“Oh,” I said. “Well, can’t you call out sick or something?” I could certainly text Ellie and Sage to let them know I wouldn’t be at the bakery, though I understood that was because I owned the bakery and could do whatever I wanted, unlike Gabe. Surely solving a murder took precedence over tutoring kids, though. No matter how important teaching was! Teachers are important! They should get paid more! Like, a lot more. Then maybe Gabe and I wouldn’t have this weird money-related tension between us.
“No, Pom. I’m not going to call out sick.”
“But you were going to call out sick if we got stuck on the island.”
“We’re not stuck on the island,” he said. “And that would’ve been an emergency situation. My AP kids have their test coming up soon, and I have to help fine-tune some bonus college essays for kids hoping to get off the wait list. I need to be there for them.”
He’d always been a stickler about not calling out of work, even for investigating a murder. Back when we’d done our very first interrogation together (of Fred, the Afton CFO), he’d called out of work for me. I guess it had been charming, then.
Or maybe this was what he’d been talking about. Because I’d gone ahead and made my spa appointment for the morning without consulting him. He had his tutoring sessions in the afternoon. If I’d planned my chat with Vienna for the morning, he probably would’ve been able to come, but instead I’d just steamrolled ahead without even asking.
“Of course,” I said. “Your job is so important. The kids need you. I can handle this on my own.”
Far from his eyes welling with tears of love at what a kind and compassionate girlfriend he had, he tensed his jaw. “I don’t need your sarcasm.”
For a moment I was oddly touched that he thought I was being sarcastic, considering that theNew York Posthad once said I thought sarcasm was a new perfume. Then I just felt bad thathe’d misinterpreted what I was trying to say. “I’m not being sarcastic, I swear. Go be there for your kids. I know that what you do is important.”
He stared at me warily for a moment, as if not quite sure I meant it. He turned away before I could be sure he was.
As far as I was concerned, the Chelsea building was ours until someone in a uniform or with the last name Phlume told us it wasn’t. I mean, I still had the key, and the security code for the alarm still worked. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath on that until the keypad beeped green.
Our building had once been a grand Chelsea town house. It had housed some presumably very wealthy, prominent families for years after it was built in the 1800s before being subdivided into apartments in the seventies or eighties and then falling into disrepair in the nineties. The building had to be worth millions and millions now, but the state of the inside was, to put it mildly, not great. I was pretty sure Conrad’s plan had been to let us clean it out and do basic renovations on it while collecting generous tax breaks and then, in ten years or so, use that money for a gut renovation before putting it on the market and profiting handsomely. But who knew what Bibi would want to do?
As soon as the door shut behind me, leaving me in the slightly musty-smelling, dusty foyer, my phone buzzed and buzzed and buzzed. Someone calling me—hopefully not Vienna telling me she couldn’t make it, not after I’d come all the way down here.
Nope. It was Nicholas. I picked up. “I know, I know, I’m grounded, and I’m a terrible person for stealing the jet,” I said, hopefully preempting any yelling. “Is that it?”
He was quiet on the other side. I loved it when I got to shock people by showing them I understood more about the world than they thought. “No,” he finally grumbled. “It’s not it. I wanted to talk about your… building.”
“My building? The one Conrad gave me?” He grunted assent. I turned in a little circle around the foyer. Better not mention that I was here right now, just in case. What if I wasn’t supposed to be and he told Bibi out of revenge for me stealing the jet? “What about it?”
He gave a disgruntled-sounding cough. “I was thinking that it would make an excellent little boutique hotel. You know that we don’t have anything in the Chelsea area, and a big building right now might be… well. Too much. But a small, exclusive hotel…”
“You know when I said Conrad was giving me the building, he wasn’t reallygivingme the building, right?” I said. “It’s an exaggeration, like if someone said I stole a jet when really I just borrowed it from a family member for a couple of days without authorization.” I paused to let that sink in. “He was going to lease it to me for a very low rate for a long period of time.”
“Yeah, but you can do whatever you want with it once you sign the contract, right?” Nicholas said.
“Yes, because accepting a building for use as a hub for my nonprofit and then immediately turning around and using it as a for-profit hotel for the family business would be fantastic for my image,” I said. Weird that two people in two days had mentioned doing the same thing with Conrad’s building. Greedy vultures. “I’m not signing it over to you for a hotel. If it’s even going to be mine now that Conrad’s dead. The whole thing’s up in the air. Okay? I have to go.”
Like a coward, I hung up before he could argue with me. Took a deep breath. Shook myself out a little. Like I would jeopardize my nonprofit, the thing I was investigating a murder to save, for anything, butespeciallyfor the family business. Come on, Nicholas.
Now. Where was I?
I’d beat Vienna here, and I needed to cool off from my annoyance over Nicholas’s call, so I used the time to take a lookaround. I hadn’t been here in a while, but my old assistant Lina and her team had been working on it in the weeks before the gala, as had the contractors I’d hired to rip up moldy carpet and fix a cracked toilet and paint some walls. It was looking much better, though the smell of paint was making me a little woozy; the interior was cleaner and brighter, with a lot of the old wall detailing and crown moldings still intact. The peeling wallpaper revealed scrawled writing and graffiti on the walls themselves. I wondered idly if we’d find any treasure under the floorboards. Images filled my head as I poked it around corners: a couple of housing-insecure students sleeping in this nice, quiet room overlooking the air shaft; Lori cooking up some healthy packed lunches in the big top-floor kitchen; kids studying on free laptops in one of the living rooms, with shelves of donated books lining the walls.
By the time I heard the doorbell downstairs, I was feeling really good about the space. Too good. To the point where I’d almost forgotten why I was here in the first place. My mood plummeted the way I did when I went bungee jumping off the top of the Burj Khalifa (very illegal, but nothing is too illegal to be done when you’re in the company of a Saudi prince).
“Vee!” I said as I flung open the door, pulling her in for a hug and some cheek kisses before I could even really see her. Our hug ended quickly so that I could usher her inside before anyone on the street could snap a picture.
There, I drew back and bit my lip before I could blurt something unfortunate about her unfortunate haircut. Last year, post our temporary friendship breakup, she’d chopped her long hair into a sleek bob. Now, perhaps reflecting even greater stress, she’d chopped it into a pixie cut. She did not have a face for a pixie cut (to be fair, very few people did). “You look great,” I lied. Even beyond the haircut, she did not look great. Her eyes were hollow, and her fingers wouldn’t stop tapping against the banister of the steep staircase.
Her laugh was as hollow as her eyes. “Sure. Okay. Thanks.” Her voice was raspy, probably from all the talking she’d done with lawyers. I knew from experience that they’d ask you to tell your story over and over and over, ask you the same questions over and over and over, to see if they could trip you up. Or maybe it was from all the crying. I knew from experience that speaking with lawyers often came with a lot of crying too.
She cleared her throat, which wouldn’t help with the raspiness. I made a mental note to send out my assistant to pick up some honey and tea with lemon for her—oh, wait. I made a mental note to order it in. I really needed to hire a new Lina, but it would have to wait till I solved the murder. “Pom,” she said. “I just wanted to apologize.”
My breath caught in my throat. She couldn’t really be apologizing for the murder, could she?
Of course not. She continued, “I’ve been a bad friend lately. You’re going through a lot, too, but I’ve been selfish. I’ve only been thinking about myself.”
