“You got any idea who did it?” Gladys asked, eyeing us.
Savilla shook her head. “Not yet, but if there was something omniferous, then Dakota and her man are on the case.”
I tried to parse out that one.Omnipotently nefarious?That guess was as good as any.
Gladys gave me a half-grin, ignoring Savilla’s word choice. “That’s right. You and the new sheriff are an item, aren’t you?”
I gave a slight shrug and assumed a blank expression as I scanned the menu again. “Actually, I think I’ll have the Eerie Espresso.”
“Great choice,” Gladys said, thankfully not asking any follow-up questions as she moved to a large metal machine to start our drinks.
As soon as we had our pumpkin loaf and I’d sipped my surprisingly tasty drink, Savilla gave me the most intense look I’d ever seen from her, making me nearly choke. “What? Do I have something on my face?”
Savilla bit the inside of her cheek and dropped her eyes to the table for a second before looking back up at me. “I need to tell you something.”
Despite the treats, my mouth went dry.Oh God. Here comes the confession. She’s the one who killed Brett, and she’s confiding in me as her brand-new sibling.My heart practically jumped into my neck.
“I couldn’t bear to tell StepMommy and Nanny Kate, but we are hemoragitically losing money at The Rose.”
“Okay?” I said, knowing a thing or two about money flowing out faster than it was coming in. I also had not yet wrapped my mind around the idea of owning half the estate, so if she told me it was worth pennies, it wouldn’t actually change my life much.
“All of our pageant sponsors pulled their funding after Daddy’s death and I don’t think I even want to do the pageant anymore, so I’ve—we’ve—got no income to keep the lights on past Christmas.” She took a deep breath. “At least, that’s what Daddy’s financial guy told me.”
I noticed her use ofwe, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.
“I was already thinking about getting help to turn the estate into something amazing,” Savilla continued. “And I think the universe has totally provided an answer.”
“And by answer, you mean…”
“You!” Savilla grinned widely as if proud of both the universe and herself. “Now that we’re co-owners, I’m sure of it. We are totally in this together.”
Her expression was a combination of relief and longing, and though I understood both of those impulses after finding my own need for community this summer, I was certain that I couldn’t be her only solution.
“So, the first thing we need to do,” Savilla continued, “is to find money to do some renovations, bring The Rose into the twenty-first century, you know?”
I did not know, but she took a sip of her drink and kept talking.
“To do that, we definitely need a cash infusion.”
That caught my attention. “You don’t have cash?”
“Not much.” Savilla shrugged with the carefree attitude of the permanently wealthy. I reminded myself that someone would always loan her money if she didn’t have her own. “If we could find the Rose Diamond, that would be more than enough to give us a fresh start.”
Us.There was that plural pronoun again.
“Yeah,” she said, relaxing into her chair as if settling in for a long chat, “apparently Daddy was losing the family money faster than ever.”
I thought of what I’d discovered this summer at the pageant: that Mr. Finch was an investor in Dr. Bellingham’s plastic surgery business, that he and Mr. Finch were close, that Dr. Bellingham had helped plan Mr. Finch’s murder. This must have been an investment that had soured in more ways than one for Mr. Finch.
Savilla took a sip of her drink. “Daddy was never really a great businessman.”
“Then why didn’t he sell the diamond?” I asked. “Before it disappeared?”
“The finance guy said that he had arranged to sell it, but then one day it was missing from the display case.”
It was reminiscent of Miss 2001’s missing crown.
“And you’re sure Brett didn’t steal it?” I asked.
