Girl Three (28 page)

Last night, her starry hopes of something developing between the two of them had burned out. Even so, she wouldn’t easily forget the strength of his embrace. His feathery touch or his tender kisses. The fire-and-spice scent of him.

But her judgment had been off. After last night, she didn’t trust him, and she knew he didn’t trust her. It didn’t matter now, because there was no room for him in her life. And definitely not in her heart.

But her heart did go out to Helena.

The woman was ambitious and cutthroat, but she didn’t deserve the storm that had blown her way. Jessie wondered how much she’d known about Ian’s secret life. The least she was dealing with was the possible suicide of her husband—a man who’d allegedly killed himself because he left his mistress, her protégé, to die from drugs he’d given her. Did Helena have any idea that Ian had diverted Sam’s eggs, fertilized them, and provided the embryos to Elizabeth—another mistress and Helena’s good friend?

No one needed a good friend like that.

Jessie felt true sympathy for Helena. Something told her that going to see her was a bad idea, but it was the right thing to do.

…

Jessie rang the doorbell of the Aldens’ soaring townhouse in an idyllic Georgetown neighborhood. A brushed brass plate engraved with a scrolling capital
A
surrounded the lighted doorbell. She faced the oversized red door, nervously clutching a bouquet of white lilies.

The doorbell chimed. Jessie took a deep breath and the scent of lilies tingled in her nose. She waited, nervously turning on the heels of her boots and watching the snow fall in fat, wet flakes.

No one came to the door.

She debated whether to ring the bell again. Maybe it would be better to just leave the flowers and send a card. What would she say to Helena anyway?

Jessie looked for the best place to put the flowers, then heard footsteps coming toward the door and stopping on the other side. She stood there feeling awkward, looking down at her feet.

The lock clicked, and the door opened. A polished pair of wing-tipped shoes and the cuffs of navy slacks moved into her line of vision. She raised her head and looked straight into the eyes of her father. She took a step backward, and the air felt colder than it had a moment ago.

“Hello, Jessica.”

What is he doing here?
All of the connections and assumptions she’d made about the people associated with Sam were called into question in an instant.

“I, um—” A barrage of questions ricocheted in her mind. “I came to see Helena.”

He gestured for her to come in. She stepped into a grand, two-story foyer with white marble floors, whiter walls, and billboard-sized works of dark modern art that made her feel colder than she had outside.

“Helena’s in the kitchen.” Her father led her to the back corner of the house, into a sprawling chef’s kitchen. More white, with stainless steel appliances and black countertops.

Helena sat at the end of a gleaming chrome and glass dining table, gazing at the half-empty martini glass in front of her. Predictably, she was dressed in black—slacks and a low-cut sweater—with makeup on her pale face, her hair styled. She shifted her eyes to Jessie.

Behind her, two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows met in the corner, revealing a postcard-perfect backyard enclosed by ivy-covered red-brick walls. Fresh snow dusted the bricks and leaves and collected on the grass and the box-cut shrubs.

Jessie broke into a clammy sweat. Everything looked staged. Everything felt wrong.

Why is my father here?

She walked over to Helena and laid the bouquet of lilies on the table. “I’m sorry about Ian.” her voice wavered with emotion and nerves.

Her father walked around the table to Helena’s side, facing Jessie. Helena stretched her red lips into a line and shook her head in a way that made it look unusually heavy. “You ought to be sorry,” she said, eerily calm. “You
had
to stay here and nose around after Sam died, didn’t you? Showing up when you weren’t welcome. With your pictures and questions and fucking accusations.”

Jessie blinked and swallowed hard.

Her father sat next to Helena and held her hand with familiar ease. “That’s not fair, Helena,” he said.

Jessie couldn’t believe he’d come to her defense.

“Shut up, Ryan,” Helena said. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Jessie had never heard anyone speak to her father that way. And she never would’ve imagined he would allow it.

Shut up, Ryan.

Ryan. She’d heard Helena refer to her father like that before. When they’d met at the Market Inn and Helena had bragged about how she and Sam tricked him into giving Sam the condo. Jessie remembered her conversation with Philippe at the cupcakery, when he’d said that her father and Helena had been involved before Helena married Ian. Were they involved now?

