Mina’s nostalgia had quickly turned to frustration. “In the end I went along with it, just like I did with anything Brett wanted. The director saw that I had some experience but told me my face was ‘better off camera.’ It was humiliating.” Mina scoffed. “We officially broke up the night before he asked Presley to be his girlfriend, though no one else even knew we were together. If anyone saw us, they probably thought Brett was asking me to grab him a coffee.” Mina was crying now, her anger and longing on full display. “That night I told him I was tired of sneaking around and that I couldn’t bear to see what came next.”
Presley reached toward Mina, who shook off her touch. “I had no idea,” Presley said softly.
Mina blinked at Presley as if she couldn’t quite register the words, and then she finally let out a long breath. “I know. After Mr. Finch died, I told him it was time to come back to me, but Brett decided that he needed to get ahead just a bit more with you. He swore that it wasn’t true love, that after he got the press he needed, he would leave you and come back to me, but then he released that tape of the two of you and…”
Presley put a hand to her stomach and looked as if she might be sick. She turned to Joe. “I knew it was Brett. He told me that some hacker had broken into his computer, but when I asked why he had the video in the first place, he couldn’t give me a straight answer.”
“Brett had recordings of him with every woman he’d ever slept with.” Mina crinkled her nose in disgust. “It was, like, his thing. I told him to delete them, but he wouldn’t, and he convinced me…” She swallowed as if she couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “Somehow, God knows how, he convinced me that it was funny. Until he finally broke up with me. When I threatened to go to the network, to tell them that Brett was a fraud, he told me that he would send a video of us toTMZand say thatI’dblackmailedhimwith it. He would claim that I’d told him I wanted to break up him and Presley.”
Mina’s face fell and she hung her head, obviously ashamed at how far she’d let her relationship with Brett descend. “It was so… twisted.”
Twisted was the right word.
Mina lifted her head and stared into her grandmother’s eyes, taking a deep breath that shuddered her body. “That last night on set, that’s the first time I wanted to kill him.”
“But you didn’t,” Miss 1962 said, seeming frailer than ever. It was as if she were willing the statement to be true.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Charlie take a step forward. He hesitated though, listening for more.
“No. Or, at least, not yet. And then when it happened, I… I didn’t mean to.” Mina’s voice was growing louder as she finally told the whole truth. “I didn’t know how or when I would do it, but I took this job with every intention of getting Brett to come back to me or…” Mina glanced at the far wall with the gargoyle, where I’d spotted the tuft of fake fur.
“We talked in the parking lot right before the reunion party last night. He said that he’d spoken to Lacy and wanted me to get footage of Presley bursting in on the two of them together. I told him that he could go to hell, but he reminded me that he and Presley were all for show. Told me that he wanted to be with me again. After all of this was over. He reminded me about thediamond from the music video, the one I’d held, the one he’d promised me.”
“She’s right.” Miss 1962 spoke as if I was the confessor in the room. “Mina told me about the diamond and the engagement and how much she loved him, so… I hid the diamond. Two years ago, when I was judging the pageant.”
I studied Mina’s grandmother, confused. “You did what?”
“I convinced Glenda to show me some of her favorite pieces of family jewelry during the 2023 show—she always loved gloating—and while she was studying a ruby necklace, I swiped the diamond. It was almost too easy.” Miss 1962 smiled softly at the memory, as if it’d been nothing more than taking a pack of gum from the grocery store.
“But why would you…?” I couldn’t even finish the sentence, so confused was I by Miss 1962’s admission.
This time she addressed Mina rather than me, clenching her hand around her granddaughter’s as she tried to convey the urgency behind her actions. “That diamond had been promised to you, and I didn’t want either of those stupid men—Frederick Finch or Brett Brinkley—to change their minds at the last minute. But if they did, Mina and I would be the only ones who knew where it really was. Besides, it wasn’t really stealing.”
I raised my eyebrows and Miss 1962 caught my look of disbelief.
“It wasn’t,” she protested. “I didn’t even remove it from the palace. I put it down here. In the gargoyle’s hands.”
Every eye peered past me to the end of the room where the gargoyle was mostly cloaked in darkness. Without turning around, I could envision the gargoyle’s unfurled wings, the empty hands, and the velvet with the indentation the size of a child’s palm. The size of the Rose Diamond.
“Brett didn’t know the Rose Diamond was missing, but Gram had told me where she’d hidden it. No one ever came downhere,” Mina admitted. “So, last night I came down here to see if for myself. I lugged my gear with me so I could say I was filming if anyone saw me. After that conversation with Brett in the parking lot, I don’t know what came over me, but I knew I had to do something. So, I took it.”
Realization spread like a fine mist hanging over the room, and that’s when I noticed an object sticking out of one of Mina’s bags of gear at her feet. It was a boom mic covered in tufts of fake fur, the same one that she must’ve been carrying when she came down here and swiped the diamond.
“When I got upstairs to the ballroom and everyone arrived, I pretended to be checking the lighting on Brett when I dropped the diamond in his drink, but I swear, I didn’t think…” Mina hung her head and began to cry. “Brett had put me through so much.” Her voice hardened. “I thought if he swallowed the stone, the diamond intended for me, he’d understand what it felt like to choke on his own promises. I didn’t mean to…” Mina’s voice broke. “I just wanted him to hurt like I was hurting.”
I took in that last sentence with the heaviness that she meant to convey. Perhaps she hadn’t meant for it to happen, but Brett had died.
And Mina Davis was responsible.
The same wave of realization seemed to wash over Mina again as she began crying harder, hunching forward as grief wracked her body for the first time since her lover’s death.
THIRTY-FOUR
After Mina had been taken away, I spotted Presley wearing a stricken expression. Joe wrapped his arms around her. Though clearly shaken, she let herself be held.
“It wasn’t the curse,” she said, pulling back to look into Joe’s eyes.
“I told you.” Compassion and something else—love, most likely—played about Joe’s lips. “You didn’t need to stay with him.”
