“Okay,” I said. “I can see why that would be scary. But I’ll be with you and—”
There was a loud yell from behind us, followed by a thud.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We both turned in the direction of the Wainwright house.
At first, I didn’t see anything, but then I realized that something was lying on the sand outside the Wainwright mansion. And that, above, on the tallest deck, the railing had broken and was dangling, swinging in the wind, which was picking up speed.
Something had fallen off that deck.
No.
Someone.
I didn’t wait to see what Tania would do. I just took off for the lump in the sand. For the person-shaped mound there.
But when I stopped a few yards from the person who’d fallen, Tania was right behind me.
I stopped, because I recognized who had fallen. I gulped. Oh, hell. It was Roman Wainwright. He was splayed out on the sand here, and his neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. His arms too. He was very obviously dead.
I put my fingers to my lips.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Tania said, and then she repeated it over and over, a whispered mantra.
I grabbed her arm. “It’s okay.” It wasn’t okay, but I felt like I needed to say something.
She tore out of my grasp and shook her head. “I can’t be here.” She ran past me, heading for the steps that led up to the house.
“Where are you going?” I yelled after her.
“To my car,” she said. “To go home.”
“You can’t leave!” I screamed, but a gust of wind came through and seemed to tear the words out of my mouth. I couldn’t even be sure that Tania heard me. She was climbing the steps as fast as she could.
I thought about going after her, but what was the point of that?
Then I thought about leaving too. Let someone else deal with Roman Wainwright’s corpse. I looked back up at the tall deck, the broken railing. Had this been an accident? Had he been pushed? If it was murder, I supposed I didn’t much care. I probably would have pushed him myself if I had the guts.
In the end, though, I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it, alone over in my house next door, wondering who would find Roman and what would happen next. So, I got my phone out. I didn’t dial Oliver Patterson, because I wasn’t in danger, and I didn’t think he had a lot to do with dealing with dead bodies. Instead, I called 911.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” answered the crisp voice on the other end.
“Hi,” I said. “Uh, I was on the beach, and I heard a yell. My neighbor fell off his deck, and I think he broke his neck.”
“Are you on a cellular phone?”
“Yes?”
“We can’t always pinpoint cell phones accurately. What city are you calling from?”
“Sarasota. Um, Siesta Key.”
“Great, and your address?”
I rattled it off.
“Good. Help is on its way to you. Now, are you near your neighbor?”
“Yeah, I’m looking at him.”
“Is he responsive? Can you speak to him?”
“I think he’s dead,” I said.
“Try to speak to him, please.”
I rolled my eyes at the phone. This was like being on the phone with the people who helped you fix your computer. The ones who insisted you do a restart, even though you’d tried that five times already. I moved the phone away from my mouth. “Uh, Roman?”
Obviously, Roman didn’t respond.
“He’s not responsive,” I said to the 911 operator. “His neck, it looks really bent. Like, it’s all the way to the side? I think he’s dead.” The wind was blowing.
“What was that?” said the operator. “There’s a lot of wind where you are. I couldn’t make that out.”
“I said he’s not responsive,” I told her.
“What?”
I hung up. I was pretty sure that you weren’t supposed to hang up on 911 people, but she was getting on my last nerve. And also, maybe I needed some emotional space to try and figure how I felt about this. Here he was, dead, and I had been wishing for his death—well, wishing for his punishment, anyway. But now that he was dead, I felt… good.
Yeah, I felt good. I felt triumphant. I was glad this bastard was dead. I was glad he wouldn’t hurt any more women or traumatize any more little girls. As far as I was concerned, Roman Wainwright had no redeeming qualities.
I thought about leaving again, but I didn’t, because I figured you were supposed to stick around, like how you’re not supposed to leave the site of a car accident.
Sure enough, an ambulance showed up pretty soon, lights flashing. And then a wave of servants came out along with the paramedics.
The paramedics closed ranks around Roman’s body, and I couldn’t see anymore.
I was left to answer questions from the police officers who showed up with the ambulance. They wanted to know what I saw, and I had to repeat my story over and over. They asked me all kinds of things that I didn’t even know the answer to, like about what Roman had been doing before he fell and if he had any medical conditions that could cause him to lose physical coordination.
But finally, they took Roman’s body away, and they let me go.
I went back across the beach to my house. It was dark now, but the wind was still whipping everything around pretty good. I wondered if we were going to get a storm. I hadn’t heard anything on the news. I guessed in a house like this, right on the water, I’d probably have to evacuate.
Because of the wind and the dark, I was right on top of the house before I realized that someone was sitting on the steps leading up to my front porch.
I stopped short when I saw. “Hello?” I called out in a shaky voice. Probably stupid. If it was someone who wanted to do me harm, announcing my presence wasn’t the greatest strategy. But I couldn’t exactly unsay it.
The person stood up, and I recognized him. It was Drew. He was wearing the remnants of what he’d been wearing at the memorial earlier, but he didn’t have his tie anymore, and the first few buttons of his shirt were undone. He was barefoot as well, his dress pants wet at the bottoms, crusted with sand. “Emilia?”
