Mr. Mysterious: A Mister Standalone (The Mister Series Book 4) (29 page)

But it’s not Pax who directs the conversation to the exact place I don’t want it to go. It’s Ivy. “What about that silver envelope?”

“What silver envelope?” Oliver asks.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“The one at the house on Martha’s Vineyard? You know?” She looks at Nolan. “Remember? Pax picked it up when he got all the other evidence of our…” She blushes. “Our fantasy night out of the way before the cops saw it. What was in that envelope?”

I chance a glance at Ariel and she’s got her mouth open, ready to say something.

But Ellie beats her to it. “Silver envelopes?” Every head turns to look at her. She looks across the table at Mac. “Didn’t you use silver envelopes for our scavenger hunt on our first date?”

“Yeah,” Mac says. “Pax already asked me about it, but you know what? I don’t really know why I used silver envelopes. Maybe because it reminded me of The Night?”

“Well,” Nolan says, “I guess the next question is… why the hell is Paxton asking about silver envelopes? He asked me too. When Ivy was invited to apply for the job here at the resort, she said it came in a silver envelope.”

“Yes,” Ivy says. “It did!”

I look at my sister again and now she’s scowling. I shake my head.

She shakes hers back.

Later
, I mouth silently. Mariel gave me specific instructions when we had our discussion. And it did not involve telling everyone about what she knows.

“Well,” Pax says. And I just know he’s going to tell them about our day at the races with his mother. But he doesn’t. He might, in fact, sort of tell a lie. “It’s just odd, don’t you think?”

He squeezes my hand, like he’s trying to keep this a secret as well.

I squeeze back, relieved to get to the end of the silver envelope discussion.

“Cindy,” Ariel says, standing up so fast her chair scrapes on the floor. She places her napkin next to her untouched canapé and says, “I have to go to the little girl’s room. Can you come with me?”

“Um, the food is coming soon,” I say weakly.

“Fuck the food, Cinderella. Get your ass up and join me.”

Oliver laughs. “Fucking sisters. They are incapable of peeing alone.”

“Mac,” Five says as Ariel grabs hold of my arm and practically drags me across the dining room. “You never did explain why you were using silver envelopes for that scavenger hunt.”

“Well,” Mac says… But then I can’t hear anything else because Ariel has me out in the hallway.

“What the fuck, Cindy!” she whisper-shouts. “I knew you had a funny look on your face when I was holding up that silver envelope.”

“Ariel, look—”

“No, you look! You have a crucial piece of evidence and you’re withholding it.”

“It was junk mail,” I say.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“I opened it when you were arguing with Victoria, OK? It was a credit card offer in a pretty envelope, that’s all. I threw it away.”

“Then we’re gonna go get it out of the trash. Because I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

“Fine with me.”

I let Ariel drag me through the hallways back to the catering kitchen, which is now bustling with cooks and servers who are getting our dinner ready.

“Can I help you?” Elizabeth, the chef, asks, when she spots us at the doorway.

“Yes, Elizabeth. Sorry to interrupt you guys in here. But my sister left something in the trash that we need to recover. Do you mind if we look?”

“Oh, sorry. We emptied the trash.”

“Where did you take it?” Ariel asks, her voice stiff and cold. “We really need it back.”

“It’s been compacted.” Elizabeth shrugs. “Sorry. We have very strict trash regulations on the resort. Everything is compacted to save landfill space.”

“See,” I say, pulling my arm so Ariel has to let go of me. “It’s nothing. I’m not lying.”

“Is something wrong?” the chef asks.

“No,” I say. “We’re just a little edgy tonight, Elizabeth. That’s all. Isn’t that right,
Ariel
?”

Ari huffs air but turns on her heel and walks back out the door.

“Sorry to bother you,” I call back over my shoulder as I follow her. She is waiting at the end of a hallway, seething with anger.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not! I swear! Why would I lie about a stupid piece of mail?”

She looks me up and down, then turns once again and starts walking back to the dining room.

“What if we’re looking at it all wrong?” Five is saying when Ari and I return.

“What do you mean?” Nolan asks.

“Look,” Oliver says, getting up, dipping his napkin in his water glass to get it wet, and then walking over to the menu chalkboard. He wipes it clean, picks up a pink piece of chalk from the tray, and begins to write down names. “Claudette, Allen, Stewart, Ellen, the Conrads, Lucio Gori Junior, Lucio Gori Senior, Liam Henry, and Boring Richard.”

“Wait,” Ivy says, a sad look on her face. “Do you think my father was involved?” She turns to look at Nolan. “Remember those girls you told me about? The blogger who tried to set you up? And the one who lied about being pregnant?”

“Yeah,” Nolan says, scratching his chin. “How the fuck do all these people connect?”

“And, more importantly, who’s in charge?” Victoria asks. “Because it looks pretty clear to me that it’s all about Liam and Gori. They are the bosses, everyone else is just a player.”

“Maybe,” Five says, getting up to join Oliver. “If you look at it like a flow chart—” He draws squares and circles around each name, then starts connecting them with lines. “Then it barely makes sense.”

“Jesus fuck,” Mac says. “That is complicated.”

“Right,” Five says. “But—” He erases all the names and lines and then draws a big circle in the middle, attaching each name to it on the outside with one short line so it looks like an elongated sun a child might draw in pre-school. “If you look at it this way, it’s really rather simple.”

