Little White Lies

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Campbell was slumped, halfway unconscious, across the seat lengthwise. Walker was equally out of it in the passenger seat. Their father was talking—lecturing. Family honor and self-control and blah, blah, blah. The senator expected better of Walker. Any man worth his mettle knew his limits.

  Only the senator didn’t. Not really, because at some point in the drive, he’d allowed the car to drift into the next lane.

  Oncoming traffic. Campbell saw headlights, and the next thing she knew, her father jerked the wheel to the right.

  Too far to the right.

  The sound the car made as it hit something wasn’t a thump. It wasn’t a crunch. Campbell let her eyes close again as her father opened the driver’s side door. Let Mr. Hypocritical High-and-Mighty, who’d expected better of Walker, figure this one out.

  She hadn’t known, at that point, that the object they’d hit was a person.

  “Are you two excited?” Aunt Olivia asked as she pulled into the parking lot. “Of course you are. After all of this time and all of those fittings—you’ll actually get to try your dresses on!”

  The Symphony Ball was rapidly approaching. Each and every copy of the designated gown had been ordered, altered, and hand-sewn to exact specifications. This was the last fitting—the one where we actually saw the results of all the others.

  “I am so excited,” I deadpanned, “that I can hardly stand it.”

  “Oh, hush, you.” Aunt Olivia’s enthusiasm remained fully intact. “And remember: if you see Charlotte Ames, tell her how much you love the dresses.”

  “It’s nice to see you three on such good terms.” Charlotte Ames was indeed present inside the tailor shop. Thus far, the senator’s wife had called the Symphony Ball gowns “a bit full” and “classic in a refreshingly ordinary kind of way.” Now she’d transitioned from subtle jabs at Aunt Olivia to focusing on Campbell, Sadie-Grace, and Lily—and blatantly ignoring me. “Just like old times,” she continued blithely.

  Something tells me you wouldn’t be so glad to see them acting like such good buddies if you knew why.

  Lily didn’t keep secrets from Sadie-Grace, and that meant that Lily’s best friend knew what we knew, and she was just as determined as we were to help Walker and Nick—even if that meant helping Campbell, too.

  “That dress does flatter you, Sadie-Grace, sweetheart.” ­Charlotte Ames shook her head fondly, then turned back to the other ­mothers. “Then again,” she said for Aunt Olivia’s benefit, “what dress wouldn’t?”

  Beside me, Campbell cut a sharp glance toward Sadie-Grace, who was looking distinctly jittery in the wake of the compliment.

  “Be nice,” I told Campbell.

  “Aren’t I always?”

  Lily slid in beside us. With deft hands, she combed her fingers through Campbell’s hair and swept it back into an elegant twist. Campbell relaxed slightly under her touch, then caught herself. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me, Lily Taft.”

  Lily had made it very clear that she was in this for Walker’s sake, but there were moments like this one where the remnants of her friendship with Campbell were evident, too.

  “You should wear your hair back to the ball.” Lily let the other girl’s red tresses drop gently back to her shoulders and moved past her to the mirror. “And don’t worry. I wouldn’t dream of feeling sorry for you.”

  “We need them,” I reminded Campbell. She’d been reluctant to accept my help, let alone anyone else’s—but this wasn’t a two-person job.

  “This isn’t a fairy tale, sister dear.” That was what Campbell had said to me, as she’d begrudgingly let me in on the details. “This is a revenge story, and it’s going to be epic.”

  Across the room, Charlotte Ames narrowed her eyes at the two of us. Part of the reason I’d been able to convince Campbell that we needed Lily was that the senator’s wife would have put up a much bigger fuss about Campbell spending all of her free time with me.

  Turning away from me, Campbell walked toward the three-way mirror. She waited until all four of us were standing in front of it—and out of earshot of her mother, Aunt Olivia, and Greer—before she cut to the chase. “They made the arrest today.” She met her reflection’s gaze. “Daddy has been pressing for it. Nick is in custody as we speak.”

  The thought of Nick behind bars made my stomach heavy.

