Page 1 of Intrigued
Chapter One
December 22nd
“Christmas with the Christmases” was something I’d been repeating ever since I’d accepted Bronwyn Henrietta Christmas’s invitation. Her offer was twofold—spend the holiday with her family while taking on a project that would excuse the debt I owed them. What she’d hired me to do was still a mystery. All I knew was that it paid a lot of money.
“Is it legal?” I had asked during our call in which it sounded as though she were whispering.
From the moment I met Bronwyn, I realized she lived every moment of her life in secret. Even the circumstances of how we’d become roommates at Redmond College were a secret. Redmond was an all-girls liberal arts college on the East Coast, where the rich and privileged sent their daughters to live up to their blue-blooded family names. My blood was redder than red. I was not rich, and I sure as hell wasn’t privileged. I was the daughter of a conman and a perpetually depressed woman who had willed herself into an early grave. But school had become my safe haven. I loved learning and had graduated at the top of my class, earning a full academic ride to Redmond.
“Yes, it’s legal,” Bronwyn whispered, although she sounded as if I had insulted her.
“Okay, then tell me what it is,” I blared.
She paused. “I can’t. Not over the phone.”
“Why not?”
“Holly, please don’t make this harder than it already is. What I need falls in line with what you do, investigative reporting. I know you’re an independent reporter. I read both of your books,The Howsley ProjectandIn Defense of Bad Air.”
I sat up straight, gripping the handles of my black leather chair, and studied the large downtown building on the other side of the busy avenue. “You did?”
“Yes, I did.”
I had sold a lot of those books, but she was the first person from my early years to say she’d read them. It felt strange and rather gratifying.
“I promise it will be worth your while,” she whispered even lower than before.
I’d accepted her invitation, and now, after a hectic start to my day and a four-hour drive from Philadelphia to Newport, Rhode Island, I stood in front of the Christmas mansion estate. The massive iron gates with their pointy spears at the top and a twisting design of the family crest in the middle opened wide to let me in.
My nerves were through the roof as I drove slowly past the pine trees, glistening fresh snow, and expansive white lawn on my final approach toward the rustic red stone mansion with high gables, plenty of windows glowing with warm light, and chimneys peaking beyond the roof like narrow spires. I couldn’t rip my eyes off the sheer size and magnificence of the home. The place looked more like an exclusive five-star hotel. It was strange to know people actually lived there.
Finally, I arrived at a fork in the drive and decided to curve toward the front of the house. Bryn had given me no instructions regarding where to park or what would happen once I arrived. She had only given me the address and the family gate code. We had agreed she would meet me any time between 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. I glanced at the time on the console. It was 3:17 p.m. I stopped under the carport and searched past the archway of the enclosed patio. It looked as if no one had opened what looked like the iron castle doors in centuries.
I figured I should get out to see if Bryn or anyone could direct me on what to do next. But the longer I thought about where I actually was, the antsier I became. This was the estate of the famous or infamous Christmases, depending on how I looked at them. Suddenly, I wished I’d stayed home, even if it would’ve been another Christmas spent alone. I would’ve drunk hot cocoa and caught up on all the issues of my news magazine subscriptions that I had missed while tending to a busy summer of covering political scandals and corporate cover-ups.
But that was only my fear talking. I hadn’t laid eyes on Bronwyn Henrietta Christmas in the flesh since we’d hugged and wished each other a great summer after our first year of college had ended. Since I had been assigned to the same dorm room for the next academic year, I thought surely I would be rooming with her again. But she hadn’t shown up. Junior and senior years went by, and I was assigned to the same dorm room, but Bryn had never shown up. I’d tried calling her, but I would only reach one of the family estate secretaries, who’d promised to inform Bryn that I’d rung her.
I took a deep, settling breath. For four years of college, I’d lived in the most posh dorm on campus. It wasn’t by accident. I took a moment to recall the first time I ever met the pretty, wealthy girl with her perfect bob of blond ringlets that showcased her sensual bow-tie mouth and coveted bedroom eyes. It had been during student orientation, which had taken place a week before school began.
No one sat on either side of me in the large auditorium, although the place was packed and abuzz with excited chatter. It was as though all the girls knew each other from summers at a posh camp in the Alps somewhere or from the times their families mingled while vacationing in Europe. My curious ears listened to how they discussed who went to which overpriced private high school and how some of the girls didn’t have the grades to land a spot in Redmond.
“Her spot was given to one of the hobos,” one of them said.
I only realized I was one of the hobos when the girl with the dark hair and blue eyes glared at me after saying that.
A girl flopped down in the seat next to me. “Don’t mind them. They’re stinky little bitches with bad breath and sour pussies.”
I gasped at her filthy language, even though I was thankful that my new adversaries seemed wounded by what the girl had said.
“I’m Bronwyn Christmas, but the people I like call me Bryn.”
One of the girls turned to the side and pretended not to be watching us through her peripheral vision. Something told me she wasn’t permitted to call Bronwyn by her nickname. It was also clear that in the pecking order of the rich and powerful, Bryn was at the top.
She asked me where I grew up, and I was not ashamed to say, “Pittsburgh.”
“What does your father do?”
I narrowed an eye. “You mean for work?”
