Sebastian’s mouth puckered. The lack of leads into his father’s murder remained a sore spot for him. I tensed too, but for another reason entirely. From what Fletcher had told me, Harry Coolidge was a dedicated cop, the sort who wouldn’t stop digging until he found out the truth about Vaughn’s murder—and my part in it.
“Where’s Charlotte?” the girl asked, interrupting the two men.
I let myself take another quick glance at her. For the first time, I realized that she was carrying a small white box in her hand, tied with a pale pink ribbon. Tonight was Charlotte’s birthday, and a pile of presents had accumulated on a table off to one side of the room. Charlotte had come down to the ballroom when the guests started arriving, but I’d been so focused on Sebastian that I hadn’t paid much attention to her. I hadn’t seen her in a while, though. I wondered if she was back in the library, hiding under her father’s desk again. The thought saddened me, since I was the cause of her grief.
Sebastian waved his hand. “Oh, I’m sure that Charlotte’s around here somewhere.”
The woman held out her hand to the girl. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go find Charlotte so you can give her the present you brought her. Sebastian, thank you for inviting us tonight.”
He tipped his head at her. “Of course, Henrietta. You know that you guys were like family to my father.”
Harry gave Sebastian one more hard stare before moving off into the crowd with his wife and daughter.
“Arrogant ass,” Sebastian muttered under his breath.
“Him?” I asked, focusing on Harry again instead of his daughter. “What’s wrong with him? He seemed okay.”
For a cop who would haul me off to jail if he ever learned what I’d done to his friend.
Sebastian shook his head. “He’s an old friend of my father’s, and he’s been sniffing around ever since Papa’s death. I think that Harry blames me because the cops haven’t found my father’s killer yet. As if it’s my fault that the police in this town are so incompetent. As if he could do any better.”
No doubt Coolidge could do better. He would at least try, which was more than could be said for most of the cops in Ashland.
Still, I wondered at the venom in Sebastian’s voice and the seeming bad blood between the two men. From what little I’d seen and heard, Harry Coolidge had appeared to be a loyal friend to Vaughn. He was certainly doting on his wife and daughter. He’d already braved the crowd at one of the bars to fetch his wife a glass of white wine and his daughter some ginger ale. The girl giggled as her father made an exaggerated bow and presented her with the soda, while the mother looked on with a smile on her face. Such a nice, happy family. For a moment, I felt achingly envious of Bria’s look-alike.
Sebastian moved in front of me, cutting off my view of the Coolidge family.
“Well, that looks like the last of the guests,” he said. “I’m going to go find Charlotte and welcome everyone properly. After the party gets started up again, we’ll slip away and have our own private celebration. Okay?”
I smiled, once again feeling that peculiar mix of longing, desire, guilt, and sorrow thrumming through my chest. “It’s a date.”
He nodded. “Wish me luck.”
“Good lu—”
But Sebastian had already turned and was striding away.
18
Sebastian moved through the ballroom, shaking hands and greeting his guests again. He disappeared from sight but reappeared a few minutes later in the center of the floor, his arm around Charlotte’s shoulder, his head bent down as he whispered something in her ear. I wondered where she’d been hiding.
Like her friend, Charlotte wore a simple dress, although hers was black with splashes of deep blue, almost like abstract roses blooming across the pouffy skirt. Her black hair was pulled back into another French braid, the end tied off with a blue ribbon.
Sebastian left Charlotte standing by herself while he went over, grabbed a champagne flute and a fork from one of the bartenders, and gently ting-ting-tinged the tines against his glass. Slowly, the orchestra’s classical music faded away, and the crowd quieted down.
Sebastian moved back to the center of the ballroom, putting his arm around Charlotte’s shoulder again.
“I want to welcome you all here tonight,” he said, looking from one side of the crowd to the other. “Thank you all for coming and helping Charlotte and me honor our father. Tonight is my sister’s fourteenth birthday, and it would have been his fifty-first. I can’t think of a more fitting tribute to him than being here with all of you, his friends, his family.”
Sebastian’s gaze flicked over to Mab. An amused smile flitted across her face, as though she were in on some private joke that no one else knew about. Maybe she was simply glad that Vaughn was dead, and some of the problems that he’d caused for her along with him.
“A lot of rumors have been going around about my father’s death,” Sebastian said. “The police are still investigating this horrible crime, but I wanted to make all of you a promise here tonight. His killer will be brought to justice. My father wouldn’t accept anything less, and neither will I.”
The crowd clapped heartily at his words. This time, Sebastian looked straight at Harry Coolidge, who had his arms crossed over his chest and a sour look on his face. I wondered what the cop knew that I didn’t. But like Fletcher had said, I couldn’t exactly ask him.
“My father is gone,” Sebastian continued. “And although we are here tonight to celebrate his birthday, his memory, his legacy, we all know that we cannot dwell on the past and that we must move forward. That is why I will be assuming control of Vaughn Construction, effective immediately.”
Sebastian straightened, and his voice boomed through the ballroom as he outlined how he wanted to continue the work and projects that his father had started. Truth be told, I tuned most of it out, since it was obvious that Sebastian was trying to reassure his business associates that everything with the company would proceed on time and on budget. I wondered if that was why he’d invited Mab. Fletcher had said that she owned a significant stake in Vaughn Construction, and she wasn’t the sort of investor you disappointed—not if you wanted to keep breathing.
Charlotte squirmed out from under her brother’s arm, although Sebastian caught her hand and kept her close to him. She stared down at the polished floor under her black sandals. I wondered if all the talk about what a great man her father had been upset her, if that was what she wanted to get away from. I wondered if she was thinking about all the times he’d hit her, all the times he’d abused her, all the times he’d hurt her simply because he could.