by Lauren Carr
After taking a healthy sip, Ivy sat back in the chair and uttered a sigh.
“Do you still drink your five-o’clock martini?” Chris turned to Doris and Helen. “Ivy has to have a martini every day at five o’clock.”
“Five o’clock cocktail hour,” Doris said with a nod of her head. “I remember when I had to have my five o’clock cocktail. I gave that up when I discovered yoga.”
“You have no idea how hard it is running a household and maintaining appearances,” Ivy said. “Yes, if you must know, I knew Stu did some horribly immoral things to keep Slade happy. You’ve seen the news. It’s coming out about what Slade was capable of if you dared to say no to him.” She took another sip of her drink. “Stu was only trying to protect our family.”
“I imagine knowing what was going on must have made things stressful for you,” Helen said.
Nodding her head, Ivy took another sip of her drink.
“Do you still have trouble sleeping at night?” Chris asked.
Ivy stared at him with a blank expression.
“Blair told me that you often, as in every night, took sleeping pills,” Chris said. “You had a prescription, didn’t you?”
“Flurazepam hydrochloride,” Ripley said from the corner in which she had positioned herself to watch their conversation.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Ivy asked.
“The medical examiner found flurazepam hydrochloride in Blair’s system,” Chris said. “Four times the normal dose.”
“That and a martini.” Doris arched an eyebrow in Ivy’s direction.
“Martinis were not Blair’s drink of choice,” Chris said. “She would only drink martinis when she was with you, and you have a prescription for flurazepam hydrochloride.”
“You don’t know that,” Ivy said.
“Yes, we do,” Ripley said. “We got a search warrant for your home. Our investigators found your prescription in your medicine cabinet. You got your latest thirty-day prescription filled at the beginning of the month. One pill a day. You should have fourteen pills left. But you only have ten. Where did the other pills go, Ivy?”
“You slipped them into Blair’s martini,” Chris said.
“I didn’t,” Ivy said. “Stu did that.”
“Blair called you after that hitman tried to kill her,” Chris said. “She was scared. She trusted you. Why wouldn’t she? You were her best friend. You’d been hiding her for years.”
“You had to see how upset she was when you picked her up from the metro,” Helen said. “Being her friend, you must have asked her about what had happened.”
“At which point she told you everything,” Chris said. “That was when you discovered that you had been helping the woman with the power to bring down your husband’s most powerful client. If she did that, then your big house, luxury cars, country clubs, big vacations—powerful friends—it would all go up in smoke. So you took her home and gave her a martini mixed with sleeping pills. Then, after she got nice and drowsy, you put her in the car, drove her to where we used to live, and pushed her down the hill into the lake.”
“Then you stepped into the lake and stood on her back to hold her under the water until she drowned,” Ripley said.
“No.” Ivy shook her head. “It had to have been Stu.”
“Stu had no idea that Blair had been a threat until the next morning,” Chris said. “As long as he didn’t consider her a threat, he had no motive to want her dead.”
“With everything that has come out about Stu’s business dealings,” Ivy said with a scoff, “why would you not assume he’d killed Blair?”
“Because Stu didn’t get where he was by not thinking things through,” Chris said. “If he had murdered Blair, he never would have left her purse behind, and he wouldn’t have had to have hired Burnett to go into the FBI to steal her belongings.”
“It was essential for Stu to locate and destroy every copy of Goldman’s report about Cross selling classified information to Slade,” Ripley said.
“I guess it was Daniel Cross then,” Ivy said. “He caught up with her.”
“Before he disappeared, Daniel Cross told us that your husband had accused him of killing Blair,” Ripley said. “Stu thought he had been covering up for a murder that Cross had committed.”
“Whoever killed Blair did it more out of emotion than business,” Chris said, “and they didn’t think it through.”
“You can’t prove Stu or one of Burnett’s people didn’t kill her.” Ivy held up her martini glass, which was almost empty. “Stu knew I drank martinis. He also knew I took sleeping pills. He probably framed me. Or maybe it was his so-called assistant Jenn.”
“Oh, yeah, Jenn,” Chris said. “Your husband spent a lot of time with her.”
“Don’t you know it.”
“Lucky for us, she’s turned into a government witness,” Chris said.
“Singing like a canary,” Doris said.
“We checked Stu’s cell phone records,” Ripley said. “He made quite a few calls, all bouncing off the cell phone tower in downtown DC next to where Jenn lives. Also, she lives in a secured building. We have video of him going into the building with her at five o’clock the evening of the murder and leaving the next morning at around four.”
“The call made to the hitmen in Baltimore?” Doris said. “That call was traced to a cell tower in Chantilly while Stu was with his—” She cleared her throat. “Assistant.”
“Jenn has stated that Stu never had any business dealings with those hitmen in Baltimore,” Chris said.
“And you believe her?”
“Yes,” Chris said. “SD Associates was the name of your husband’s original law firm, which was located in Baltimore. He stopped using that name over a decade ago when he moved his practice to Washington.”
