Page 59 of Over Her Dead Body

“My husband wants to show you the terrace,” Margot says.

“He does?”

“He will.”

Todd accepts this because Todd believes in the basic goodness of invitations. He heads toward Margot’s husband, who looks mildly surprised and then immediately civilized about it.

Margot steers me toward the side hall.

Behind us, the party keeps moving. Glasses empty. Laughter returns. Nobody sounds quite as drunk as they did before.

“What happened?” I ask.

Margot stops just inside the hall. “Upstairs?”

“That seems like the obvious place to start.”

“A woman collapsed.”

My stomach drops. “Collapsed how?”

“The way women collapse at parties where everyone is rich enough to call it exhaustion.”

I look back toward the kitchen.

A staff member stands at the base of the stairs now. Not blocking them exactly. Existing in front of them with purpose.

“Is she alive?”

“How should I know?”

Margot’s voice is flat in a way I do not like.

“Do you know her?”

“Come on, Emma,” Margot says. “Is this your way of avoiding talking about Vienna?”

“I just want to know if you know who she is.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t. You know I don’t. Besides, no one admits to knowing girls like that once something goes wrong.”

I look at her. “That’s sad.”

Margot exhales. “Of course it’s sad. But you know how this works. She was paid to be here, Emma. In one way or another, so are at least half the people in this house. Something goes wrong, everyone looks away and the party keeps moving.”

“Right.”

Margot sees my expression and overcorrects with a sigh. “I heard someone call her Lila. There. Does that help?”

Lila.

The girl in silver.

A first name. A laugh she was paid to keep bright. A body upstairs becoming a problem everyone else knows how to walk around.

Not as shocking as it should be.

“She was standing next to me five minutes ago.”