Page 94 of Murder on the Upper East Side

‘Fall of senior year, Edward Beaumont and I started up a collab. He was at Yale, and he wasn’t sure if Beaumont Capital was his future. He didn’t give a shit about me, but he wanted to learn about smart home tech, and my parents’ company was booming. Edward saw dollar signs, all he’s ever cared about, and I thought I could get my parents’ attention for once, impress them with my entrepreneurial spirit. They loaned me five K and gave me their blessing. Anyway, when Richard caught wind of our project, he shamed Edward into dropping it. He pulled out, no explanation, and I lost the whole five grand. My parents were furious.’

‘You said this was fall of senior year?’

Gemma nodded. ‘Things fell apart right before Thanksgiving.’

Sothat’swhy Gemma had reacted so strangely when Hannah had told her about running into Edward at the Après-Thanksgiving party at the club. Not because she’d been involved with Edward – at least not romantically. Because he’d screwed her over. It was a minor mystery, but after all this time, the truth still felt satisfying.

‘Anyway, years later, after Richard’s death, Edward hired my family’s company to make some modernisations around the club.’

‘Residual guilt?’

‘Probably. But Phipps Co. only did the lighting before Bash intervened. That little fucker cancelled plans for any further modernisations. And he insisted on a remote for the lights, of course, no app. He couldn’t stand the idea of the Lenox Club moving into the twenty-first century.’

‘Hence no cameras in the club. The no-devices policy. No key cards.’

‘Exactly. Nothing that would have made it easier for the detectives to track Madison’s killer. But see, Paul knew all that. The gala wasn’t Prescott’s first event at the club. He’d probably been there a dozen times, over the years. He would have known the complete lack of tech would be a shield.’

‘And he probably also knew about the lighting. Where the remote was stored. The Lenox Club was the perfect stage for his revenge scheme.’

Gemma nodded. ‘Clearly, he did his research. But up on the roof, once he saw I’d figured it out, he came at me. He was as furious with me as he’d been with Madison, and he’d let his anger cloud his judgement. He knew he’d said too much.’

‘What happened, after he came at you?’

Gemma dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘We struggled, near the edge. He slammed me up against the wall, I still have a massive bruise on my hip. For amoment there, I thought it was over.’ She looked stricken, replaying the memory. Then a smile played across her lips. ‘Thank god he was so out of shape.’

She picked up her glass, drained the dregs of her cocktail. ‘It was him or me, Hannah. And I wasn’t about to let him destroy my life a second time.’

Hannah leaned in and dropped her voice. ‘You have to go to the police. Tell them it was self-defence. He was trying to kill you.’

‘Absolutely not.’ Gemma stood, pulled out the handle of her pink rollaboard.

‘The bruise. It’s still visible on your hip?’

‘Which proves what exactly? That I’m clumsy?’

Thin tendrils of panic bloomed in Hannah’s chest.She’dpointed the finger at Oliver. He’d been charged with not one but two murders he hadn’t committed because of her. It was her responsibility to fix this.

‘Then don’t tell them about the roof,’ she said in a rush. ‘You can say you spoke to Mr Harris earlier in the night. And he confessed to Madison’s murder.’

Gemma pulled out her phone and shot off a quick text. Then she started for the door, Hannah on her heels.

‘I considered that, okay? But why would he confess to me for no reason?’

‘You’ll think of something. We’ll go together. We’ll—’

‘Hannah.’ Gemma was at the door now. ‘I’ve thought this through, every angle. They won’t find Oliver’s DNA on Madison’s glass, or the remote. Whatthey have on him, it’s thin. He’ll probably get off in the end, if the case even goes to trial. Which is honestly too bad, because after what he did to me senior year, he deserves what he gets. If he goes down for Paul’s crime, so be it.’

Gemma pushed through the front door of the bar, onto the sidewalk. Hannah followed. A black sedan pulled up to the kerb, and in one slick motion, Gemma opened the back door and tossed her suitcase inside.

‘Thank you, Hannah.’ Gemma gave her a broad, toothy smile as she slipped inside and lowered the window. ‘It was good to get this all off my chest.’

‘Gemma—’ Hannah lunged at the door, but it was too late. It was locked, and the handle wrenched from Hannah’s grasp as the sedan peeled out into traffic.

For the next two hours, Hannah sat on the soft grey couch in the living room of her Bushwick apartment and tried everything she could think of to track Gemma down. The magazine’s contact at the NYPD ran the sedan’s plates, as a favour, but either Hannah had got them wrong in her rush to memorise the string of letters and numbers, or the plate had been a fake. Gemma’s phone was switched off too, making it untraceable.

Gemma had said she’d been heading home to LA, via LaGuardia, but had that even been true? Three airports flew out of New York, plus the train and busstations. Gemma could have been headed to any one of them, then to any destination. In fact, LaGuardia was almost certainly the one place she had not been going.Did you know LaGuardia is nice now?She’d made a point to name the airport, then say something that would stick in Hannah’s mind – an insurance policy, in case Hannah figured out the truth.

It was all moot anyway, because none of the major airlines would give out passenger information, if Gemma was even flying under her own name. She was simply gone.Poof.