Her Sister's Secrets

by V. J. Chambers

  “Why was my sister on your boat?” I said. “Why was she leaving clothing here?”

  He furrowed his brow. “Well, I told her it was fine. I mean, we came out together a lot.”

  “You did?” I massaged the bridge of my nose. “To talk about party planning?”

  “No, to hang out… to…” He cocked his head to one side. “Oh, hell, you don’t know, do you? That’s why you’re acting so weird. She didn’t tell you? I thought she would have. We were kind of keeping it quiet, but then I broke up with Tania, so I don’t see why she would have kept it to herself.”

  “Kept what to herself?”

  “Violet and me. We were seeing each other.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I was astonished, even though it meant that everything now made sense. Why he was so upset about Violet’s death. Why her stuff was on the boat. All of it.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t completely clear him of being the murderer, because it was always the boyfriend. That was what they said, right? So, he could have still lured me out here to kill me, and I still wasn’t going swimming, but, I had to admit, it cleared some things up.

  “Wow, you really didn’t know,” he said.

  “The truth is, Violet and I hadn’t really spoken for, well, a long time before she drowned,” I said. “It’s one of the reasons that I have to find out what happened to her. We couldn’t make peace while she was alive, but if I can find this closure for her…”

  “You really think someone hurt her?”

  “Do you think it’s crazy?” I said, eyeing him. If he told me it was crazy, that might point to his being the murderer.

  He tossed Violet’s swimsuit down on the unmade bed. “No, I guess I don’t. You’re right. She was a strong swimmer. And it does seem weird that she was out swimming by herself that night.”

  I lifted my chin. “Where were you that night?” This was the first thing I needed to establish—whether or not he had an alibi.

  “Well, actually, I thought she and I were going to meet up later. I was waiting for her at home, but she never showed and she never called.”

  So, that wasn’t an alibi, was it?

  “What about Tania?” I suddenly blurted.

  “I wasn’t with Tania,” he said, defensive. “Things with Tania and me were over.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I meant that maybe Tania could have—”

  “Oh God.” His eyes widened. “She was angry.”

  “Tania was angry? At Violet?”

  He nodded. “And me too. I mean, the way she saw it, Violet had come between her and me, but it wasn’t that way. Tania is… fragile, and I had to tread carefully with her. I mean, the relationship between us was over in every way except officially. The only reason I didn’t completely break it off was that I was worried about her.”

  “Wait a second, what do you mean by fragile?”

  “I mean,” he said, “that she would make threats—”

  “Violent threats?” Hell, we’d solved this case already. Unless he was just casting suspicion on Tania to try to throw me off him, which was always a possibility.

  “Well, not exactly. She would threaten suicide if I left her, and the thing is, she had attempted to kill herself our freshman year of college. And she almost succeeded. She had to be taken to the hospital and have her stomach pumped, and she still has damage to her internal organs to this day, so she’s…” He sank both of his hands into his hair and turned in a circle.

  I was quiet.

  He looked up at me. “No. I can’t believe that. Tania would never do that. She couldn’t.” And then he pushed past me, out of the bedroom.

  I waited a few moments, reeling from all this new knowledge. And then I went after him.

  He was back on the deck of the boat, pouring himself another bloody mary.

  “Did Tania ever say anything to you or to Violet? Did they ever argue? Was she ever—”

  “She didn’t know.” He didn’t look at me. He went back to the railing. The wind riffled his hair, blew his shirt back, exposing more of his tanned skin. “When I ended things with her, I didn’t tell her that Violet and I had been seeing each other.”

  “Wait a second, you and Violet were together at the same time you and Tania were together?”

  “No.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Sort of.” He sighed. “It’s like I said, things with Tania and me have been over for a long time. I had been trying to leave her, but she never seemed strong enough to handle it. Violet knew, and she was fine with it. We were casual. There was no expectations on either of our parts. It was just fun. And everything with Tania was the opposite of fun. It was serious and dark and heavy. And Violet came into my life, and she was this breath of fresh air. She was so…” He bowed his head, and he was suddenly sobbing.

  I went to him. I gingerly patted his back.

  He turned and buried his face on my shoulder. His body was wracked with sobs.

  I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a grown man fall apart like this. I knew that I thought that men shouldn’t be forced to suppress their emotions, but maybe I had some latent sexism or something, because this was just really, really…

  He straightened, gulping in air. He scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of one of his hands. “I’m sorry about that.” He sucked in breath and turned around. He drank his bloody mary greedily.

  I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Also, the shoulder of my sundress was wet with his tears and maybe his… Ew, was that snot? I looked around and spied a towel hanging up. I seized it and mopped at my dress. “The thing is, I think Tania did know.”

  He sniffled. “What?”

  I nodded. “Um, last night, I ran into her at the party at your house, and she said something about my sister and me both being people who took things that weren’t ours.”

  He grimaced. “What did you take of hers?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “I guess it was only that I showed up at the party at all. She didn’t think I belonged there.”

