1 tsp Thai chili sauce or other hot sauce
1 squeeze lime juice
1 tsp honey
Salt and pepper to taste
Whisk all ingredients together and store any extra in the refrigerator.
Thirty-five
“SINCE when do we keep secrets from one another?” Derek asked that night, lying in bed.
Nikki knew this moment had been coming all evening. They couldn’t discuss the Andrés angle until after their babysitting duties were over. Simon had done a nice job trying to deflect the information he’d revealed by telling them all about Violet’s favorite new thing to do, which was finger paint. He’d packed a set of finger paints and paper in her diaper bag, and all evening, Nikki and Derek had played the good aunt and uncle by doing artwork with Violet and trying to avoid the one topic they knew was coming between them. “Look, I knew this would be your reaction.”
“And what reaction is that?”
“You’re upset with me, and I don’t really know why. You have no reason to be. Don’t you trust me?”
“I have no reason to be upset with you? You go and see an old boyfriend, not once but twice now without telling me, and you wonder why I’m upset. Of course I trust you, but when you keep things from me, I have to wonder if there is something I should be distrustful about.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Ollie slinked out of the room sensing the tension.
“Is it?” Derek asked. “And what’s this? That he’s still in love with you?”
She shook her head. “Come on. That’s Simon talking. You know how your brother is.”
“I do. He can’t keep his mouth shut, but he also isn’t a liar.”
“Maybe not a liar,” Nikki said, “but he sure can exaggerate. And he didn’t say love, he said he still had it bad for me.”
“Same thing and you know it, and something tells me the guy is still in love with you and you know it. I don’t think my brother is exaggerating about this though. I know how close you and my brother are, and that kind of information came from you. Did Andrés tell you that he still loved you?”
Nikki didn’t answer.
“He did, didn’t he? I’m gonna kill him. I’m going to kill him.”
“Stop it!” Nikki yelled. “The green-eyed monster is ugly on you. It is! Now, I love you. I was marrying you. I chose you. I don’t think you getting all stupid is a good answer. Andrés will move on, but you need to drop it, too. Enough. And you know what? Since you’re all high and mighty about secrets, how about the fact that you haven’t told me that Patrice wants me to sign a prenup? That’s the only way she’ll sell her shares and leave this place. Yeah, Simon spilled those beans, too.”
Derek stood up out of bed. “Of course I was going to tell you. I hadn’t because we really haven’t had time to talk much other than about the murder.”
“Really? We share a bed. So what was your plan?”
He sighed. “I planned to talk with you, and I also planned to rip up the prenup as soon as Patrice was gone. You know I wouldn’t hold you to something like that. I did plan to tell you, but did you plan to tell me about Andrés?”
“I didn’t see the need to tell you about Andrés. The fact is that he provided me with information. I can’t help his feelings toward me, but I did tell him my feelings for you.”
“You should have told me,” he said.
“Yes. I guess I should have, and I’m sorry.”
Derek began pacing the floor.
“I said I’m sorry,” she said again.
“I know, and I’m sorry, too. And you know what? This has made me realize that we can’t have any secrets. None. We’re supposed to be partners, and relationships are based on honesty. Good relationships anyway.”
“We have a good relationship,” she said.
He stopped and faced her. “I think we do, too, and that’s why I have to tell you something. No more secrets.” He sighed.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about eighteen years ago.”
“Okay.” She sat up.
“Me. Lily. I . . . one night, I . . .”
“Oh my God,” Nikki said. “You slept with her.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Thirty-six
DEREK’S revelation threw Nikki into a tailspin. Upset, confused, and considering what he’d told her to be more than just a simple secret he’d been keeping, she’d packed a bag and driven a half hour north to Calistoga where she checked into a room at the Calistoga Ranch. She needed to go somewhere where she could get away and think. Derek couldn’t understand—or acted like he didn’t understand—why this was such a big deal. He felt the past was the past and he’d left it there a long time ago. He’d begged her not to leave, tears in his eyes as she’d loaded up her car. She turned to him when he came running out after her.
“What does this mean?” he asked. “You can’t go. You can’t give up on us. That was the past, and I had to tell you because it could be why someone tried to kill you. You have to stay here with me, and we have to work through this together.”
“I don’t know what any of this means. All I know is that I have to go somewhere where I can think and be alone.”
“Nikki, please.”
“Please what? I have to think. I can’t do that around you. I can’t understand why if you did this with Lily in the past why you would even have this long-term friendship with Jackson. It’s not right. All I know is if I slept with a friend’s boyfriend, I could never show my face to that person again. And if I’m reading this correctly, you may actually be thinking that you’re their oldest son’s father.”
“I don’t know.” He bowed his head. “Look, it was a big mistake. It was huge. It was college. We were partying. It was stupid. I hated myself for it, but Jackson has never known, and I love the guy.”
“You didn’t love him enough not to sleep with his wife.”
“They weren’t married.”
“So that makes it okay?” Nikki asked.
“Of course not. I was an idiot. It was a mistake.”
“Seems like you made quite a few mistakes in the past, Derek. What about Savannah? Oh, a little kiss was all. And now Lily. Did you make it a pastime to go around sleeping with your friends’ girlfriends?”
