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Clarissa huffed, pulling open the oven and shoving her baking tray inside. “One day she completely lost her shit. We were out working an event. It was important, maybe our most important one, for one of our exclusive clients. And she just blew up, out of nowhere, over nothing, and stormed out. I never saw her again. It’s real sad how she ended up, but like I said, you could see trouble coming.”
“That was how many years ago?” Jamie asked.
Clarissa squinted. “Five or six, thereabouts. It’s been a while, but you don’t forget a meltdown like that.”
Jamie and I glanced at each other. The timing roughly matched when Laurel’s landlord said she’d started disappearing.
What kind of trouble had she gotten into?
Clarissa rested her hands on her hips. “Not to rush you out, but I need to move to savories if I’m going to be ready. We’re doing an anniversary party in Poughkeepsie.”
“We appreciate your time.” Jamie checked his phone. “If you think of anything else—”
“Wait,” I said. “Do the words ‘Tongue-Cut Sparrow’ mean anything to you?”
Clarissa froze in the middle of untying her apron. “You know that place?”
“It’s a place?” I took a deep breath. Instinct told me to play it easy.
Clarissa’s eyes darted to the door, and the fine hairs on my arms lifted. “I don’t know for sure, but when you’ve lived here long enough, you catch whispers.” She glanced down at Jamie’s phone. “Would you mind turning that off?”
He stopped recording and leaned over the table. “What have you heard, Ms. Barker? I promise, anything you say is safe with us.”
“I told my daughter not to go near it,” she said. “The Hudson Mansion, up the river… You know, the hoity-toity hotel?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I confessed.
“Yeah, well, it’s real old money. Those kinds of people don’twantyou to hear about them, trust me. I brush up against those circles sometimes in my line of work. And it’s not just fancy airs and nice things. They’re a different species.”
“We’ll look up the Mansion,” Jamie assured her. “What’s the relationship to Tongue-Cut Sparrow?”
Clarissa’s voice lowered. “During the day, the Mansion’s all blue bloods and high teas. But I’ve heard it runs a seedy club at night. Not trashy—the other kind.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She looked me up and down. “The kind where on the outside, they’re wearing blazers. But on the inside, they’re wolves.” She cleared her throat. “We were actually working a job at the Mansion the day Laurel flipped her shit.”
Jamie canted his head in my direction, and I buried the urge to grab his arm. I could feel it. This was important.
“Ms. Barker,” Jamie said, much calmer than I felt, “I know you need to get to work. But could you spare one more minute and tell us exactly what you remember about the day Laurel quit?”
Clarissa’s eyes moved between us. They were bloodshot, like she wasn’t used to sleep. “It’s been years now. And I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve struggled with…getting some habits under control. So there might be holes. Maybe there’s even a few things I made up, I don’t know. I’ll give you what I remember, but I’m trying to be honest about what it’s worth.”
“Anything you can tell us is worth a lot,” I said quietly. “To the investigation, and to me.”
She sighed. “The Hudson Mansion used to be one of our exclusive contracts—lucrative, because they wanted everything top-notch. The trade-off is you’ve got to be on your best behavior, which is what I tell my waiters. The day Laurel quit was the first event we’d done at the Mansion since she started. Even during setup, I noticed she kept going missing. Trust me, I get it, it’s a fancy place, and maybe she wanted to poke around, bump into a rich guy. Wouldn’t be the first. But she had a job to do. So I warned her in no uncertain terms, stay put. The event starts. The room’s stuffed wall to wall with billionaires, and at some point, I realize there’s no one serving the hors d’oeuvres. I swear to god, there she was, gone again.
“When she crept back, I confronted her. Tried to make it discreet, because obviously I didn’t want to scare off the clients. But she started yelling, defending herself, saying I didn’t understand, I wasn’t her mother—strange stuff. Then in the middle of a sentence, I kid you not, she stops and goes white as a ghost. I turned around and tried to figure out what she’d seen, but all I could see was a bunch of people in black tie, drinking champagne. Next thing I knew, Laurel’s quitting and hightailing it out of there. No one’s ever quit in the middle of a job like that. I had to fill in for the rest of the day. That’s the long and short.”
“Did you recognize anyone at the party?” Jamie asked.
Clarissa snorted. “Not exactly my crowd.”
“Okay. Well, thanks again, Ms. Barker.” Jamie nodded subtly to the door, with a look that saidWe have a lot to talk about.
“I hope you find whatever you’re looking for,” Clarissa said. She was looking directly at me.
“Thanks,” I said faintly, because I was already a million miles away, trying to imagine what had scared Laurel so bad she’d quit her job on the spot, never to be seen again.