  “This is a good thing, Sawyer.” Campbell’s elevated brow challenged me to argue with that statement. “You know that.”

  I knew that Campbell’s original plan had involved Nick being let go. When the senator had intervened to have the case reopened, she’d decided to use that to her advantage. Objectively, I recognized the fact that the way the senator had been pressuring people to make this arrest would work in our favor. I knew, as well as Campbell did, how that interference, once it came to light, would look.

  Senator Ames committed the theft to frame Nick, who was getting too close to the truth about his previous crimes. When that didn’t work, he used his political sway to engineer the arrest.

  That was the story we wanted to tell.

  “How long until we can pull the trigger?” I asked, smoothing my hands over the front of my gown and trying to look like I actually cared whether or not it succeeded in giving me the appearance of boobs.

  “Sawyer! Don’t you dare smudge that fabric.”

  Aunt Olivia had eagle eyes. I let my hands fall back to my sides and waited for Campbell to answer the question.

  “It could be weeks still,” Campbell murmured, turning slightly to one side and then the other, inspecting the dress from each angle. “We’ll only have one shot at this.”

  The fact that she’d said we was a miracle—and not a minor one. To my surprise, Campbell followed that up by combing her fingers through Sadie-Grace’s hair, the way Lily had through hers, arranging it just so around the startled girl’s face.

  “The closer we get to a trial,” I murmured, “the more rope we give the senator to hang himself.” I knew that. It didn’t mean I had to like it.

  “I suppose we’re supposed to just sit around and wait?” Lily rose up to the balls of her feet. “Heels?” she called back to her mother.

  “Two inches.”

  Lily adjusted her stance. I tuned out Aunt Olivia and focused on Campbell. My mind went back to that night—the one she’d described to me, the one I couldn’t get out of my head.

  Campbell’s eyes were closed. She didn’t open them until she heard her father on the passenger side of the car. He dragged Walker out from his seat and over to the driver’s side.

  When Campbell realized what was going on, she threw her own car door open, bent to the ground, and puked.

  And that was when she saw Colt’s body.

  “The three of you will have to take care of Nick,” Campbell murmured.

  “Take care of him?” Sadie-Grace asked, wide-eyed and cautious as Campbell stopped playing with her hair. “Like… mob-style?”

  Campbell laid one hand lightly on Lily’s shoulder and the other on Sadie-Grace’s and leaned forward conspiratorially—like the three of them were just BFFs. “Get him a lawyer. A good one.”

  “How would a teenager go about hiring a lawyer?” I asked, catching sight of the four of us in the mirror: a quartet of girls in white gowns, pure as the driven snow.

  Campbell stepped back from the rest of us. “You’ll figure it out,” she murmured. “And I will handle everything else.”

  s it turned out, finding a lawyer to hire for Nick wasn’t the hard part. Coming up with the retainer was. Lily offered to ask her parents, but given what I’d overheard weeks before about their financial situation, I wasn’t sure that was the best idea.

  Not that the idea I’d come up with was much better.

  I cleared my throat. “Can I talk to you?”

  My grandmother was sitting behind her desk in the home office. She glanced up from the papers she was perusing. “You certainly can,” she confirmed, “though perhaps you should also inquire as to wh
ether or not you may?”

  It took every ounce of self-control I had to resist the urge to eye-roll. Instead, I rephrased my question. “You got a second?”

  With a roll of her eyes, Lillian inclined her head toward the chair on the other side of the desk. There was no easy way of approaching this, so I ripped the bandage right off.

  “I need an advance on my trust.”

  “The educational trust due to you once you have fulfilled your end of our contract?” Lillian clearly knew the answer to that question, but for once, she made me provide it anyway.

  “Yes.”

  “Dare I ask what you need this advance for?”

  To provide legal counsel to an accused criminal—but don’t worry, he didn’t do it.

  “I’d prefer not to say.”

  “I see.” Lillian tilted her head to one side. She looked older somehow than she had on the day I’d met her—less polished, more real.

  Or maybe I just knew her a little better.