“No! Of course not! Nikki, be reasonable. Let’s talk about this.”
“I told you that I can’t. Not right now.” She started the car and pulled away, tears blurring her vision. She angrily wiped them away.
Now, drinking a strong cup of coffee, she sat out on her hotel room balcony, which overlooked an olive tree orchard and a stream running through the valley. The sun was coming up and she welcomed it, not having slept all night.
Okay, so Derek claimed that sleeping with Lily was a mistake. Duh. How does one justify sleeping with a friend’s girlfriend? And what about Savannah? Had they only kissed like Derek insisted? Could Nikki ever really trust this man? Sure people made mistakes, but his were huge and costly . . . And talk about keeping secrets! What was she supposed to do, and think? She loved this man. She really did. Only a few days earlier she had been supposed to marry him, and now she didn’t know if she even knew him. Maybe he’d been one of those party guys, a frat guy who liked to score notches on his bedpost. But shouldn’t friendship have meant more to him than it obviously had? Nikki had to know how that night had gone down eighteen years ago. It would be the only way for her to discover if she and Derek were meant to be. At that moment she couldn’t think of a scenario that would even remotely make what had happened in the past okay. But she prayed for one.
There was only one person she could go to in order to get straight answers and that was Lily. The only thing about going to Lily with this information was that Nikki would be laying all her cards out on the table. What if Derek had been right the night before? That maybe Lily had wanted to get rid of Kenny thinking he was possibly the father of her son, and then harming Derek in some way. This begged the question
, why would she not just go after Derek rather than Nikki, unless she was jealous of Nikki. People killed over jealousy. Sick but true. Or, maybe it was a way of getting even, or maybe it was Jackson who’d targeted both Nikki and Kenny. Kenny didn’t have a significant other, so he became the direct prey, and by killing Nikki, Jackson would have taken Nikki from Derek, in a different manner than the way Derek had taken Lily, but on some weird level it was conceivable that Jackson felt this was his right. All of it boggled her mind.
And the theory of broken identities and connecting to the three gods of fate? It was possible that Jackson had been powerfully affected by thinking for years that he was this kid’s father. He identified himself as that and now he was feeling like he was losing control. Jackson didn’t strike her as a killer, but maybe changing his identity when he did kill helped him to justify his actions. Lily could also fit into that category. If light was shed on lies she’d kept for years, it could also throw her into a tailspin, disconnecting her from that “perfect mother” moniker she seemed to identify herself with.
Nikki wasn’t certain if any of these theories would pan out. What she did know was that her relationship was on the rocks and a killer was still out there. She also knew that Derek did love her and she did love him. But was love enough this time?
That wasn’t a question she could answer, but there were answers for some of her questions. And even though she could be handing herself over to a murderer, she had to know the truth.
Thirty-seven
LILY met Nikki in the Calistoga Ranch restaurant for lunch. Derek had left several messages on her cell phone begging her to at least call him and let him know where she was. She’d finally texted him and told him she was fine and staying in Calistoga. She knew he’d be calling around looking for her. He texted her back asking her to come home, but she told him she wasn’t quite ready and to please respect her time alone.
“You okay?” Lily asked. “You look a little tired. I was surprised that you called and asked me to meet you for lunch up here.”
“I’m not going to waste time,” Nikki said. “I am tired, and I need answers.”
Lily looked at her oddly and replied, “Okay.”
“I know about you and Derek. That you slept together in college.”
“Oh.”
“He told me,” Nikki said.
Lily nodded.
“I also know that you were arguing with Kenny the other night.”
“I already explained when I had dinner at your place what was going on with Kenny. I hope you won’t tell anyone, because Jackson doesn’t know, and I’ve thought about it and realize that it gives me a motive to have killed Kenny,” Lily said.
“Yes, it does. And now with this revelation I’ve learned about you and Derek, I do believe it also in some roundabout way gives you a motive to try to take me out as well.”
Lily took a sip of her water. “I didn’t kill Kenny and didn’t try to harm you. I swear. You have to believe me. And you can’t tell anyone this, because I’m afraid it would devastate Jackson.”
“Lies devastate people, Lily. I’m not going to tell your husband what you told me, but the police may find this out on their own. They have ways. I do need to know about that night with Derek, and I have to know if you think he could be your son’s father, because he brought that up, too.”
“Derek is not Jon’s father. I know that.” She sighed and covered her eyes momentarily with her hands. “That night . . . um, it was one of those things that happen. I, well, Jackson had left school that semester. Did Derek tell you that?”
“No.”
