by C. J. Thomas
“What happened?” She laughed bitterly, tossing her head back. Her hair shook like a fiery waterfall. “What do you think? I mean, honestly. Haven’t you pieced it together yet?”
“Honestly, no. I didn’t want to believe you’d do anything like this.” I spoke the truth plainly, openly. There was no point in being coy.
“That’s your downfall. You didn’t wanna believe I could stoop so low, is that it? You’re supposed to be so smart, aren’t you? And that boyfriend of yours, that mountain of muscle. He’s supposed to be such a hotshot. The two of you together, all that brain power, and you still couldn’t figure it out? I guess there really is such a thing as being blinded by friendship.” She snickered.
I stayed quiet, waiting for her to speak. The longer she spoke, the longer I would survive. The more time I would give Dan to find me.
“I met Austin around a year ago. I was covering some charity event—I think you were there, too. Weren’t you? I could swear I saw you there.”
I searched my memory. “Was that the one for the animal shelter?”
“Yes. Remember, I wore that black Chanel dress. I love that dress. You looked really good that night, too.”
“Thanks.” I couldn’t believe it. She made it sound like we were just two girlfriends, gossiping over a party we went to.
“That was the night I first saw him—I mean, really saw him. He’s always in the news, whatever. I had never met him personally, though. I hadn’t looked into those eyes of his. I hadn’t heard him laugh. He’s so charming, so witty. You would never guess he was as rich as he is. Know what I mean? Sometimes you can just tell, when a man is a real drip. Full of himself. Not Austin. He thinks it’s funny, having all that money, the way people treat him. Like he’s something special.” Margo walked to the window, using the gun’s muzzle to pull the curtains aside.
I wondered when she’d completely lost her mind. Even her speech patterns were erratic.
“I fell for him right away, obviously. Who wouldn’t? And it wasn’t about the money, really, it wasn’t. It was him, just him. More man than I had ever known.”
She sounded like something out of a corny B-movie from the nineteen forties. I took the opportunity to roll my eyes since she was looking elsewhere.
“We had a beautiful night together. One crazy, beautiful night. It was magic, really. It only made me fall deeper for him. I couldn’t help myself—he was everything I’d ever wanted in a man. The kind of man every woman wants, I guess. Powerful and virile and sexy. He rocked my world, to put it bluntly.” She laughed, then sighed. I watched as she leaned against the window frame, lost in memory. “I didn’t know somebody else had already taken him.” Margo’s voice went cold, flat.
“Emelia,” I whispered. So that was it.
“Yeah, her.” Margo looked back at me, letting the curtains fall shut. “Do you know how humiliated I was? Thinking the night we spent together meant something to him, the way it did to me. He never told me then that he’d just started seeing the little tramp. They weren’t serious yet, he told me. Otherwise, he never would have slept with me. Like I was dirt. She turned him against me, wouldn’t let anybody else have him. She wanted him all to herself, selfish bitch. He wasn’t like that when we were together. It was all her fault. I mean, who did she think she was, anyway? God’s gift? She wasn’t even all that good of an actress. And her sanctimonious speeches about the environment? Gimme a break.”
“Hang on a second,” I said. I hated breaking into her stream of consciousness, but something about her story didn’t jibe with me. “If they worked so hard to keep it a secret, how did you find out? Why did he make it a point to tell you exactly why he couldn’t be with you again?”
She smirked. “He practically made me sign a blood oath, swearing I wouldn’t spill the beans. Like I said, I threw myself at him. He had no choice but to tell me he was already involved—he blurted it out, actually.”
“Under what conditions?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself.
“What do you think? I followed him into his limo one night after another event. He freaked out.”
I cringed for the both of them. How awkward that must’ve been for Austin. I could just imagine him blurting out his relationship with Emelia after the woman he made the mistake of sleeping with started stalking him. How far had Margo gone before he didn’t have a choice?
She sank onto the bed, just by my feet. For a split second, I considered kicking her. Maybe the gun would fall from her hand. I might be able to get away.
No, since my hands left it impossible for me to open the door. I had no way of untying them.
“I knew they weren’t right for each other, I just knew it.”
“Why do you think that?”
She glared at me. “Isn’t it obvious? I mean, she was little miss environment, wasn’t she? She hated everything he stood for, and vice versa. She could have destroyed him. Why would he put himself in that sort of danger? If it weren’t for me caring about him the way I did, actually giving a damn about whether his company survived or failed, he would have lost it.” Her voice took on a pleading, almost whining tone. “Just because she flashed herself around and the rest of the world thought she was hot stuff, he acted like a stupid man and almost gave everything up for her. I couldn’t let him do that. He was supposed to be so smart, right? He runs this tremendous company, tells people what to do, all of it. Why couldn’t he be smarter about who he dated?”
“It’s not easy for us to be smart when it comes to things like that, is it?”
She looked at me through narrowed eyes. “No, it’s not. I tried to warn him about her, I really did. I mean, what if she was only using him? What if she wanted to destroy him?”
So Margo had had the same doubts Dan and I did.