  I certainly knew her well enough now to know that my request was going to cost me.

  “How much of an advance are we talking about?”

  She’d been in charge of the family’s finances since her husband’s death. From what I’d come to understand in my time here, it had grown exponentially under her guard.

  “Ballpark number?” I stalled for time.

  Lillian did not believe in stalling. She picked up a pen and turned back to her papers. I spat out a number.

  Very slowly, Lillian laid the pen back down. “Are you in some kind of trouble, Sawyer?”

  Do you consider breaking numerous federal laws in an attempt to take down one’s biological father to be “trouble”?

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  She stared at me, long and hard. After a long moment, she smiled. “I suppose an advance could be arranged.”

  I hadn’t anticipated this being so easy.

  “I’ll have my lawyer draw up the papers.”

  I was already rising from my chair when something about the way Lillian had said those words sent a twinge down my spine.

  “What papers?” I asked.

  “We’ll have to amend the contract, of course,” Lillian told me, reaching out to pat my hand. “With the advance—and my new conditions, going forward.”

  ackie had no idea how things had gone so wrong. In retrospect, letting the boys back to the holding area was probably a mistake. Especially the third boy.

  The one who’d claimed to be a lawyer.

  The one who could not stop talking.

  At first, Mackie had listened to the rambling teenager in the tuxedo, hoping to catch something that vaguely resembled human speech. Instead, all he had picked up on was the fact that the ­“lawyer” had also received a note.

  Mackie did not trust these notes.

  “I thought you called your attorney.” Mackie aimed that statement at Walker Ames—he of the curiously blank, but entirely existent, police file. “Or did you just call him?”

  Mackie nodded—sternly, he hoped—toward the boy in the tuxedo.

  “Neither, Officer.” That answer didn’t come from Walker Ames. It didn’t come from the other boys or from any of the four girls.

  It came from behind Mackie.

  With a sense of foreboding, Mackie turned and found himself looking at a regal, terrifying woman. Like the girls, she was wearing a floor-length gown. Unlike the girls, her dress was black. It shone and shimmered all the way to the floor. The jacket she wore over it was beaded. Expensive.

  It was her eyes that concerned Mackie the most. She looked to be in her late fifties—possibly older—and her eyes were steel blue.

  “Walker called me.”

  “And who might you be, ma’am?” Somehow, Mackie managed to form intelligible words.

  “My name,” the woman replied graciously, “is Lillian Taft.” She fixed him with a smile. “I’m afraid the two of us are going to need to have a little chat.”

  he glove luncheon is one of Symphony Ball’s oldest traditions. On the night of your official presentation to society, your fathers will be the ones to escort you to the end of the walkway. They will be the ones leading your first dance as adults, as elegant, strong, charitable young women.”

  Greer Waters had her red hair pulled back into a sedate ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her “baby bump” was just barely noticeable underneath her pale blue dress. The speech was clearly practiced.

  My mind was on other things.

  “But this afternoon,” Greer said with a smile, “is not about your fathers. It is about the women who’ve come before you, the women who’ve raised you. Mothers and grandmothers, aunts and sisters and more. So, mamas…” Greer raised a glass. “Enjoy your mimosas. You deserve it! And, girls?”

  Cue a sheen of unshed tears…

  “We are so very proud of you.”

  Personally, I thought my own mom—who was, of course, not in attendance at this little soiree—would have been very proud of the way I’d posted bail for a boy I barely knew, hired him one shark of an attorney, and also learned quite a bit about natural sedatives in the past two weeks.

  Every Southern lady, I thought in imitation of Greer’s tone and cadence, should know how to drug and frame a scoundrel sorely in need of drugging and framing.

  “I remember Lily trying on these gloves when she was four.” Aunt Olivia looked down at the gloves lying between her plate and Lily’s and smiled fondly. “Such a bitty thing with such a big attitude.”

  That bitty thing had spent the past two weeks on logistics. Lily was every inch her mama’s daughter—type A in the extreme, especially when it came to premeditated crimes.