Jessie took a deep breath. “Like I said, I’m sorry about Ian. And you’re right; I did have lots of questions about Sam’s death. But if I hadn’t been the one asking them, it would’ve been someone else.”

Helena lifted an eyebrow. “Who?”

Jessie glanced at her father. His eyes sparked with curiosity but his expression remained stern.

“It doesn’t matter who,” she said to Helena. “You blame me, and I’ll have to live with that.”

Her father gave her a measured stare. Behind it, she could’ve sworn he looked proud.

Helena took a slow swallow of her martini, glanced defiantly at Jessie’s father and leveled her coal-black eyes on Jessie. “Remorse and flowers.” She picked up the bouquet and smelled the lilies. “High marks. But if you came looking for forgiveness, you won’t find it here.”

The doorbell chimed.

“I’ll get it.” Her father squeezed Helena’s hand and went to answer the door.

Jessie stood, ill at ease and silent.

Helena ignored her and stared into her drink.

The sound of her father’s footsteps echoed in the foyer, followed by similarly sturdy steps and the more tentative clicks of a woman’s high heels. Her father entered the kitchen with Philippe and Elizabeth close behind.

Jessie reeled. The only way this could get more awkward would be for Ian and Sam to come back from the dead and join them.

On his way to Helena’s side, Philippe brushed a kiss on Jessie’s cheek. “Kind of you to come,” he whispered.

Elizabeth nodded at Jessie, a flash of fear on her face. Makeup didn’t hide the dark circles under her eyes, and she looked several years older than she had yesterday. Her gaze darted between Helena and Jessie, then settled on Jessie with a question—
You didn’t tell her, did you?

No
, Jessie thought, and hoped she conveyed it in her eyes. The only thing that could come from her revealing Elizabeth’s secrets to Helena would be more hurt. And from the look of it, both women had already had plenty of that.

“Hello, Jessie,” Elizabeth said.

Jessie gave her a tight smile. She had a fleeting thought about what Elizabeth had said to her yesterday:
Don’t worry about Ian. I’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you
.

Elizabeth went to Helena and hugged her. They shared some muffled words while Philippe took the seat where Jessie’s father had been moments ago. Her father watched with thinly veiled disdain. Had he known about Elizabeth’s affair with Ian, and what kind of friend she’d been to Helena?

Regardless, Jessie saw no sign of doubt among them that Ian had committed suicide and that the confessions in his note had been true. It was as if the story hadn’t surprised anyone but her. Or it was too unthinkable to broach the subject until it was proven. Seeing them all react in this way bolstered Jessie’s confidence that Ian actually had killed Sam, and made her even more certain she’d chosen the right course by deciding to go home.

She joined her father across the room. “I’m going to leave now.”

He nodded. “I think that’s best.” He put his palm on the small of her back. “I’ll see you out.”

They walked in silence, his hand feeling nothing like the father’s hand that had guided her through the first fourteen years of her life, before she’d been sent to boarding school.

He was even more of a stranger than before.

They stopped at the door. “You told me not to associate with Helena,” Jessie said. “But here you are.”

He pursed his lips. “This situation is…different.” A glint of emotion flickered in his eyes.

She couldn’t decide if he meant different because he had feelings for Helena, because he felt guilty about Sam’s path of destruction, or both.

“For you, things are always different,” Jessie said sadly. “I’ve finished settling things for Sam. It’s time for me to go home.”

Chapter Forty-One

On her knees in Sam’s closet, Jessie taped closed the last box of her sister’s belongings. Some she would keep, others she’d give to Nina. The rest would go to charity. Her father had told her to take care of everything but the furniture and housewares, and now she had.

She stood and went into the bedroom. Darkness had come while she’d worked in the closet, but a filmy brightness shone through the windows from the falling and fallen snow. As beautiful as it looked, as peaceful and serene, she wished it would stop. She wanted to leave in the morning. To go home and put everything that had happened here behind her. She closed the blinds and switched on one of the bedside lamps, remembering the night she’d stood in that same spot, pointing a gun at Senator Talmont. She shuddered at the memory. Now it seemed surreal.

Just as she added the box to the stack at the top of the stairs, her cell phone rang. She glanced at the Caller ID.