“He kept his business license in that name,” Helen said, “but he closed up his office there and moved everything to Washington. Jenn told us that he doesn’t use any contractors in Baltimore.”
“You pretended to be Stu’s assistant and hired those hitmen to take care of matters that threatened your affluent lifestyle,” Chris said.
“Like the intern Stu had gotten pregnant twelve years ago,” Helen said. “The police thought Stu had arranged it, when really it was you because she and her unborn child threatened your livelihood.”
“I called those hitmen, huh?” Ivy’s lip curled up into a snarl. “Even if the call bounced off the tower in Chantilly, it didn’t come from my phone. Therefore, you can’t prove I hired them.”
“No, it was made from Blair’s phone,” Chris said. “I’m sure you’ve gotten rid of it. Senator Keaton’s investigator received a call from the same burner phone used to hire Tony the hitman. That means, whoever murdered Blair took her phone and used it to contract a hit on me.”
“We found two phones at the murder scene,” Ripley said. “One was the phone that Blair purchased under the name of Charlotte Nesbitt after coming back from the States. The second was the one she had taken to Switzerland.”
“Most likely the one she had used to record Monroe’s murder,” Chris said. “We believe there was a third phone that she purchased with cash when she decided to come forward with what she knew about Daniel Cross.”
“You know Christopher,” Doris said. “You must have realized as soon as you killed Blair that you had unleashed the wrath of hell. He wasn’t going to stop until he hunted you down. So you hired those goons to take him out first.”
Ivy’s eyes were wide with anger. “You can’t prove—”
“You called Tony in the middle of the night,” Chris said. “I think you were in such a panic—thinking of all the things that you had to lose—that you just hastily put together this plan to get rid of Blair and frame me for it. But then, when you got home, after dumping Blair’s body and throwing her pu
rse in the lake, that was when you thought things through.” He shook a finger at her. “You realized Blair had been in possession of evidence that could bring Leban Slade down.”
“And you knew that if anyone could find it, it would be her husband,” Ripley said.
“That was when you called your old friends the hitmen in Baltimore,” Chris said. “You used Blair’s phone, which maybe she had dropped it in your car. I don’t know. You used Jenn’s name so that if things went sideways, she’d get blamed.”
“After all,” Ripley said, “contracting assassinations was in Jenn’s job description.”
“Was it you who searched her room or Jenn?” Chris asked.
Saying nothing, Ivy regarded him with a frosty glare.
“I think it was you,” Chris said. “Because Stu told me that he didn’t realize Blair was Anonymous until we questioned him after Blair’s murder. At that point, her room had already been searched. You found bank statements showing that Blair had a safety deposit box. After we left, you told Stu about the safety deposit box and that was when he ordered Burnett to keep an eye on me.”
“Meanwhile,” Helen said, “you sent your hitmen a corrected address of where to find Chris.”
“I have to admit I was a little perplexed when you called me after we had left your place,” Chris said. “You told me that it was to apologize, but I didn’t buy it. Later, when I replayed our conversation, I remember you urging me to go home and get some sleep. The real purpose of that call was to find out when I would be going home so that you could let Tony and Ralph know.”
“We had one pair of hitmen waiting to kill Christopher and burn down the house,” Doris said, “and another waiting to confiscate whatever Blair had in her safety deposit box.”
“I admit that was confusing,” Chris said. “But then, when I realized Ralph and Tony had not been hired by the same perpetrators, it made sense.”
“You can’t prove any of this,” Ivy said with a laugh. “I never saw Blair that night. I waited at the metro and she never came out.”
“Ah yes,” Chris said, “you never saw Blair.”
Ivy shook her head.
“We had to do a lot of hunting on that.”
“I suppose you searched all of the metro security cameras and cams on the freeway,” Ivy said. “Did you find any pictures of me and Blair in my Mercedes coming back from the metro?”
“No,” Chris said.
Ivy set her glass on the desk and stood up. “Then I’ll be going.”
“But we did find goose poop,” Ripley said.
Ivy jerked her head in the agent’s direction.
“One of the big problems I had when living on Lake Audubon was goose poop,” Chris said. “You see, we lived close to the wildlife refuge. While our backyard was not a refuge, those animals spilled into it. It felt I spent half of my time scraping goose poop off my shoes and hosing it off the tires on my vehicle.” He cocked his head at her. “I didn’t see any geese hanging out in your neighborhood when we were there.” He turned to Ripley. “Did you?”
His former partner shook her head. “This time of the year, the leaves have fallen from the trees around the lake. Geese are getting ready to fly south. Based on all of the wildlife evidence left at the crime scene, forensics will have no problem placing you in that section of the lake,” Ripley said. “Of course, you’re smart enough to have cleaned your car. But, according to our forensics people, you didn’t quite get all of the goose poop and algae out of the crevices of your Alexander Wang boots. Not only will that prove you were in the area, but we can also place you in the water.”
Chris pointed at Ivy’s foot. “Also, the size of the boot and the shape of the sole will place your foot on Blair’s back when you held her under the water after she had passed out from the sleeping pills.”
