Her Sister's Secrets Page 20

  “Yeah, sorry it took me a while. I have a crazy schedule. I work two jobs, and sometimes I’m just going straight from seven in the morning to nearly midnight. What can I help you with?”

  “I actually wanted to ask you a question about the Fletcher retirement gala. You worked it along with my sister, Violet. Do you remember?”

  “Uh… I don’t know.”

  “The guy died of a heart attack during the gala?”

  “Oh, yeah, I do remember that. Oh, that was so weird.”

  “It was? What was weird about it?”

  “Okay, well, this was before I even knew that the guy was dead, right? I was coming out of one of the restrooms, and I saw Violet at the end of the hall with the Fletcher guy’s son. I think his name is Jonas or something.”

  “Jonah.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Jonah. So, they’re standing in front of a closed door, and he’s yelling at her stuff, like she needs to mind her own business and that she doesn’t know anything.”

  “Okay, that’s a little bit scary,” I said. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. I wasn’t going to get into that. I mean, I knew Violet, and she could handle herself. I do remember that she had her phone, and she was saying that she was going to call someone, and he grabbed it from her and threw it.”

  “Threw it where?”

  “Just threw it down the hall. She started to go after it, and he grabbed her arm and said she needed to leave it alone, that it didn’t matter anymore, that it was done.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Do you have any idea what he was talking about?”

  “No,” said Jess. “Not a clue.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Well, I got called back to the kitchen by someone to help with food, so I didn’t see. But I did talk to Violet later, because I didn’t think that she should let a client treat her like that, no matter how rich he was. I wanted to know if I should pass on the news that he was blacklisted, right? Because we all stick together. If a client is bad news, not the kind of person we want to serve, then we’ll all close ranks against him, you know? Every planner and caterer and florist in the area. We don’t screw around with that kind of stuff.”

  “Oh, okay, I get it,” I said. “So, did Violet want to blacklist him?”

  “No,” said Jess.

  “What?”

  “I know, right? I couldn’t believe it. I asked her about him throwing her phone down the hallway, and she said that was all a misunderstanding, that there was nothing wrong.”

  “I can’t believe that,” I said. “Because I have her notes, and she says in them that she’s considering going to the police.”

  “Yeah, she probably could have filed against that guy. Except it was all fine and good, she said.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “That is weird.”

  “Definitely,” said Jess.

  “Anything else you can remember about that?”

  “No, that’s about it. But that’s enough, don’t you think?” She laughed a little.

  “Yeah, that’s pretty crazy,” I admitted. “Okay, well, thanks so much for calling me back, Jess.”

  “Sure,” she said. “No problem.”

  * * *

  I don’t know what I was expecting from Jess Gilbert. I guessed I’d hoped she’d have answers for me. But talking to her had only raised more questions.

  One thing was for sure, it didn’t look good for Jonah Fletcher. But the hell of the thing was, there were only two people that knew what had happened between him and Violet that day, and Violet was one of them. She wasn’t talking. He was the only person who did know. If I wanted to get the answers, I was going to have to get them from him.

  And I didn’t know how I was going to do that.

  I considered calling Oliver. I wondered if an eyewitness to an argument was evidence. It didn’t sound very evidence-y. When I thought of evidence, I thought of something tangible.

  Anyway, there was no way that Jonah was going to open up to the police. No, if someone came and tried to officially question him, he’d lawyer up and shut down and nothing would come of it.

  On the other hand, Jonah Fletcher seemed to have a thing for me. He wanted to go out to dinner, anyway, and he’d agreed to do it someplace public. So, great, that could work. I could flirt with him, and I could get him drunk or something, and maybe I could get him to open up to me.

  Maybe not, though, because I had to accept the fact that Jonah was starting to look more and more likely to be Violet’s murderer. He’d known her. He’d argued with her. He’d lied to me about it.

