Her Sister's Secrets Read online

  “You want him back?” I surveyed her. “Why?”

  “Because I’m in love with him.”

  “Okay, but he hasn’t been very good to you. He stayed with you because he was afraid if he dumped you, you’d kill yourself, and he was sleeping with my sister behind your back. That’s kind of crappy.”

  Her face fell. “I know. Maybe he doesn’t deserve me. I mean, after everything I’ve done for him, you’d think he’d be more grateful.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “All that time when he was getting kicked out of school after school, I never wavered—”

  “What?” I said. “What schools?”

  “Four or five of the best private schools in the country and maybe two in Europe,” she said. “I heard all the rumors, and I defended him.”

  “What rumors?” I said. “Why’d he get kicked out?”

  She shrugged. “He has a temper. I think it was mostly fighting. I mean, there was that one school, with that one girl, but he said she was lying, and I defended him.”

  “Lying about what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. She said something ridiculous, and I know he would never do that, because he had me.”

  “Ridiculous like what? And what does it have to do with having you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know, I don’t even know why we’re talking about this. The point is that I would do anything for him. If I thought someone was out to get him, I would fight that person, you know? I love Drew. He’s the love of my life.”

  “He raped someone, didn’t he?” I said. “Just like his father. Just like what his father did to you.”

  She shot up out of her seat. “No.”

  I got up too. “How can you defend him? These Wainwright men, they go around thinking they can have whatever they want, and my—”

  “That girl was lying,” said Tania. “He and I were together. He wouldn’t have touched her.”

  “Right, because he was always faithful to you,” I said.

  Her face crumpled. “Stop it. Why are you doing this? You think you can make me hate him so that you can have him? That’s not going to work. Drew is mine. And if you don’t back off—”

  “I don’t want Drew!” I exploded. “You want him, you can have him.” I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. And then, because I didn’t even want to continue this conversation, I just walked off. I left the bar, got in my car, and drove back to my house.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  There was someone sitting on the steps outside the house.

  At first, I thought it was Drew, and that was bad, because I kept getting more information about him, and none of it made him look good. I didn’t want him to be here, because I didn’t know what he might do to me.

  But then the figure stood up, and I realized it was Jonah.

  That wasn’t much better.

  Rationally, I knew that only one of them could have killed my sister. Well, unless they’d done it together, I supposed, but that didn’t make any kind of sense. Did it?

  Anyway, point being, if Drew was the killer, then it wasn’t Jonah, and vice versa. But I didn’t know who had done it, and I couldn’t trust Jonah.

  So, once I recognized him, I stopped cold. I was on the walkway down to my porch. It was made from loose white stones. I stood there and looked at him, and he stood at the bottom of my steps and looked at me.

  “Listen,” I said quietly, “I’m not really in the mood to talk right now.”

  “You think I was in the mood to talk when you ambushed me at the benefit tonight?” His voice was crisp in the darkness.

  I swallowed. If he was really a murderer, then I needed to placate him. “Okay, I’m sorry. I apologize. All right? Now, I’m really tired, so if we could talk another time, I would really appreciate that.”

  “You have the wrong idea about me,” he said.

  “Okay, well, I’m sure that’s true, but I’d really rather not—”

  “And I don’t have any idea about you,” he said. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  I felt trapped. I wondered if I should head back for my car. I could drive back to my apartment and be safe there. Neither Jonah nor Drew knew where that was. Yes, that was probably the best idea. I felt around in my handbag for my car keys and then I turned and began walking back to the driveway.

  “Emilia?” called Jonah.

  I picked up the pace.

  “Hey, hold on. Where are you going?”

  I heard his footfalls behind me, and I went even faster.

  But he caught up to me. He seized me by the arm and turned me to look at him.

  “Let go of me.” I was horrified to hear that my voice was high-pitched, like a little girl’s.

  “No,” he said. “There is no reason for you to be afraid of me.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Then let me go. If you don’t mean me any harm, you’ll just let me go.”

  “I’m going to tell you about why I lied to you about knowing your sister,” he said. “I’m going to tell you, and I don’t tell people about it, so it’s not exactly easy for me. And furthermore, you don’t deserve it, because you’ve told me nothing about yourself, so—”

  “Please, let me go,” I said, and now I was whispering, pleading.

  He tightened his grip on my arm. “It wasn’t about her. I mean, she was there, and she saw, so she knew, but it wasn’t really about her. It was about me. It was about my father.”

  “You’re hurting me,” I said.

  “I’m not,” he countered.

  “How would you know that? Can you feel what I feel? You are digging your fingers into my arm—”

  He tugged at me, pulling me closer to him. “Listen. You wanted to know about this, so listen.”

  I swallowed. I shut my eyes. It was funny, because I had always imagined that if I was in a situation like this, I would fall apart. I thought I would turn into a sniveling mess, but I felt strangely calm and still. I opened my eyes. “Fine. I’m listening.” If he was talking, he wasn’t killing me. The longer he talked, the more time I had to figure out how to get out of this.

