Troubles in Paradise (Paradise #3)(16)

“New room? Are you…”

“Taking Mama’s room,” Maia says. “I’ve slept in here the past two nights.” She pauses. “The sheets still smell like her. How long do you think that will last?”

Ayers’s heart feels like a dying rose shedding its petals. “Oh, Nut,” she says.

“I worry I’m gonna make the smell disappear faster by sleeping in the bed and that one night it won’t smell like her, it will smell like me. But I don’t have a choice because Irene is sleeping in my room.”

“Irene?”

“Yeah,” Maia says. “Have you not heard? Baker didn’t call you?”

Baker has not called her, which she finds strange, since he’s supposedly so keen on celebrating her “newfound freedom,” but she figures he’s been busy getting settled in, and, frankly, she’s relieved that he hasn’t asked to see her. “No,” Ayers says. “Heard what?”

Maia sighs like an adult. “Well, they lost the villa in Little Cinnamon.”

This news propels Ayers out of her chair and over to the front window. It’s another beautiful day in paradise; things are happening out there while Ayers convalesces. “Lost the…lost the villa? What are you talking about?”

“Gramps said it was tax trouble. But I heard him and Irene talking about the FBI. I think my dad was into something illegal.”

Ayers’s stomach lurches. She collapses onto the sofa. Hidden underneath it are all of Rosie’s journals. Ayers had discovered the journals buried in Rosie’s dresser and she’d…absconded with them, taking them from Huck’s house. They were Ayers’s own private archaeological find, no less precious or revelatory to Ayers than the Dead Sea Scrolls or dinosaur bones. These journals told Rosie’s story, one Ayers didn’t know, and Ayers was Rosie’s best friend. Ayers found herself compelled to binge on them but she’d made herself read slowly and carefully. She’d made herself savor them.

In the final two volumes are passages in which Rosie described Russ telling her outright back in 2016 that his company, Ascension, sold the lots in Little Cinnamon to fictional entities—shell companies. He admitted to Rosie that Ascension was in the business of hiding money, laundering money. And then, in the very last pages of the journal, Rosie wrote about how Russ had informed his boss, Todd Croft, that he was leaving the company and how Todd Croft had shown up at La Tapa and threatened Rosie.

Six weeks later, both Russ and Rosie were dead.

Now the FBI knows and the villa is gone? Ayers’s thoughts are all over the place. Do the FBI agents think Todd Croft killed Russ and Rosie, or do they think it was, in fact, a lightning strike? Ayers remembered hearing thunder that morning. So it was a lightning strike—simple, impossible bad luck. But the scene Rosie described with Todd Croft was…alarming.

The villa is gone.

Ayers can’t help but wonder what this means for Baker. Obviously, if there’s no place for him to live, then he’s going back to Houston.

Ayers feels a deep, crushing disappointment, worse even than her pain about the broken engagement. Baker will leave—if he even arrived in the first place. And what about Cash? Will he leave too?

Ayers brings her mind back to the present. “So Irene is living with you guys?” she says. “For how long?”

“Until she gets back on her feet,” Maia says. She lowers her voice. “I think Gramps is happy. He cut my grounding down to a week.”

“Won’t Irene go back to Iowa?”

“She can’t,” Maia says. “The FBI took that house too.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I told you, there’s been drama.”

“What about Cash?” Ayers says. Because Treasure Island is out of commission, Ayers hasn’t spoken to Cash since Tuesday night. “Is he staying with you guys?”

“He’s living with Tilda,” Maia says.

Living with Tilda? Ayers knew they were kind of seeing each other; they’d been together the afternoon that Mick proposed at Christmas Cove. That was five days ago. Now they’re living together? “Wow,” Ayers says. The toast won’t settle in her stomach; she feels like it’s on a seesaw. Is it coming up or staying down? “Where’s Baker?”

“He and Floyd are at the Westin,” Maia says. “I’m actually headed there in a little while to watch Floyd while Baker looks at some rentals.”

“You are?” Ayers says. She feels a tiny arrow of optimism shoot through her, though she’s too lethargic to even smile. “So they’re staying?”

“Yes, they’re staying. Floyd starts at Gifft Hill on Monday,” Maia says. “Wait until I tell everyone he’s my nephew.”

Oh, boy, Ayers thinks. The Gifft Hill mothers will have a field day with that. “Have fun,” Ayers says. “I love you; you’re my number-one girl. Let’s hang out next week.”

“We can…” Maia says. “But I might be busy with my friends or babysitting for Floyd.”

“Right,” Ayers says. “Only if you can fit me in.”

“I’ll have my people call your people,” Maia says, and she hangs up.

Baker is staying! For a second, Ayers’s happiness is greater than the dread that she feels about the rest of the story—the lost villa, the FBI, Russ’s illegal business dealings.