“What the hell is luminizer?”
Without answering, Campbell left the room and returned with a dress she’d selected for me: white cotton, with a gathered neckline and spaghetti straps. “I’ll send the dress home with you in a watertight bag. I’d recommend a bright-colored bathing suit to go underneath. You’re not trying to hide the fact that you’re wearing one, so you might as well go big or go home.”
I reached for the suit I’d worn here.
Campbell blocked my arm. “Not that one.” Having issued that edict, she disappeared back across the hall.
With a roll of my eyes, I studied the “luminizer” she’d handed me, determined it to be some kind of glittery lotion, and mentally filed it under hell no.
“What is she doing here?”
I turned to see Charlotte Ames standing in the doorway. Campbell’s mama wasn’t wearing makeup, and I could smell the alcohol on her breath from four feet away. Her question was clearly directed toward Campbell, but she stood facing me.
I could not help feeling that wearing nothing but a towel didn’t put me in the best position for a standoff.
“Isn’t it enough that your father’s in prison, Campbell? Do you really hate me so much that you would invite this…” Even inebriated, Charlotte Ames was not the type to fling about vulgarities or slurs, so she settled on simply referring to me as this. “…into my home?”
Maybe I should have felt attacked or degraded or, at the very least, condescended to, but the only thing I could bring myself to actually feel in that moment was pity.
This woman’s husband had cheated on her. Repeatedly. He had knocked up a teenager years ago. And even though that baby wasn’t me, I was one of the people responsible for her husband’s arrest. Campbell, Lily, Sadie-Grace, and I had planned his disgrace down to the last detail, and as a result, Charlotte Ames had spent much of the past month splattered on front pages right alongside her husband.
“I’ll go,” I said.
“No.” Campbell stepped into the hallway and blocked my exit. “Stay, Sawyer. After all, you’re my sister.” Given that she knew now that I wasn’t, I could only assume that Campbell and her mother were not currently on the best terms. “Blood is thicker than water—isn’t that what you always say, Mama?”
Charlotte’s sharp intake of breath was audible. “I didn’t raise you to talk to me that way, Campbell Caroline.”
“You raised me to be a lady,” Campbell countered lightly. “And ladies play to win. It’s not my fault you’re slipping, hiding out here with your tail between your legs like we have something to be ashamed of.”
“I am not having this argument with you,” Charlotte said, her voice low in a way that would have sounded a lot more ominous if she weren’t drunk enough to slur her words.
“Then don’t,” Campbell replied simply. Don’t argue. Don’t make a scene. Campbell turned back to me and held out an electric-orange swimsuit. I took it.
Charlotte straightened, doing a passable impression of someone who wasn’t fall-down drunk, and shifted her attention wholly and pointedly to me. “I suppose that I should offer you a beverage.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Charlotte stared at me so hard that I could feel her gaze on my skin. “It’s only a matter of time before your roots start showing, you know.” Her voice was strangely pleasant. She barely even slurred the words. “It doesn’t matter how they dress you up, or what little tricks you learn, or how well you think you can blend. You are what you are, sweetheart, and you’ll never be anything else.”
She took a long drink out of the glass in her hand—whiskey, by the smell of it.
“You can tell your mama I said so.” She smiled daggers at me and shook Campbell off when her daughter tried to lead her back down the hall. “Or better yet, pass the message along to your aunt.”
iv?” For years, Charlotte had prided herself on knowing the right thing to say in every situation. She was the sensitive one. Julia was the blunt, take-no-prisoners type. And Liv…
Liv hadn’t been herself since they’d buried her daddy.
Charlotte hovered in the doorway to the late Mr. Taft’s home office, her eyes fixed on the silhouette in the window.
“You can’t stay cooped up in here all day, Livvy,” she said delicately.
“I can do anything I want to.” Liv’s tone was calm, with just the slightest lilt. “That’s what he used to say. ‘Sky’s the limit, Bug.’” There was a pause. “He called me Bug.”