“I wouldn’t have done that to him,” she insisted, sounding miserable. “He wouldn’t listen.”
It made sense in a sick, twisted sort of way, yet there were still too many unanswered questions. I was afraid to ask, afraid she would never tell me. I wondered if she would be angry at me for asking. I didn’t want to set off the ticking time bomb she’d obviously become.
Something hit me. “Austin knows, then.”
“Knows what?”
I took a chance. “What you did to Emelia.”
She blinked, as though she tried to decide how I’d figured it out. I wasn’t as stupid as she thought I was. It broke my heart to consider it, but after everything she’d already told me, it only made sense that she was the killer.
Eventually, she nodded. “Yeah, he knows. I didn’t make it a secret that I hated Emelia. Not just because she was with him, but because she put him in danger. It killed me to think of her putting him in danger. So I put her in danger, instead. For once, she didn’t get what she wanted.”
My stomach turned. “How did you get your hands on the drugs?”
“It wasn’t hard. Any of it. She wrenched her back on the set of some movie a while ago, so she had the prescriptions. All I had to do was make it look like she took them. I mean, come on. It’s the oldest story in the book, right? The rich, famous bitch can’t handle fame, so she drugs herself to death.”
“What about the hemlock?”
She cocked her head to the side. “It’s easy to get your hands on things in LA if you really want to.”
Poor Emelia. She was in love. She wouldn’t have hurt Austin for anything, and he wouldn’t have hurt her.
“Why is he with you, then? If he knows you killed Emelia? Why hasn’t he gone to the police?”
“Because he’s supposed to be with me. Don’t you get it? I did him a favor.”
I ignored her delusional prattle. “You know, you were joking when you called Dan a hotshot. I know you were. You were right, though. He’s a smart man, one of the smartest. It’s only a matter of time before he finds out you were behind it all. When he questions Austin—and he will, of course—he’ll make him buckle. It’s all over for you already. You just don’t know it yet
.” I forced myself to look her in the eye. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You can still get out of this more easily than you would if you go through with . . . whatever this is.”
“You really care about me, don’t you?” she asked.
“You were always a friend to me. I don’t want to see you get punished.”
“So it wouldn’t have anything to do with the gun I have pointed at you right now, would it?” She raised the gun, leveling it with my chest.
“It’s not, Margo. You know it’s not. Think about it. Everything we’ve been through? You still have a chance. There’s still time to turn this around.”
“You can’t turn murder around.”
“You don’t have to make it worse, though.” Then, something else occurred to me. “What about Austin? What will he think when he finds out what you did to me? Will he still want to be with you?” It was a long shot, but I had to take it.
I half-expected her to come to some realization. I thought she might see the error of her ways.
I was wrong. She only laughed dismissively. The gun never wavered.
“Honey, I wouldn’t be so sure about that if I were you.” She couldn’t stop chuckling. “See, I know a little something about him that he doesn’t want anybody else to know. Miss Emelia convinced him somehow—I don’t wanna think about how she did it—to invest in green energy.”
I gasped. It had never occurred to me. “Was that why you tried to blackmail her?”
“Oh, you know about that, too? I guess you were smarter together than I gave you credit for. I apologize for underestimating you.”
“No problem.” I tried to hold back the sarcasm, but it wasn’t easy.
“Yes, that’s it. That and their relationship that they wanted to keep so quiet. I tried to shake Emelia down—she was supposed to love him so much, wasn’t she? They were just the perfect little couple. She wouldn’t, though. She hemmed and hawed, so I took care of her. Then, I moved on to him.”
I shook my head. “That’s why you were supposedly together. You’ve been blackmailing him, now.”
“Something like that. I wrote an article about his investment. He was with her in spite of the danger she put him in. Now he’s with me because of the trouble I could make for him. I think that’s almost sort of poetic, don’t you?”
I nodded mutely, dumbfounded. She was entirely insane. How had I never noticed any of this before now?
“He knows I’ll bring him to his knees if he doesn’t play along. We have to be together. It was meant to be. I think he’s finally coming around, thank goodness.”
“Yeah, thank goodness.” I nodded. She didn’t seem to pick up on my sarcasm.
“And that’s why I know he won’t help your boyfriend. If he does, I’ll go public. It’s in his best interest to keep his mouth shut about me, about my involvement with Emelia—everything.” She shrugged. “So it looks like you’ve finally been outguessed.”
I did everything I could to give the impression I couldn’t have cared less, that I trusted Dan and had no fear of her.
The light glinting off the steel of the gun left me feeling less-than-positive.
I could only hope Dan was on his way and that he arrived before the hammer got cocked.
157
Dan
AN ENTIRE DAY.
It took even a seasoned police detective to convince Frank to put out a missing person’s repost for Julia. It took that long before anybody would take me seriously.
Once the following morning came, a morning during which I sat at my desk in the same position I’d been sitting in for twenty-four hours, even Frank had finally come around to my suspicions.
Only they weren’t suspicions by that time. They were all-out fears.
Was she already dead? Probably. Margo had killed her, left her somewhere, and gone on the run.