  The only thing that didn’t make sense was the gap. This was four years ago. So, if Jonah had a vendetta against Violet, then why did he wait so long to kill her?

  Even so, he could still be the murderer. But then, it seemed like everyone I interacted with could be these days. I didn’t know who to trust.

  I thought of how weird Drew had gotten the other night, all that stuff he’d said about pressing me into the wall and everything. What the hell had that been all about?

  Anyway, it would be stupid to be alone with Jonah. I should make sure to be out in public somewhere when I talked to him about this. And since I didn’t want to be alone with him, I vetoed the idea of going to his house and accepting his dinner invitation. What if he somehow figured out that I was onto him and shot me with that gun of his?

  No, I was not going there.

  I needed to run into him.

  So, I decided to go back to Captain’s. I’d seen him there before. Maybe he was a regular.

  I took care getting dressed, because I wanted to attempt to be seductive. I didn’t want to look too dressed up, though, so I wore jeans and a low-cut, fitted black tee. I topped it all off with a necklace made of polished sea stones and pair of strappy sandals. I kept my makeup simple and fresh.

  I was nervous as I applied my eyeliner. I tried to psyche myself up as I looked in the mirror. Tried to tell myself that I could do this, that I could manipulate him and he would give me what I wanted.

  I wasn’t so sure.

  But I had to. For Violet.

  Anyway, with my luck, he wouldn’t be there.

  * * *

  He wasn’t there.

  I spent an hour nursing a vodka and cranberry at a table by myself that afternoon, and then the happy hour crowd started to show up. I stuck around, thinking maybe he’d come in.

  He didn’t.

  Instead, a woman approached me. She had short dark hair which was cut in a blunt pixie cut and she was wearing a sarong dress tied over a bikini. She came right over to my table and leaned over. “Hey, this is probably weird, but you really remind me of someone.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Um, well, who?” This never happened to me. I didn’t have one of those faces, and I didn’t resemble a celebrity or anything.

  “Uh, just a local girl, Violet Farrow.”

  I felt my heart rise into my throat. “That’s my sister. Was my sister, I mean.”

  “Was?” said the woman. “What do you mean?”

  “Uh, she passed away a few weeks ago.”

  “No.” The woman was shocked. She sank down into the seat opposite me. “That’s awful. She was so young and vibrant. What could have happened?”

  I swallowed. “She drowned.”

  The woman’s face fell. “That’s terrible.” When she looked back up at me, there were tears in her eyes.

  “Did you know Violet?” I said.

  “Just from here,” said the woman. “She’d come in most weekends. Sometimes we’d chat.” She wiped at her tears. “Oh, hell, this is the worst. I’m buying you a drink.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Alexis, by the way. Alexis Daniels.”

  I shook with her. “Emilia Farrow.”

  “Emilia,” said Alexis. “Hell. You know, she never talked about her sister, but you look just like her. Let me get you that drink.” She got up from the table.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about being des
cended on by Violet’s old friend, especially when I was trying to run into Jonah. But I didn’t see how I could refuse to talk to her without being rude. And, anyway, she seemed nice.

  When she came back with two drinks—rum runners complete with tiny little umbrellas—I decided this was actually a good thing. Jonah wasn’t here, and that was looking like a dead end. But this was a chance to find out more about Violet’s social life. No one she worked with knew anything, and I had been flying blind. This was my chance. Maybe I would find out something that would be the key to unraveling everything.

  “So, you must be devastated,” said Alexis. “I can’t believe I didn’t know. I mean, I haven’t seen her for a while, but I didn’t really think anything of it.”

  “Did you used to see her a lot?”

  “Pretty much every weekend, like I said. She was a friend, but we were bar friends, you know.”

  I didn’t really know. I didn’t go to bars very much, I guess. “Sorry, I’m not really familiar with the term.”

  “Just someone that you talk to at the bar,” she said. “You run into them when you’re out, and you tell them all sorts of things about yourself, and there’s a lot of intimacy there, but then you go home and you don’t think of each other again until you see each other. You don’t exchange numbers or invite each other to dinner parties. You know? Bar friends.”