Nina.
Her stomach clenched. Maybe she had the information about Ian’s blood type.

“Hey.” Jessie heard traffic in the background.

“Long day.” Nina’s voice had an edge too sharp for Jessie’s liking. “I’m headed underground to the Metro so I might lose you. Meet me at Teaism.”

“The one up here?”

“Yeah. Just a couple of blocks from you, across Connecticut on R Street. I’m on my way.”

“In this snow?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s Sophie?”

“With the sitter. I’ll see you—” Nina lost her signal.

Jessie got to Teaism before Nina. From the outside, the converted townhouse looked like lots of others, but the inside was serenely Japanese. Jessie bought two chai teas and sat at one of the silkwood tables next to a window.

She fidgeted and worried, exotic tea and Japanese serenity doing little to ease her mind. What did Nina have to tell her that she couldn’t say on the phone—that would take her away from her child?

Nina bustled in the door and stomped the snow off the boots Jessie had watched her put on this morning. The tight look on her face was fair warning. She caught Jessie’s gaze, strode to the table, and unzipped her coat.

“Damn Metro.” She untied her scarf and pulled her lime-green knit hat from her head. “They keep raising fares, and service gets worse, and the waits get longer, and will they ever teach the train operators how to brake? I swear, they’ll make you puke.” She slumped down onto the chair.

Jessie knew to let Nina rant when she got in a mood like this. She scrunched her nose and nodded toward Nina’s cup. “Chai?”

“Thanks.” Nina sucked in a breath and exhaled with drama. She closed her eyes, as if to shut out the Metro anger and switch gears to something else.

Jessie wondered if she wouldn’t rather hear more about the Metro.

Nina shrugged off her coat, took a sip of her tea, and winced. “Hot.” She looked out the window for a long moment, then focused her gaze on Jessie. “It wasn’t Ian. He wasn’t the man Sam was with the night she died.”

Jessie’s stomach sank. She buried her face in her hands while the idea settled in her mind. Disappointment drained what little energy she’d regained since she’d left Helena’s, and she dragged her fingers down her face. “You’re sure?”

“That’s the same thing you asked me when I told you about Sam.” Nina said snippily. “I’m sorry, but I’m sure.”

“I’m not questioning
you
, it’s just not the news I wanted to hear. I’d convinced myself that it was Ian. That this nightmare was over.”

“Ian had Type O blood,” Nina said. “Type Os are nonsecretors. Our guy’s a Type B secretor. Nowhere near the same.”

“How did Ian die?”

“He injected himself with succinylcholine.”

“Sux? The lethal injection drug?”

“That’s the one.” Nina propped her elbows on the table. “The drug itself metabolizes pretty quickly, but we found metabolites in his blood. Normally that wouldn’t be enough to confirm the cause of death, but he had a fresh injection site and the used syringe was found near his body.”

“That’s a horrible way to die.”

“Muscle paralysis that prevents all movement—even breathing. Not the way I’d choose to go.”

“So you think he committed suicide?” Jessie asked.

“All the evidence isn’t in yet, but it looks like he might have.”

“They’re reporting it on the news like it’s a no-question case, and everyone else seems to think the same thing.” Jessie told Nina about her visit to Helena’s, about Philippe and Elizabeth stopping by, and about her father being there.

A snowplow rumbled past on the street outside, its blade scraping on the pavement.

“Ian’s so-called suicide seems too convenient,” Nina said. “And that whole group is incestuous. Your father led you to think they were his sworn enemies, and there they all were, drinking martinis together while I was looking through my microscope at what was left of Ian.”

“Helena was the only one drinking.”

“You know what I mean.” Nina looked wired-tired.

Jessie imagined her up during the nights with Sophie teething and fussing, working all day, and now dealing with the headache of Jessie’s situation. She would be edgy, too.

“If what Ian wrote isn’t true, I can’t believe Helena or my father would be all right with the police thinking that it is.”

“Why not?” Nina asked.

Jessie shook her head and shrugged.

“Someone didn’t want Sam’s murder investigated,” Nina said. “Now someone doesn’t want Ian’s death investigated. The best strategy would be to link them both together and cancel out one with the other.”