The only other explanation that made sense was a murder-suicide, but why go through all the trouble of murdering somebody to protect yourself if you were only going to kill yourself right after?
Margo had to be nuts, but I didn’t think she was that nuts. She’d managed to fool Julia into thinking they were friends, after all.
“You’ve been here all night?” Frank handed me a cup of coffee when he arrived that morning. I accepted it without looking at him. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I’d tried to tell him, hadn’t I? He hadn’t taken me seriously. Nobody had.
“I know a lot of my suits look the same, but I would think even you could tell this is the same one from yesterday.” I gulped the coffee gratefully. It was the only thing keeping me going, along with the other cups I’d downed throughout the night. I’d been forced to resort to the crap coffee at the station, none of the nearby shops being open overnight.
“Why didn’t you go home, at least? Wait to hear something there?”
“I’d only go crazy there. It seemed to make more sense to go crazy here. At least there are people here, even it’s only the overnight shift, criminals and cleaning people.” I snorted at my own joke, which made me understand how very exhausted I was.
It was hardly a funny joke.
“Why don’t you go back to the break room and grab some shut eye?”
There was a room on our floor, just off the locker room, with cots for cops working around the clock on pressing cases. I’d spent more than my fair share of nights catching desperate bits of sleep in there.
Only, I couldn’t sleep this time.
It was unthinkable.
Even in those other cases, when my career or another person’s life was on the line, I could sleep for an hour. I’d never been so close to a case before. It was never about somebody who mattered to me.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face. When I was lucky, she was smiling, laughing, smirking in that way she had.
At other times, her eyes were glassy.
Blank.
Dead.
I didn’t answer Frank, and my silence seemed like answer enough because he went to his desk.
“Did you put out the MPR?”
“Just now. Before you came in.”
“That’ll get you somewhere. I’m sure it will.”
I turned to him. It wasn’t even worth the energy to be annoyed anymore. I was just tired and feeling hopeless. “If nothing helped yesterday, why would it help today?”
“Don’t say that. You can’t lose hope.”
I blinked, stunned. Then I laughed. I saw the hurt on Frank’s face.
“Fine, then. Be an asshole.” He looked away.
“No, no, sorry. I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, partner. Only, do you realize how hollow that sounds? You made me think of all the times I’ve said that to somebody, especially back when I was a beat cop. You can’t lose hope. How many times did I actually mean it? How many times did I think there was a reason to hope? Probably none, or a very small percentage.” I looked him in the eye. “Do you think there’s hope? Do you really?”
He sighed, averting his eyes. “I think we’ve gotta be smart about this. That’s what I think. Before we both lose our minds.”
“Well, partner, you’ve had a good night’s sleep. Why don’t you tell me how you want to be smart about it?” I folded my hands behind my head, sitting back in my chair. “Shoot.”
He rolled his eyes, put on the spot. I hated to make him feel that way, but the truth was, I was desperate for a little guidance. My brain was a total fog of sleepless panic.
“What motive would Margo have for killing Julia?”
“She’d shut Julia up.”
“So why not just kill her and get it over with? Why take her?”
“You think she took her somewhere?” I sat up, interested.
“How else can you explain them both going AWOL like this? If she killed Julia right away, she would hide the body or leave it somewhere nobody would find it right away. Then she would go back to her life. Right? Why put suspicion on herself?”
His words sparked a tiny flame of hope ins
ide me.
He was right. When she killed Emelia, she didn’t disappear for days. She went back to her routine, even showing up at a gala event the next day. She was working, socializing, throwing guilt off herself—not like guilt was on her, or anybody, at that point. Aside from the theories Julia and I had, anyway.
“You think she took her somewhere, then?”
“It’s the only theory that makes sense to me. She’s holdin’ her somewhere.”
“But why? And for how long?”
He shook his head, sighing sharply in frustration. “That, I don’t know. Who knows why she took her in the first place, even?”
“Do you think it’s about the article? I mean, why go through all this trouble for one lousy article?”
“That article was gonna name Austin as the possible killer, wasn’t it?”
I shook my head. “To be honest, I don’t know what the final draft looked like. She didn’t let me read it. I know it was supposed to out them as a couple. Maybe that was the reason? Using the pictures, that was it. Nothing in the interviews we conducted.”
Frank nodded thoughtfully. “So it wouldn’t name him outright. That would be . . . is it libel or slander?”
“Libel if it’s printed,” I tossed off, only half-thinking about my words. “So, Austin might have suffered for that. But why, really? I mean, the girl’s dead. She’s gone. She can’t do anything to hurt the company anymore. Unless there was something else, some other aspect of their relationship.” I couldn’t believe my brain was clicking the way it was, seeing as I’d gotten no sleep. Frank’s presence energized me. He gave me somebody to think off of, work off of. We always did better work together, I realized. We made a good team.
“You think it was deeper than just them dating?”
I nodded, thinking back to the meeting at Austin’s—if it could be called that. “When I talked to Haynes, he said something that didn’t register with me at the time, but it did set off a little ticker in my head. Something I would need to go back to.”
“And that was?”
“He told me about the first time he met Emelia. It was at some green energy event.”
