by Rick Blechta
The girl’s eyes barely opened again, and her mouth moved. A trickle of blood came out of the corner, held for a moment, then flowed down her cheek. Shannon wiped it away with her sleeve.
Olivia’s mouth moved again, and Shannon put her ear directly above it, knowing she wanted to speak but couldn’t because of the blood filling her lungs.
The words came out in a pain-filled whisper. “I did... what I had to.”
She shuddered once more, and the last breath of Olivia St. James’s short life left her body as a long sigh.
Filled with anger, regret but mostly deep sorrow, Shannon’s slumped as she bowed her head over the dead singer.
Down below, running feet could be heard, then, “Police! We’ve got the building surrounded.”
The cavalry had finally arrived.
Marvell, obviously not in good shape from the crack on his head, was sent off to the hospital, but Jackie flatly refused to go. Since she wasn’t outwardly marked, they didn’t overrule her. So Shannon, Jackie and Roy were put in a downstairs conference room to cool their heels as the official wheels ground slowly forward. Roy paced the room ceaselessly, muttering to himself. Jackie had been given a blanket, but she was still shivering and looking ill.
Shannon, surprisingly, felt calm and focussed for the first time in several days. Procedures were being followed. Each of the three had been interviewed in a separate room, and she knew the same was being done with Maxine and her crew. As a former cop, she desperately wanted to hear what sort of spin they were trying to put on the situation.
About every ten minutes, Roy complained that things were taking too long, and one or the other of the two underlings watching them would answer wearily, “The sheriff will deal with you when he’s good and ready.”
Close to three in the morning, the door opened and a new person entered.An older man with a grey buzz-cut and sharply pressed uniform, he sat down wearily on the chair at the end of the conference table, then slid Shannon’s and Roy’s wallets down to them. No sign of their guns.
“I’m Sheriff Newmark,” he said.
“What’s going on?” they all asked at once.
He pursed his lips and stared at them for a long moment. “Well, as you know, Ms Olivia St. James is dead. The ME has told me that the bullet tore her up real good inside. There was nothing anyone could have done for her.”
Shannon sagged, then asked, “And her stepmother?”
“Maxine St. James was hit in the shoulder. She lost a lot of blood, but she’ll be all right.”
Jackie smashed her fist down on the table. “Goddammit!” she croaked, “Why is it always the wrong way around?”
Once the three had been given the thumbs up by Newmark, the sheriff’s men became a lot friendlier. A female deputy accompanied Jackie back to her room so she could get some clothes. Still, it was nearly five o’clock before they were allowed to leave.
Seen in daylight, the damage to Roy’s Hummer was even worse than expected. He didn’t seem to notice.
It was a subdued group that dragged themselves back to the motel in Portola.
“I’m going over to the hospital and see how Marvell’s doing,” Roy said with a sigh. “He looked pretty rough. I don’t know how I’m going to explain to his momma what’s happened.”
Shannon gave him a big hug. “Thanks for everything, Roy. You’ve been a rock throughout this.”
He looked at her sadly. “I just wish it had turned out better.”
“We all do.”
After the door closed behind the big man, Jackie looked at Shannon. “How are we going to tell Andy?”
Her boss sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands.“I don’t know, Jackie. I just don’t know.”
Even though she was falling-on-her-face tired, Shannon called Toronto after gathering her thoughts for a few minutes. The last thing she wanted was for Curran to hear something about Olivia’s death through the media.
“Shannon!” he said. “Thank God. It’s almost three, and I’ve been going crazy with worry. What’s happening?”
“It’s all over, Andy, and...well...I really don’t know how to tell you—”
“Is Olivia okay? That’s all that matters.”
“No, Andy, she’s not. Everything went horribly wrong. She had confronted her stepmother by the time we got there. She had a gun and there was... there were some shots fired. Olivia was hit in the chest.” The PI squeezed her eyes shut, trying to find the inner strength. “She’s dead, Andy. I wish I could tell you anything else. I am so sorry.” The phone was silent for quite a long time, until Shannon finally asked, “Andy, are you still there?”
