“So what’s this secret that you were talking about on the phone earlier?” he asks in a low voice. “Does it have anything to do with what you’re wearing under that dress?”

His smile is playful. Unfortunately, my secret is anything but.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I say. “At the same time we talk about where you keep your gun when it’s in the house.”

“Heather,” he begins, but I cut him off.

“Not now,” I say. “Let’s figure out who’s trying to kill Tania first. Then we can deal with our own problems.”

As I get closer to the firepit, I pick up on some of the lyrics Nicole is singing. Her voice is pleasing, with a lovely lightness to it.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the words to her song.

“ ‘My blood,’ ” Nicole is singing soulfully as she gazes into the sunset, “ ‘my blood, I tasted my menstrual blood. And yes, it tasted good, just like I knew it would . . .’ ”

Jessica utters an ear-burning expletive, then says, “Mom, I swear to God if you don’t make her stop, I’ll do it. I’ll jump.”

“Welcome back to the family,” Cooper whispers and drops a quick kiss on my cheek before he drifts away to serve drinks.

Chapter 16

The Palm’s Special
Vegan Salad Made
Exclusively for Tania Trace

Serves 4
Ingredients for Tania Salad
½ pound string beans, cleaned and cut into one-inch pieces, cooked until crisp-tender, about 4 minutes
1–2 large beefsteak tomatoes, seeded and chopped into one-inch cubes
1 sweet onion, such as Vidalia, chopped into half-inch pieces
Method for Tania Salad
Pour salad dressing ingredients together in a jar and shake to combine.
Taste for seasoning.
Combine string beans, tomatoes, and onions.
Toss with dressing.
Serve on chilled salad plate.
Dinner is served outdoors on a table carved out of rock—most likely stolen from Stonehenge—under the stars, which begin to shine shortly after the sun goes down. Two waiters and a busboy from the Palm show up with an extraordinarily large number of insulated bags containing the steaks, lobsters, fries, mashed potatoes, and cheesecakes that Grant Cartwright ordered. They come out onto the deck and begin setting the table as if this is something they do every other night. For all I know, maybe they do.

For Tania there’s a special vegetarian salad that the owner named in her honor—a variation of a salad already on the menu—after Tania famously ordered it (shrimp and bacon omitted) at every Palm steakhouse in the country during her last national tour, making it one of the most popular items on the menu.

But after the waiters go to all the trouble of specially dressing and plating it, then presenting it to her with a very charming flourish, all Tania does—after thanking them sweetly—is pick at it. Even her dog, which she keeps on her lap the entire time, doesn’t appear interested in eating it. (I wouldn’t have been either, unless it still had the shrimp and bacon on it. Lucy frequently attempts to eat out of Owen’s litter box, so I’m pretty sure she’d have eaten it, even without the shrimp and bacon.)

Most of the people at the dinner table do their best to politely steer the conversation away from the horrible occurrence at my place of work. Even Grant Cartwright, the person responsible for my current state of poverty (not counting my mother and her boyfriend, Ricardo), pretends to be super-interested in where I’ve been since the last time I saw him.

“I had no idea you had such a good head for numbers, Heather,” he says. “You always struck me as more the creative type.”

“People can be both, Dad,” Nicole chimes in. “For instance, I write songs, but I’m also doing Teach for America, because I really want to give back—”

“Can someone please pass the wiiiiiine,” Jessica says loudly.

“Jessica,” her mother says, with a disapproving glance. “Don’t.”

“So you do the payroll for the whole building?” Mr. Cartwright asks me, ignoring his daughters. “And Cooper’s billing as well?”

“Not the whole building,” I say. “Just the student work-study staff. And Cooper’s bookkeeping turned out to be a breeze once I got a system in place.” I politely refrain from telling Cooper’s parents that his former system was no system. I found receipts dating from a half-decade ago tucked away in his underwear drawer. That, of course, was a recent discovery, as I have not been privy to the contents of his underwear until lately.

“She’s turned my whole business around,” Cooper says, and there’s a hint of pride in his voice.

“It helps that we found an accountant who isn’t currently incarcerated,” I say, not wanting to take all the credit.

“I owed him a favor,” Cooper explains. “You don’t have to work in an office to be a good accountant.”

“I totally agree,” I say. “And Cooper does have a very . . . diverse set of friends. But it’s easier to call an accountant who isn’t locked in a five-by-nine cell for most hours of the day.”

“Heather’s always had a good head for business,” Jordan says as he sucks on a lobster claw. “That’s why I never understood people who made dumb blonde jokes. I was like, ‘You haven’t met my girlfriend.’ ” He winces, having apparently received a kick from one of his sisters under the table. He glances nervously over at Tania. “I mean ex-girlfriend. But Tania’s real smart about that stuff too.”

Tania doesn’t seem to be paying the least bit of attention. She’s playing with her salad, separating the green beans from the tomatoes and onions, until her plate begins to resemble a small Italian flag.

“Well, I think it’s lovely Heather was able to join us tonight,” Mrs. Cartwright says. She’s on her third—or maybe fourth—glass of wine. Grant Cartwright has a full-size refrigerator in his kitchen devoted exclusively to wine and set at multiple temperatures—one compartment for the reds, the other for the whites. “If I were Heather, I’d have told this whole family to go to hell. It’s so nice when exes can remain friends, instead of being at one another’s throats.”

Tania drops her fork.

“Just leave it,” Jordan says, laying a hand across his wife’s to keep her from ducking beneath the table to retrieve the utensil, which she seems about to do. “Are you all right, hon?”