Lovers and Liars: An addictive sexy beach read

by Nigel May

  Nikki had been shaking with nerves ever since arriving at the station, worried shopping her blackmailer to the police would also result in her own downfall as a hit-and-run driver under the influence. Her confession about Julian hadn’t helped. As her mother squeezed her hand the two women gazed into each other’s eyes, their feelings a twister of emotions at finally being able to serve justice to the man who had killed Tilisha.

  ‘We have no evidence that he killed your mother. We only have…’ He scanned the notes he had been making during the meeting, ‘Pasinetta’s word for that. No offence, but the word of an elderly lady about a crime that happened thirty odd years ago is not exactly Judge Judy watertight.’

  ‘None taken,’ replied Pasinetta, ‘but I know I’m right.’

  ‘I have all of the texts he’s been sending me about wanting more money,’ suggested Nikki. ‘And details of the account where the money has been going. Surely that counts for something? He was blackmailing me, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘For killing somebody under the influence… You chose to give him the money to protect your own back, miss.’ The police officer couldn’t ignore the fact that Nikki was very much in the wrong too. ‘Turning a blind eye to what you have done is not an option.’

  It was now Heather’s turn to reach out and take hold of Nikki’s other hand, the two sisters and their mum linked together as one. Automatically Heather let her other hand link into Pasinetta’s, completing the chain of solidarity.

  ‘But she was scared to within an inch of her life,’ said Heather. ‘She was having a knife waved in her face and risked losing a treasured ring that belonged to our dead grandmother. I hardly think that makes a person act with sense and reason, does it? We all have our moments of madness, don’t we?’ She glanced over at Sutton, a flash of maternal love connecting the two of them about the madness that Heather had recently gone through.

  ‘And all of that will be taken into consideration, I promise,’ said the officer. ‘But we need solid evidence against Ollie Featherstone to send him down.’

  ‘Maybe this will help…’ The voice belonged to a young female officer who had stuck her head around the door of the office. ‘We’ve been checking camera footage from the Toronto ferry port for the day that Mr Bailey was killed and I think you’ll find this interesting, sir. Ollie Featherstone can be seen quite clearly boarding the ferry at the port and disembarking at the other end. He is also seen making the return journey later that day.’

  ‘Arrest him now, string him up like he did poor Julian!’ There was an hysteria tinged with great sadness in Sutton’s voice as her words exploded forth.

  ‘It isn’t that easy. We can prove he was on the island, Mrs Rivers,’ said the male police officer, directing his words at Sutton, ‘but that still doesn’t mean we have evidence to say he killed Julian Bailey. The murder report says that there were no fingerprints that could be linked to anyone other than the victim.’

  ‘It’s all rather coincidental though, don’t you think?’ said Pasinetta.

  ‘It’s farcical!’ barked Sutton. ‘The man killed my mother, killed my…’ there was a slight pregnant pause before she completed her sentence with the word ‘friend’. She had planned to say ‘lover’. ‘And he extorted money from my beautiful daughter, so send his sorry ass down. The man’s fucked more people over than Herod!’

  An orchestra of disgruntlement filled the room as all four Rivers women began to speak at once, their voices overlapping as they called for Ollie Featherstone to be all but hung, drawn and quartered on the spot. The male officer looked on, somewhat perplexed at their crossfire of conversation.

  It was the female officer who brought the cacophony of voices to an end by stepping into the room and forcefully banging her fist on the table. ‘Ladies, please, if you would just care to listen…’

  Heather, Nikki and Pasinetta all fell silent. Sutton felt obliged to carry on chuntering her disgust for a few more seconds until Pasinetta shot her a glare to tell her to can it.

  The female officer spoke, turning to the other officer as she did so. ‘We do have evidence, sir. Good, solid evidence that should see Ollie Featherstone go down for a long, long time. The belt that was used to hang Mr Bailey from the tree on Snake Island had quite a large, distinctive buckle on it. A bull’s head, like something a rodeo star would wear. Very cowboy. The police in Toronto assumed it must have belonged to Julian Bailey.’