“It’s not a
who
inside that circle,” I say before thinking.

“But a what,” Ariel finishes for me. “Some kind of organization, or company, or…” She trails off. I don’t look at her. But it’s true. Everyone knows it. There is a cacophony of
oh
, and
yes
, and
of course
coming from everyone at the table.

“We only have one more question,” Oliver says. “What’s the name of the entity inside the circle? When we figure that out we’ll know,” he says. “We’ll know everything. Why they set us up, who was responsible, and what we need to do about it.”

Pax reaches for my hand again. We squeeze together this time.

Because we already know what goes inside that circle.

The Silver Society.

And this can only mean one thing. There is one more missing name on that list of people.

And it’s his mother.

Chapter Thirty - Paxton

The conversation lags through dinner after that. Presumably the group is busy mulling over who this mysterious entity in the center circle might be.

But the name is repeating itself over, and over, and over in my head.

The Silver Society.

I have so many questions for Cindy. They are spilling out of my mind and filling up my head until I feel like just grabbing her arm and pulling her out of the dining room.

But I can’t do that.

No. I can’t do that.

Because everyone will know I know something and then they will start asking questions. And Cindy might let something slip about the silver envelope my mother showed us at the races. And one of the guys—Corporate, probably, because we’ve never exactly been friends and he’s probably still pissed off at me about that whole island mercenary contract I had on his life a few weeks ago—will put two and two together and come up with Mariel Hawthorne. And then I might really have to kill him.

And, and, and. It goes on, and on, and on like that from there.

“How’s the food?” the chef, some fresh-faced thirty-something woman, says, beaming a smile at all of us as she claps her hands together in anticipation.

“Oh, it’s lovely,” Ivy says. I can’t see her, she’s on the other side of Cindy, and I don’t try, anyway. I just look back down at my plate as Nolan tries to convince the woman everything is perfect even though there is nothing about us that says anything is perfect.

I cut a piece of steak and shove it in my mouth.

Cindy turns her head to look at me, just as Ellie, Mac, and Five begin talking on my end of the table. She leans in and kisses me on the cheek, but instead of turning away, she lingers close to my ear and whispers, “I have to tell you something.”

I pull away and look her in the eyes.

Alone
, she mouths to me.

After dinner
, I mouth back.

Cindy takes a deep breath and nods her head, then goes back to picking at her steak. We have one course left. One more course and then I can get out of this fucking room, get away from all these fucking people, and just clear my head and think.

Think.

I really need to think.

Cindy and I are conspicuously silent after that, and Oliver does not miss this. He’s mostly scowling through the rest of the main course and when our plates are finally taken away, he says, “So…” looking straight at me. Only a few people notice. Cindy, of course. And when I look to my right at Five, he scowls and steeples his fingers under his chin like some kind of epic villain in a superhero movie.

“So,” I say back. Mac and Ellie are engaged in a conversation about their dog, who was herded away with Corporate’s new insta-kid the moment they got here. But Ariel is directly across from me, and she’s paying very close attention.

“Do you love her?” Oliver asks. “Because if you don’t, you need to back. The fuck. Away.”

“Oliver,” Cindy says. “We’re in a new relationship. We like each other enough to take it further. It’s none of your business.”

“Yes,” I say when she stops talking, never taking my eyes off Oliver. “Yes, I love her.” When I look over at Cindy, she’s smiling. Maybe even blushing. “I do,” I say. “You just took over my life and now that you’re here, I can’t imagine I would ever be happy if you left.”

“Awww,” Ariel says. “See, Oli, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Our little baby sister has won the heart of big, bad Mr. Mysterious.”

“What about your
job?
” he says to that. And he sneers the word job. “You can’t possibly—”

“I’m out,” I say. “I’m partnering up with Cindy in her detective business.”

“I guess that’s why you showed up here in a trench coat and then locked yourself in Nolan’s office?”

Ivy actually laughs on the other side of Cindy. Everyone is listening now.

“Yeah, that was kind of a dick move, Mysterious,” Nolan says.

“Oh, stop about your stupid desk, Nolan,” Ivy chastises him. “It’s no big deal. Three months ago we were sneaking away too. So stop being judge-y.”

“It’s
my
office,” Nolan says. “And I never fucked you in there.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say. “I’m done here.” I’m about to get up when the chef and servers appear with dessert, and Cindy places a calming hand on my arm to keep me seated.

“Ten minutes,” she says, leaning over to whisper in my ear. “Ten minutes and we can go back to our cabana and be alone.”

“I heard that,” Oliver says, as he is served a plate with a single chocolate-covered strawberry with some kind of filling spilling out the top.

My plate is put in front of me and I look down at it, just as the chef says, “Please enjoy the cheesecake-filled chocolate-covered strawberries. Who would like coffee?”

Fuck that. I pop the whole strawberry in my mouth and stand up before I get roped into twenty more minutes of conversation. “It was great, Elizabeth,” I say to the chef, tossing my napkin down, and chewing through the words before I swallow and continue. “Sorry I wasn’t dressed for the occasion, but I was traveling all day and now I’m pretty tired. So Cindy and I”—she is wrapping her strawberry into a hastily constructed takeaway container made out of her napkin—“are going to bed. See you on the other side, my friends.”