Good Girls Lie(99)

She and Rumi, they are good together. Right together. When he kisses her, undresses her, properly, gently, as if this is their first time together, she realizes she doesn’t want to break it off with him. Doesn’t want this to be the last time. She’s grown to care about him. Maybe she always has.

She lies in the crook of his arm afterward, sated and glowing, a leg thrown over his strong thighs, runs a finger down his chest.

“I have to tell you something,” Rumi says.

“Mmm?” she says languorously, with a stroke of his flesh, because she knows what he is going to say. And she’s going to say it back and mean it.

But he surprises her.

“It’s about your mother... I heard her on a call when she stopped in for a coffee before she left. She was talking about you to someone named Ellen.”

Ford feels the anger begin to rise. “Ellen Curtis? The senator?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. She said you’d understand about the reinstatement.”

All the coins drop for Ford. “Oh, my God. That bitch!” She’s so angry she actually starts to laugh.

Rumi is looking at her quizzically. “You okay?”

“She sold me out. She’s done a deal with the alumni association. Goode goes coed and Jude Westhaven, savior to the masses, will shepherd the new deal through if they make her headmistress again. Of all the conniving, horrible...” She rolls onto her back, staring at the ceiling of her childhood home. “Rumi, what do you think about New York?”

“Big city. And your mother lives there.”

“What if she didn’t? Or you didn’t ever have to see her? If I went, would you be interested in going with me?”

“On a trip?”

“I was thinking something more permanent.”

He sits up, drags her with him. The sheets fall to the floor.

“Wait a minute. Are you asking me to move to New York with you? Leave Goode?”

“Yes. That’s what I’m asking.”

The look on his face is sheer joy. “Yes, Ford. I’d love to move to New York with you. I can’t wait to get out of this town.”

“You and me both,” she says, kissing his neck, realizing she feels free for the first time in ages. To hell with this school. To hell with her mother. To hell with the Westhaven legacy, the spoiled girls, the constant politicking with the board and the alumni association and the town. It is time for Ford to make her own way in the world.

* * *

Ford doesn’t plan on falling asleep but when her phone rings, she realizes it’s almost dawn. Rumi lies next to her, curled on his side, a hand on her hip. They’ve never spent the night together. She quite likes waking up with him in her bed.

She rolls over and answers the phone. It’s Melanie, and her voice is shrill with panic.

“Ford? Ford? You have to come, right away. There’s another dead girl.”



74

THE TRAIL

Kate hasn’t slept. She and Tony have been combing through the files as Oliver sends them from Scotland Yard.

Money is always the trail to follow. Kate isn’t an expert, but she has done a few classes in forensic accounting. Between her and Oliver, they’ve uncovered at least fifty thousand skimmed out of the Carrs’ accounts with no traceable landing spot.

There are payments made to The Goode School, too, though those stop as soon as the family dies.

They break for a snack. Oliver is on speakerphone.

“I have a theory,” Kate says. “The impostor was close to them, no doubt. Someone who worked for the family, most likely. She saw a chance to inherit a massive fortune. She killed the Carr family, took Ashlyn Carr’s place, and bolted to America to await the estate. All she has to do is go to this fancy-schmancy school for a few years, then get through college, and she inherits everything.”

“It’s hardly the first time something like this has happened. But where is Ashlyn Carr’s body?”

“Drag the lake on their estate. I bet you find it there. This is a sick, twisted person we’re dealing with.”

“Hold on.” Oliver is back a few minutes later. “All right. We’re reopening the investigation into the deaths, effective immediately.”

“Good. There might not be evidence in the house, but I bet somewhere on the grounds.”

“Have you arrested this child at the school yet?”

“No, not yet. Trust me when I say she has no way out. Marchburg is tiny, she tries to run and we’ll hear about it. How did y’all miss the money siphoning the first time around?”

“Easy. Accounting did a cursory pass through the financials, but they were looking for impropriety on behalf of Damien Carr, illegal payments and the like. Finding nothing that stood out, and no evidence to the contrary, they called the files clean. The estate was to be left to the daughter, but she didn’t stand to inherit without a degree, and she had to be twenty-five. It’s inviolable. No one thought she killed them. Why would she? It was easy to accept the double suicide theory. The daughter walked in and found them, called 999. The records are very clear.

“And the headlines were lurid. You have to remember, this was a man who had been above reproach for his entire life, and terribly private, too. Someone sent a compromising story, with photographs of Carr and his lover, to the press. The scandal cost him a very important position in government. He was, by all accounts, devastated.”