  “I hope this isn’t too presumptuous.” Greer took the lone empty seat at our ten-top round table, right beside Sadie-Grace. “But I have something for you, sweetheart.”

  The whole point of this luncheon, such as I’d gathered, was for each Debutante to be presented with a pair of white gloves—elbow-length, elegant, and preferably with a family history.

  Symphony Ball was not designed for first-generation debutantes.

  “My Deb year was one I’ll never forget.” Greer patted ­Sadie-Grace’s hand, and Sadie-Grace, bless her heart, was unable to keep from staring conspicuously at her stepmother’s gently protruding stomach.

  “I know your mama wasn’t from here,” Greer continued magnanimously, “so I would be honored if you would wear my gloves.”

  Aunt Olivia brought her napkin to her face and dabbed gently at her lips—the equivalent, essentially, of coughing the words trying too hard under her breath.

  “I only hope someday you’ll have a little sister to pass them on to.” Greer let her hand rest on her stomach. “Though my mama’s instinct tells me this one is a boy.”

  Had I not been preoccupied with my own criminal enterprises, I would have been seriously concerned that Sadie-Grace’s stepmother was planning to acquire a baby on the black market.

  “Sawyer.” Lillian spoke softly. I thought, at first, that I’d committed some unforgivable faux pas with my salad fork, but then my grandmother withdrew a pair of gloves, carefully wrapped in plastic, from her lap. “These were meant for your mother.”

  My mom had never made it to her own glove luncheon.

  I accepted the gift Lillian had offered and then ducked my head. “Excuse me.” This seemed as good a time as any to make my escape. I stood, allowing Lillian to think that the moment—and its significance—was weighing on me. “I have to make use of the necessary.”

  It took Lily exactly three minutes to follow me. “The necessary?”

  “Too much?” I asked.

  “That depends,” Lily said. “Were you going for debutante elegance or drawing room circa 1884?”

  I shrugged. “I’m flexible.”

  I checked the stalls, while Lily kept an eye on the door. By the time I’d finished my circuit, the third and fourth members of our little party had joined us.

  “How’s N
ick?” Campbell’s first words were more revealing than she would have liked.

  “Salty,” I said. “And somewhat bewildered as to why we’re helping him. But mostly? He’s picked up on the fact that there’s a game afoot here, and he wants in.”

  “We could tell him,” Sadie-Grace suggested hesitantly. “And Walker.” It was fairly obvious that she was making the suggestion so that Lily didn’t have to.

  “If we tell Walker, he’ll confront Daddy.” Campbell looked from Sadie-Grace to Lily and narrowed her eyes. “We don’t want that—not yet.”

  Keeping this from Walker was killing my cousin. I’d been checking in on him as often as I could, but Lily had avoided being in the same room with him since she’d found out the truth.

  “Walker’s stable,” I said. “Or as stable as Walker gets. And Nick…”

  “Nick doesn’t understand how our world works.” Campbell walked over to the nearby sink and picked up a bottle of hand lotion. “He’s a wild card.”

  Weeks of scheming side by side hadn’t given me any more insight into what—if anything—Campbell felt about the guy she’d framed. She’d used him. He’d used her. I had literally no idea if there was anything more to it than that.

  “We’ll tell the boys soon,” Campbell said, rubbing lotion into her hands. “Walker and Nick will know what they need to know when they need to. For now? I’ve looked at the different scenarios that Lily’s run out, and there’s one that seems to have a certain… panache.”

  “The day of the ball?” I guessed.

  Bingo. Campbell didn’t need to issue a verbal confirmation—it was all right there in her eyes.

  “That gives us two weeks.” I thought out loud. “What do we still need?”

  “The audio,” Campbell replied immediately. “And the pearls.”

  “What do you mean we need the pearls?” Lily said. “You have them.”

  “Actually…”

  “Campbell!” Sadie-Grace squeaked. “What happened to the necklace?”

  Our plan wouldn’t work without it. To set Sterling Ames up for framing Nick, he needed to be caught with the pearls. At a certain place. At a certain time. In certain circumstances.