Finally, a reaction from the always calm and collected Grady.
“So you’re saying it’s not true?” There’s a part of me that’s calling “bullshit,” but it seems to be battling with something equally loud.
My heart.
Celine was the one to listen to her heart. I’ve always been better at listening to my head.
“Seriously, who told you something like that?”
I sigh. “The guy that Celine was seeing. You met him. He came by the apartment last week.”
“The one with his hand on your knee. Yeah, I remember.” It’s such a subtle dig. Did he really care about that? I had already forgotten about it. “And he just offered this information to you?”
“No. I accused him of being behind Celine’s murder. Then he told me about you. It’s a long story . . .”
Grady butts his joint into a can of sand to put it out, and then reaches back to tuck his hands behind his head in a relaxed fashion. “Sounds like someone who’s trying to misdirect your attention.”
“Maybe.”
“Not that I want to disparage myself, but I think he looks more like the kind of guy who could afford a high-end hooker than I do.”
“Escort,” I mutter softly—though, in the end, I know that he’s not wrong.
“Frankly, I’m kind of offended that you’d believe that so quickly.”
“I didn’t. But then I—” I cut myself off. I’ve divulged many facts to Grady with complete ease in recent weeks. I felt comfortable with him since the first night up here. But suddenly that comfort has been replaced with unbalance and distrust. I need to be a better poker player. And I can’t ignore what Jace told me tonight, simply because I don’t want it to be true. Especially since so much of what he told me adds up.
So if it’s true, and Grady just lied directly to my face about being Celine’s client . . . what else could he be lying to me about? Could he have been the one to feed Celine enough drugs to make her overdose? Why would he want to kill her? To what end?
For the dragon vase.
That would explain why I didn’t find it in Jace’s place that night. Maybe Jace didn’t take it after all. Maybe Grady did. He has keys to her apartment. He has access. But . . . what the hell does Grady even know about valuable antiques, or what to do with them?
“But then you what?” Grady probes.
I swallow the painful ball forming in my throat. “Nothing. I think this investigation is going to drive me insane.” My clutch vibrates in my hand. That has to be Doug. I sent him a text earlier, on the drive back from the Waldorf, to update him on my encounter with Jace.
“Come on. It’s cold. And you’re beautiful.” Grady lifts the end of the blanket up again. Beckoning me to the warmth, and to him.
Had I not seen that “J” on the mailbox, I might have written Jace’s words off and accepted the invitation.
Now I merely offer him a tired smile. “Good night, Grady.”
I wait until the outside door is shut to dig my phone out and call Doug. I need him to tell me that my gut is wrong and Grady isn’t lying to me.
CHAPTER 30
Maggie
“Let’s play this out.” Doug’s fingers strum against Zac’s desk, the diary open in his free hand. Zac is busy clicking away at his keyboard, trying to hack into Grady’s network. He must have one, given that he has a camera sending a live feed from the rooftop to his apartment.
So far, it’s proving a lot more difficult than Zac expected. Which begs the question, why?
“ ‘Jay’ as in ‘J. Grady’ meets up with Celine in a hotel room. Introduces himself as ‘Jay’ and she’s surprised because she knows him only by his last name.”
“That’s all he’s ever gone by. Even Ruby didn’t think much of it.”
“ ‘And I just spoke with him at the office earlier today,’ she wrote in here.”
“But Grady has no reason for being there.”
“ ‘What if he tells someone what I’ve been doing to make money? I need that job!’ ” Doug recites. “There’s some sort of connection to work and Grady. There must be.”
So far, Doug isn’t quashing my worry that the man I’ve been sleeping with is a filthy liar.
I groan in frustration. If Celine had just outed people in her goddamn diaries like a normal person, we wouldn’t be going through all this. “Why wouldn’t they admit to knowing each other?”
“Role-playing,” Zac pipes up, his eyes scanning over my dress without shame. I highly doubt this living space has seen anything more upscale than a pair of jeans and a button-down flannel shirt before I started coming here. Doug answered on the first ring and demanded that I meet him outside my building right away, so I just kept going on down the stairs from the roof, not bothering to stop at the apartment to change.
“Okay. Fine. So, they decide to stay in character,” Doug agrees. “It’s easier for her . . . he gets off on it . . . then what? Do they see each other again? How often? At this hotel or somewhere else? Zac, forget that for a minute. Check out the hotel’s reservation log. Everett said he saw her at the Waldorf with the old man, right? Start there.”
“Date?”
Doug scans the top of the diary page. “July sixteenth.”
Zac’s thick fingers fly over the keyboard, and what looks to be an internal hotel system pops up. When he looks over and sees my shock, he shrugs. “We do a lot of hotel room checks in this line of work so . . . I already know all the loopholes.”
For a moment, I forget why I’m here and try to wrap my head around Zac’s level of access. “Aren’t you worried about getting caught?”
“I’m the gingerbread man,” he sings, smirking. “I’ve been in their system a hundred times. The trick is to not touch anything. Especially money.” A few more clicks and then, “Nothing at the Waldorf.”
“Try the other luxuries. Trump, the Plaza, the London, Langham.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know the drill.”
“I’ll be back in five. I need some fresh air.” Doug pulls a pack of cigarettes out and runs up the stairs.
Which gives me the opportunity, the few minutes I need. “Zac . . .”
“J-Man said something about the feed from his security camera being missing, didn’t he?” Zac says, never lifting his fingers or eyes from the monitor as he jumps from system to system.