  “Well, she’s always been a snob.” He shook his head. “Listen, we have to be very careful here. Because if we upset Tania too much, she might do damage to herself. She’s fragile, like I said.”

  “If Tania killed Violet—”

  “She couldn’t have,” he said. “I can’t believe that.”

  “But it’s possible.”

  “Let me talk to her,” he said. “Can you do that? Just let me broach the subject with her. And don’t involve the police yet. Because if we’re wrong, being accused could be very troubling for her, and I couldn’t bear being the person who brought that down on her.”

  “But if she did it—”

  “Can you do that?”

  I sighed. “Okay, I guess. I don’t think the police would be much help anyway. But, sure, you can talk to her. She probably wouldn’t talk to me, anyway.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I just can’t figure how she could have known. I had only just told my father. Violet and I went to dinner with him, and we told him we were together.”

  Suddenly, I remembered the DNA test. My stomach roiled.

  “What?” said Drew.

  I shook my head. I felt like I might be ill. Physically ill. “You need to take me back to shore,” I said. “Now.”

  * * *

  Back at my house, I sat out on the porch, studying the DNA test and trying to wrap my head around this. My sister was the daughter of Roman Wainwright. That meant that she and Drew were half brother and half sister. If they had been together, like physically together, and they probably had been, although I hadn’t asked Drew that question, then it had been incest.

  Oh, Violet.

  How could our mother have kept this from us?

  And then I had another awful thought. Drew had just told me that he and Violet had announced their relationship to his father the night before she died. I got out my cell phone and dialed Phin.

  He probably wouldn’t answer, I
thought as it dialed. He was probably at work at the hospital and—

  “Hello?” Phin’s voice was groggy.

  “Were you asleep?”

  “I got switched to the night shift last night.” He yawned.

  “Listen, my sister was sleeping with Drew Wainwright.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I mean, he says they were in a relationship. He didn’t say they were sleeping together, but they probably were. I couldn’t very well ask him that. What kind of person asks someone if he was having sex with her sister or not? That would have been weird. Of course, he acted weird too. He acted incredibly weird. He got snot on my dress.”

  “Wait,” said Phin. “Drew and Violet have the same father.”

  “I know,” I said. “And get this. The night before she was killed, they had dinner with Roman and told him they were together.”

  “Oh, hell,” said Phin. “So, you think Roman was so disgusted by that, maybe he took care of Violet?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s suspicious, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty awful,” said Phin. “Your poor sister.”

  “I’m almost glad she never knew,” I said. “I can’t even imagine discovering something like that.” I paused. “She couldn’t have known, could she?”

  “No way,” said Phin. “It’s just… tragic.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “But maybe Drew knew,” said Phin.

  “If he knew, then he wouldn’t have continued the relationship,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Phin. “Think about it. He tells his father he’s dating this girl, his dad is like, ‘That’s your sister,’ and Drew loses it and is so ashamed and angry that he drowns Violet.”

  I gasped. “Oh, God, you could be right. And he is violently emotional about it.”

  “Oh, is that how the snot happened? I was wondering.”

  “He just broke down in front of me. He was a sobbing mess. He has a really hard time talking about Violet. Maybe it’s guilt.”

  “Definite possibility.”

  “But there’s another suspect,” I said. “And that’s Drew’s ex, Tania. Who he was sort of, kind of, technically cheating on with Violet. And then he dumped Tania for Violet. So, she has a reason to be angry.”

  “Oh, wow,” said Phin.

  “I know,” I said.

  We were quiet.

  “You know, maybe you should just tell what you know to the police and come home,” said Phin.

  “Are you crazy? I can’t come home. I’ve just started to find things out.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said. “But it’s starting to seem like maybe there’s something to this. There’s a lot of people who seem to have a reason to hurt Violet. And it could be dangerous. Not to mention the fact that you still don’t know who put you in that house or why.”

  “I’m not leaving,” I said. “And I promised Drew I wouldn’t tell the police about Tania until after he talks to her.”

  “Why did you promise him anything? And what does it matter what you said to him, anyway? He might be a murderer.”

  “Just… I might as well wait. I think I need more if I want the police to take me seriously.”

  He yawned. “Well, I want a text from you morning and night, just so I know you’re all right.”

  “I better let you go back to sleep, huh?”

  “Mmmph.” Another yawn. “Be really careful, Mila. I couldn’t handle it if anything happened to you.”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, I got a phone call from—of all people—Officer Oliver Patterson. Speak of the devil and the devil appears, I thought.

  “How are you, Emilia?” he said on the other end of the phone. “I can call you Emilia, right?”

  What was I supposed to say? No? Should I start calling him Oliver instead of Patterson? I thought maybe I would. “Sure thing, Oliver,” I said.

  He chuckled. “Listen, I’m just calling to touch base about your sister’s case. I said that I would look into it, and I have, and I’m not finding anything that would indicate foul play.”

  I made a face at my phone. Of course he wasn’t finding anything. “Well,” I said, “just to be clear, what are the kinds of things that you could find to indicate foul play?”

