I felt my limbs go numb and my face grow cold. The detective knew—or would know soon—that Drue and I had been reunited for less than three months. He knew that her corpse had been found floating in a hot tub outside my bedroom. He knew that the guy who could have provided my alibi was gone. Maybe he even knew that there’d been texts on my phone about killing Drue.
“Listen,” I said, my voice quiet, but, thank God, steady. “I was very happy Drue asked me to be in her wedding. I was happy she still cared enough about me to want me to be part of her big day. I was happy to be here. I had no reason to want to hurt her.”
McMichaels gave me a look that seemed to last a week. I held my breath, waiting for him to tell me to start the story again, the way he’d done twice before. Instead, he stood up, turned, and reached onto the shelf behind him, the one that held the Cuisinart and extra stacks of plates. He pulled down a sheaf of papers and handed them to me.
“What’s this?” he asked.
I stared at the first page, at a mock-up in the style of a wedding invitation. You are cordially invited to (sponsor) the wedding of Drue Cavanaugh and Stuart Lowe, it read, in an ornate, scrolling font. There was a photograph of Drue and Stuart, one that I recognized from Drue’s Instagram. The happy couple stood in front of the Eiffel Tower. Drue’s hand was extended to show off her engagement ring, and Stuart’s arms were wrapped around her as he held her against his chest. Only the picture had been edited, so that, extending from her back and his back were blank price tags, reading YOUR BRAND HERE. At the bottom, the invitation said, Say yes to the dress (or the flight, or the hotel, or the wedding favors, or the wine). Please RSVP for this once-in-a-lifetime brand synergy opportunity.
I turned the page and saw a mock-up of the bed that had been set up on the beach the previous night, and a picture of a generic bride and a groom on a bluff over the ocean, exchanging vows at sunset. YOUR HASHTAG HERE, the text invited, with more blank price tags and arrows pointing to the bed, the rugs, her dress, his watch.
“It’s a pitch deck,” I told the detective.
“A what now?”
“A pitch deck.” I adjusted my posture, pressing my legs together, trying to think. “A solicitation for businesses to advertise on Drue and Stuart’s social media.” I paged through the document. It was four pages long, and it made its case clearly: two hot young influencers, each with hundreds of thousands of fans and followers, were getting married; and brands, from airlines to hotels to fashion retailers to home goods purveyors, were invited to get a piece of the action. Pony up, the copy said, and you will see your brand featured and mentioned in conjunction with THE SOCIETY WEDDING OF THE YEAR. On a beautiful private beach in exclusive Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Drue Lathrop Cavanaugh of the Cavanaugh Corporation will say “I Do” to Stuart Edward Lowe of All the Single Ladies fame, I read. Millions of desirable millennials will follow their feeds to see photographs and videos of the ceremony, the party, the afterparty, featuring Holland-based DJ 7en, and the happy couple enjoying the honeymoon of a lifetime. There will be guaranteed glamour, celebrity sightings, and maybe a surprise or two! Make sure those consumers see your brand when they watch!
“So what does this mean?” the detective asked.
I felt breathless, like I’d fallen from a great height and landed hard. “Drue and Stuart were trying to get sponsors for their wedding.”
Detective McMichaels frowned. “Sponsors?”
“Right. Businesses that would pay to be featured on Drue and Stuart’s social media.”
I flipped to the third page, where there was a schedule of events, with Twitter handles and hashtags for the winery, the caterer, and the disc jockey, some of whom, I assumed, had swapped their goods and services for the exposure the wedding guaranteed. The last page had Drue’s and Stuart’s biographies, along with the number of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat followers they’d amassed. Other wedding guests were listed beneath them, with more pictures and statistics. This inclusive celebration will feature celebrity facialist Minerva de los Santos, I read, and rising influencer/Afrofuturist Natalie Jonnson. My breath caught when, right below a picture of Natalie in metallic wraparound sunglasses and a flower crown, I saw my own face. Plus-size influencer Daphne Berg will be a featured wedding participant, read the copy. In the shot they’d chosen, from my own Instagram page, I was dressed in one of Leela’s outfits, posing in front of the brick wall that it seemed every influencer in the five boroughs had, at one point or another, used as a backdrop.