“I know they were expensive,” Doris said, “but you should have thrown the boots away.”
Tears returned to Ivy’s eyes. “She had no idea. She lived with us for three years, but she had no idea that Leban Slade was Stu’s biggest client. If it wasn’t for Slade, we’d never have been able to put Hannah in that private school, live in our house, or go to Europe every summer. Blair was going to take everything we had, everything we worked for, away. I had to do what had to be done to protect us. I had to protect my family.” She raised her eyes to Chris’s. “You understand that, don’t you, Chris? I did love Blair.”
He shook his head. “But you loved your stuff more.”
Epilogue
Leban Slade’s private jet sliced through the skies over the Philippine Sea heading for his private island. After several days of rallying his allies, the billionaire had decided to take a break.
Slade told no one where he was going. He planned to disappear for several weeks while the lawyer he had hired to replace Stu Dunleavy ironed things out.
“The truth is irrelevant,” Slade told his attorney after he expressed trouble keeping the billionaire’s influential friends united in his defense.
Blair Matheson’s recording of Daniel Cross confessing to spying for Slade before shooting Les Monroe in the back had been seen by most of the population in the United States. How do you tell people that what they saw is not what they had seen?
“You tell those cowards that I own them!” Slade shouted into the phone when he learned that most of the lawmakers in Washington were running from him like rats jumping a sinking ship.
“These politicians, the police, and the FBI are getting intense public pressure for justice. They want to see you arrested and convicted for espionage,” the lawyer said.
Leban Slade’s laughter could be heard in the cockpit of his private jet. “None of you get it yet, do you?” His bloated face turned red. He screamed into the phone, “I’m untouchable!”
He slammed the phone onto the table. It bounced and landed on the floor at his feet.
“Arrest me?” Chewing on the end of his cigar, he laid his head back and closed his eyes. “Justice? Justice is for the little people.”
The phone on the floor rang.
Slade’s bushy eyebrows arched. He peered down at the vibrating and ringing instrument. There was no caller ID listed on the brilliant purple screen. He had never seen it that color before.
“Shut up,” he muttered an order for the phone to stop ringing.
It disobeyed.
He scooped up the phone and put it to his ear. “Who the hell is this?”
“I’m your maker, Leban.”
He laughed.
“I know we haven’t talked in a while. Even so, I decided to give you a heads up about our upcoming meeting. We have so much to go over, it seems only right to give you time to prepare.”
“Meeting? I’ve got—”
“Tell me, Leban, are you still an atheist?”
Leban sputtered. “Who the hell is this?”
“Looking at your portfolio, I have to tell you that I’ve been very disappointed—”
“I have the world’s best portfolio—” He jumped out of his seat.
“Not when it comes to the business of humanity. You have made some seriously disastrous decisions.”
“Like what?”
“For example, it’s never a good idea to give weapons of mass destruction to a mad man.”
“I deny that I have anything to do with anyone selling weapons to the North Koreans.”
“Lying to me does no good, Leban. No matter how hard you spin it, I know the truth. Where was I?”
“You said I was selling weapons of mass destructions to North Korea, which I wasn’t,” Leban snarled.
“If that’s the story you want to stick to, Leban, go ahead. We’ll be talking about breaking that commandment in our meeting as well. Anyway, it turns out that some of the parts you sold to them were faulty. As a result, there’s been a glitch in the missile that t
hey launched one minute ago, and they’ve lost control of it.”
Leban’s mouth felt dry. “What are you telling me?”
“Well, to go back to my original question, Leban, are you still an atheist? You’ve got eighteen seconds to reassess your position on that matter.”
Leban heard a high-pitched wail outside the jet. He looked out the window and saw the nose of the missile closing in on him.
“Be thankful that you’ve packed for warm weather.”
Helen arrived at the Matheson farm at the usual time after Sierra finished her weekly riding lesson. She had backed off from Chris after Blair’s funeral. It was best to let him take the lead in their relationship.
After not hearing from him for three days, Helen suspected that Chris was in need of serious time to heal his wounds. As gruesome as it was, she was thankful for a double homicide case to keep her mind occupied. She did not want to be one of those women waiting by the phone.
At least, she concluded, they did love each other enough to be friends. They had agreed that no matter what happened between them, Sierra would continue her riding lessons. When they arrived for the lesson, Chris greeted Sierra with a hug and gave Helen a polite kiss on the lips and a nervous grin.
Hours later, after capturing the prime suspect in the double homicide, Helen practically held her breath as she drove up the Matheson driveway. Her first clue that something was amiss was the horse trailer parked next to the paddock instead of in its usual spot next to the barn.
A horse that Helen had never seen before was in the paddock. Her face glowing with excitement, Sierra was exercising the mare on a lead.
Chris’s father had rescued race horses—horses who were in need of lots of space and tender loving care in which to spend their retirement. It had been Helen’s experience that most of those horses were too high spirited for her daughter, whose horseback riding experience had been limited until she started taking lessons.
As far as Helen was concerned, Sierra was no way, no how, going to get a race horse of her very own.
