Grandma leaned in the doorway. As usual, she was impeccably dressed in a tailor-made tweed suit and high heels. Her lipstick was perfect, and her hair didn’t move as she walked. There was a slight hint of smoke coming off her clothes. Emma wondered if Mr. Mercer really hadn’t noticed yet. “Do you have homework?”
“Not really,” Emma said. “I’m pretty much all done.”
“Good. That means you can come with me.” Grandma offered her hand. “Your father’s party is tomorrow, and he’s asked me to do some last-minute things.” She made a face. “Well, he hasn’t asked me, per se, but I think some things have been overlooked. For instance, did you know that your mother hasn’t designed a lighting scheme?”
Emma opened her mouth, then shut it fast. It seemed to Emma that Mrs. Mercer had planned everything down to the last detail. Mrs. Mercer had made countless calls to the caterer, adjusting and readjusting the menu. They’d hired a salsa band, and she’d been practicing her dance moves at night, stressing because she’d never salsaed in her life. Emma thought it was really sweet that she was putting so much effort into making her husband’s party special. But there was no use arguing with Grandma. She seemed like the kind of woman who was going to do things her way, no ifs, ands, or buts.
I wonder if that’s where I got my stubbornness from. But then I remembered: I was adopted. Grandma wasn’t part of my gene pool.
In minutes, Emma had changed into a cotton dress and kitten heels—Grandma deemed that her jeans and T-shirt were “too sloppy” to go to Neiman Marcus in—and she was sitting in the plushy leather passenger seat of Grandma’s Cadillac. And minutes after that, they were walking through the Neiman Marcus perfume aisle. Emma’s nose twitched from the competing scents.
A memory rippled through me. I was walking through Neiman’s with Grandma when I was much younger. A girl at the Estée Lauder counter asked if I wanted a makeover, and Grandma had sat me on the stool. “This will be our little secret,” she’d said conspiratorially. Maybe Grandma wasn’t so bad, after all.
Grandma peeled off her white leather driving gloves. “Are you excited about your father’s party?”
“Sure,” Emma said. “If nothing else, it will be nice to see Mom relaxed again.”
“Are you bringing a date?” Grandma asked as she paused to sniff a new Dior perfume.
“Yes,” Emma said.
“Is it that boy who got in all that trouble?” Grandma asked sharply.
“Thayer? How did you know about him?” Emma said, surprised. Thayer had been Sutton’s secret boyfriend.
“Your sister told me a few months ago,” Grandma said, heading for the elevators. “She said it was obvious. And she said your love for him was—oh, how did she word it? Obsessive, maybe. Dangerous.”
Suddenly, the smell of the perfumes made Emma a little ill. Why was Laurel saying things to Grandma about Sutton and Thayer?
And it wasn’t my love for Thayer that was obsessive. It was Laurel’s.
“Oh,” Emma said quietly. “No. It’s someone else. A guy named Ethan Landry.”
“Good,” Grandma answered. “Because truthfully I think your sister was a little jealous.” Then she stopped short in the middle of the scarves department and took Emma’s hands. “I know I’m hard on you, dear. And sometimes I probably come off as cold at times. But I just want the best for you. I want you to lead the best life possible, and I get so worried when I hear about you getting in trouble or dating bad boys or not getting the grades I know you can get or having tension with your sister. I just want you to be safe. I just don’t want you to end up like…” She trailed off, pressing her lips together.
Emma frowned. “Like who?”
An expression Emma couldn’t gauge flashed across Grandma’s face. It almost looked like fear. But then there was a crash next to them, and she turned. Someone had just knocked a whole rack of scarves over. Salesgirls rushed to the scene and quickly picked them up.
When Grandma turned back to Emma, her face was composed once more. “And to be honest, I’m a little worried about Laurel, too. Is it me, or does she seem…distracted these days? Almost like there’s something weighing on her mind?”
Emma’s ears burned. “Um, you could say that,” she murmured, more to herself than to Sutton’s grandmother.
“Do you know what it is?”
Sweat prickled on the back of Emma’s neck and she saw a flash of blond out of the corner of her eye. She turned around and faced the front doors, certain she’d just seen someone jump out of view.
“I don’t have a clue,” Emma said, swallowing hard.
“Well.” Grandma clutched her purse and marched for the escalators. “Whatever it is, it seems like she’s up to no good.”
No kidding, Emma thought as she followed Grandma up the escalator.
Cool dread washed over me. One thing was for sure. Emma needed to search for evidence in Laurel’s room ASAP, and put an end to this charade once and for all.
14
RACKETEERING
Saturday afternoon, Emma stood a foot in front of Laurel’s door, her hand poised on the knob. Downstairs, she could hear Mr. and Mrs. Mercer bustling around, making last-minute arrangements for the party, but Laurel was nowhere to be seen. She was probably out with Thayer somewhere.
Twisting the knob, Emma stepped into the bedroom. The smell of Laurel’s tuberose perfume greeted her like a rush of heat. Two candles sat on Laurel’s desk, along with a cup full of mechanical pencils and a framed photo of five wild mustangs racing across a grassy field. The print was hotel-bland and oddly impersonal in contrast to the collage of photos and tennis ribbons Laurel had tacked up on her wall. Right near her closet was a black-and-white shot of Thayer standing with his arm around Laurel’s shoulders in the parking lot of Sabino Canyon. It was slightly askew, and the edge of a different photo poked out from underneath it. Emma lifted it up to find a photograph of Sutton and Laurel with their arms wrapped around each other in a nearly identical pose to that of Laurel and Thayer.