The Charmers: A Novel(36)

She would not escape this time.





27

Mirabella

I’m standing alone near the wooden steps leading down the small cliff to the beach, exactly where I’d stood ten minutes ago, and probably ten minutes before that. The waves have picked up as the tide turned and are now splashing noisily on the pebbles, then flowing back again. Endlessly. Forever.

I refuse to believe Verity is lost in the sea. I cannot. I will not allow it. I saved her from herself on the train and there’s an old saying that when you save a person you are responsible for them forever. You become the keeper of their soul.

I can see Chad silhouetted against the waves, striding back toward me. I know he fears she has drowned. And in my darkest place, I begin to fear it too.

My once-lovely aqua chiffon dress is plastered against my body with the wind that’s gotten up and the spray carried on it. I feel Aunt Jolly’s pearls, cool against my breasts. I put up a hand to touch them, wishing the aunt who gave them to me could be here to help me now. And also Jerusha, the enigma whose life I was so determined to explore, to find the truth about whether she had committed a terrible crime of passion or if someone had framed her. The story that she had found her lover with another woman and in a jealous rage had shot him did not ring true. Her lover adored her, and the woman was a stranger who’d followed her home, spied on her, envied Jerusha’s success, her beauty, her home. And her love.

It was not in her character, and “character,” as murder psychologists tell us, is where the truth lies. You are who you are.

All I know is if she were here now, she would help. I have a gut feeling about Jerusha, as strong as my gut feeling that Verity is here, somewhere. I will not give up hope.

Chad came to the top of the steps and stood next to me. He put a hand on my shoulder and I pushed the pearls to one side so I might feel his warmth, the strength I needed. I turned to him and tripped awkwardly. I put out my hands to save myself but fell onto the grass, which was cold and damp. The sea sounded suddenly louder. Chad hauled me back up. He stroked away the strands of hair sticking to my face where tears were now running. I hitched my dress back over my bosom, smoothed my damp skirt. Oddly, I was still holding onto my sandals. I held them up to show him, managing a half smile. “Thanks. I’m sorry, I always seem to be crying.”

“That’s okay, cry if you need to. Lord knows it’s a relief sometimes, just to get all that emotion out of you. And listen, the Boss has men out searching for Verity. Nobody is sure she went into the sea, nobody remembers anything other than seeing her go into the house. She could turn up anywhere.”

He was doing his best to sound convincing but I wasn’t buying it. It was a good try though and I wanted him to think I felt better because of it.

I slipped my hand into his and we walked back to the house, still festively lit for the party. The black hills loomed beyond, a dark forested backdrop. A killer might be hiding out there, peeking through the windows, watching the privileged enjoying the rich man’s bounty.

How the Boss had managed to keep Verity’s disappearance a secret from everyone I did not know, but his party was going right on; wine was still being poured, chefs were still sizzling things on their barbecues, lanterns glowed and moths and night creatures still batted their wings against them, the small ruffles of noise competing with the laughter and the tinkling of ice. All the normal things when nothing was normal anymore.

I took my hand from Chad’s and looked at my ruined silver mesh gloves, stuck with black earth and flower petals and grit. Yet my sapphire still glowed.

“Thank God,” I said. “I should have hated to lose Aunt Jolly’s ring. She treasured it because it came from Jerusha.”

Chad took my gloved hands in both of his. “One day I want to ask you about your hands, and what happened,” he said. “But now is not the time. We have to find Verity. She can’t have gotten far. I think maybe she was a little tipsy, I saw her stumble as she walked to the house. Mirabella, let me ask you, what do you really know about Verity? Is there anyone she told you about who might wish to harm her?”

I shook my head, tears spilling. Some women I know look glamorous when they cry, but not me. Red eyes are not becoming.

“Only the rotten husband,” I said. “The cheater. I told you all he wanted was money. He took what little she had. She left him, never to be heard from again. Until Verity files divorce papers, that is. I expect he’ll have plenty to say about what a bad wife she was. Little Verity who’s so innocent she makes me feel like a woman of the world. How could anyone wish to harm her? Why? I ask you.”

He made no answer and we walked in silence up the rise to the party. A passing waiter stopped to offer a tray of martinis. Chad snagged a couple and put one in my hand.

“Drink,” he said. “You have to get yourself together.”

The Colonel came striding toward us, head poked forward in his usual urgent manner, though his face was grim.

“My men have searched this stretch of the beach,” he said, taking a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopping his brow. “Nothing. No discarded clothing as if she had gone skinny dipping…” He glanced apologetically my way as if I might be offended by the very suggestion. “It has been known, at parties like this, at beach houses.”

“Of course,” Chad said.

I knew the Colonel had noticed my skirt clinging to my legs, and my tear-dampened face and windblown hair. “I need to go home,” I said. Aunt Jolly’s villa, my villa, suddenly seemed a haven of safety. I suddenly realized that of course it would be the place to which Verity would return. If she were free to do so.