“Yeah. How did it happen?”
In a calm, unemotional voice, Shannon told him everything that had taken place the previous evening. She felt certain Olivia’s actions had saved Jackie’s and Marvell’s lives, and she told him that.
“And that bitch of a stepmother?”
Shannon sighed deeply. “I really don’t know what’s going to happen to her. I’m not a lawyer, but you can count on me not resting until she’s brought up on any charges we can make stick.”
“And what charges would those be?”
“I wish I could tell you. She’s in the hospital. She’s certainly an accessory to what happened last night, but past that, I just can’t tell you at this point. I’m sorry I couldn’t call with better news.”
“So am I.” Curran sighed heavily. “So what happens now?”
“We’ve been told by the sheriff to stick around. You’ll hear from me the minute I find out anything. You have my word.”
“Thanks,” he said and hung up before Shannon could say anything else.
Jackie lay in bed all that first day, face to the wall.
Shannon knew she was wrung out by her ordeal, but this response was more than that. The girl would never admit it, but she was a wreck.
What they’d done to her had been unimaginable.
About five, Shannon went out and picked up some Chinese food at a place down the road from the motel. She also bought a bottle of whiskey. But when she got back to the room, the first thing Jackie said was, “I’m not hungry.”
Shannon put the food on the dresser and sat on Jackie’s bed. Giving the younger woman’s shoulder a squeeze, she said, “I know how you’re feeling right now. I feel the same, but what happened is part of this game. It sucks, but things don’t always turn out the way we’d like.”
Jackie flinched under her hand. “If I hadn’t screwed up, we wouldn’t have failed, and Olivia wouldn’t be dead.”
“You didn’t screw up. If you hadn’t held out as long as you did, Marvell, you and Olivia would probably all be dead. And Olivia being in that room wasn’t just about saving you. She finally had a chance to confront her stepmother. That’s why she was there. That’s what you have to remember. You have to keep that fact in the front of your mind. You. Did. Not. Fail.”
Jackie made no response.
“Do you still want to work for me, Goode?”
Finally, Jackie turned over. “Yes.”
Shannon nodded and got off the bed. “Then the first order of business is to get something in our stomachs. I’ve also bought a bottle of Jack Daniels. Tonight we’re going to tie one on. Forget all about the bullshit world we live in. Tell stories about ourselves. Maybe even laugh.”
Looking out of red-rimmed eyes, Jackie asked her boss. “And what about tomorrow?”
The older woman’s eyes blazed. “Tomorrow we go after Maxine St. James with everything we’ve got. She is not going to walk away from what she’s done.”
But for all her brave words to rouse the troops, Shannon knew she had lied.
They had indeed failed.
Epilogue
I faced Shannon O’Brien for what would likely be the last time.
The original plan had been for me to go to her office in Unionville, but packing up the rest of the house had been taking more time than I’d expected. Since the movers were coming
the next morning, she’d said she would drop by in the evening.
It seemed a fitting way to bring that chapter of my life to a close.
Shannon had been arrested on her return to Canada, and she’d admitted later that only some fancy footwork by her friend Roy had saved her from the same fate in Portola. Even though Palmer had spoken at length to the sheriff in California, he was still angry enough at her that he was determined to get his pound of flesh. It had taken two days to get her sprung from jail.
I’d had a devil of a time making Kate understand what was going on when she saw a news report about Shannon’s arrest on TV. She was so incensed about it she’d written a blistering letter to Toronto’s chief of police, which I actually encouraged because it distracted her for awhile from the loss of Olivia. It was my child’s first experience with death and something I would have shielded her from if I could have.
Typically, Shannon had shrugged off her arrest, not wanting the cops to look any worse than they already did. If Palmer had even an ounce of sense, he would have fallen on his knees and kissed her feet for the information she’d provided.
We’d been in touch sporadically over the past three months but hadn’t talked face to face. Palmer and his men, along with cops from Florida and New York, had trooped through Olivia’s room at my house, taking photos and asking pretty much the same questions each time.
