Nothing. Had they gone away for a few nights, like traditional honeymooners? He opened the bedroom door. Empty.
Rafferty moved down the hallway, knocking on doors, then opening them, calling fruitlessly to each of the Whitings as he moved. He made his way to the third floor, to the servants’ wing, and knocked on the long row of white doors.
There was no one there. All of the servants had been dismissed.
The only place he hadn’t looked was the wine cellar. He went back to the empty library, turning on more lights. The bar, normally hidden behind the bookcase, was turned at a right angle into the room, and he could see light below. Either they’d neglected to lock things up after the party, or someone was down there.
He walked behind the bar to the elevator and pushed the call button. Nothing. He could see down the shaft to the elevator at the bottom. He pressed the call button again and, once again, nothing happened.
There was a house phone in the speakeasy. He’d seen Finn use it on Thanksgiving, calling the kitchen for more glasses. There was probably one in the spa as well.
He walked to the partners desk and found the house phone off the hook. He replaced it on the cradle, then picked it up and pressed the button marked SPA. It rang, but no one answered. He stepped forward, and his foot stubbed something soft.
Finn’s face was blue, and there was a trail of bloody vomit on the rug next to him leading to the couch. He must have tried to crawl toward the phone before collapsing on the floor. Rafferty knelt, trying to rouse him, but Finn’s body resisted. Already rigor mortis had begun to set in.
Rafferty used his cell to dial 911. Then he unlocked the front door and left it open for the Beverly police. Back outside, the air was cold and moist as he moved toward the cliff. If someone was really in the wine cellar, he had to find a way down there. Rafferty had no light save the flashlight app on his phone, but the stars were bright, and the sky was clear enough to see the approximate location of the opening that Mickey had pointed out on the rocky, narrow beach below. The tide was dead low and just beginning to turn. He was going to have to climb down.
The cliffs were steep, falling at least fifty feet into the ocean below. He stood on the granite ledge, looking down at the crumbling staircase that was behind a padlocked iron gate. The last fifteen feet of stairs were completely missing. If he got down there, he might not be able to get back up. Still, he knew what he had to do. This was the only other entrance to the cellar.
Adrenaline pumping, he climbed up and swung himself over the iron gate, stepping off the edge of the cliff and lowering himself onto the crumbling staircase carved into the badly eroding ledge.
The uneven steps sloped steeply as he moved down toward the ocean. With each step, the stairway dropped bits of rocky granite that bounced off the beach below.
It was a longer drop from the last step to the beach than it had appeared from above. Rafferty lowered himself off the final step, holding on for a long moment before he let himself fall. He landed hard on hands and knees, scraping skin. Slowly, he stood, then looked up at the sheer cliff and the house above.
He might have just made a really stupid mistake.
“Drink,” Marta demanded.
Callie stared at her in disbelief. “Why are you doing this?”
Marta smiled. “Do you really have to ask?”
Callie hadn’t sipped much of the foxglove-laced port at the reception the way Finn and Paul had, but she had joined the toast, drinking just enough, she now realized, to have slowly begun to feel its poisonous effects, first with the vomiting, then the green-haloed vision of Marta she’d seen earlier, and now the muscle weakness Marta had just described. Unwilling and unable to grip properly, she dropped the glass, shattering it into a thousand little shards.
Marta tsked, flashing the blade in front of her; its silver appeared to strobe. Marta’s dark hair seemed to strobe, too, turning colors as she moved. Where had Callie seen that before? Callie’s knees buckled, and she slid down into the pile of glass, drawing blood.
“Be polite, for God’s sake.” Marta held the carafe of purple port up to Callie’s lips. “Protocol demands it. Look, I’ll even give you the toast. To marital bliss,” she said. “Too little and far too late.”
Callie turned her head.
“So contrary,” Marta said. “So ready to refuse the libations. You’ve turned into your mother.”
Callie stared at her.
I have another name.
The scent of licorice.
She’s five years old, for God’s sake!
The stone floor. The blood dripping down the walls and pooling at Callie’s feet.
“It was you.”
I have another name. Can you guess it?
“It was you,” Callie repeated. “At the party with all of us.”
“It was me in a few places,” Marta said. “Though you might not have known me, I knew you.”
The woman in red held out the chalice for Callie to sniff.
“The Wicked Queen.”
“Never wicked. Humiliated, betrayed, unloved, but never wicked.”
Callie felt sick.
“I was Rose’s friend. From the center. I was never one of them,” Marta said. “But they convinced Rose that what I was doing was worse than anything they were doing. I tried to warn her, but they turned her against me.”
My Love…
Cheryl, Susan, and Olivia giggling.
Callie standing in front of the room, hands in the elocutionist’s pose, reading the love letter aloud while the others hooted with laughter.
The Goddesses vowing revenge for getting them in trouble, for telling Rose what they were doing in her house.
Callie’s own mother suggesting their revenge and the ultimate betrayal: “Let’s take him.”
It wasn’t Leah who was the fifth petal of the rose. It was Marta.
“You were supposed to be at the blessing that night.”
“Rose forbid it. She took your mother’s side against me.”
“She was kicking us out of her house! Because of what you told her.”
“I told them not to go that night.”
“To the blessing?” Callie wasn’t sure what Marta was telling her.
“To him.”
Callie remembered the man on the bed. The blood.
“What they were doing was wrong. Especially with a child around. Your mother convinced Rose that I was part of it, procuring men for them: the Goddesses’ madam. But you were right. I was supposed to be at the blessing. And so I came.”