Her words rang of truth. Not that I knew the tone of truth so well; Opal’s words had also rung of truth when she was tearfullytelling me she’d been acting weird because of “family stuff” and not because she was a cold-blooded killer. But my intuition was probably way better than it was back then, now that I’d actually solved a crime, so I assumed I was correct. “It’s not your fault, Cora.”
“Part of me knows it, but another part of me still thinks it is.” She swiped her cheek with the back of her hand. A point against her: while her mascara was waterproof, her rouge was not. It smeared into a patch under her eye that looked eerily like blood. “So I wanted to help. And money wasn’t enough. I saw what was going around online about you, and I wanted to clear your name.”
She pulled out her phone. I braced myself to smile politely at photos of her kids and tell her how cute they were even if they looked like the hobgoblins inLabyrinth, but, instead, she showed me a screenshot with a bunch of numbers in it, which was less appealing than a tiny hobgoblin. “What is this?”
“It’s a financial statement,” Cora said. “Don’t ask me what kind or what all the numbers mean.” She pointed to a line with a name on it.Vienna L. Soo.“All I know is that it shows your friend taking money from Greystone Inc.”
My mouth dropped open. Greystone, the evilest of evils in the finance world. “Vienna would never.”
“Numbers don’t lie,” Cora said. “It’s dated a few years back. It looks like she accepted an enormous contribution from the corporation to start up her charitable foundation, but she never spoke about it publicly.”
“Or privately,” I said, still shocked. Vienna had always told me that she’d started up her nonprofit solely using funds from her trust and her family… but, you know, I’d thought in passing, having started up my own foundation, that she must have received alotof money from them. Because my family was wealthier than hers (not trying to brag or anything; it was just true) and mine was still slower going. She’d entered the scene with an enormoussplash and hadn’t stopped since. “Are you absolutely sure? How do you know this wasn’t forged?”
“I mean, I can’t give you a notarized statement from Vienna and the CEO of Greystone,” Cora said. “But I overheard something at the gala between Vienna and Conrad that made me suspicious, and then later when Conrad was murdered and the public was trying to pin it on you… well, I followed my suspicion and went digging in hopes that it would help you. My husband works a lot with Jack Wohl, whose hedge fund works with Greystone, and he was able to find this statement, which tracked with what Vienna and Conrad had been saying to each other. Between this and the earring, maybe it’ll be enough to get people off your back.”
She must also have overheard their heated discussion in the corner—maybe she’d been standing closer than me and could hear more, or she’d gone by at a different moment. Or who knew? Maybe Vienna and Conrad were having heated little discussions the entire night. “So somehow Conrad found out that she’d taken money from Greystone, which is super sketchy and definitely evil, to start her foundation,” I said slowly, piecing it together in my mind. My toes curled, sand catching sharply in the bends. “He said in his speech that he knew someone’s secret, and Vienna looked like she was going to puke. Could he have been blackmailing her?”
“I don’t know,” Cora said. “I’m just trying to help you by sharing the few details I have.”
I felt a little bit like a large frog had taken up residence inside my chest. If the police had this information, too, no wonder they thought Vienna did it. Between the altercation at the gala, and the earring, and the fact that the victim had been blackmailing her and threatening to expose her unless she… what? Did it matter?
Well. She looked awfully guilty.
The frog was so heavy. It couldn’t be Vienna. It just couldn’t. I went to turn to Gabe for comfort—even if he didn’t agree with me, he’d tell me he did to make me feel better—but of course he wasn’t there.For optics and things.I felt his absence like a wound.
Honestly, it made me want to drink. So I did. I waved over a passing waiter and told him to give me whatever was on his tray. He did, because I was the guest and guests were always right and soIwas always right, right? I took it without a thank-you, because I was a guest and he was paid to do this and I—Old Pom was starting to poke her head out again.
“Are you okay?” Cora asked. I took a long sip to silence both her and Old Pom, or maybe the drink was feeding Old Pom. It was terrible, honestly. The drink. It had clearly been going to some old man, because it tasted like medicine and was at least 90 percent alcohol. I didn’t gag or grimace as it went down, though. Because I was a professional.
Or I used to be. A professional partier. It seemed those skills didn’t go away, even though I specifically hadn’t used them in over a year.What will people think?whispered New Pom. I’d get judged so hard. Though right now I was just drinking. Not partying. I firmly told my shoulders to stop shimmying to the beat of the players on the shore. No dancing. What would people think?
I really needed Gabe. I took another long drink—God, that burned—and smiled. The air felt so cold on my teeth. “I’m fine. Can you send me that statement?”
“Of course.” Cora immediately texted it to me. I couldn’t believe she’d saved my number after all these years. I used to make Lori do yearly refreshers of my contact list to get rid of all the randos. “Pom, are you sure you’re okay? You’re looking a little green.”
That gave me the perfect opening to excuse myself and golooking for Gabe, to nestle into his arms and let him tell me I wasn’t a total failure.
But why should I? He’d ditched me here. So I didn’t take it. Instead, I stretched my smile wider. I was out of practice with my slightly deranged infectious party smile, but it worked. Cora smiled back at me. “Nothing another drink won’t solve.”
CHAPTER
Thirteen
The plane ride back the next day was quiet and subdued. My conversation with Cora had finished soon after her texting me the financial statement, with her promising to get back in touch if she learned any more intel and also to keep patronizing my nonprofit—that was a plus, I guess, that noteverybodywould abandon me. Maybe Vienna would be sent to prison but transfer all of her ill-begotten funds to me to use for my foundation. Something something, silver lining?
Anyway.
After learning what I had from Cora and provisionally clearing her from the suspects list, I hadn’t felt much in the mood to spend the rest of the weekend hanging out with people I didn’t care about and didn’t even suspect of murder. Once I’d gone looking for Gabe, only to find out he’d gone up to our room with a headache, the decision was easy. I begged off early the next morning with profuse apologies to Kevin instead of leaving later that evening as planned. I even spared a polite smile for Persimmon, who was hanging off his arm, dressed in what didn’t amount to much more than a scrap of silk. She looked fantastic, actually. If her hope was to make me jealous of her man, she’d failed, but I was now super jealous of her waist-to-hip ratio.
“Don’t worry, of course things come up,” Kevin saidsolicitously, patting me on the arm. I’d told him my dad had summoned me back to the city to help him manage an urgent business matter. (If you’re going to lie, why not lie big, right?) “Perhaps we can all go out to dinner when everything is resolved and Persimmon and I are back in the city. I’d love to hear more about your work.”
I glowed, choosing to believe he was talking about my nonprofit and not my pretend work for the family business. “Absolutely.”
“Speaking of which, do you have a seat on the Afton board?” he asked.
So much for that hope. I smiled enigmatically, because I didn’t actually know the answer to that question. “Why do you ask?”
His own solicitous smile disappeared, and it took me a second to realize it was because he thought I was being difficult with him, not difficult with myself. “I’m considering making an inroad into the hotel business. As you probably know, office real estate is slumping, and that’s where a lot of my portfolio is. I think boutique hotels are the future.”
