Second Nature (8 page)

I brushed past him. “I
have.” I headed straight for the curtains and started closing the blinds and
heavy drapes. When everything was closed I turned on the flashlight on my cell
phone.

“The guard at the gate
will notice the light if you go in the bathroom or the toy room. There’s no
thick curtains in there.”

He tapped on his
flashlight on his cell phone too, giving me a strange look. “Toy room?”

I cracked a bitter grin.
“Rachel played with Barbies and toys far longer than the rest of us. She made
me play with her last summer. We were fifteen and she was still into them. She
wasn't what she made everyone think she was.” I turned and walked straight for
the bookcase with the secret door, something she had also demanded she have. I
killed the flashlight and pulled the bookcase back, stepping into the well lit
room. The ceiling was more like a conservatory’s and let in heaps of silver
moonlight.

“Creepy,” he whispered
and slinked in after me.

The room was round with a
domed ceiling made of windows. Along the walls were dollhouses, carriages,
resorts, and cars all set up for play. Each of the Barbies was positioned and
dressed in the finest of outfits. Some even matched the outfits Rachel had from
designers. Two blondes sat in a car, one brunette stood in the elevator, never
getting off. There were Barbies on horses and dolls in beds, tucked in sweetly
by their devoted owner.

“This is insane.” He
dropped to his knees and lifted a male doll with the same color hair as his. “I
have that dinner jacket.” He turned back, giving me a worried look.

“Oh I know you do. You
were always her secret wish. She was with Ashton because he was the right one,
but you were the one she loved.”

“That’s disturbing.” He
pointed at the kitchen with the Barbies in maid uniforms. “If I lift the lid
off the pot in the kitchen am I going to find a bunny?”

“You can’t tell me you
never noticed the way she threw herself at you, before her mom and you did it?”

“I did, but I thought she
was just trying to rile up Ash.”

“No.” That made me
chuckle, but I pointed at the single dresser in the room. “That's where she
kept her love letters and other things.”

“Love letters?”

“Of course.” I rolled my
eyes and walked there, pulling the drawers open. I lifted out a bound book with
a lock on it, holding it together.

“Where’s the key?” I
rifled through the pages. “She always kept it in here, assuming people would
think the key was somewhere cryptic.”

“Just pry it open. She
isn’t going to know now.”

I looked down at the
bound book I had seen her open so many times and remembered perfectly how her
eyes would light up with mischief from the knowledge she knew something we
didn't. I swallowed hard and passed him the book. “You do it.”

He snapped the lock with
almost no effort, tearing the binding and carrying it into the other room where
he could turn on the flashlight again.

I rifled through the
objects she had collected, remembering each one she had showed me. A lock of
hair from the first time she and Ashton kissed. She had cut some of his and
some of hers and braided them together.

A rubber band that had
been wrapped around a bouquet of flowers Ashton had sent to her when we were in
New York shopping with our mothers.

Each thing had been
flaunted, rubbed in my face a little even. At first I imagined she didn't know,
but after a while I noticed she only did it to me. The fact she knew about my
memory made it all worse, knowing she didn't care that I would relive a memory
from each item over and over. She knew I would suffer, and now I saw that she
wanted that for me.

And yet, the image of her
broke body broke my heart, even after all the cruelty I had endured.

She was
so mean to Lindsey
,
it was cruel
. She always said
Lindsey would be the last to get laid in our grad class. But that was going to
be me.

I was always second on
the list. She would be mean
to me and then crazy nice
.
High and low, give and take. It was horrible.

I was the one who would
disappoint my entire family. She told me that when she was angry—that I
was the punishment my mother received for being such a bitch.

I didn't miss Rachel.

Not even a little.

But I would solve her
murder and protect my real friends from the wake of hate she had created.

Closing the drawer, I got
up and walked to where Vincent was on the bed, ensuring I closed the bookcase
so the light wouldn't give us away.

Before I even got to the
bed, he lifted up a ransom note. It was one exactly like the ones he had
received, a ransom note printed in a kidnapper font and not cut-up letters.
“She had them too.”

“What does it say?”

My heart was beating so
fast I had to sit on the bed next to him as he read it aloud.

“Wine and dine and
sixty-nine. But not your boyfriend, instead take mine?” He flipped the paper
over and scowled. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Clearly the first part
is obvious, and the second part means someone else went on the date with Rach,
maybe being forced. Someone who wasn't single.”

He lowered the paper and
continued to rifle the book. “There’s another. It says, ‘7:00 at the docks and
don't forget my cash.’”

“She met someone at the
docks, someone who was taking her on a date.” The pieces didn't add up in my
head. “So maybe the girl in Sierra’s dress, the blonde who tried to drug us, is
the one who sent these.”