  “That’s hard to say,” he said. “It’s a case-by-case sort of thing. In this case, what we’re finding is that the evidence is all in line with an accidental drowning. If she’d been found in her clothes or without clothes—” He broke off. “Uh, sorry, I didn’t mean to be inappropriate. It’s only that if she had been found that way, it would raise red flags.”

  “But you told me this before,” I said. “You promised you would do some digging. What digging did you do? Have you even had time to look into the case?”

  “I went over all the evidence with a fine-tooth comb,” he said. “I assure you of that.”

  What did that expression even mean?

  He was still talking. “I went down and talked to the coroner who examined your sister’s body, and I asked her if she thought that there was a possibility this was a murder. She said it was very unlikely. But she also said that if it was a murder, it might be hard to tell, because the water would have washed away a lot of the evidence that we could have found. But she didn’t think there was anything to indicate that we should be looking at this that way.”

  “What if my sister had enemies?”

  “Did she?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I’m finding out all kinds of things about her life.”

  “Like what?”

  I considered. Should I keep my promise to Drew and not rat out Tania yet? What about Drew himself? What about his father? The thing was, I had my doubts that Oliver would be much help with any of it. I had very little faith in the entire police department at this point. It was a step in the right direction, his calling me personally, but it might be too little, too late.

  “Listen, you didn’t go out to that address mentioned in the letter, did you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “That’s good. Do you want to file a report against the letter writer?”

  “I’m still not sure about that.”

  “You want me to go out to that address and have a look around? See what I can see?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t have to do that.” Inwardly, I cringed.

  “You seem pretty convinced that something bad happened to your sister,” he said. “I want you to feel as if you’ve been served by our department. That is our job, you know. To protect and serve.”

  “Look, if I need you, I’ll get in touch,” I said.

  “Do that,” he said. “You’re on a cell phone, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “So, you’ve got this number then, in your call log. Save it. The number I called you from, this is my work cell. I have it on me twenty-four/seven, even if I’m not on duty, so you can call it any time, all right? If that person who wrote the letter takes things to the next level, you call, got it?”

  “Sure,” I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so pissed off at Oliver before. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so attentive now, when I didn’t really want him in my business. However, it was probably a good idea to have a cop’s number if I needed it, especially considering this all could end up pretty dangerous.

  Hell, if Drew was the murderer, I’d been alone with him on his boat earlier, and I may have narrowly escaped death. So, Oliver could prove useful. “I appreciate that, actually. That’s very decent of you.”

  “Well, it’s my job, and I still owe you,” he said. “You take care now, Emilia.”

  * * *

  The cell phone that had been in the house when I arrived was blinking. It must have gotten a text or some other kind of notification.

  I seized the thing and turned it on.

  Yep. A text message. It was from the Host, just like the others that had been on the phone when I arrived. Good morning, Emilia, it read. You ha
ve a lunch reservation at La Madeleine Caffe. 12 noon sharp. Wear a blue dress.

  Okay, what the hell?

  This person, whoever this Host person was, seemed to think he could move me around like a chess piece. He’d left that invitation to the party at the Wainwright’s house, and I’d gone. But I still didn’t know why. Had I figured out whatever it was that the Host wanted me to from that little excursion? Somehow, I didn’t think so. So, now, I was supposed to go to a restaurant?

  Maybe I wouldn’t.

  I shouldn’t allow this person to control my life.

  On the other hand, I had pretty much already allowed him to do that. He wanted me to stay in the house. I stayed. He wanted me to go to the party. I went. He wanted me to look into Violet’s death. I did it.

  And I knew La Madeleine. It was a nice restaurant, but it was all the way on St. Armand’s Circle, which was on Lido Key. It wasn’t really far away or anything, just it was interesting that the Host was sending me away from the house. The point was, it wasn’t a scary place. It was pretty public, and it had an outdoor deck that overlooked the ocean. If the Host wanted to kill me, he probably wasn’t going to do it there.

  When it came down to it, I was probably safer at La Madeleine than I was here.

  Okay, well, maybe I would go.

  I wondered if maybe this would mean that I might meet the Host. Maybe that was the reason I’d gotten the text. I wondered why he wanted me in a blue dress. Maybe he had been spying on me, and he thought that I looked good in blue or something. Maybe this was the part where he asked me to sign the sex contract.

  I contemplated not wearing blue, simply to spite him.

  But in the end, I selected one of the many blue dresses in my fully-stocked closet and got in my car. In the end, I was too curious not to follow instructions.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I arrived at La Madeleine at 11:49 AM. Since I wasn’t supposed to be there until noon, I wandered around St. Armand’s for a bit. The circle was a big traffic circle that was lined with various upscale shops. Mostly it was clothing, but there were a few stores that sold decor and the like. It was all crazy pricey. No normal person who lived in Sarasota went shopping here. It was entirely for the rich tourists. I window shopped for ten minutes, and then I went back to La Madeleine.