up the steps and began taking clothes out of the closet, folding them, and putting them into the garbage bags.

  It was probably sacrilege, what I was doing, but it was the way I used to pack up my stuff when I was in college. I went from apartment to apartment back then, and I always moved everything in big, black garbage bags.

  I took the remaining ball gowns out of the closet and spread them out on the bed. I didn’t know if I could bear crumpling them.

  I sat down on the floor.

  My phone rang. I picked it up. It was Phin.

  “You have to leave,” he said. “This is insane. There are guns?”

  “Maybe he just has it for self-defense,” I said. “Rich people probably get robbed more than other people.”

  “And why do you think he asked you out? Didn’t you say he was totally rude to you every time you saw him?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He was kind of a jackass.”

  “But suddenly, he wants to date you.”

  “He said he was being friendly,” I said.

  “Whatever,” said Phin. “You can’t trust that guy. He probably did rent the house, and he probably is a psychopath who’s screwing with you.”

  I rubbed my bottom lip. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “Listen, I watched this documentary about this guy who would capture women, and then he would take them in his plane to the wilderness and release them, and then he would hunt them down and kill them. This is probably the same thing.”

  “Um.” I furrowed my brow. “I mean, maybe. But I watched that documentary with you, remember? And they were like prostitutes?”

  “So? You saying that prostitutes’ lives don’t matter?”

  “Not at all. I’m just saying that if you’re a psychopath who’s going to hunt women for sport, you usually pick someone who no one is going to notice disappearing.”

  “Exactly, and you have lost most of your family, so—”
r />   “I have you,” I said. “If I went missing, you would point your finger at Jonah Fletcher right away.”

  “Yeah, but does he even know I exist?”

  I licked my lips. “No, I guess not.”

  “So, you’re coming home.”

  “Yeah, I was actually in the middle of packing.”

  “Oh, thank God.”

  “But, you know, I was thinking…” I looked at the gowns. “The house is paid up, you know, and the Host said I could stay.”

  “Because he wants to murder you.”

  “And I don’t even know if I can fit all these clothes in my car.”

  “Oh, hell, Mila, he is probably going to dress your corpse up in those gowns and rape your dead body.”

  I cringed. “Can you not be so graphic?”

  “Sorry, that is where my head goes.”

  I sighed. “Look, I can’t leave.” I realized it suddenly.

  He groaned. “What? I thought you were packing.”

  “I can’t leave. I don’t know what happened to Violet. I have to find out. For her. And I don’t think Jonah Fletcher is a serial killer.”

  He sighed.

  “Hey, you’re going to that wedding with me, right? Kimber said I have a plus one, and I want you there. I imagine everyone will be there. You can let them all know that I’ve got someone who’s going to be looking into them if I die.”

  “Oh, geez, Mila, this is supposed to make me feel better?”

  “I don’t know.” I began taking clothes out of the garbage bag and hanging them back up in the closet. “I just know I can’t give up on Violet. I have to look into everything, and I have to get to the bottom of this.”

  “You’re too stubborn for your own good, you know that?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  * * *

  Looking into everything meant dealing with that message from James Regal’s mom. I pulled it back up on my computer, and I called the number she’d left. I wasn’t really looking forward to this conversation. I’d never had a one-on-one conversation with the woman, but I did remember her yelling at my mother that Violet should be locked up in jail for what she’d done. Why she’d send a message with condolences, I couldn’t really figure.