I stared at the document, mouth dry, eyes hot. She was using me, I thought, and felt something inside of me crumple. Of course she was. Of course she didn’t want me to be her friend again. Of course she had ulterior motives. She wanted to get the fat girls on board, to make us feel included without actually doing the work of including us. And I was the bait; I was the beard, the flag she could wave in front of my plus-size sisters to convince them that she was on their side.
I cringed, remembering bits and pieces of the party, or things Drue had said, realizing that I should have put this together much, much sooner. I remembered the video crew prowling the beach, Drue holding a signature cocktail and giving an interview that must have been live-streamed to her feed. I remembered noticing the mattress company’s hashtag, on a card next to the bed on the sand, and how Drue had brushed it off. A couple of brands came to us, so we figured, why not?
I must have looked as shocked as I’d felt, because McMichaels’s voice was almost gentle when he asked, “You didn’t know about this?” I shook my head and waited for him to say, Sounds like you didn’t know much, or I’m surprised she could do this without you, or Wow, you were really in the dark, dummy! Instead, he asked, “How much money could Miss Cavanaugh and Mr. Lowe expect to make from something like this?”
I did some fast math, considering my own rates, and what I’d heard about what real celebrities could pull in. “It depends. For someone like me, it’s a hundred dollars for every ten thousand followers. So if I’ve got thirty thousand followers, some company will pay me three hundred dollars to feature a photo of its yoga mat, or pet treats, or whatever. But it’s different for celebrities. The big ones get millions of dollars for a post. Sometimes more.”
The bushy eyebrows went up. “For just one picture?”
I nodded. Drue and Stuart combined had somewhere around a million followers. If they got all of the sponsorships they’d been seeking—from the airline that would take them to their honeymoon and the hotel where they would stay, from the caterer and the bakery providing the wedding cake and the company that had made the tablecloths and napkins for the wedding dinner, for all three of Drue’s wedding dress designers… I worked my mental calculator, and finally said, “If this worked the way they hoped, it could have paid for the whole wedding. Going forward…” I imagined the possibilities, the maternity and baby-specific brands Drue could work with if she got pregnant, the barre and boxing and spinning brands when it was time to lose the baby weight. “I couldn’t even guess.”
“But a lot.”
When I nodded, McMichaels pointed one thick finger at the word near my name on the pitch deck. “You’re an influencer.” He said it as a statement, but I heard it as a question. Which made sense. How could I be operating in the same world as gorgeous, glamorous Drue?
“Well, not a very influential one.”
Ignoring my poor attempt at humor, he asked, “Were you advising Drue on how to make money from her social media?”
I shook my head. “There are companies you can hire to do stuff like this for you. Professionals.” I pointed at the pitch deck. “This was made by a professional.”
“So you had no idea that this was going on?”
I thought about the party the night before, all of the photographers, the video crew. She was probably streaming it on her stories, I thought, and kicked myself for not noticing. I thought about Drue in her bedroom, telling me that she’d promised her father that she could pay him back for wh
atever the wedding cost. “No,” I said in a small voice. “I had no idea.”
The detective stood up. In the bright summer light, he didn’t look even slightly grandfatherly. He looked stern, and angry, and determined. “There has not been a suspicious death on the Outer Cape since 1994,” he said. “And that went unsolved for years. It was an embarrassment.” He pronounced the word precisely, giving each syllable equal weight, and he gave me another hard look. “We don’t know how your friend died. But I promise you this: we aren’t going to end up with egg on our face again.”
“Good,” I whispered. My mouth felt very dry. “That’s good.”
“One more thing,” he said. His voice didn’t rise and his expression stayed mild as he looked down at his notebook. “The wedding planner gave me a list of all the guests for last night’s event.” He looked up. “There’s no Nick Andros on there.”
I blinked. “What?”
