Page 41 of The Bridesmaid
‘What about the forensic evidence from the Colombian police?’ I ask. ‘They must have fingerprinted all the guests. Did they match it to any found in the panic room, where Adrianna was held?’
‘There were fingerprints in the hostage area, from all the bridesmaids. Along with about a hundred other people’s. As well as their DNA, hair, and clothing fibers. The Kensingtons were conducting tours that night. Showing off their new panic room. There was so much forensic matter in that room, it took the Colombian team two months to process.’
I absorb all this. ‘You’re thinking a party guest kidnapped Adrianna, then lay low for three years.’
‘Until the wedding was announced,’ considers Fitzwilliam.
‘Or until Simone started investigating,’ I say. ‘She was obsessed with that case. Ever since she met Leopold Kensington at a Wine Gala six months ago. I assumed she was just attracted to the TV ratings. Now I’m thinking … maybe Simone had a closer connection to the case she didn’t tell me about. Why else would she have risked her life to investigate?’
‘Everything points to another bridesmaid,’ says Fitzwilliam. ‘All four women were at Adrianna’s twenty-first birthday. All four were the only people with access to the storage room, the night of the murder.’
My mouth twists. ‘And we’re about to board a plane with them.’
Chapter Thirty-One
HOLLY
Being on the Kensingtons’ private jet is a surreal experience. When we boarded, the other bridesmaids barely looked at me.
I had been wondering how the hell this was going to work. How does a new bridesmaid arrive without everybody questioning it? Now I see the opposite is true. Mark was right. It’s like a job. Someone else left. I’ve got the position. No one questions it.
Fitzwilliam has been relegated to the back with the cabin crew. I’ve been seated right across from Silky, who didn’t show up at the Plaza. She’s famous in New York cinematography circles for dark and haunting works. Up close, she looks dangerously thin, the skeletal lines exacerbated by her height.
Silky has angular features and black hair cut in a bob. She is dressed almost entirely in rather dilapidated vintage pieces. A lace-trimmed slip dress, and a jet-black designer suit jacket swung casually over her shoulders. The look would be perfect for a New York It girl in her twenties, but somehow, she is just very slightly wide of the mark. The dress is a shade too short. The baseball sneakers look a few years out of date. And … I realize with shock … she smells. A low unwashed odor overlaid with high notes of incense that I guess come from whichever GreenwichVillage flea market she picked up her wardrobe from. Something about her eyes is wrong. Blank. Distant. As if her mind is very much elsewhere.
She introduces herself, shaking my hand in a languid way, and holding me in an intense, serious gaze.
‘I’m doing the flowers,’ she explains. ‘You?’
‘Law,’ I say awkwardly.
She nods. ‘Be careful around the other bridesmaids. Kensington Manor School girls can be unkind to new arrivals.’
Before I can ask what she means, Silky leans against her seat and closes her eyes. Within seconds, she’s breathing deeply.
Adrianna has taken advantage of a private room with full-size double bed, and is presumably snoozing out of sight. Georgia has no such luck; her ballerina-pump feet are crossed at the ankle as she frantically leafs through seating plans for the wedding breakfast.
Ophelia has her cream leather seat set back, a bold-print eyemask pushed up to ruffle her paintbox orange hair, playing a game on her neon-cased phone. The heat of the flight has raised two rosy pink spots on the freckled skin of her cheeks. Her jumpsuit and heels combo have been switched for a designer velour version, matched with Chanel sliders for the airplane.
Over the aisle, Petra’s spider-long legs are kicked out in a pair of silver sneakers. She and Ophelia seem to not be making eye contact. Georgia positions herself as far away from Petra as possible.
Silky wakes up as the airplane begins to descend over a patch of azure Caribbean ocean soaked in blazing sunlight. The island below is a hump of dark green; the headland stretches to a thin tip, which frays away into a tattered coast, like a smudged thumbprint.There’s a curved bay, taking a deep, sandy-edged bite out of the headland.
The plane loops around and Silky begins frantically sketching in her notepad.
Around the island, the blue sea gives way to the lightest pastel green. Lagoon-like, and pretty. Fuzzy dabs of jungle – one hairy thicket from the air – are scarred with rectangles of broken shrub.
‘They tried to grow sugarcane here,’ explains Silky, pointing. ‘It never took. The English Kensingtons gifted the island to Leopold as kind of a joke.’
‘How do you gift someone an island as a joke?’
‘It was their wedding present,’ she explains. ‘When Leopold got here to check it out, he discovered they’d dumped him with a tropical rock with nowhere to land a plane or even moor a boat safely. The early Kensingtons had thrown up a few stone buildings and fled when they realized you couldn’t grow anything here but mosquitos, but,’ she stretches her arms high, releasing a waft of musty scent, and yawns. ‘Leopold being Leopold, he took that worthless land, and made it worth a fortune. Playground for the rich and famous. It wastheplace to be, a decade ago.’
The comma-shaped island spills from the central cone of a verdant dormant volcano. From the air, I can make out a clutch of square, water-filled terraces on one of the steep sides. Hot springs.
‘That’s Fortune House,’ Silky is pointing to a jungle-swathed peak, topped with slabs of gray building. ‘The Kensingtons used to have big parties there when we were kids.’ She looks sad.
‘You grew up with the Kensingtons?’ I say.