  ‘Did Julian look like a blessed bucking bronco star, for Christ’s sake?’ hissed Sutton.

  ‘Mum, shut up!’ The words of Heather and Nikki together in unison were enough to silence Sutton again.

  The female officer continued. ‘The belt is clearly visible in the footage of Ollie Featherstone getting on the ferry to the islands and it appears to be missing when he is taking the journey back. That would make it pretty conclusive that he was the one behind the killing. Plus, if we find the gun he used to shoot Julian Bailey then there’s no way he can slip off the hook this time.’

  ‘Can I get an amen to that?’ said Sutton. ‘Now bring that scum in!’

  ‘You know where to find him?’ asked Nikki.

  ‘We do,’ said the male officer. ‘It’s an apartment we’ve visited on many an occasion. We’ll send someone round there now to arrest him. Let’s hope he’s in a cheery mood because we’re finally about to bust his run of Teflon-coated luck for good!’

  An hour or so later, as Pasinetta seated herself back down in the comfort of her own front room and flicked on the plasma screen to catch up on some of her favourite TV shows, three police cars were pulling up outside the squalid apartment that Ollie Featherstone shared with other notorious New York lowlifes. When they entered the building they found him alone, hunched over his computer, watching porn. A reefer lay, still smoking, in the ashtray on his desk and a half-filled glass of spirits rested alongside him. It was obvious from his drunken slurring as they arrested him that it wasn’t his first. He was arrested on suspicion of the murders of Julian Bailey and Tilisha Nash.

  He smiled as the officers cuffed him, almost proud that his murderous actions had been uncovered. ‘Was that hanging not the coolest fuckin’ scene ever?’ he slurred. At first an air of confusion struck him at the mention of the name Tilisha Nash. Then it dawned on him. ‘Fuck, that tart from way back? That was like three million years ago.’ It was all evidence that would be used against him in court, along with the gun that was found in one of his drawers, which was proved to be the one that had fired the fatal bullet into the temple of Julian Bailey. One of the officers unpinned a photo from the wall of the kitchen showing Ollie with his arms wrapped around two of his fellow criminals. Holding up his trousers was a big-buckled belt featuring a bull’s head.

  As lowlife Ollie Featherstone was bundled into the back of a NYPD police car, sobering up slightly due to the muggy heat of a New York summer hitting his senses, he was beginning to think maybe he wasn’t smart enough to be a big-time criminal after all. He stared out the car window and realised that he’d been a victim of his own arrogance – thinking he was better than a working girl on the street, convinced he could blackmail and kill without consequence, and thinking a man like him would always be one step ahead of the law. How wrong he was. As Ollie was driven away, the three Rivers women were boarding a private jet at a New York airfield, ready to fly back to Barbados.

  Sutton, Heather and Nikki had managed to bring one evil man to justice. As they headed back to the Caribbean their thoughts were on another: Sheridan Rivers.

  62

  It was all about the body language. Heather Rivers knew it would be – she had studied it. It had always been something that fascinated her greatly. The postures, the gestures, the facial expressions, the distance a person kept from you while talking… Every tiny nuance was a mighty indication of what was going on inside a person’s head and how they functioned.

  It was Max who had first turned her on to it – it had been part of his shopping TV training. An important thing to
know was how to interact with guests to get the most out of them. One evening at their Florida home he had started talking to her about it all – the fundamentals of proxemics, the study that explains how people treat their space and others in their proximity, a subcategory of non-verbal communication. Then there were the keystones of haptics, the study of touch and personal space. Heather had loved it and had found herself studying body language wherever she went. She would watch Max with his guests on the TV and see how he subtly broke down any nerves they had by holding a hand, wrapping an arm around them to bring them closer or by using the micro expressions on his face to tell a guest when things were going well. Undetectable to many, but to those in the know, like Heather, it was glaringly obvious.