  “It was my father’s retirement gala,” he said. “I booked it for my father, because it was expected of me, and because we were all supposed to honor that bastard, but I never wanted him honored. He didn’t deserve that.”

  I was close to him. Could I bring up my knee and connect with his balls or something? Make a run for it?

  “No,” he continued, “if I’d had my way, there would have been no big party for him. But I had to book it, so I did. And I picked your sister, because she wasn’t a big deal back then. She didn’t have the gig at the Wainwrights’ and she didn’t cost a lot of money. And that’s what I wanted for my father. I just wanted something cheap and easy, and to be done with all of it.”

  I brought up my knee.

  He let out a little cry of surprise, dropping my arm and backing away, evading my leg. “What the hell?”

  I reeled, trying to find my balance.

  He grabbed me again, and he pulled me up against him, and now our bodies were close. He wheezed harsh breaths down at me, his teeth gritted. “I thought you were going to listen.”

  I cringed.

  He let go suddenly. “Fuck.” He kicked at the ground, sending the white stones of the walkway skittering everywhere. “What the hell am I doing?” he yelled out at the night sky.

  I started to back up. This was my chance.

  He turned back to look at me. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what…” His voice was defeated. He sat down on the ground, burying his head in his hands.

  I took several more steps backward, and then something possessed me to stop. Maybe because he looked so defeated. Maybe because he wasn’t trying to hurt me. Maybe because I was too stupid to live.

  “Why?” I murmured.

  “Why what?” he said in a muffled voice.

  “Why were you so angry with your father? Because he cut you off?” I couldn’t help it. I was
curious.

  He laughed. His shoulders shook, and he laughed. And then he wasn’t laughing, but his shoulders were still shaking.

  I stepped closer to him, cautious.

  He looked up at me. “You saw that scar on my arm?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I remembered it.

  “It’s from a cigar,” he said. “My father did that to me. I was around ten at the time.”

  My lips parted.

  “Usually, he was smarter than that,” said Jonah. “He didn’t do things that left permanent marks.”

  I swallowed. I didn’t know what to say.

  He got up. He let out a huff of air and sank his hands into his hair. “I’m going to go. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry. You must think I’m some sort of animal or—”

  “Tell me the rest of it,” I said. “What does that have to do with Violet? What happened at the gala?”

  “He had a heart attack,” said Jonah. “He died.”

  “No, I know that,” I said. “But…”

  Jonah jammed his hands into his pockets. He hung his head. “I was there when he had the heart attack. We were in one of the back rooms, and he was in the middle of one his typical tirades, telling me all about how I was a colossal disappointment, and I guess he got himself a little too worked up. He collapsed. And I, uh….” He raised his shoulders, still not looking at me. “I didn’t do anything at all. I just watched.”

  “Oh,” I said softly.

  He raised his gaze to meet mine. “Violet saw. She came into the room because she had the run of the whole place during the gala. And she wanted to call an ambulance or something, and I wouldn’t let her.”

  “Oh,” I said again.

  We were both quiet.

  He turned back out to gaze at the water lapping at the shore.

  I hugged myself.

  In the distance, I could hear the ocean and the wind.

  I took a deep breath. “How did you convince her it was all a misunderstanding?”

  “I told her about the abuse,” he said. “I had to. Because she didn’t understand, and I didn’t know how to explain…”

  “And she just accepted that? She just let it go?”

  “Yes,” he said. He grimaced, dragging a toe across the stones. “Okay, maybe I paid her off. I had inherited everything at that point. I could afford it.”

  “Well…” I shook my head. “Well, Jesus, Jonah.”

  He laughed again, something bitter and ugly. “You wanted to know.”

  This place. God, this place. These people. Everything was rotten underneath.

  “I never hurt your sister,” he said. “I swear to you I didn’t.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Except that if all this is true, you have even more of a reason to have done it, because she could have exposed what you did. Maybe she came to you, feeling guilty—”

  “No, that never happened.” He was matter-of-fact about it. “I paid her a lot of money. And I do think she was… sympathetic.”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t sure if I believed him.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Quid pro quo?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me about yourself. Why are you here in this house? Who’s paying for it?”

  “Someone set me up here so that I could investigate my sister’s murder.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because this person thought it was Roman Wainwright, and she thought I’d expose him. Roman had hurt her.” I bit down on my bottom lip. “But I don’t think it was Roman. I don’t know who it was.”

  “You think it was me.”

  “Was it?”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  I swallowed. “Then leave. Leave me alone here and don’t try to hurt me or silence me or—”

  “I would never hurt you, Emilia.” He let out a heavy sigh. Then he suddenly seized my hand. He planted a kiss on the back of it. “Sure, I’ll go.” He let go of me. And then he backed away, and the darkness swallowed him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I felt exhausted, so I climbed into bed after he left. First, I checked all the windows and the door, made sure everything was locked up tight. I didn’t know if that was going to keep me safe or not, but it was something I could control.

