Page 88 of Beach Reads and Deadly Deeds

“Oh, happy birthday.”

“Thanks. Thirty. I don’t feel different.” I think I’d felt—and acted—thirty from the minute I took my position at McMann & Cohn five years ago. I’d skipped over my fun twenties. The thought depressed me.

Brie stared at the water and drank her daiquiri.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I think my dad is going to propose to Sherry tonight. I’m just—well, it’s fucked. Fuckity fuck fuck.”

“Do you know much about her? Her background?” My mind raced. Sherry wasn’t who she seemed. Her attitude with me, her sneaking around the island, paying a creepy guy cash for who knew what.

Brie shrugged. “Enough to know that she’s awful. I don’t want my dad to marry her. Iknowshe’s after his money. Okay, I don’tknow, but Ithinkshe is, and her last husband is dead, and I don’t want my dad to... to...”

Her voice caught, and I said, “Have you told him how you feel?”

“Yes! No. Sort of. I mean, Sherry is the first woman he’s ever broughthere. I just think she’s two-faced. She’s fun and nice and all casual when she’s with my dad, but when he’s not around? She’s conniving. Snotty. She criticized the housekeeping staff for being mediocre, that we didn’t pay a thousand dollars a day to live in filth.My dadpays a thousand dollars a day. Not her. I don’t think she has any money other than what she got from her husbands.”

“Two-faced,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“Diana wrote in the book that she was meeting ‘two-face’ at eight on Sunday. Maybe you’re not the only person who thinks that Sherry is two-faced.”

“You could be right. But we can’t prove it.” Brie was right, but I didn’t discount the idea. She said, “You know, it’s just been dad and me for years, and I don’t want him to be alone.”

“Give him more credit,” I said. I hesitated, then told her what Sherry said to me in the spa. “She thought I was flirting with your dad, and that I had befriended you in order to get close to him.”

“What?”

“Then I saw her today in St. John, and she was acting... well, suspicious.” I didn’t tell her what Sherry said on the ferry, or how she intentionally scared me. I still wasn’t certain I hadn’t turned a light warning into a serious threat. “I followed her.”

“You followed her where?”

“I saw her in a taxi. She met up with a suspicious guy in the middle of nowhere and gave him an envelope of cash.”

“I knew she was up to something! And?”

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”

“Mia,” Brie said, and bit her lip. “Please don’t be mad at me.”

“You took Diana’s book from my room.” Instantly I was relieved. That meant it wasn’t gone.

Brie frowned. “No! Why would I? Is it missing?”

“Someone broke into my room. They made a mess and took the book, which I’d taped behind the dresser, just asyousuggested. Just tell me the truth. Do you have it?”

“No,” she said. Then she glanced away. “Well, shit.”

My heart fell. “I really hoped it was you. I would have been mad, but also happy that it wasn’t gone.”

“Ididn’ttake it,” she insisted. “But—I did go into your room last night. The patio door was unlocked. I shouldn’t have, I know! But I wanted to see what you didn’t want me to see.”

I was confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Yesterday, you totally didn’t want me to go through the book, and I thought there might have been something written in there about my dad that you didn’t want me to know. The door wasunlocked. And I didn’t touch anything else. I looked behind the dresser. It was there. I read it, put it back exactly where I found it.”

That had a ring of truth.

---