  Yeah, I didn’t have any bar friends. But okay. This was even better. “I see. So, she told you things about her life? Like her personal life?”

  “Oh, honey, she could gab. She told me all sorts of things. And she was an adventurous gal, that sister of yours.”

  “What do you mean by adventurous?”

  “Just all those men. It seemed like she was always juggling three or four. No one serious or anything. She was playing the field, having fun. Well, until recently, I guess.”

  “Because she was with Drew.”

  “Actually, she never used names. It was always nicknames, like Sex and the City. You know, Mr. Big.”

  Right. Violet and I had watched that show together as teenagers, and I shared a love of it with Phin, too. That was half the reason he did stuff like make up names like Mr. Money Bags. I sighed. Sounded like a Violet thing to do, too. “She was being mysterious, I guess.”

  “I got the impression that she was dating people who might have a bit of celebrity,” said Alexis. “She did spend a lot of time hobnobbing with the rich and famous with her job. And you know there are all kinds of people who have houses out here.”

  “No, I know,” I said. “I guess that would explain it. But you said that she was playing the field until recently?”

  “Oh, right.” Alexis nodded. “She was down to two guys. She called one Rich Boy and the other one Working Stiff.” She laughed. “The last night I saw her, she said it was getting too complicated, and she was going to have cut one of them loose. I asked her which one, and she laughed and said she hadn’t decided yet.” Alexis grinned, shaking her head. “I mean, the nerve of the girl. She said she was going to do eeny, meeny, miny, mo.”

  Okay, whoa. Assuming Rich Boy was Drew, I thought I might have just stumbled onto a motive here. A real, honest-to-god motive.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  And later that evening, Drew came by my house.

  I was wary, but I also didn’t want to make him suspicious, so I let him inside. But I had my phone close, ready to dial Oliver if I had to.

  Drew was in a good mood. “I have DNA results.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That seems soon.”

  “Yeah, I paid for it to be expedited. This was important for me to know,” he said.

  “I assume, from the way you’re acting, that Violet isn’t your sister,” I said.

  “Not in the slightest.” He grinned at me.

  “Well, I’m glad,” I said. “I know that was hard for you to think about. I’m glad it turned out not to be true.”

  “Me too,” he said. “I wanted to come by and tell you about it, and I wondered if you wanted to have a drink with me to celebrate.”

  “Actually, I was out drinking all afternoon,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m wiped out.” I wasn’t lying, but I also didn’t want to be alone with him either.

  “Too bad,” he said. “Well, another time, then.”

  “Definitely,” I said. I walked him to the door of my house.

  He was across the porch, stepping onto the stairs.

  And I couldn’t help myself. “Drew?”

  He turned to look at me.

  I had to know how he’d react. “You think Violet was sleeping with anyone besides you?”

  His face twitched. “Why are you asking me that?”

  “Just a question.”

  He sighed and he looked away, out at the ocean. “Yeah, okay, sure. Well, yeah, I mean, we had kind of an open thing going on.”

  “So, that means what? You weren’t exclusive?”

  “Well, for most of our relationship, I was technically engaged to Tania, so it would have been shit of me if I had asked her to be faithful to me, you know?”

  Oh, Tania. I hadn’t seen her in a while. Had I ever eliminated her as a suspect? Had I eliminated anyone?

  “Violet was, I think,” he said. “Or seeing someone, maybe. I don’t know if it was… physical.”

  “She talked to you about it?”

  “Not really,” he said. “But she didn’t hide it from me. It honestly wasn’t something that I wanted to talk about in a lot of detail.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can see that.”

  “Seriously, why are you asking me this?” he said.

  I couldn’t very well come out and say I was fishing for a motive, could I? “I’m just curious, I guess. You weren’t angry with her about her being with someone else?”