He paused his page
flipping and flashed the book at me. I winced at the photos of Rachel in her
bathing suit. She had on bright thick makeup, enough that I hardly recognized
her. And heels so high and cheap she wouldn’t have been able to walk. She was
posing in obscene ways, making me uncomfortable to be seeing them in the dark
with Vincent.
Or at all.

The skimpy bathing suit
barely covered her; especially the one photo where she was looking up at the
camera and the red lipstick was smeared across her cheek. The look in her eyes
would haunt me the rest of my life.

“Her pupils are really
dilated. She’s high as hell.
Her and Molly.
She was
getting bad with it.”

“Who’s Molly?”

He chuckled. “Ecstasy.
Rachel had a fondness for it.”

“Gross.” I looked it over
again, scanning the papers and the pictures. An idea popped into my mind.
“We’re assuming the pictures came after the letters. But what if it’s the
reverse?” I lifted the paper with the wine me dine me quote and pointed at the
question mark at the end of the sentence. “The paper doesn't say she should
take the boyfriend out, it says she did. Rachel must have hooked up with this
guy, gotten stoned, and let him take pictures of her. Then the letters started
after the photos.” I noticed the silver tattoo and brownish red henna on her
hand. “This is from spring fling. We got all matching tattoos. These photos
were taken last spring.”

“That's months before I
ever got my first letter. Rachel was first.”

I nodded. “Yup. Looks
that way.”

“So some guy seduced Rachel,
got her stoned, and took these lovely little snapshots for his girlfriend to
blackmail her with?”

“That's what I would
guess.”

He lifted his gaze and
looked at me with serious concern brewing in his eyes. “What now?”

“Now we find the designer
and see what he has to say about the second dress.”

He nodded. “Have I ever
told you how much I adore that brain of yours?”

“No. But telling me while
we’re here alone in our dead friend’s bedroom as you hold her semi-naked photos
isn’t making me comfortable with it.”

“Right.” He grinned.
“Anything else here we should be looking for?”

“You do realize I’m not
Nancy Drew, right?”

“Of course.” He shrugged.
“You’re way smarter than she is. So think.”

I closed my eyes and let
it all float around me, each face and letter and photo. “I can’t think of
anything else. We should go and check out Ashton’s room though. Try to figure
out where he might have gone.”

“He took Rachel’s car
from you girls at Sierra’s house and nothing ever came of that? Her GPS in her
security system was deactivated so they couldn't track it. And no one has seen
it since. It hasn’t been reported or found by any of the people tracking him,
including the best PI my family knows. That car is either at the bottom of a
lake or it's a pile of ash.”

“What about a chop shop?”

He opened his mouth to
argue but paused. “There is one place I know that could and would do it for the
right price. Let me look into it.”

“You going to call
Hendricks?”

He chuckled and turned
the flashlight off, leaving us in the awkward darkness. “No. I don't call
Hendricks. He wouldn't take my call anyway. Only my dad and Crimson Cove Inc.
speak to him.” He got up and walked to the door, bringing the book with us.

“Shouldn't we leave that
here?”

“No. We need to gather
evidence. The police and FBI had a chance in this room already. They didn't
find this book. That tells me neither of them wanted to find it.”

“You think her parents
stopped them from revealing her indiscretions?”

“Absolutely. She’s dead.
Why let her ruin them as well as her own reputation?” His words were horrible,
but I knew they were exactly the way our parents thought.

“If we hurry, we can get
through Sage’s room before she gets home.”

“She’s sleeping at
Rita’s.”

“Even better.” He walked
from the room, leaving me there for the second I lasted before a shiver of cold
air crept across me. It was like my dead friend was breathing on me as she
watched us snoop through her things. I hurried after him, not excited about the
next stop. At least Sage’s house was ridiculously easy to get in and out of.

The fairest of them all

Vincent dragged me
through the window, scraping my legs on the edges of the frame. I winced and
pulled them in. We’d climbed the wall around the property, just like we’d done
when we slept over, to sneak in and back out.

“How are you so heavy
when you’re so skinny?”

“Don't!” We both knew it
was a huge boob joke, but being alone made it horribly awkward. “Tell me some
fun things about your summer and don't involve anything creepy.”

“I’m never creepy.” He
looked defensive.

“I mean, just don't make
it weird. We’re already doing something not awesome.”

“Saving our friend isn’t
awesome?”

“Hanging out alone, just
me and you, while Linds is passed out drunk is not awesome.” I cocked an
eyebrow as I wiped my legs off from the dust in the window.

“She trusts us both.” His
face got a look I had never seen before. “You think I would risk my
relationship with Lindsey for anything?”

