Story one: Evelyn Carrington, beneath the icy exterior, still had a soft spot for the girl she'd once called her honorary granddaughter, and quietly smoothed the way for her without asking for credit, because some kindnesses were only kindnesses if nobody saw you do them.
Story two: Evelyn Carrington didn't do anything without getting something for it, and a woman who paid off her estranged protégée's debts without being asked, without being thanked, without so much as a line in the ledger, wasn't being generous. She was buying something. Silence, maybe. Compliance. The right to keep a woman close enough to watch, close enough to remind, without either of them ever having to say out loud what the money was actually for.
I sat in my car outside Perrault's for a solid three minutes before I started the engine, turning it over.
The cooling friendship right around the time Hyacinth's marriage started coming apart. The bracelet buried in a hedge at a murder scene. The dues that got quietly, mysteriously, paid. None of it was proof of anything other than that people change. Relationships evolve.
And yet…
Dorothy hadn't said the word blackmail, and neither had I, though I don’t know who I would say it to considering I was in the car alone.
But I'd done four seasons of a true crime podcast, and I knew the shape of a secret. Money moving quietly between two women who supposedly hadn't spoken in years wasn't nothing. It wasn't proof Hyacinth had rigged a straw with a spring-loaded spike, God knew that took a kind of technical skill I couldn't picture her having. Not with those manicured nails and that helpless-debutante routine. Then again, I seemed to remember she’d done well in school. And it was a thread, and Hyacinth had given me a ridiculous story about a missing earring that didn't hold up for more than three seconds under a porch light.
I pulled out of the parking spot and headed home, already composing, somewhere in the back of my head, the very careful, very casual way I was going to bring this up with Hollis.
Except casual only applied to my wardrobe.
I texted Hollis.
Need to talk about EC and HMM and the buried bracelet.
Not casual at all
And Hollis, because he was him, just texted back in his usual shorthand.
No.
It really felt like we were developing a partnership in all of this.
Not.
Yet his reply still made me smile.
Eleven
I went all in on the magnolia theme for Sunday brunch. It seemed a little excessive now given the way the gala event panned out, but I’d already done most of the leg work.
Besides, nothing loosens tongues quite like mimosas.
What I couldn’t decide was if Evelyn had been killed by Hyacinth Maxwell, one of my guests, someone wholly unrelated to galas and The Society, or by a serial killer.
The serial killer was my least favorite theory. It lacked personality.
While I couldn’t exactly investigate someone outside of Evelyn’s Society connections, I could cozy up to Hyacinth next week when my guests were gone. Today was really the only opportunity to put the screws to the Midnight House guests. They were all scheduled to depart on Monday.
I'd cut a dozen magnolia blossoms from the tree out back before the heat could brown their edges, floated three of them in a shallow bowl at the center of the dining room table, and tucked the rest into water glasses down the length of it. There were beignets dusted thick with powdered sugar, a pitcher of chicory coffee, a pitcher of mimosas, and a platter of eggs Sardou that had taken me forty-five minutes and two separate trips to the store because I'd forgotten the artichoke hearts the first time.
Eggs Sardou was basically a fancied up poached egg with a Hollandaise sauce on top and an artichoke bottom. Not an easy feat for me, the master of the microwave, but I was trying to improve my food offerings at the B&B and brunch was a good time to up my game.
"This is a lot of production," Reginald observed, easing into his chair with the newspaper tucked under one arm. “Looks quite delightful, Harper.”
"I like a theme," I said. “The plan with the magnolias was to harken back to what was supposed to have been a highly successful gala fundraiser Friday night. It seemed a shame to waste it all.”
"Somebody already died over a theme this week," Taylor said, reaching for the mimosas before he'd even sat down. "Feels a little on the nose, Harper."
"It's a brunch, Taylor. Not an omen."
"Everything's an omen right now." He poured himself a generous glass, then, after a beat of visible internal debate, poured a second one and slid it toward Allison, who accepted it without comment.
