“You’re right, you’re right,” Reginald said. “My apologies. I certainly hope Mrs. Carrington pulls through whatever this was.”
"I didn't do anything to her drink," Allison said, sharp now, the deadline-panic voice from two days ago creeping back in, except this time it wasn't about WiFi. "I wanted to see her. I wanted to see if she'd actually go through with it, the lawsuit, or if it was just posturing to scare me into backing down. That's it. That's the whole terrible truth. I'm not a murderer, I'm a coward with a manuscript deadline and an axe to grind."
Nobody said anything for a second. Teddy hopped down off my chair and went and sat directly in front of Allison, staring up at her with the unblinking judgment only a skunk can properly deliver.
"He believes you," I offered. "For what that's worth."
"It's worth something," Allison said, a little unsteadily, reaching down to scratch behind his ears. "More than I expected, honestly."
Her earlier uneasiness with Teddy was clearly in the past.
Reginald crossed his arms. "So we have a hand on camera nobody can identify, a writer with a legal grudge and no invitation, a distiller who's upset about his brand and also being sued, and — " he glanced at Vivienne " — a documentary filmmaker who happened to have her camera perfectly positioned to catch the one piece of footage that matters."
"Don't," Vivienne said, low. "Don't do that. I've been filming everything for three days. That's my job."
"I'm just observing," Reginald said.
"And what about you?" Vivienne shot back. "You've got motive dripping off you. You said she humiliated you in front of the whole historical board."
"I was nowhere near that table," Reginald said. "I was on the front lawn, discussing bousillage with a very patient docent, and I have several witnesses and possibly a recording, since I was talking into my phone like an absolute architectural addict for twenty solid minutes."
That sounded like it tracked to me.
My own phone buzzed against my thigh, and I nearly dropped my tea reaching for it, grateful for a distraction. The screen showed a number I didn't recognize, but the first line of the text made my stomach drop straight through the floorboards.
Hey, Harper. This is Patrick. The server from the gala.
Okay, so I had given the server my number. So what? Maggie was always telling me I needed to get out more and he wasn’t that much younger than me.
He sent a second text before I could reply.
Wanted you to know before it hits the news. I was in the back hallway when the ambulance crew came through and I heard the doctor tell one of the paramedics that lady didn't make it. Died on the way to the hospital. Thought you'd want a heads up since y’all were there when it happened. Hope you weren’t close to her or anything.
I read it twice. Then a third time, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less final.
"Harper?" Allison said. "You've gone white as a sheet."
I looked up at the four faces staring back at me. “Evelyn’s dead.”
Taylor's face was ruddy and flustered, Reginald's carefully composed. Allison's was guilty and raw, while Vivienne's unreadable as ever, camera still balanced on her knee like she hadn't quite decided whether to keep filming.
"That was Patrick," I said. "One of the servers from tonight.”
“The one who called you a rich bitch?" Vivienne asked.
“No, the other one. The first one. He said that Evelyn didn't make it." My voice came out steadier than I felt, which was, frankly, a miracle given the way my hands had started shaking around my glass of sweet tea. "She died on the way to the hospital."
The silence that followed had weight to it, the particular hush of a room realizing all at once that the thing it had been dancing around—the possibility, the theory, the what if—had just become a simple, terrible fact.
Taylor set his tea glass down very carefully, his hands shaking just like mine were. "Well," he said, and his voice cracked right down the middle. "There goes any hope of this being a bad night that gets better by morning."
Reginald sat down, heavily, in the chair nearest the cold fireplace, staring at nothing.
Allison pressed both hands over her mouth.
And Vivienne looked down at the little glowing screen still cradled in her palm, at the pale, ringed hand frozen mid-motion above Evelyn Carrington's silver cup, and said, very quietly, to no one in particular:
"Somebody's going to want to know whose hand that is."