“I know.” Despite her best efforts, Charlotte could not find any words of honeyed comfort beyond that.
Liv probably didn’t want to be comforted.
“Come on.” Liv pushed off the window frame and stalked past her second-oldest friend.
Second-best, a voice inside Charlotte always whispered.
“Call Julia and tell her to meet us at the cemetery,” Liv ordered. She’d always been the charismatic one, enough so that people—male and female, young and old—did what she suggested.
Under any other circumstances, Liv being Liv might have gotten under Charlotte’s skin, but not today. Not when Liv Taft was finally starting to sound like herself.
“Don’t just stand there, Char. Get a move on. We can raid the liquor cabinet on the way.”
here was a board nailed across the door to The Big Bang, like the whole place had been condemned. I had to look twice to determine that it was for show.
“Mama would have a heart attack if she knew where we were,” Lily said beside me, straightening her dress. “Or worse, a conniption.”
We’d told Aunt Olivia we were spending the night with Sadie-Grace. For good measure, I’d also passed along Charlotte’s regards, which seemed wiser than saying, Campbell’s mama sends vague insults and whiskey-laden predictions about the future.
“Do you want to open the door?” I asked Lily. “Or should I?”
She took a deep and cleansing breath. “Here’s to a legendary evening.”
She pulled the door open, and a cacophony of country music, loud voices, and what sounded like a live piano hit me all at once. The lighting inside the bar was dim, but there were colored Christmas lights strung along the entire perimeter of the open room, and a massive crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling. There was a baby grand piano on the far side of the room, and behind it, silvery curtains that had been drawn to reveal the bar’s name in a spotlight on the wall. Gas station memorabilia hung along the other three walls, with a dozen or more signs for filling stations deeming themselves The Last Chance.
The entire place looked like it had been decorated by a couple, one of whom had read The Great Gatsby a few too many times, and the other of whom had a fondness for all things mom and pop.
“It shouldn’t work,” someone said behind me. “But it does.”
I turned to see Campbell. When Lily had dropped Walker off and picked me up earlier, Cam hadn’t said a word to either of them about what I’d told her. She was good at keeping secrets—if she wanted to.
“I take it you’ve enlightened your cousin as to the score?” she asked now.
Horror seeped through my body, weighting it down limb by limb—then Campbell smiled and made it clear that her question had been targeted at Lily and that the “score” she’d been referring to wasn’t my secret.
“Parts of Regal Lake are Martha’s Vineyard,” Campbell enlightened me. “And parts are Duck Dynasty, and ne’er the twain shall meet, except in fine establishments like this one.”
Half of the bar-goers in this room looked like they would have been right at home at The Holler. The other half looked like they’d come straight from the yacht club. The common denominator was that nearly everyone in the building was young—and as we stood there, more than a few of them turned to look in our direction.
It took me a moment to realize that they were looking at Campbell.
“Notoriety suits me,” Campbell said, but her usual bravado fell flat. “Don’t you think?”
“I think we’re supposed to be in the back room,” Lily said, nudging Campbell in that direction. “Come on.”
Before I could follow them, I noticed a disturbance a few feet away. “You two go ahead,” I told Campbell and Lily. “I’m going to rescue Sadie-Grace.”
Sadie-Grace Waters was what my old boss, Big Jim, would have referred to as a looker and what my grandmother referred to as a sweet girl. She wasn’t particularly skilled at standing up for herself or recognizing sexual innuendos. I managed to push my way through her thick ring of current admirers just as one of them was saying something rather questionable about apples.
“Hi, Sawyer!” Sadie-Grace greeted me cheerfully. “People here are so friendly.”
I snorted and gently maneuvered her away from the crowd.
“Where are you going?” one of the men called, disappointed.
Sadie-Grace, bless her heart, bounced to the tips of her toes. “I can’t tell you,” she called back. “It’s a secret!”