“That man you said you met last night. His name isn’t on the guest list.”
“But…” I closed my eyes and clasped my trembling hands together. “He told me that he was an old friend of Drue’s. They both spent summers on Cape Cod. They went to sailing school together. Maybe he forgot to RSVP?” Even while I was stumbling for an answer, I was remembering that Drue hadn’t recognized Nick. Not when I’d asked him to take our picture; not in her bedroom when I’d said his name.
McMichaels was staring at me with absolutely no sympathy on his face. He tap, tap, tapped at his pad, and turned it around so that I could see what he’d just googled: Nick Andros is one of the heroes in Stephen King’s apocalyptic thriller The Stand.
I tried to keep calm, or to at least look calm, even as I felt my heart and belly wobble and lurch like they’d come unmoored inside me. The insides of my thighs still felt sore and bruised from what Nick and I had done the night before.
“He told me that he worked for the school district in Boston, and that he grew up spending summers on the Cape. He said he’s working on a charter fishing boat.” The detective continued to stare at me blandly. “Maybe Nick is his middle name!” I knew how desperate that sounded, but it was all I could think of, and maybe it was true.
“Would anyone at the party remember seeing you with this gentleman?” There was a hairbreadth pause before McMichaels said “gentleman,” but I heard it.
I shook my head. My mouth was dry. Snatches of the previous night were replaying themselves in my memory; things he’d done that had seemed romantic at the time and now seemed sinister in retrospect: Nick asking if I was a friend of the bride’s, asking if I was staying in the big house. Nick with his hand at the small of my back, saying Let’s go sit over here, where it’s quiet. Nick steering me away from the rest of the guests, toward far-off tables, or into secluded nooks, and me, stupidly flattered, thinking he wanted me all to himself. Nick pushing me against the glass, saying Don’t make a sound. No one can know we’re here.
McMichael was looking at me hard. “Is there anything else you can remember?”
I screwed my eyes shut, trying to remember. “He said he worked on a boat named the Lady Lu. He said he knew about people behaving badly at weddings, because two of his cousins got in a big fight. He told me he wasn’t online, at all.” My face felt like it had been flash-frozen, my tongue felt clumsy and thick.
“Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Drue Cavanaugh?” McMichaels asked.
It’s a long list, I thought. And, I realized with a sinking feeling, if someone had asked me for that list six months ago, I probably would have put myself at the very top.
Chapter Eleven
I staggered down to my bedroom on legs that felt like frozen logs. I wanted to call my parents, and Darshi, and I’d have to call the Snitzers, too, but before I could do that, my phone started to ring.
“Daphne?” Leela Thakoon’s emphasis-on-every-third-word was warm in my ear. “How are things? OhmyGod, I can’t believe how gorgeous it looks there, you lucky duck! And did you see, your picture last night got more than two thousand—”
“Leela,” I said. My voice was thick. It was all still starting to register, and it still didn’t feel real. “Drue is dead.”
There was a pause. Then a gasp. “Dead?” Leela breathed.
“I woke up this morning, and she was in our hot tub…” I swallowed hard. I could still feel the peculiar stiffness of Drue’s body against mine, the wrongness of it. She would never smile again, never drink another cocktail or kiss another boy. She’d never get married, never go on the honeymoon she’d planned, never have children. Tears spilled down my cheeks.
“Oh my God,” Leela said. “That’s unreal. I can’t believe it!”
“I know,” I said. “I can’t believe it either.”
“What happened? Is there anything I can do?”
“They don’t know. I found her this morning, just a few hours ago. She’s gone now. An ambulance came, and they took her.”
“You found her? Oh, God. You poor thing.” Leela’s voice was sympathetic. “Had you guys been drinking a lot?”
“No. Not me. I don’t know about Drue.” But even as I was speaking, I was shaking my head. Drugs and drinking made you lose control, and Drue was all about keeping a tight grip.
“Daphne, I am so, so sorry. I can’t even imagine what you must be going through. Please, if there’s anything I can do for you…” Leela lowered her voice. “Do you need me to send you something to wear for the funeral?”
