Privilege 1 - Privilege (10 page)

More important, she had to find the information she needed fast or Briana Leigh was going to realize that Emma Walsh wasn't quite what she seemed.

"Hey, Emma! Get your butt inside!" Briana Leigh shouted. "That pasty skin of yours cannot handle our Texas sun, and I am not going to this party tonight with some red-faced freak."

The girl turned and sashayed back inside, leaving the huge door yawning open behind her. Ariana bit down on her tongue and followed.

This is all for a good cause, she reminded herself as she stepped into the airy entryway to Briana Leigh's exquisite home. All for a very good cause.

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"Briana Leigh! Where have you been all day?"

Ariana paused in the center of the tiled foyer as an elderly woman in an automatic wheelchair zoomed in from the open archway to the south. Her heart fluttered as if she had just bumped into someone famous. It was Kaitlynn's beloved Grandma C. The woman looked tiny in her chair, but somehow not at all frail. She stared up at Briana Leigh through thick glasses, her pointy chin to the sky. Her white hair was pulled into the tightest bun Ariana had ever seen.

"At the club," Briana Leigh replied coolly, crossing her arms over her chest. "Why do you care?"

"We were supposed to talk about school this afternoon. I confirmed with you this morning, did I not?" Grandma C. demanded.

Ariana smirked. This woman was all business.

"So I forgot," Briana Leigh said, rolling her eyes. "We can talk about it tomorrow."

"We will talk about it right now, Briana Leigh," the old woman snapped.

"Grandmother" Briana Leigh said through her teeth. "I have z guest."

Briana Leigh turned toward Ariana, and Grandma C. followed her gaze. Her eyebrows shot up as she noticed for the first time that she and her granddaughter were not alone. She touched the pad on her wheelchair's arm and zoomed right up to Ariana.

"And who might you be?" she asked, her tone softened to one of mild interest.

"I'm Emma," Ariana said, extending her hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Covington."

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"Manners! Interesting. My granddaughter usually brings home nothing but heathens."

Ariana gave a polite chuckle--not too big, lest she offend Briana Leigh for laughing at such an obvious dig. Briana Leigh's grandmother never took her eyes off Ariana as she reached up and clasped her hand. Her grip was like iron. Impressive for such a tiny woman. "It's a pleasure to meet you as well," she said.

"Emma is going to be staying with me for a while," Briana Leigh said authoritatively, daring her grandmother to contradict her.

"If it's all right with you, of course," Ariana added, earning a sour look from Briana Leigh. But she couldn't help it. She had been trained from birth to be deferential to her elders.

Grandma C. clearly appreciated the effort. She gave Ariana an approving glance and nodded. "Good. Maybe you'll be a positive influence on my granddaughter while you're here. Make yourself at home."

"I will. Thank you," Ariana said. She now understood why Kaitlynn loved the woman so much. She was powerful and straightforward.

Grandma C. turned her chair to face Briana Leigh. "Y and I will talk tomorrow morning," she told her. "Good afternoon, ladies." With that, she

ou zipped out of the room, leaving Ariana with her hostess.

"Well. She liked you," Briana Leigh said in an acidic tone. As if the idea irritated her.

"Grandparents are pretty easy to work," Ariana replied, hoping Briana Leigh would believe that she was just putting on a front for

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the old woman. "It's nice to humor them, don't you think? They're so frail."

Briana Leigh smirked. "You've got style, I'll give you that," she said. "Come on. Let's go find you a room."

Ariana followed Briana Leigh out of the foyer and over to a wide staircase, appraising the gorgeous home as she went. She was glad she'd had a chance to meet Mrs. Covington. But she couldn't help wondering why Briana Leigh kept the woman around. Clearly the old lady irritated Briana Leigh. If the girl was such a cold-blooded killer, why not just feed the matriarch a mess of sleeping pills and earn her freedom?

There was a time when Ariana would have done that herself.

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MOURNING

"That's all you brought?" Briana Leigh asked, glancing at Ariana's backpack as she opened the double doors to one of the guest suites.

"The airline lost my luggage," Ariana lied. "My cousin said she'd send it along as soon as it was delivered to the house."