  “I couldn’t be. I was with Tania. It would have been hypocritical. Anyway, after I ended things with Tania, we decided we would be exclusive, and then she wasn’t seeing anyone but me.”

  I wasn’t sure if I believed him. On the one hand, there was no reason for him to admit the fact that he and Violet had been casual if he was trying to hide something, so that was in his favor. But on the other hand, I didn’t see Drew Wainwright as the type to be okay with someone being openly unfaithful to him. Of course, maybe I didn’t understand how it all worked. I had never been in a casual relationship. And I had to admit that Violet had a gift for convincing people to be okay with outlandish things.

  I remembered once, when we were teenagers, she had somehow convinced me to switch rooms with her in our apartment, even though hers was smaller than mine and had a tinier closet. She sweet-talked me on the proximity to the bathroom and view out the window or something.

  “Why would ask me if I was angry?”

  “No reason.”

  “Hey, you’re still trying to figure out who murdered her, aren’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You think it was me?” He looked incredibly hurt.

  I let out a little guffaw, which I hoped sounded natural. “No, of course not. Of course not.”

  He looked unsure. “You promise? Because that’s insane.”

  I smiled. “I promise.”

  * * *

  “So, what do you think of that?” I said into the phone to Phin. “I mean, he knew I was trying to pin the murder on him. Do you think that’s suspicious?”

  “I think it was pretty obvious what you were after,” said Phin. “So, I don’t know if that means anything.”

  “Do you think I’m way off base with Drew?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You could be. I think there’s more stuff here with Jonah Fletcher that needs pursuing.”

  “No, you’re right,” I said. “But I don’t know how I’m going to get close to him without being alone with him. I guess I could go to Captain’s every day until he shows up or something.”

  “That could take some time,” said Phin.

  “I know.” I sighed. “And then there�
�s this other mysterious person who Violet may have been involved with. Alexis said his nickname was Working Stiff, so maybe he wasn’t rich, maybe he had to work for a living.”

  “Yeah,” said Phin. “But we have no idea who that could be.”

  “I know,” I muttered.

  “Here’s an idea,” said Phin. “What if it was Jonah Fletcher?”

  “What?” I said. “He’s crazy rich.”

  “Yeah, but he works too,” said Phin. “He makes apps. He’s got a whole company, right? And besides, I think maybe Violet picked the nickname more for the ‘stiff’ part, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I got the double entendre,” I said, considering. “I don’t know. I think it’s a stretch.”

  “Think about it,” said Phin. “Jonah lied to you about knowing Violet. Maybe that’s because he was involved with her. Maybe that’s because he killed her.”

  “I’m considering the possibility that Jonah killed Violet,” I said. “He’s very suspicious to me. But I have to tell you that I don’t really see anything to make me think that he was sleeping with her.”

  “It gives him a motive is all,” said Phin. “Let’s say that Violet was open with Drew about the fact she was sleeping around, but she never told Jonah. And then she dumped him for Drew. Jonah was pissed off and killed her.”

  “But why would she start sleeping with him after they got in that big argument at his father’s retirement gala? He was horrible to her. Apparently, he yelled at her and threw her phone down the hallway.”

  “I don’t know,” said Phin, “maybe she was turned on by all that.”

  I snorted.

  “You’re the one who kissed him,” said Phin. “How did he get him to kiss you?”

  I considered. “Okay, maybe you have a point.” Because I had pretty much kissed Jonah because he had a sexy voice, which was insane. “Still, I’ve got no evidence on that.”

  “Well, here’s what I think,” said Phin. “You run into him, and you corner him, and the first thing you say to him is that you know he was sleeping with your sister. See how he reacts. That’s going to tell you a lot.”

  “That’s actually a great plan,” I said. “Now, I just need to run into him.”

  “Well, what if you didn’t run into him at a bar?” said Phin. “What if you ran into him at something else, like that charity benefit for testicular cancer in Venice this weekend?”