The Last of August

Page 38

Hi luv, hope u don’t mind. Tabitha gave me ur number. Ace wingwoman she is. Fancy a cuppa tomorrow?

“Holmes. This is wretched. This is like British by numbers.”

“Can’t help it. It’s what you sound like when you’re playing posh.” She bit her lip. “Isn’t that right, mate.”

Aren’t you the sly one, Marie-Helene had written back. Jesus Christ. Sending your cousin to do your dirty work! Yes, of course I’d love to see you.

Luv to see ur paintings and talk more about them. Sorry was a bit shit last nite at ur teacher’s. Got nervous.

“Simon wouldn’t have used an apostrophe if he’s too lazy to type out a full word.”

She looked innocently up at me from the top of her book. “Bloody hell, I made a bleedin’ mistake.”

Why nervous? Marie-Helene had asked, and added a line of angel emojis.

Isn’t it obvious? Ur beautiful. U kno it 2.

Blush emoji.

“No,” I groaned. “No. Absolutely not. This is like a L.A.D. song. This is like my sister’s L.A.D. fan fiction.”

“I learned quite a bit from your sister,” Holmes said with some satisfaction. “I learned that when you were a toddler, you once insisted on wearing your underwear outside your trousers for an entire week. I saw the photos.”

“No.” I was going to murder Shelby, and creatively.

“I also learned every word to every song on L.A.D’s debut album.” To my surprise, she started warbling, “Girl / yeah girl you’re beautiful / you know you’re effin’ beautiful—”

I threw a pillow at her. She dodged it nimbly. “How can someone with a private music teacher have such bad pitch?”

“We all have our own personal skill set, Watson. Not all of us are professional heartbreakers.”

“Is there a real reason why I’m meeting Marie-Helene for coffee this afternoon? Or are you just feeling punchy?”

She lofted the book up in the air. Gifte, the title read, on a marbled textbook cover.

“Are you asking what I want for Christmas?” I asked. “Or should I suddenly be able to speak German?”

“Poisons, Watson. The word means poison. There are some things you can’t tell from surveillance footage and from frisking the housekeeping staff, as much as Milo would deny it. If I can’t do anything about Leander . . . I’m going to run some things I know about my mother’s medical history. Try to narrow down what she’s been exposed to, and from there, determine how it’s gotten into the house. Milo’s gone, you know, and now I have access to his labs. To his techs! It’s going to be an excellent afternoon.”

“I thought we’d have this case solved by midnight,” I said.

“We will.”

“This case. Not the one with your parents.”

“Obviously, they’re connected. Occam’s razor, Watson. How often are your family members kidnapped and poisoned inside the same week?” Her words were flip, but her voice wasn’t. “The simplest explanation is the truest. Always. So I’m boning up, as it were. While you’re using this girl as an in. Pump her for information. Turn on that skeezy laddish charm.”

“Any more gross puns?”

“I’m just not up for it—”

“Stop.” What did it say about us, that the best we’d gotten along in days was when we were planning my date with another girl? “Fine, I’ll get a look inside Marie-Helene’s studio, ask her friends some leading questions, try to get a read on Nathaniel before we stake out East Side Gallery tonight. But I’m getting a sandwich first.”

“Yes, good.” Like she was donning a cape, Holmes threw her ratty robe over her clothes and tucked her book under her arm. “And Watson,” she said, “wear your fedora,” and she snickered to herself all the way down the hall.

MARIE-HELENE LIKED MY HAT. SHE LIKED MY BOOTS, TOO, and the band shirt I wore with my ripped jeans, which wasn’t exactly a good thing, since I’d never listened to them.

“And anyway,” she was saying, holding her latte in her gloved hands, “Faulkner’s always been my favorite, but I like Murakami a lot, too. They’re so different, it’s hard to choose between them.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure.” We were standing outside the café where she’d wanted to meet, a half block from her studio. She’d pointed it out to me earlier—the steepled roof, the brick walls—and I was waiting for an excuse to ask to see it.

“And graphic novels. I think they’re what got me drawing in the first place.” She sipped at her drink. The fuzzy ball on the top of her hat bobbled back and forth. “Are you okay? You look distracted again.”

I forced a smile. “Just a bit lost in my thoughts, love,” I said, and I was. I wanted to move things along. I wanted to be back at Greystone with new evidence. I wanted to know when talking to a French girl about our favorite authors on a snowy street in Berlin stopped being my idea of a perfect Sunday. All I really wanted to do was get to her studio so I could rifle through her things while she was in the bathroom.

Sometimes I wondered if hanging out with Charlotte Holmes had made me into a monster. At times like this, I knew it for sure. “So how did you get into art?”

“Well, once I got lost in the Louvre—wait,” she said, frowning. “I thought I told you that already, at the Old Met.”

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