The back room was bigger than I’d expected. Round-top tables lined the walls, a half-dozen candles burning on each table, the only light in the room. I’d spent a chunk of my childhood obsessively calculating the maximum occupancy of every building I entered, and my guess was that the room could hold forty and was pushing that number. Every person here was female. Most were dressed like us—sundresses layered over swimsuits, hair strategically windblown—but I counted eight who wore what appeared to be white shifts and elbow-length white gloves under floor-length scarlet robes. Their hoods were up, casting their faces in shadow.
“Don’t be shy,” one of them told Sadie-Grace and me. “Pick your poison.” She gestured to the table beside her, which was filled with martini glasses. Each glass bore liquid of a different color—an entire rainbow of poisons to choose from.
Sadie-Grace went for a purple one. I circled the table to grab the only clear drink I saw.
“Do you like it when things are transparent?” the hooded girl asked me. From this angle, I could see her better. Her hair was dark and thick, her skin the same medium brown as her eyes.
I took a very small sip of my drink. “I don’t like anything too sweet.”
A second or two passed, then the dark-haired girl turned and disappeared into the crowd.
“I can’t believe she came tonight.”
“I can’t believe they invited her.”
“Wasn’t that nice of them?”
My default would have been to ignore the duo murmuring behind me, but the next thing one of them said was: “It would only be polite to go say hello.”
They made their way around me—and that was when I realized they were headed for Campbell. Poor, pitiable Campbell Ames, whose family was embroiled in scandal.
“Should we warn her?” Sadie-Grace asked me. She paused. “Or warn them?”
My money was on Campbell being able to take care of herself.
“Lily’s with her,” I told Sadie-Grace. “She won’t let things get too ugly.”
Just before the girls reached Campbell, I heard a thump, followed by another and another. Someone was stomping—and soon, multiple people were, creating a steady, rhythmic drumbeat.
“The Candidates are many.” Those words were spoken to carry. “The Chosen are few.” The speaker stepped onto a chair, and I recognized her as the one who’d told us to pick our poison. “You received an invitation to tonight’s little soiree,” she said, “because at least one among us thought you had…potential.” She lingered on that word, just for a moment. “You might have noticed that there are eight of us and significantly more of you. For now, you don’t need to know our names. All you need to know is what we offer. Eight spots for eight of you. Tradition dictates that at the start of her senior year in college, each White Glove picks her own replacement from among the incoming freshmen at her institution.”
There was a pause—a calculated one.
“But this summer, we decided to shake things up a bit and bring the competition to you a little early. Handy, isn’t it, that Regal Lake brings together society from three states and twice that many metropolitan areas? You have fourteen weeks to impress us. This may be my first summer at Regal, but it’s already clear that it offers a variety of avenues for making an impression.” She raised the martini glass in her hand. “Here’s to the first.”
“The Candidates are many,” another hooded girl called out, and then all of them raised their voices in unison. “The Chosen are few.”
hree things became apparent over the next hour. The first was that none of the White Gloves were really drinking—nothing more than the occasional sip. The second was that the murmurs I’d overheard about Campbell weren’t an isolated incident. And the third was that there was no doubt among the Candidates that this was a competition—and no reluctance whatsoever to oh-so-sweetly compete.
I wondered how many of the girls in this room would deep-six lifelong friends, just to make an impression.
“You’re friends with Campbell Ames, right?” A White Glove appeared beside me. Lily and Sadie-Grace were mingling on the other side of the room. I’d lost sight of Campbell. “She’s causing quite the stir tonight. I knew she would.” The White Glove sounded pleased with herself.
“You the type of person who likes causing stirs?” I asked.
“I have a certain appreciation for chaos.” The girl shed her hood, revealing a head of dark blond hair underneath. “I know Victoria said no names, but I’m Hope.”
“I’m—”
“Sawyer Taft.” Hope finished for me. “Former auto mechanic, prodigal granddaughter of Lillian Taft, and the fifth-most-interesting Candidate here.”