The look in his eyes was
my answer. “No.” I shook my head. “I don't. I just think—”

“
You
don't think any of that.
You
spoke to
Sage
who is trying to plant
seeds of doubt in your head.
Let’s not bullshit, Lainey.
She said something to you, didn't she? I saw you two talking when I was getting
Lindsey outside.”

There was no denying it.
I couldn't lie to save my life. “Yeah.”

“She isn’t a nice person,
Lain. She hasn't been a nice person in a very long time. You can only take so
much hatred before you too start becoming hateful.” He turned his back on me
and walked past Sage’s bedroom from the hallway where we had snuck in. The
window was always unlocked. It was Sage’s way in and out at night. Her parents’
room was on the other side of the house, opposite Ashton, Sage, and Emily’s.

We entered Ashton’s room
down the hall, moving silently so Hennessey didn't hear us. The old butler had
ears like a hawk.

Vincent closed Ashton’s
door when I got inside. He hurried to the closet and started lifting clothes
and going through everything, but I went to the blinds, the same as I had done
in Rachel’s room, and closed them tightly. Then I went to the bedside tables,
using my phone’s light to see that Ashton had nothing out of the ordinary. I
checked under everything, lifting and rifling as fast as I could.

After checking under the
bed and all the other places one might stash something, we both paused and
looked at each other.

“You find anything that
might suggest where he could have gone?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I
didn't find anything useful. It’s like all the personality has left the room.
Nothing, not even a single photo.”

“I agree. Her room then?”

“I guess so.” It felt
wrong to be going into Sage’s room without her saying it was okay. I wasn't
like Lindsey; I didn't like it. I felt dirty, but I followed him out of the
room and down the hall to her door.

He walked inside and
closed the curtains the way I had done in Ashton’s and flicked on his
flashlight. He didn't need me to tell him where to go. He walked straight to
her closet and went to the very back where the large built-in dressers were. He
pulled the bottom drawer out and reached in, grabbing the small box Sage always
had her personal things in. He sighed and rifled, maybe annoyed at the things
she had in there because they had once been his and she’d stole them as
keepsakes.

There was something in
the bottom of the box that gave him pause. He lifted it, revealing a black flip
phone. He turned it over, showing me white letters.

“What does that say?”

“Answer me. It’s in that
font.” The tone of his voice and the way he didn't stop to read the letters
told me he had seen this before.

“Did you ever get a
phone?”

“No.”

“This proves Sage was
getting the letters. She never told us.”

“Unless this belongs to
Ashton, and she took it to protect him.”

He had a point. I tapped my
fingertips against my lips, wondering which it could be. “She looked genuinely
shocked when Linds showed her the letter her brother had thrown in his trash
can.”

“She might have faked
that. She’s not exactly bad at faking things.”

“That’s what he said,” I
snickered.

“Funny.” He groaned.
“What I mean is she might have gone and ransacked his bedroom to take any and
all evidence against him before the police got there.” He looked back at the
box, tiptoeing his fingers through it. “Yeah, this isn’t for her, so maybe the
phone isn’t either.” He lifted a piece of paper with a ransom note. As he read
it he pulled back, looking confused. “This isn’t for Ash either.”

“What?”

He glanced up at me,
still looking puzzled. “This letter isn’t for Ash or Sage.” He held it forward.
“It was for Rachel. And it’s not in the font. It’s done with cut-up letters.”

“What does it say?”

“Fairest of them all,
meet me tonight at your ball. Behind the pool house when the lights go out.
Don't be late or you’ll miss out.” He cocked an eyebrow. “I don't understand.”

“If that's here, then
Rachel never got it?”

“It would appear not.”
His eyes lowered to the box, and in the stark beam of the flashlight his face
paled. He hesitated before reaching in and lifting a hand full of tiny pieces
of paper. He let them go so they floated from his fingers as if they were
raining down back into the box.

“What is that?”

“
Letters,
like on that letter.” He swallowed and looked at me again. “Cut up letters of
all different colors and fonts.” He reached in again and pulled a glue stick
from the box. “She’s got blank white paper and letters and glue.”

“But the killer uses the
font.”

He nodded.

“What if the phone just
hadn’t been delivered yet?” I shuddered realizing that meant we had helped her
flee her own crime scene. “What if she’s the killer? What if she’s not using
the font anymore? Like sticking the letters on the back of the phone is
easier?”

“I don't know about
that.” He lifted his gaze to mine and nodded, not adding anything else. He
looked into the box and lifted a single photo. “But I think I might know where
Ashton is.”

I stared at the photo of
the cottage with Ashton holding a large fish and wearing the biggest of smiles.
“I know where that is.”

He nodded. “I do too.”