  Shop assistants, neighbours, reporters, airline staff… Body language was on view everywhere and Heather would read it as if it were a favourite book. To her, people’s faces were a projector to show the world what was going on inside. A happy man would wear a smile; a sad woman would sport a frown – everyone knew that. But spotting the truth behind the façade of a mask that some people would wear, now that took real skill. And it was a skill that Heather knew she would need in great amounts when she decided the time was right to have a heart-to-heart with her father.

  And that time was now…

  Sheridan Rivers had done his best to avoid being alone with Heather since Sutton had brought her back to Barbados from St Lucia. He didn’t know what to say, how to face his precious daughter knowing that he was responsible for the death of her beloved Max and indirectly for the death of his own grandchild. Even for a sharp tycoon like himself, a man who dealt in billions not millions, trying to find the right words to convey just how sorry he was to Heather left him short-changed, a pauper when it came to showing emotion and regret.

  He had seen his youngest daughter a few times, but every time he entered a room, she seemed to leave it. With Sutton not talking to him, he had no mediator to try and calm the situation, to arrange a moment when father and daughter could be together. Sutton wasn’t Kassidy, there to facilitate his every need. She was his wife and mother to their children – and right now disgusted by him.

  Sheridan had never felt more alone, but he was determined not to let it show. If anything, in the run-up to the fight he had been over-compensating for his own inner turmoil by being even more of a tyrannical nightmare than usual. His confrontations with Blair, Hatton and Fidge were totally unnecessary but he had enjoyed every minute of them – but they weren’t family. The horrors of his situation with Sutton, Nikki and now Heather were much closer to his heart. And even though Sheridan Rivers was coated in billion-dollar luxuries and possessed more wealth than most men could dream of, his heart beat exactly the same as the next man. Any heart could be a broken one, and when he found Heather outside his suite at Velvet Barbados, two days before the fight, his own heart shrivelled and began to rot into a jigsaw of guilty, heartbroken pieces upon seeing the hatred in her eyes.

  ‘Heather, hello… Come in.’ His words were hesitant. For a man who normally had no trouble finding exactly the right vocabulary, it was all he could think of to say. He immediately placed his hand over his mouth as he motioned for Heather to step inside. The action was noted as she entered the suite: a suppression of feeling and a showing of deep uncertainty about what to expect next.

  Classic body language.

  ‘I thought it was about time we spoke. I’ve not really seen you since…’ She looked Sheridan directly in the eye as her own words petered out, unsure how to finish off the sentence. So much had happened to her since the last time she had seen her father.

  ‘I am so sorry about everything.’ His words tumbled out, almost vomited, and he stared down at the floor, unable to maintain the eye contact that Heather had made with him. A lack of confidence or a lack of honesty? Heather wasn’t sure. Did she really know the man standing before her? Did she even want to know him?

  Heather considered how he could convey his apology before answering. Did he move towards her to offer up a hug, some kind of father-daughter contact to show that he genuinely meant what he said? Were the intonations of his voice those of a man who wanted to make everything right? To build a bridge across a river of heartache, no matter what its width? Something inside her said that her father was merely going through the motions of a meeting that he had obviously been dreading. He was ashamed, of course he was, but had their emotional wound opened up too far ever to be sutured? The black hollow of emptiness inside told her that it had.

  ‘So am I.’ For Heather it wasn’t an apology that she was offering but a confirmation of her sorrow.

  ‘I’ve wanted to come and see you for so long. To tell you how I feel.’ Sheridan’s arms were crossed, his fists bunched, his head hanging down in shame. Vulnerability oozed from his every pore. To Heather he just seemed pathetic – she could feel the blackness inside her turning blood red as anger bubbled in her veins.

