Page 87 of Thief of Night
“Carver,” Charlie repeated. “Remy Carver.”
There was another long pause. “Let me talk to my manager.”
“Thank you.” Either the woman taking reservations at Solaluna was a very nice person or Carver was a very good name to drop.
After a few more minutes, she returned. “There’s a private cottage on the grounds. The person who booked it canceled and my manager said that she would be happy to offer it to Mr. Carver.”
Charlie didn’t even want to think about the price per night, but she knew enough not to ask. “You’re saving my job here.”
“There’s just one thing. This weekend we have a private group in. We can make sure he doesn’t share any of the same spaces and the spa will be open as usual, but some parts of the grounds will be closed off.”
“No problem,” she said into the phone.
“And we need a credit card,” the woman said. “How would you like to pay?”
Charlie read off the numbers on Topher’s credit card before she could think better of it.
“Just to confirm,” the woman said. “We’ll be charging a deposit of eleven thousand dollars to hold the cottage and we’ll charge the rest when Mr. Carver checks in. Please let him know that he will have an on-site butler who can assist him in arranging whatever he needs at any time of day or night.”
Charlie’s palms felt sweaty. Eleven thousand dollars forthree nights? The idea of that much money made her head swim. And that was just the deposit.
“Miss?” the woman asked, into her silence.
“That’s fine,” Charlie ground out, telling herself that Topher would hardly notice. He probably spent that much most weekends, jet-setting, getting bottle service in clubs, and buying those ridiculous outfits.
One of the biggest rules of the con, the rule so obvious that it didn’t need to be repeated, so clear that most people figured it out on their own, was thatno scam should touch the scammer’s real life. You slithered into the lives of the wealthy and then you slithered out again, leaving nothing behind.
But she wasn’t doing that. If Topher realized his card was stolen, he only had to glance at the charge to trace it back to her. And he was bound to realize eventually.
Charlie told herself that once she got to Solaluna, she’d find a way to reverse the charges or slip some other card from some other wallet and use that.
“What are you doing with my computer?” Posey asked from the doorway.
“Hey, you’re home.” Charlie logged out of Reddit as Posey jerked the laptop out of her hands. Not enough time for Charlie to delete the history. “Chill! I needed to look something up.”
“What?” Posey looked at her expectantly.
“A retreat upstate,” Charlie said, since there was no reason to lie about that.
“Funny thing.” Posey sat down on the couch next to her. “I am not going to ask where you went last night or why you ate all our peanut butter, but you should see what’s on the news.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s about the Hatfield Massacre,” Posey said. “They found another body.”
27Bad Decisions
Posey passed her phone over, with a video cued up on YouTube from Western Mass News. A newscaster in a red sweater had been paused midsentence:…the coroner has determined the time of death to be too close to the Hatfield Massacre for the events not to be related. The body of TikTok darling Dave Pugliese, who went by the name of Rooster Argent on the platform, final victim of the nightmarish event that changed this sleepy town forever, was found buried in the graveyard behind the Grace Covenant Church. If you have any information, the Hatfield sheriff has put up a tip line to call.The square over the woman’s shoulder, which had been showing the icon of a shadowy church, changed to an image of a balding man.Next, new charges in the Maine governor’s election fraud case—
Charlie paused the video, hoping that somewhere Mr. Punch was impressed. Rooster Argent was dead, just like she’d predicted.
“See?” Posey said. “I knew he didn’t do it.”
Charlie had forgotten about the argument she’d made in favor of Rooster being the murderer. “You’re right. My bad.”
“Does that mean you’re not going to that Umbral Elevation thing, since you can be sure he won’t be there?” Posey asked.
Charlie tried to make a noncommittal motion, a half shrug that might not have looked like anything at all. She should have guessed that Posey would immediately know what retreat upstate she’d been investigating. “I never said I was going.”