"Well, you can borrow some of my old things in the meantime, I guess. You'll be a season or two behind, but beggars can't be choosers, right?"

Ariana's cheeks turned pink with irritation over having this pointed out to her face. Never in her life had she had to beg for anything. Not even inside the Brenda T. But this was just a brief moment in her life. A blip. If everything went according to plan, things would soon be back to normal. She forced herself to smile. "Thanks."

"Well, here it is." Briana Leigh lifted a hand toward the spacious, impeccably decorated guest room. Ariana already found herself savoring the view outside the huge glass doors that led to her own private

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balcony. Outside there was a gorgeous pond surrounded by wildflowers, and behind it the sun was just dipping into view, headed for the horizon. "Meet me down by the pool when you're done unpacking. It's behind the game room at the back of the house. If you get lost, there's always some maid or other around to direct you. Did you at least get a suit when you went back to your cousin's?"

Ariana turned around as Briana Leigh headed out the door. "Actually, no. They were all in my luggage."

Briana Leigh rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll have one of the girls bring you one of mine."

"Thank you."

"There should be some other stuff in the closet," Briana Leigh said, nodding toward a door near the head of the bed. "I always have the maids move the out-of-season stuff to other rooms so it doesn't get in my way."

Rather than, say, give it to charity, Ariana thought. "Okay. Thanks again, Briana Leigh."

"Don't mention it. Like I said, this is going to be fun!" The girl smiled for the first time since Ariana had arrived, then closed the doors behind her.

Finally alone, Ariana sighed with relief. She walked over to the king-size bed and fell back into its huge feather pillows. She smiled in delight as supersoft, eight-hundred-thread-count pillowcases enveloped her.

"I did it," she whispered to herself. "I'm actually here."

Opening her eyes, she noted the elaborate gold-and-crystal

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chandelier overhead and grimaced. Ariana had never understood the compulsion people seemed to have to put dining room lighting in the bedroom.

She sat up and checked out the rest of her new home. On the east wall was a huge, ornate Victorian-style dresser, which her meager supply of clothes would never fill. Across the wide hardwood floor stood a large desk with a laptop and printer. Ariana got up to check out what she assumed would be the bathroom through the door opposite the bed. Instead she found a sitting room with two couches, a plasma-screen TV, and a well- stocked library of books and DVDs. She giggled in glee and turned back to the bedroom. There were two doors on either side of the four-poster bed. One led to a walk-in closet stuffed to the seams with clothing--from skinny jeans to colorful gauzy tops to overly sequined dresses. Most of it offended Ariana's simple sense of style, but considering the sheer abundance, there was probably something she could work with. She closed the door and opened the second door. A grin lit her entire face. The bathroom was modern and state-of-the-art, with a glass-encased stall shower and a separate Jacuzzi tub.

A tub. Ariana tingled at the very sight of it, picking up the Kiehl's products that were set up along the shelf. She hadn't had a tub in forever, and she could almost feel the warm bubbles tickling her skin. But that would have to wait for later.

Ariana headed back into the bedroom and crossed over to the desk, her heart starting to pound with trepidation. She took a deep breath and opened the laptop. It powered itself on instantly. Ariana stared at

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the blue-and-white backdrop on the screen, feeling sick with fear and anticipation.

"Just get it over with," she whispered to herself. "You have to know."

She pulled the chair out and sat down. Her fingers itched as she brought up the Google search screen, and she mistyped her own name three times.

"Dammit," Ariana said quietly. She held her own fingers and breathed.

In, one... two... three...

Out, one... two... three...

The breaths calmed her. The trembling stopped. Focused, she typed her name and hit search.

Instantly, dozens of articles from myriad magazines, newspapers, and gossip sites popped up. Ariana clicked on the first, a New York Times piece, and read slowly and carefully.

Following the evidence Ariana had planted for them--the footprints she had left in the soft earth leading to the dock from which she had launched the skiff--the FBI had dredged Lake Page for her body. They had, of course, found nothing. None of this was a surprise. But the following paragraph left Ariana's mouth dry.

