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“Yeah, I’m good,” Cam said, and the woman was gone again. She looked at her own phone. Izzy was already eighteen minutes late for the meeting they had set up.
Cam had spent the last seven days delving into Izzy Jones’s psyche and figured she was one corkboard and some string away from a crazy murder board that investigators were always creating on those gritty detective shows when they were trying to catch a serial killer.
Short of that, she had done everything she could to get to know Izzy from afar, to get a feel for her. It had been a while since Cam had had to do something like this. By now, writing and developing recipes in Meredith’s “voice” was second nature to her. But she saw it as a challenge, and in the haze of the last week, Cam had read Izzy’s memoir (not terribly revealing, with lots of platitudes about being true to yourself, which struck Cam as deeply ironic because the book was doubtless written by another ghostwriter), devoured all the major profiles of her in the glossy magazines (mostly fawning), and studied her posted photos like they were images of crime scenes.
It helped that Cam wasn’t working entirely from scratch, at least. The cookbook already had a name—Izzy Cooks—and a vague summary in the proposal that Izzy Jones was finally revealing “the secrets of her zero-fuss, fun-filled kitchen.”
The idea that Cam planned to present, gleaned from scouring “Izzy’s” Instagrammed dinners, was a casual, California-meets-Italian chic theme with a dollop of other globe-trotting flavors. She had gone back and cataloged all the meals Izzy had posted about and sketched out recipes for them, creating flavor profiles where it wasn’t immediately obvious what all the ingredients were, and adding flourishes here and there. She would have to test and refine them, obviously, but she wanted to have something to show Izzy. Cam didn’t feel confident—not in the least—but she felt the closest thing to prepared as she could.
Cam was sipping from the cool glass bottle of Pellegrino that she had finally accepted on the third check-in by the young assistant when she noticed her phone buzz. It was Birdie. Cam glanced around. It didn’t look like Izzy’s arrival was imminent, even though it was almost an hour after their appointed time, so she took the call.
“Why on earth are you whispering?” Birdie demanded.
“I’m… at the library,” Cam replied. She hadn’t told Birdie about her new assignment, partly because she didn’t want her grandmother to know how she was getting the money for the house, and partly because of all the paperwork she had signed. There really wasn’t much she could say, even if the only risk was that Birdie would tell everyone at the cafe over hash browns.
“It’s very rude to be talking on the phone in the library,” Birdie lectured. “You can just call me back.”
“No, it’s fine,” Cam answered, raising her voice to a normal volume. It didn’t seem to matter anyway. Izzy was nowhere to be seen, and she was clearly alone in the posh living room. “I stepped outside now,” she lied. “How are things going? Do you have a contractor lined up?”
“Well, that’s just the thing. I can’t seem to find anyone to take the job. Frank next door is retired, you know, and he suggested I call Bill Lenhart. I’m sure you remember Bill. He did that nice addition for the Murphys down the street?”
Cam didn’t recognize any of the names.
“So that’s what I did,” Birdie continued. “But Bill says he’s booked clear through next summer. He says everyone with a hammer in a fifty-mile radius is, too. All those new houses, and then the weekenders wanting pool houses and media rooms and things I haven’t even heard of. It’s absurd! Can you imagine an entire room just to watch movies? Hmph!”
Cam felt a little impatience rise up. She didn’t know how such things were done, but surely it couldn’t be that hard to find someone willing to take good money to do the work.
“Can’t you just look online?”
“Wait, did I just say Bill Lenhart?” Birdie asked. “Silly me, I meant Jason Lenhardt. Bill was his father. Passed away years ago.”
Birdie sounded momentarily confused.
“Sometimes, I just don’t know, Cammie.”
“How are you otherwise?” Cam asked, a note of concern in her voice.
“It’s been a little cold in the house these past few nights. Those plywood panels aren’t much for keeping the wind out,” Birdie said.
Cam paused. It wasn’t like Birdie to complain. Or to get confused. And she hated the thought of her grandmother shivering in her sleep. A new wave of worry washed over Cam just as Izzy’s black-clad assistant made another return to the room.
“I’ll have to call you back, Birdie,” Cam said.
“I’m so sorry,” the young woman said to Cam with a smile that was as faux as the William de Kooning sculpture on Izzy’s coffee table was real. “But it looks like Izzy isn’t going to make it.”
Cam resisted the urge to roll her eyes. No shit, she thought.
She’d officially been ghosted.
CHAPTER FOUR
ADA
Have you ever been jolted from a lovely, deep sleep by a frightful noise? Well, that’s what happened to me not so long ago, only it wasn’t exactly a nap that I was so rudely awoken from but rather… well, death. Along came a loud crack that sounded like a tree splintering, and suddenly the air was filled with the scent of fresh cedarwood and I found myself alive again. Well, not quite alive—I’ll explain more later.
Oh, pardon me, how rude of me. I’ve forgotten to introduce myself. Mother always did say I had the worst manners. She was right, I suppose, even though she was wrong about pretty much everything else about me, just like almost everyone else was.
Never mind that for now. I’m Mrs. Ada Poulson Merriweather, upstanding wife and pillar of Silver Cove society, to use the name I was known by when I died, though I still like to think of myself as just Ada, the girl with knobby knees who ran wild in the marshes and who got into all sorts of trouble. To the rest of the world, I was Mrs. Ada Poulson Merriweather, a member of the Main Street Presbyterian Church, nominally a member of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Club of Silver Cove (although I mysteriously always seemed to develop headaches on the afternoons they met), needleworker of rather dubious skill, pianist of moderate talent (I could bang out a decent Debussy), and sometimes-secretary to my husband, the renowned author Mr. Marshall Blanton Merriweather.
