9
Holiday texted me to meet her at Red’s the following afternoon. When I pulled up on my borrowed bike, she was waiting for me at the host stand, looking particularly art teacher–esque in a long black dress and lace-up sandals. “I already scoped out Aidy’s section,” she announced, then turned to the hostess before I could answer and pointed to a shady corner of the patio. “Sorry,” she said with an apologetic smile, “would you mind if we sat over there?” She rolled her eyes in an exaggerated way, jerking her head in my direction. “My friend here is very sensitive to the sun.”
Aidy appeared in her Red’s uniform a few moments after we sat down at the rickety plastic patio table, lifting her chin in recognition. “Oh!” she said. “Hey, Linden.” Her golden hair was up in a tall, messy bun today, giving her the look of an aerobics instructor or an Instagram influencer who specialized in wellness products. The polish on her short, bitten-down nails was a bright neon white. “How’s it going?”
“It’s going,” I said, then gestured across the table. “This is my friend Holiday. We were wondering if maybe we could ask you—”
Holiday kicked me so hard and so precisely in my busted ankle that I almost yelped out loud. “—for a couple of Cokes,” she finished for me, smiling her most innocuous smile. “I think we need another couple of minutes with the menu.”
“Sure thing,” Aidy said with a nod. She had that same look on her face as she’d had the other day at the market in town, like possibly there was something about me she found slightly ridiculous. “I’ll be right back.”
Once she was gone, Holiday turned to look at me, her gray eyes wide. “What the fuck are you doing?” she hissed.
“Wait,” I said, “what?” All at once it occurred to me that maybe I’d misunderstood the purpose of this entire outing—that Holiday didn’t have a plan at all, that she’d only brought me to Red’s in the first place because she really liked fried calamari. “I thought the whole reason we came here was to cross-check Meredith’s story.”
“I mean, yeah,” she agreed, “but we can’t just barrel right into it like a couple of amateurs. You said yourself that these people are your friends, right? We should be using that if we can—for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it’s the only leg up we’ve got. If it gets back to everyone else that you’re sniffing around trying to figure out what really happened the other night…” She trailed off.
“Oh,” I said, feeling my face get hot in spite of the leafy green canopy shielding us from the midday sunshine. Holiday was right, obviously; I’d just gotten excited, like a dog peeing on the rug. “Yeah, totally.”
“Just slow-play it a little bit, that’s all,” she continued. “Let her come to you.”
That made me smile. “Like I always do with the ladies, you mean.”
“Oh, brother.” Holiday rolled her eyes. “Just don’t make it weird, okay?”
“No, no,” I promised, “I’ll be totally cool. Put on a little smooth jazz music, ask a couple of casual murder questions…”
“Gee,” Holiday said, looking pointedly at her menu even as she tried and mostly failed to stifle a laugh, “maybe I’ll get the scallops!”
Aidy dropped off the drinks a minute later, plucking a pen from behind her ear. “So hey,” I said once we’d ordered. “How crazy was all that shit at August House the other night?”
Her gaze flicked back and forth between Holiday and me, cautious. “I mean,crazyis one word for it,” she agreed. “I heard Greg’s pretty fucked up.”
“Sounds that way.” I nodded. “Meredith mentioned you guys used to…”
Aidy’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, did Meredith mention that?” she fired back, her voice all salt and sarcasm. “I’m sure that’s not all she mentioned.”
“I mean, no,” I admitted, and I didn’t have to feign my own embarrassment. “She might have also mentioned something about a necklace.”
Aidy made a face. “I’m so sick of that girl, you know that?” she said, then turned to Holiday as if for validation. “She doesn’t evenlivehere, and she’s spent the entire summer going all up and downthe island telling everyone what a skank I am and how I chased after her boyfriend and blah blah blah. First of all, I didn’t even know Greg had a girlfriend when we started hanging out. And second of all, nobody forced her to take him back after things ended between us. She’s the one who can’t let it go.” She clicked her pen once before tucking it neatly back behind her ear. “Besides, I did her a favor. Georgette McKeown is basic as hell.”
Holiday laughed at that, loud and genuine. “I mean, fair enough,” she said with a grin—allying herself with Aidy, I realized, the same way she’d done with Meredith last night. “Kind of fits her whole aesthetic, though.”
“That girl suuuuucks,” Aidy singsonged, clearly enjoying the pleasure of a captive audience. “And she’smean! Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was the one who pushed Greg into the pool.”
I almost choked on my soda. “Wait, seriously?” I blurted. I thought of what Holiday had said back at the coffee shop, about how most detective work was just letting people say what they wanted to say anyway; still, I’d never expected Aidy to just come right out with a bald-faced accusation.
“I mean, no, not seriously.” Aidy laughed too, and then—presumably off my overeager, slightly sweaty expression—looked at me a little strangely. “Like, yes, she’s the kind of person who steals dalmatian puppies from loving homes to make into fur coats. But she’s not a stone-cold killer. Besides, I actually saw her passed out on my way to the bathroom at like four a.m.—snoring like a fucking trucker, I might add. So much for being a lady.” She held up her notepad then, waggling it a little. “Anyway,” she said, “I’ll put your order in.”
Once we were alone again, Holiday knocked her plastic cup gently against mine, smiling. “I must admit,” she said grudgingly, “that was nicely done.”
“Just like I always do with the ladies,” I reminded her. “So do you think she’s telling the truth?”
Holiday shrugged. “I mean, obviously those two hate each other,” she said thoughtfully, “so yes, probably. You said Eliza told you that Greg went into the water sometime in the hour before dawn, right? So the timeline clears her.”
“Yeah.” I was surprised by the sharpness of my own disappointment just then: That necklace had been our only concrete piece of evidence, and it turned out it was just an accessory in a fight over a guy who, by all accounts, was a total boner. On top of which, I wasn’t entirely sure when I’d gotten invested enough to be bummed out in the first place: After all, didn’t Iwantthere to be nothing to find here? Didn’t I want this whole thing to have been an accident, to go back to my own vacation guilt-free?
Holiday turned to watch as Aidy dropped the check at a nearby table. “Her and Jasper, huh?” she asked thoughtfully, twisting her straw paper between two fingers. “That’s why she stayed over at the house the other night?”