I came closer. “Geez, Drew.”
His nose was red and his eyes were bloodshot. “I can’t be at home right now. My father…”
“I know,” I said. “I’m the one who called 911.” But I didn’t remember seeing Drew there. How did he know? Did he… push his father? He’d been pretty upset the last time I saw him, and he still seemed upset. He seemed—
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Shouldn’t you, uh, go to the hospital with your dad or something?”
“Please don’t make me leave,” he said, and his voice was breaking. “I can’t be alone right now. I need someone. Let me come in.”
I sighed. On the one hand, Drew was still one of my suspects. On the other hand, what kind of shit person would I be if I chased him off when he was begging me for company? “Yeah, okay,” I said in a quiet voice. I mounted the stairs and went to the door. I fitted my key to the lock and let us both inside.
Once inside, the wind sounded even worse as it whistled against the windows and banged branches of the surrounding palm trees against the side of the house. I didn’t like it at all.
Drew stood next to the doorway, looking down at his bare feet. He was a lost little boy.
“Hey,” I said quietly. I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“I knew my dad was a jerk,” he said, looking at me with luminous, hurt eyes. “I mean, that’s why my mom left, after all. But I had no idea it was so bad. I didn’t know he was a criminal.”
Geez. This must be so hard for him. I realized that I hadn’t thought of people like Drew and Tania as being like me, with emotions and heartache. I had thought of them as abstractions. I called them snobs in my head, and I thought that they depersonalized me, because I wasn’t rich like them. But I depers
onalized them. I was no better than them. Maybe I was worse, because I was a little envious, and that made me ugly. I hugged Drew.
He wrapped his arms around me and buried his head against my shoulder. His body shook, but there was no sound. When he moved away, his eyes were dry. Maybe it was too much for tears.
“I, uh, think I might have a pair of drawstring pants and a t-shirt that’ll fit you,” I said. “If you want.”
He looked down at his clothes. “Oh, uh…” He looked up at me, wide-eyed. “Damn, I’m sorry. I’m tracking sand in here, and you probably have to clean up after me yourself.” As if that was the most horrible thing he could think of.
“I’m not worried about the mess,” I said. “I just thought maybe you were uncomfortable.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Oh. Oh, yeah. I guess I am. You know, that would be great.”
“Sure.” I jogged up the steps, located the clothes, which weren’t even mine technically anyway, and came back down. I handed them over and showed him the bathroom, so he could change.
When he came out, the clothes were just a bit snug on him, especially the t-shirt, but it wasn’t exactly a bad look on him. He managed to not make the girly clothes look at all feminine. I shook myself.
I wasn’t attracted to Drew. Really, I wasn’t. I mean, he was attractive, but I didn’t have any desire to be involved with him. For one thing, I wasn’t interested in dating one of Violet’s exes. And for another, he was kind of a mess. But I thought that he was a person that I might be able to consider a friend.
Assuming he wasn’t a murderer, that was.
“You got anything to drink?” he said. “Anything, like, alcoholic?”
“Lots of wine,” I said, showing him the wine cabinet. “Nothing stronger, though.”
“Wine is fine,” he said. “I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but do you think I could—”
“Of course,” I said. “White or red?”
“White,” he said. “I want something that’ll go down easy.”
I hadn’t chilled the wine, but Drew didn’t care. I put ice in my wine, which was one of my little tricks, but I figured it wasn’t exactly proper. We sat on a couch that faced a window and watched the palm trees blow around.
By the time Drew spoke, he was about four glasses in. “My father is an asshole, and the only woman I’ve ever loved, really loved, is my sister. I don’t know how to even process that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see how it would be, uh, tough.” I sipped at my wine. “I guess you were pretty angry with your dad.”
“I don’t know if I was angry or just horrified.”
“You probably wanted to confront him.”
He turned to me sharply. “Why would you say that?”
I shrugged. “Uh, no reason.” Only that I’m trying to figure out if you pushed him or not, that’s all. “Uh, I guess you didn’t see him this evening?”
He drained his fifth glass of wine. “No,” he said into it. “I had questions for him, and I never got to ask them.” He reached for the bottle of wine, which we’d just brought over to the coffee table in front of the couch. It was easier that way. He poured himself some more. “It probably doesn’t matter. I doubt he would have ever answered them. He wasn’t the kind of guy who really took responsibility for crap, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
Drew stretched his arm over the back of the couch, peering up at my loft. “Like, when I was a kid, I’d want him to come to my Little League games or whatever, and he’d always say he would and then not show up for whatever reason. If I got mad, it wasn’t like he’d apologize or anything. He’d say something crappy like, ‘Life’s going to disappoint you, son. Best you learn that now.’”
“Oh,” I said. “So, typical rich dad stuff. Like the movies.”
He snorted. “Yeah.”
We were quiet for a while. Drew finished another glass of wine. Poured himself another one.