  ‘But you didn’t; you haven’t. It’s as if you don’t care. Not since I lost Max, not since I lost the most precious things that life has ever given me.’ Heather moved her hand to her stomach, to the place where her baby would have still been growing had things not taken such a dreadful turn. Sheridan’s face washed white with sorrow as he spotted the action. ‘Is that why you left me so alone at Max’s funeral? When I needed you to be there for me, to comfort me as a father should? To hold me in your arms and tell me that life would become more bearable. You couldn’t even touch me. Were you scared that I would be contaminated by your guilt?’ Heather’s voice was robust as she spoke. She had expected to break down but some kind of inner strength, a knowledge what she had to say was the sad yet blatant truth, kept her spirit from weakening.

  ‘I didn’t mean for it to happen, Heather.’ Sheridan’s voice was far from strong, his tongue stumbling over the syllables as he tried to explain the inexplicable.

  ‘You were over the limit. You made a mistake and my poor Max paid the price. And then you tried to cover it up. I would never have known, you would never have told me. How can you keep that from somebody that you profess to love? How can you sleep at night?’

  ‘I don’t, believe you me. There’s not a moment that’s passed when I don’t wish that I could turn back time and make things better for you.’ Sheridan moved towards Heather to try and take her hands in his. This was his first attempt at any physical contact between them. But Heather sidestepped away, her intentions clear.

  ‘They’ll never be better! You took my husband, you took my unborn child – I’ve lost so much. I always used to imagine what you would be like as a grandfather. I’d imagine you buying cots and baby blankets and little romper suits with funny slogans on them. I’d see you bouncing your grandchildren up and down on your knee just like you used to do to me when I was young – it was a pretty picture. But now it’s a diseased one!’

  Tears were beginning to puddle in Sheridan’s eyes. ‘No, we can make this better, Heather. Let me make things right. There will be grandchildren in the future. I’ll always be there for you. You don’t know how much I’m hurting…’

  ‘And I don’t care.’ Heather’s words contained a finality that sliced off her father’s grovelling in mid-flow.

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he pleaded.

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ replied Heather. ‘I needed to see you. You would never have come to me so I had to come to you. But I’ve seen all I need to see, heard all of your pathetic words. I don’t ever need to imagine you as a grandfather, no matter what the future holds for me, because I can’t even see you as a father anymore.’

  Sheridan’s tears fell silently down his face and he dropped to his knees as if pleading for forgiveness. For Heather it was his first genuine action, but she didn’t care. Her mind was made up.

  ‘I hate you for what you’ve done. I hate you for what you’ve made me feel. You’re nothing to me anymore. Erased from my life!’ Her words were decisive and devoid of pity.

  ‘Please, Heather,
don’t do this! You’re a woman with goodness in your heart. You’ve always been so kind to others…’ Sheridan sobbed.

  ‘Well, I must have inherited that from my mother’s side,’ said Heather, turning towards the door. She had said all she needed to say. ‘You’ve killed off three family members – my husband, my baby and my father. They’re all dead to me.’

  Heather could hear the sound of Sheridan’s misery as she walked down the corridor to the lift. She stepped inside, looking at the black monogrammed V that decorated the carpet inside the elevator. She stood on it, her black heels sinking into its shape – black, black, black. But as the doors closed nothing was as black as the hatred in her heart for the man who had once been her father.

  63

  The night of the fight…

  Despite everything that had been tearing his family apart over the past few weeks, Sheridan Rivers was feeling pretty good about life as he towelled himself down after his shower. So Nikki had betrayed him, Heather had disowned him, Sutton had quit his marital bed and he had a list of enemies as long as a line of floats at Barbados’s colourful Crop Over summer festival. So what? Nothing would dampen his spirits on the night when his name, his hotel chain and his reputation would be beamed live to living rooms around the world for a return of billions of dollars.

  Nothing gave him a hard-on like cash. And nothing had ever brought him cash on the scale of the Belter in the Swelter bout. Opening hotels around the world was a magical thing, but turning his hotels into sports venues that could drag world-title fights away from the neon lights of Las Vegas was a move that would make Velvet the number-one hotel chain on the planet. And that would reap billions.