Papers rustled on the other end. “What do you mean?”
Rowan pictured Poppy’s old assistant. Long, dark hair, olive skin, a pretty face, a diamond-encrusted Chopard watch surely paid for by her father and not her assistant’s salary. She had fit in well in the jewelry culture, always traveling with a gaggle of girls to lunch or happy hour.
“I spoke to Danielle Gilchrist recently, and she told me you noticed Poppy acting strangely before you left for De Beers.”
There was a long pause. “I’m really sorry about Poppy,” Shoshanna started. “I feel so guilty saying anything bad about her, you know?”
“I know,” Rowan said quickly. “This isn’t going on the record, either. I’m just curious about what exactly happened.”
“Well, she was acting weird,” Shoshanna said uneasily. “She asked me to get off a lot of calls. She scheduled appointments but didn’t describe who they were with or where she was going. It made it hard to explain to Mason and other executives why she couldn’t make meetings when I didn’t know where she actually was. But what really made me wonder was the suite she booked at the Mandarin.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got a call from the hotel confirming Poppy’s reservation for one of their suites on a Wednesday. It wasn’t on her calendar, so I thought it was a mistake. I was telling them to cancel it when Poppy broke in on the other line. ‘Shoshanna, I’ve got it,’ she said, and then told the reservations person that she would use her private card.” Shoshanna coughed awkwardly. “Then I got off the line. But it seemed kind of . . . clear, you know?”
Rowan shut her eyes. “But you never caught a name? Never . . . saw anyone?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.” A phone rang on Shoshanna’s end. “Which means it might not be anything. I mean, I’m sure it’s not.” She swallowed audibly. “Poppy was a really good boss. I don’t want you to think I’d ever, I don’t know—sell this information.”
“Of course not,” Rowan said, though she hadn’t even considered that.
She thanked Shoshanna, then hung up and walked into the restaurant in a daze. There it was, probably as close as she was going to get to proof that Poppy wasn’t who Rowan had understood her to be. But as painful as Shoshanna’s revelation was, it was also freeing. Staying away from James was being loyal to a ghost who hadn’t been loyal to James. Poppy had moved on and found love elsewhere, and now maybe James and Rowan could too.
Corinne waved to her from a back table, and Rowan nodded and wove through the dining room to get to her. An iPad loaded with pictures sat in front of her cousin; Corinne was going through photographs to display at her wedding. When Corinne saw Rowan’s expression, she cocked her head. “Did something happen?”
Rowan explained her conversation with Shoshanna. “So maybe Poppy and whoever the guy was had been meeting at a suite at the Mandarin,” she concluded.
“Huh,” Corinne said softly, though she didn’t look like she quite believed it. “I wonder who it could be.”
“No idea,” Rowan said.
“Are you going to tell James?”
“I already told him what Danielle said.” Rowan ran her finger along a groove on the wooden table. She’d finally mentioned her conversation with Danielle when she slept over at his place last night. “Well, that proves it, then,” he’d said thickly.
James wanted to put it behind them; let sleeping dogs lie, he’d said. They had each other now. But Rowan couldn’t let it go. What if the affair had something to do with Poppy’s death?
A waitress set down two glasses of Corinne and Rowan’s favorite malbec on the table, breaking Rowan from her thoughts. “So. How’s the picture selection coming?”
“Eh,” Corinne said miserably, flipping through a few images.
“What about this one?” Rowan pointed at a photograph of Corinne and Dixon a few years after they’d first met at Yale. They were at a Kentucky Derby party—Corinne was wearing an oversize hat, and Dixon was drinking from a silver cup. “It’s really cute,” Rowan added.
Corinne shook her head. “I look terrible in that one.”
She scrolled through another perfectly good photo, nixing it too. Then another. Finally she let out a long sigh and ran her fingers through her hair. Rowan thought about what Corinne had confessed at the beach estate.
Rowan laid her hands on top of the iPad and gave her cousin a long, serious look. “Honey. What are you going to do?”
Corinne heaved a sigh and then dropped her forehead to the table. The part in her hair was a stark line splitting her head in two. “I’m going to get married,” she said in a muffled voice.
“Do you want to get married?”
“Of course.”
“People will forgive you if you don’t, you know.”
Corinne looked up, her mouth twisting. “What do you think Poppy would do?”