I felt tears prickling my eyes, and my throat felt tight. The funeral. The day before, all I’d been thinking about was Drue’s wedding, and now her parents would be planning her funeral instead. It felt heartbreaking, incredibly unfair. “Thanks, Leela. I think I’ll be okay.”
“Take care of yourself. And, seriously, Daphne, if there’s anything I can do for you—anything at all—I’ll have my phone on.”
I thanked her for her consideration. As soon as she’d hung up, I called home. My mother snatched up the phone almost before it got through a single ring.
“Daphne? Oh my God!”
“Hi, Mom.” There was no need for me to ask whether she’d heard the news. The sorrow in her voice told me that she was more than up to speed.
“I just saw a push alert this minute. My God, poor Drue,” she said, sniffling. “And her poor parents. To lose their daughter on her wedding day.” There was a brief, muffled interlude, then my father’s voice was in my ear.
“Daffy, you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said, wiping my cheeks as more tears spilled out of my eyes at the sound of my childhood nickname, which my dad hadn’t used since I was seven or eight. “Except I don’t think I can come home. The police… I was the one who found her, and the police don’t want anyone leaving.”
“You found her?” I heard my mother wail.
“Judy, calm down,” my dad said. To me, he said, “Why won’t they let you leave?”
“I don’t know. I guess they might have more questions for me, is all.” No way was I getting into the details of how the guy I’d been with while my best friend had been murdered had disappeared. My mother would never stop crying, and my dad would be on the next plane up, with every lawyer he could find in tow.
“Do they have any idea what happened?” he asked.
“Not yet. I don’t even think they know how she died.”
“It’s been all over the news in the last half hour,” said my father. “You know. ‘Heiress Found Dead on Wedding Day.’ ” He lowered his voice. “You’re in some of the stories.”
My heart gave an anxious lurch. “What? Why?”
“Nothing bad. It’s just your name. Some of the places are using the picture of the two of you from your Instagram. The one where you’re in the water, laughing.” The one that Nick took, I thought, feeling my throat get tight. I remembered how I’d felt Drue trembling when I’d touched her. How she’d laughed, splashing me, doing her little dance in the shallows. How she’d hugged me at her bedroom door
and said, You’re the best friend I ever had. I wondered how many strangers had seen the picture and, at this very moment, how many of them were crawling through my Instagram, scrutinizing everything I’d ever posted for clues about Drue.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, hearing my voice crack. I wanted to ask him to come get me, I realized, like I was a little kid waiting to be picked up after school. Except he couldn’t come, because I couldn’t leave.
“Hang on.” I heard footsteps followed by the sound of a door, opening and closing. I imagined my father was leaving the living room, getting out of my mom’s earshot, probably heading to their bedroom. I could picture him, in his weekend clothes, a plaid shirt with a frayed collar that disqualified it from the workweek rotation, and a pair of the baggy pale-blue jeans that only middle-aged men ever seemed to wear.
“I didn’t want to ask this in front of your mother,” he said, “but are the police treating this like a suspicious death?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “The detective talked to me for a long time. He had all kinds of questions about Drue, and her parents, and her fiancé, and… and everything,” I concluded. “But I don’t even know how she died.”
There was a pause. “I saw Drue’s father once. So this would have been twelve or thirteen years ago.”
“Where was he?”
“In Midtown, near Central Park South. I was up early, by that place on Fifty-Seventh, you know, where they have the bialys.”
I knew the place he meant, and that it was different from the place that had the bagels, and the place with the whitefish salad.
“It must’ve been six o’clock in the morning. And I saw Robert Cavanaugh in an overcoat and a suit. All dressed up, with a woman in a fur coat.” My father paused. “It wasn’t Mrs. Cavanaugh.”
“Oh, boy,” I breathed. A summer friend, I thought. One of his extracurricular sweethearts, one who’d left Cape Cod or the Hamptons and made her way to the city. “Did he see you?”
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