“Jackson’s ex-girlfriend, the one he’d had all through high school, tried to kill herself, and, uh, she tried to put that on Jackson. His grades plummeted and she kept calling and obsessing over him. He finally decided to go home for a bit and see if he couldn’t straighten things out. You can imagine how I felt. Here this psycho girl was working my boyfriend, and he was falling right into her trap. And he fell further. He didn’t stay in contact with any of us, and every time I would call, he’d be brief and I got fed up. One night I got drunk and wound up with Kenny. I actually wound up with him a lot. I fell for him, believe it or not, but he could never be serious with me, and he insisted no one could know about us. He had to keep up that reputation of his, you know, as the party animal.” She smirked. “But recently he contacted me. He’d met someone, and they were living together. I guess they wanted a baby, and she couldn’t get pregnant. Things went downhill, and she moved out of Kenny’s place. Then he saw the announcement about Jon’s graduation, and he started thinking that maybe Jon could be his son. He got weird about it. He insisted I have a DNA test. But come on, how unfair is that? I told him no way and that he wasn’t Jon’s father and he had no rights to him. He thought he needed to have a son, someone who looked like him, someone to carry on his name. He’s our son. He wasn’t Kenny’s and he never would be, not in the way that Jackson is a dad to Jon, no matter what. I begged him to leave us alone. I was really upset to see him here.”
“I’m sure you were, but what happened with Derek back in school?”
“I got mad at Kenny when he treated me like a second-class citizen. I was good for a late night call but nothing else. And you could say that Derek was always the guy to go to when in need of solace, but I went to him with a plan. I planned to seduce him.”
Nikki found herself making fists.
“I was hurt and angry at both Jackson and then Kenny, and let’s face it, everyone knew Derek was a nice guy. He was the real catch of the bunch. I told him my problems with Jackson, and he said he hadn’t heard from him in weeks. I tried to get him to drink with me, but he only had a few beers. This will sound crazy and it probably was, is . . . but I had a friend who’d given me something to relax me. I don’t even know what it was, but I slipped it in his beer and he started to relax a little. I tried to go in for the kill so to speak, but he just kind of laughed me off and told me that I was being silly, that we were friends. I decided to fast-forward my plan and went into his bedroom and changed into something slinky. I came out, and he was passed out on the couch. So I undressed him, which wasn’t easy, wrapped myself around him and in the morning convinced him that we’d been together.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I thought if it got out then Jackson would be jealous. I was trying to get even with him for leaving me in the lurch, but then Jackson came back and we worked out our stuff, and well . . . I was already pregnant when he came back to school. I couldn’t tell Derek what I’d done. I felt it was best to leave everything alone.”
Nikki slammed her hands down on the table and felt the heat rush to her face. A group of women lunching at a separate table all turned and looked. “You have to tell him the truth. For all these years Derek has believed that the two of you slept together. And now it’s come between us.”
“Oh no! You can’t let this come between you. Derek loves you. He adores you. I’ve never seen him this happy. It was me. It was all my mistake and my stuff. I’m sorry. You have to go and work this out with him.”
“You have to go and tell him the truth. You owe him that. You owe me that.”
Lily nodded. “I guess I do.”
“And you’re sure that Jackson doesn’t have any idea that any of this could have gone on? Is there any way that he might think that you and Derek slept together?”
“No. I-I, well, maybe. But I really don’t think so.”
“Maybe, though? Maybe what? How?”
“Savannah.”
“She thinks this happened between you and Derek?”
Lily nodded. “Well, I didn’t tell her directly, but I did tell Nancy, Zach’s wife or ex-wife, whatever. We were friends and roommates and she knew my plan, and I told her it happened.”
Nikki was speechless, which didn’t happen often. “I feel like I’m in the middle of a soap opera on speed. You need to straighten this all out.”
“I’ll
do what I can.”
After Lily left, Nikki ordered herself a glass of Zinfandel and dialed Jonah’s number. This time he picked up on the first ring. “Have I got a story for you,” she said.
“That makes two of us,” he replied.
Thirty-eight
“AN unauthorized biography?” Nikki about yelled the words. “She can’t do that!”
Jonah was sitting across from her sipping iced tea and nodding his head. “Sure she can.”
Nikki was on her third glass of wine on an empty stomach. “That Renee! She’s, she’s, she’s a bitch!”
“Slow down there, missy. I think you should eat something.”
Nikki waved a hand in the air. “You know what, eating is overrated, and after what I’ve been through this week, I think getting a little buzzed, no, shit-faced, is in order. Yup. Totally shit-faced.”
Jonah shook his head. “You’re on your way there.”
“Good. But listen, I’m gonna sue that Renee Rothschild. Now how did you get this little bit of information?”
“Her plane landed on the big island of Hawaii yesterday, and I called her up and questioned her. She wasn’t too pleased, but I asked her about you and the photos and the wedding and her snide remarks to you.”
“Oh, yeah, I bet she was so forthright.”
“Actually she was. Then I asked her about her relationship with Kenny, and she claimed that she didn’t even know the guy and she didn’t even know he was dead. I faxed over the picture to her from that newsletter. She says that he was just some guy that she met at the conference who was hanging out with a group of them.”
“Convenient. Isn’t that just so convenient?”
Jonah set his tea down. “I didn’t get the feeling she was lying to me.”
“She’s a sly one. Let me tell you. Real sneaky, snaky, snarky sly. That’s her.” She pointed at him.
“I don’t think she’s the one we’re looking for, but I do find what you’ve told me about this Jackson, Kenny, Lily, and now Derek, angle interesting.”
A Toast to Murder Page 17