“You never have to apologize to me for being selfish,” I said. It wasn’t like I hadn’t spent almost the entirety of my adult life being the most selfish person imaginable. “And trust me, I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there.” I took her hands in mine. They were freezing. “Let me help.”
She blew out a long exhale. “I don’t know what else there is to do, honestly. I’ve hired the lawyers and they’re doing their thing. I didn’t kill the guy, so the other side isn’t going to be able to prove that I did unless someone is trying to frame me.”
“I imagine the earring doesn’t help,” I said in what I hoped was a soothing way.
She shook her head grimly. “No, that doesn’t help. But it’s not like someone stabbed him with it. He was just holding it.”
“Right,” I said. “Of course.”
She sighed. “And all this garbage online isn’t helping.”
“Don’t look at it,” I said, and she gave me a deadpan lookback, probably because she knew 100 percent that I regularly disobeyed that advice. I had in fact, just that morning on the car ride here, spent some time scrolling through a series of posts using the hashtag #PoMoanA, I guess because I bitched and moaned too much about the murder happening at my gala, even though I hadn’t done any of it publicly? Or maybe it was a reference to the rumored sex tape that would remain a rumor because of the enormous payoff I’d given my ex? I didn’t know. “Anyway, want to stop thinking about online garbage and think about actual garbage?”
“Not really,” she said.
“That’s the spirit,” I replied. “According to the notes my former assistant left me, we need to go through all of the boxes in the basement by hand. Apparently they’re full of records from all the people who have lived here previously, and there could be something interesting and/or valuable in there.”
“Valuable?” She wrinkled her nose. “Like what?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. She was convinced, though.”
The basement was, unfortunately, a typical basement: chilly, damp, musty. Cobwebs draped themselves in luxurious scarves from the ceiling. A sizable space had been cleared out already, exposing a bare concrete floor, but there were still stacks of boxes along the walls: some old, disintegrating cardboard, and some wood. A few file cabinets also stood against the far wall. “Those file cabinets look locked,” Vienna said from behind me, still up a few steps. “Oh well. I guess we can’t go through anything and we’ll have to go upstairs where it’s nice and clean and have tea.”
I made my way toward the file cabinets, grimacing as I sidestepped a clump of something that was either dust or the remains of a dead mouse from before I was born. Indeed, a lock chained the drawers closed. I leaned in to examine it.
“It’s too bad there are laws against removing padlocks,” Vienna said cheerfully. “I guess we’ll just have to—”
She broke off, interrupted by the sound of me smashing thelock with my foot. “There,” I said, regarding it with satisfaction. The old metal had been so brittle it hadn’t even taken that much force. “There aren’t any rules against opening something that’s locked if the lock is already broken when you find it.” I actually had no idea if that was true, but whatever. “And it was already broken when we found it, right?”
I looked over my shoulder just in time to see her wince. For a moment I was relieved: Surely, someone so concerned over breaking a minor law would never break a major one, like the ones forbidding murder. But then she said, “With everything going on, I really can’t handle any kind of run-in with the law. I’m under a microscope right now.”
Of course. “Don’t worry,” I said. “If the law comes after us for this, I’ll take all the blame.”
Lina had brought down an old chair to sit on while going through the items. I took that while Vienna perched on a wooden box, pulling a couple of drawers from the filing cabinet and setting them on the floor before us with a clang. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”
As it turned out, doing this was extraordinarily boring. As in, more boring than you’d think going through boxes of musty outdated records in a basement would be. My eyes glazed over at all the names of people who’d lived here back in its brownstone era and the various things they felt necessary to hold on to. Copies of complaints to the city about pigeons crapping on her stoop from a Catherine Craig. Doodles of superheroes from a William Melrose. A short story about a brownstone mouse who fell in love with a city rat from an Erwin Roost.
Nothing better to break up something boring than something terrible, right? “So, anyway, Vee,” I said, clearing my throat. That wasn’t a cobweb stuck in there, was it? “How are you doing? Really?”
Her eyes were trained on the yellowing sheaves of paper she was flipping through. “Really?Fine.” I stared at her the sameway I did when trying to will Millicent’s tiny dog to drop the sapphire pendant or silk scarf it inevitably tried to eat whenever she’d brought it to the hotel.
She must have felt my eyes burning into her head and sighed, sending half a sheet of paper crumbling into dust. “Okay. Not so fine.”
“You texted while I was up in the air and wanted to talk,” I said gently. “What did you want to talk about?”
She sniffled, and for a moment I thought she might cry, until she wiped a cobweb off her nose. I should’ve known better. Vienna had tear ducts of marble. “I wanted to tell you the truth. In case it comes out publicly.”
“What is it?”
She bit her lip. “Conrad Phlume was blackmailing me.”
So. There it was. I was glad I didn’t have to get the financial statement out and confront her with it. “Because of Greystone?”
She startled at the sound of the name, dropping a packet of papers on the floor. The bare bulb overhead flickered, but I didn’t think that was related. “How did you find out?”
“The public doesn’t know yet, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said. “Someone at Kevin’s party who was connected to Greystone asked me about it.” I paused for a beat in case she was going to push back or get more upset, but she didn’t move. “Why did you take money from them?”
She wiped her hand over her cheek, but it came off stone dry. “It was because of you.”