He started to talk again. His voice was starting to sound slurred. “He and my mom would argue sometimes, and it would be like the arguments from hell, you know? They’d throw stuff at each other, break things, threaten to kill each other.”
“Seriously?” I said.
“No, I’m making all that up because it’s not embarrassing as hell,” he muttered sardonically.
“Sorry,” I said. “Do you think your father was serious? Could he have done something violent like that?”
“No, he’d never hurt my—” Drew broke off. “You think my father killed Violet?”
“Well, you said that the night before she drowned, you told him you were in relationship with her. He would have known that you guys were, you know, related, and maybe he killed her too, I don’t know, to save you.”
Drew shuddered. “Oh, God, that’s so damned twisted, Emilia.”
“I know,” I said. “Maybe I’ve been thinking about it too much.”
Drew sat up straight, slamming his wine glass down on the coffee table. “Why couldn’t he have just told me not to be with her?”
“Because then he would have had to admit to…”
“To what he what did to your mother.”
I sighed. “Actually, it doesn’t make sense. Violet was already born when that happened.”
He furrowed his brow. “What?”
“Yeah, so I don’t know. I guess she must have been with him before, and it must have been consensual, because she would have left earlier, right? I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
He picked his wine glass up again. He drained it again. Then he stood up. He wasn’t steady on his feet.
“Hey,” I said, getting up, reaching for him.
He waved me away. He staggered over to the window. “Then he could have told me. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know my parents weren’t exactly faithful to each other.”
“Listen, Drew, maybe—”
“I hate him,” said Drew. He put his palm flat against the pane of glass. “But, you know, he’s dead. And I never got to say goodbye, and that feels like hell.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “I mean, I don’t know, not exactly, but I… I’ve had my share of loss.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “You’re a really good person, you know that, Emilia? You’re so open, just like Violet was. It’s like, you’re not hiding anything.”
I felt a stab of guilt.
“I probably don’t deserve how nice you’re being to me.” He turned back to the window and rested his forehead against it.
Abruptly, there was a rush of rain outside. It was loud, and we could hear it, see the rain drops hitting the windows. Rain was violent like that in Sarasota in the fall.
Drew jumped back, startled. “Oh, hell,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. I helped him sit down. “Why would you say you don’t deserve it, Drew? Have you done something you’re not proud of?”
He gave me a strange look, and then he laughed. It was a bitter laugh. Harsh. He pointed at the bottle of wine. “I want more of that, but I can’t sit up.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have more, then,” I said. “You’re going to have a hell of a headache tomorrow.”
“Fuck tomorrow,” he said. He managed to move forward and seize the neck of the bottle of wine. He didn’t bother to pour it in his glass. He set the glass down and leaned back on the couch, hugging the bottle of wine. He put the bottle directly to his lips and took another drink. “I loved Violet so much.”
“Me too,” I said softly.
“She was the only person who ever saw me for me, you know? Not as as a Wainwright, not as a dumb rich kid, but as just… a man. And now, it’s all tainted.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“It makes me ill.” He drank more wine. He scrunched down further on the couch.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “But you didn’t know. It’s not your fault.”
He closed his eyes. “She was beautiful and sweet and wo
nderful, and now every single time I think of kissing her, it makes me want to vomit.” He grimaced.
Oh, crap. He wasn’t going to actually throw up, was he? He’d had a lot of wine. I waited, watching him.
But he didn’t say anything else. His eyes remained closed, and his features relaxed. His breathing grew even.
He had passed out.
I took the wine bottle out of his arms and covered him up with a blanket.
For a while, I watched the storm through the windows. Then I realized how exhausted I was, and I trooped up the stairs to lie down. I fell asleep right away. There were no nightmares.
* * *
When I woke up the next morning, Drew was gone.
The cell phone that had been left here for me was blinking. New message. It read, All has been revealed. Thank you for your help. The house is paid up until the end of November. You are welcome to stay.
I set the phone down, completely thrown.
What?
Nothing had been revealed. I didn’t know who killed Violet.
Had it been Roman, then?
But how had Roman died?
What the flying hell? I texted the Host back. What do you mean?
I waited, but nothing happened. Of course I wasn’t going to get an answer. Instead, I called the Host’s number. I put the phone to my ear and listened as it rang on the other side. It rang and rang.
Eventually, a voice came on that said, “I’m sorry. The number you are calling has not set up its voicemail inbox. Goodbye.”
I tossed the phone on the counter.
This was not cool. At all.
I’d had a thought earlier about trying to figure out what realty handled renting out this address. I needed to figure that out.
I got out my laptop and looked up the address. It came up right away, under about five different websites that featured house listings. Huh. That was weird, wasn’t it? I didn’t really know how renting a house out here worked. I called a number on the first search result, and someone answered right away.
“Lisa Holden, Realtor,” she said. “Can I help you?”
“Um, yes,” I said. “I hope. I’m trying to find out who’s rented out the following address.”
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