Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(14)

“Good morning, everyone.” The youngest Magnusson sibling flounced around Greta in a blue and white striped top and a skirt that skimmed her curvy hips. Apart from mildly bloodshot eyes and the dark circles beneath them, which he could just make out beneath a heavy layer of powder, she seemed cheery. Certainly wider awake than the rest of them.

She set down a stack of newspapers and magazines and parked herself in the chair next to Winter, directly across from Bo. “Gotta catch up on all the local gossip I missed while I was gone,” she said when Winter looked at her as she was rapping her knuckles on the stack of newspapers. “Did you know that Darla McCarthy threw her husband out of their Russian Hill house in nothing but his underclothes? Good for her, I say. That man is a dog.”

“What is wrong?” Greta repeated to Astrid.

“Not a thing,” Astrid said. “I’ll have what everyone is having. It smells delightful. Oh good. Coffee. Wait, have we got any smoked salmon? I missed that in Los Angeles. The cafeteria breakfast on campus is just dreadful, and—”

“Why were you on the yacht, Astrid?” Winter said, his easygoing mood heading downhill, fast. “And what the hell happened?”

She poured coffee into a china cup with a gilded rim and handle. “Stop being so grumpy. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Astrid fainted on the yacht,” Bo said in calm voice. “But she’s okay now.”

“Fainted?” Winter said, completely abandoning the newspaper.

“I knew it.” Greta cupped a hand to Astrid’s cheek and frowned. “It was all that champagne.”

“It was not,” Astrid said, pushing her hand away. Silver glinted on her wrist.

The watch. She was wearing it.

That was good!

And also horrible.

Why was she flaunting it out here, where God and everyone else could see? Bo suddenly felt overwarm and guilty, as if every single perverted, obscene fantasy he’d had about Astrid was on display—and he’d had plenty of them.

And yet . . .

She was wearing the wristwatch. That had to mean something. She wouldn’t wear it out of pity; he knew that for a fact. He’d worried the engraving on the back was too sentimental—that it said too much about how he felt. About her. About them. About his despair over the possibility of a future together. Oh, for the love of God, why wouldn’t she look at him again?

“Bo?”

He blinked. Winter’s mismatched blue and gray eyes stared at him expectantly.

“What’s that? Oh yes. The yacht. Well, this is what happened . . .”

Bo told the whole story, forcing himself to talk over Winter’s rising anger and the suspicion that his boss’s twitching fingers were seconds away from strangling Bo’s neck. But after Winter was assured that Astrid was, by all appearances, healthy and in one piece, he finally relaxed and ate his breakfast. And no one made any other remarks until Bo mentioned the part about the yacht’s owner identifying her maid at the hospital.

“Mrs. Cushing apparently feels so bad about lending out the boat to Miss Richards,” Bo said, “that she’s offered to house her and the other survivors until they can—”

“Ridiculous,” Greta interrupted, her face pinched in disbelief. “What wealthy lady lets her maid borrow a luxury yacht?”

Huh. She was probably right. Bo certainly couldn’t imagine, say, Greta asking to use one of Winter’s boats for a weekend outing. The proud housekeeper would just as soon set herself on fire.

“Maybe it was a special reward,” Aida suggested.

Greta crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh ja,” she said sarcastically. “I will just please ask Winter”—which she pronounced more like Veen-ter with her lilting accent—“if I can borrow the Pierce-Arrow limousine for a big-time champagne weekend with my friends.”

Bo smiled to himself. He rather liked it when Greta got agitated. But she’d made her point, a good one—not to mention that it had temporarily distracted everyone from thinking about Astrid’s trip to the hospital.

“The whole story stinks,” Astrid said. “Those survivors are lying. And Mrs. Cushing knows something about it, because Greta’s ab-so-lute-ly right about the maid borrowing that yacht.”

“It doesn’t make much sense,” Aida admitted. “All of them with memory loss . . .”

Astrid folded her arms over her chest. “My nurse said two of them acted like they were familiar with each other. And that Cushing lady got ticked off when the police chief said they needed to inspect the yacht, right, Bo?” Astrid looked at him again for the first time since she’d walked into the dining room.

“Yes, that’s right.” He glanced at her wrist and made sure she saw his gaze linger there. But she only looked away again, damn her!

Winter sighed heavily. “If anyone cares about my opinion, I think you should just forget all about it. The yacht’s gone. We don’t know any of those people. And I, for one, am staunchly opposed to anything magical or cursed or haunted.”

Aida cleared her throat.

Winter winked his scarred eye at her. “Except you, of course, darling.”

“And your daughter,” Aida reminded him.

“I’m still hoping that maybe we’ll get lucky with her,” he admitted with a grin. “One medium in this family is enough.”