During my Debutante year, interesting had been used mostly as an insult dressed up in compliment clothing. I didn’t sense any of that from Hope.
“Do I want to know how you know that I used to be a mechanic?” I asked.
Hope smiled. “In your shoes, I’d be far more curious about the four Candidates who make your backstory seem tame.”
I couldn’t help thinking that she didn’t know the full story.
Another White Glove appeared beside Hope. “Causing trouble?” she murmured. Unlike Hope’s, her hood was still in place.
Hope neither confirmed nor denied the accusation. “Nessa, Sawyer. Sawyer, Nessa.”
“No names,” Nessa reminded Hope.
“White Gloves don’t take orders,” Hope replied lightly. “Not even when the person issuing them is one of our own—and that includes the illustrious Victoria Gutierrez.”
It took me a moment to process the name, and then I felt like a bomb had been detonated in the room. I couldn’t hear anything but a ringing in my ears and the name that Hope had just very pointedly dropped. Gutierrez. Victoria Gutierrez.
I scanned the room for the White Glove who’d said that we didn’t need to know their names—the dark-haired girl who’d told me to pick my poison. Unfortunately, in this lighting, with most of the White Gloves’ hoods still up, she wasn’t easy to spot.
What are the chances that Victoria Gutierrez is related to the Victor Gutierrez who made a move against Davis Ames? What are the chances she’s related to Ana?
I tried to catch Campbell’s attention but couldn’t. A nearby White Glove turned. Not Victoria. Counting Hope and Nessa, that was three down. A fourth was facing me on the far side of the room. Not her. Turning, I saw a hooded girl exiting back into the bar. Glancing through the party, I was able to rule out two more based on height and build. That gave it even odds that the one who’d just left was Victoria Gutierrez.
I decided to take my chances. Once I made it to the main bar, my target wasn’t hard to spot. A scarlet robe didn’t exactly blend. I followed the hooded girl through the crowd. Despite the music—courtesy of the piano and the loudspeakers—very few people were dancing, unless you counted swaying and drinking to one of the dueling beats.
Victoria—if that was Victoria—sauntered up to the bar. It was in the middle of the room
, elevated and roped off with red velvet ropes.
I tried to follow, but a bouncer stopped me before I could.
“I’m going to need to see some ID.” He was small and compact, with a humorless gaze and biceps he probably spent most of the day flexing.
“I’d be happy to show you my driver’s license,” I replied, “just as soon as you circumvent the fight that’s about to break out between Inebriated Frat Boy…” I nodded to our left. “His friend, Drunken Heir to the Family Fortune…”
The bouncer turned to look.
“And the guy they just bumped into for the third time, who we’ll just call Are You Boys Looking for an Ass Whupping?”
The bouncer turned back to me, folded his arms over his chest, and humorlessly demanded my ID a second time.
“Are you boys looking for an ass whupping?” someone demanded—loudly—from our left.
The bouncer made a beeline for the frat boys. Sometimes, it paid to be observant. I moseyed on by the ropes and helped myself to a barstool right next to the White Glove. I still couldn’t see her face. She was leaning forward, elbows on the bar.
“Can I get you something?” someone asked her.
I recognized the voice that had asked that question a second before my eyes settled on familiar hazel ones behind the bar.
“Nick,” I said. I hadn’t expected to see him here. I told myself that was why I felt a jolt, borderline electric, as the ghost of our single shared dance solidified in my memory. At the time, he’d been a fish out of water, the boy at the country club dressed in a T-shirt and faded jeans. Now he’d traded the jeans for shorts—or possibly a swimsuit. His T-shirt was threadbare and worn.
Soft, some part of me thought, imagining the feel of it beneath my touch.
The girl beside me chose that moment to let her hood fall back. Victoria Gutierrez. “Another half-dozen drinks,” she told Nick, commandeering his attention. “Same deal as before.”
“Pretty, colorful, and watered down,” Nick said, stealing a sideways glance at me. “Coming right up.”
Deadly Little Scandals Page 4