"I don't care how long it takes. We are going to keep searching this lake until we find my daughter, "Arthur Osgood said. "I don't care if I have to personally pay to have this lake dredged a hundred times. My daughter will have a proper Christian burial. "

"Crap, Daddy," Ariana said, her accent sounding more pronounced than usual in the silence. She covered her mouth with her hand and

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leaned her elbow on the desk. Why couldn't her father just let it go? It wasn't as if he'd cared to see her when she was "alive." She knew that her father loved her in his own way--he had, after all, paid all that money to ensure she was placed at the Brenda T. rather than at some maximum security prison, and he had bought off all those people just so she could wear her fleur-de-lis--but he hadn't been up to visit her once since her incarceration. Why the doting father act now?

The rest of the article contained information about her childhood, her conviction, her sentence. A little bit about that awful mess with her sister last year at Easton and an editorial aside about how insanity obviously ran in the family, which made her want to call the newspaper and complain. Reporters were supposed to report, not make diagnoses.

Then Ariana came to a quote that stopped her blood cold.

"She was my baby, "Lillian Osgood said via phone, through anguished sobs. "My one and only child. I don't care what you all think she did. She did not deserve to die this way. "

A follow-up call was fielded by Mrs. Osgood's psychiatrist, who told this reporter that her patient would be making no further comment.

Ariana's heart expanded in her chest as tears welled in her eyes. One hand flew to the fleur-de-lis necklace as the other compulsively reached for the phone next to the computer. Her mother was in pain. She had to call and let her know that her baby was all right. But before she dialed through the area code, her logic kicked back in and she stopped herself.

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No one could know she was alive. Not even her mother. Especially not her mother, who had a tendency to babble when drugged, which was most of the time. Ariana put the phone down again and covered her eyes as tears spilled down her cheeks. She was never going to speak to her mother again. Never going to see her or hug her or hear her sing her favorite lullaby. Ariana's heart filled with grief, overwhelmed by the loss. How was she going to do this? How was she ever going to get through all of this alone?

There was a quick rap on the door, and Ariana's head popped up. She quickly dried her tears with her hands and stood up, slapping the laptop closed. "Come in."

A slight woman with white hair and a boxy gray uniform strode into the room, holding what appeared to be a scrap of purple nylon.

"Hello, miss," she said with a quick bow of the head. "Miss Briana Leigh asked me to bring this to you."

She held out the bathing suit. Ariana plucked it from her fingers and held it up, trying to discern where the many flosslike straps were supposed to go. Never in a million years would Ariana have ever been caught dead in such a revealing suit.

But then, she wasn't Ariana Osgood anymore.

"Thank you," Ariana said.

The woman smiled and scurried from the room. Ariana opened the laptop again and, with one final thought of her mother, quickly deleted the Google history. She could leave no evidence of Ariana Osgood behind. As of that moment Ariana Osgood was dead.

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LACK OF TRUST Briana Leigh had a manicurist on call. Other than Vienna Clark, an old friend from Easton Academy whose mother owned several upscale salons in New Y and L.A., Ariana had never met anyone who had a manicurist on call. But the second Briana Leigh had seen the sorry state of Ariana's

ork cuticles and toes, she had speed-dialed Libby Lane's Gold Star Salon. Now, as Briana Leigh lounged in the hot tub next to her indoor pool, Libby Lane herself sat at the end of Ariana's lounge chair, going to town on her calluses with a pumice stone.

Ariana would have been offended by Briana Leigh's audacity, if she hadn't been so very grateful.

"Your magazines, miss."

The maid who had delivered the bathing suit that was currently riding up Ariana's ass placed a stack of fashion mags on the slate floor between Ariana's chair and the hot tub. Ariana glanced at her hostess and, when the girl said nothing, uttered a quick, "Thank you."

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The woman smiled at Ariana for the second time that day, and Ariana started to realize that those two words were a rarity around this house. All that money and Briana Leigh couldn't even spare a thank-you here and there to the people who took care of her evil, greedy, traitorous self?

No matter how hard Ariana tried, she just could not wrap her brain around the idea of killing for money. Especially one's own parent. Crimes of passion were another story. Those she could understand. She knew firsthand how a person could come to that. But what Briana Leigh had done was unthinkable. And what she'd done afterward--pinning the murder on her innocent best friend--was even worse.