  But the minute that my head hit the pillow, I was wide awake. I couldn’t even keep my eyes closed.

  After tossing and turning for nearly forty minutes, I got my phone out. I had read somewhere that it was bad to look at screens when you were trying to go to sleep because it actually kept you awake or whatever, but I thought I’d just have a peek at my blog.

  I logged in to my dashboard.

  What the hell? Why had I had so many pages viewed? That wasn’t right. I usually had a third of that looking at the blog.

  I had a gazillion comments to look at too.

  Oh, hell, I really hoped that I hadn’t been hacked or something. I had installed a plugin that did a good job of filtering out spam comments, but a thing only works great until it doesn’t. I really hoped there wasn’t more spam to contend with.

  Ugh.

  Suddenly, I didn’t want to look at my blog. Instead, I opened my Facebook app.

  I was immediately greeted with a picture of Violet from five years ago. Memories for Emilia, said Facebook.

  Oh, hell. I needed to use Violet’s computer to get access to her Facebook account and mark her as deceased or something. I was pretty sure that once Facebook knew someone was dead, they didn’t do crap like this.

  But even though it caught me off guard and made me feel a little sad, it was also nice to see her. I clicked on her name and went to her profile to look at her most recent pictures.

  There were pictures of her at all the parties she planned, arms around the hosts, everyone grinning. She was so beautiful and so alive.

  I touched the screen, tears filling my eyes. “I’m sorry, Violet,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for being such an ass and chasing you off three years ago. I’m sorry that I didn’t reach out between now and then. I’m sorry I wasn’t a good sister to you.”

  Now, I was really starting to cry.

  I bit down on my lip. “Were you murdered? What happened to you?”

  I scrolled back and then forward, and then settled on the last photo that Violet had ever uploaded to Facebook. It was marked as having been put up the night she died, around 9:00 that evening. She was by herself outside somewhere, standing on a street. The background was blurry. She was grinning. And that necklace she was wearing, I’d seen it before.

  Where?

  I sat up straight it bed. Oh, crap. On Drew’s boat, there had been a necklace like that. I was almost certain it was that exact one.

  So, if her necklace was on Drew’s boat, that meant…

  It was Drew.

  And I had evidence. But was my word going to be enough for Oliver? He was probably going to need to get a warrant to search Drew’s boat, and I didn’t know how warrants worked, but I wasn’t sure that a Facebook picture and my recollections were going to be enough.

  But maybe, if I went onto Drew’s boat myself and got a picture of the necklace and could show Oliver the two pictures? Violet the night she died wearing it, and then the necklace on Drew’s boat? Well, if I had that, that had to be enough, didn’t it?

  Maybe I should call Oliver to make sure.

  I checked the time.

  After midnight.

  No, I didn’t want to bother him. If I woke him up, he’d be in a bad mood, and I’d be in a better position with evidence in hand.

  * * *

  I didn’t have a way into the marina on my own, since it was locked up at night, though, so that was a problem. However, the boats were all in the water, and you couldn’t fence off water, so I figured I could get to the boat if I swam. The important thing would be keeping my phone from getting wet.

  As it happened, though, I had a waterproof case for my phone. Lots of people did around here, because you could wear it while you were s
wimming and listen to music or whatever. It had an armband and everything. Well, to be truthful, I had not bought the thing myself. It had been a Christmas gift from Phin, and he had tried to sell me on how great it would be to have this case, but I had never used it once. I kept it in my car in case I ever drove to the beach and wanted it. Now, it was finally going to come in handy.

  I changed into a swimsuit, threw a shirt and shorts over it, and went out to my car.

  I turned the key and music from the radio started blaring.

  I jumped, and then turned the radio off. I didn’t want to listen to any music on this expedition.

  I backed the car out and drove over the foliage-surrounded roads to the marina. I was fairly sure that there was a big building full of condos right next door to it. The condos had beach access. I could easily walk down there, get in the water, and then swim to Drew’s boat.

  There was only one hole in my plan.

  Parking.

  Parking in Siesta Key was a nightmare.

  The streets out here were narrow, and the area was essentially residential. The big condo building had parking, but I couldn’t get in there. That was gated off.

  I drove up and down the streets for a while until I found a tiny corner strip mall with a little grocery store, a real estate agency, and a pizza place. I decided to park there. If it took me too long, I was going to get towed, but that was a risk I was going to have to take.

  I parked my car. I had intended to strip off my clothes and leave them in the car, but I obviously hadn’t been thinking that through clearly. I was going to have to bring them with me, along with the keys. I didn’t know if I’d take them off and leave them on the beach or just swim in them. I had thought to bring along a towel. I grabbed that.

  Then I locked up the car, stuck my keys in my pocket, put my phone in its nifty waterproof case, strapped it to my arm, and started walking toward the marina.

  It was a bit of a walk. The air was muggy and warm. It was cooler at night, but it still felt tropical. I walked as quickly as I could, and I got a little out of breath. My heart started to pound. I wasn’t sure if it was from exertion or from fear.