When all of them were satisfied, I painted over everything. I couldn’t bear to look at it.
As I listened to what Shannon was saying, I just wanted with every fibre of my being for it all to be over with.
“Smith provided most of the information,” Shannon was saying, “once the DA made a deal with him.”
“So when are Haggerty and Colville being brought back to Canada for trial?”
“Palmer is pushing hard to get them, but the U.S. always does things in its own way and in its own sweet time. Believe me, if they thought they could make a murder charge stick against Dave Haggerty for Olivia’s death, they’d never give him up. He isn’t fighting extradition. California has the death penalty.”
“And Palmer? What’s he got on Haggerty?”
Shannon’s face had an unreadable expression. “With my information, Palmer’s men got hold of the rental car they had in Toronto and unbelievably found a couple of Maggie’s hairs still in the trunk. They probably had her body wrapped in a plastic sheet, but that’s seldom foolproof. The pathologist also found a tiny bit of Haggerty’s skin under one of Maggie’s nails. So Dave will go down, along with that little rat Colville as an accessory.”
“What’s the latest on Maxine St. James?”
“Seems she personally owned Sunnyvale and had installed Dr. Smith as its head. That makes her an accessory to what he was doing to Olivia, as well as for his torture of Jackie,” Shannon said disgustedly, “and, of course, for Olivia’s shooting. Maxine let Smith do whatever was needed to keep her stepdaughter anxious, lost and totally unable to deal with anything. It isn’t hard when you use the right psychological techniques on someone as vulnerable as her. The drugs were the worst, though, a combination of heroin and cocaine.”
“Speedballs?”
“Kind of a cute name for something so horrible, isn’t it? Maggie figured out pretty quick what was going on, and after they got away, she probably had to get Olivia over the worst of the addiction by herself. Once free of Sunnyvale and the drugs, Olivia actually began to heal a bit. I don’t know if she ever would have been completely right, but she certainly was doing better, as you know.”
“But why didn’t Maxine just arrange for her stepdaughter to have an accident?”
Shannon finally smiled. “When they got a look at Bernard St. James’s will and the date it was drawn up, it became pretty clear. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he must have suspected his wife might have had something to do with his son’s death. Part of it was that he couldn’t believe his darling daughter would ever have done anything like that, nor did he believe the police version that the murder was possibly committed by a bunch of partying kids. The retired butler, Jim Davis, admitted that much to me a few weeks ago.”
“So the father changed his will?”
“Yes. He had a new one drawn up two months before he died but didn’t tell Maxine. In it, his widow would be the trustee for the estate and have full control of it until Olivia either married or died. Once either of those things happened, Maxine would get a cash settlement of twenty-five million dollars, and the rest of the estate would either go entirely to Olivia or to various charities and St. James relatives. The solution was obvious: all Maxine had to do was keep Olivia at Sunnyvale the rest of her life, and she was home free.”
“She must have freaked out when Olivia got away.”
“You bet. One of the servants in the New York mansion remembers the day well. Maxine was throwing things and screaming at Smith, who’d flown in to talk to her. She was completely out of control.”
“But why go to all this trouble? Surely twenty-five million dollars would have been enough for her.”
“Maxine’s whole life revolved around playing with her late husband’s estate. That’s the best way to put it. She’s got the value of the damn thing up to one-and-a-half billion dollars. That’s how she gets her ya-yas.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the last thing Olivia said to you—”
“We all have. I believe she knew exactly what she was doing. She knew about the provisions of her father’s will.”
“So she was willing to die to beat her stepmother? I find that hard to swallow.”
“How can we say what was going through that poor girl’s head? I only know what she said... at the end. You can believe what you want.”
At that point, I just couldn’t sit there, so I made an excuse about getting a glass of water from the kitchen. I brought one back for Shannon too. We drank, neither of us willing to look at the other. Eventually, the silence became too much.
“Do you think Maxine killed Olivia’s brother, or were those sketches upstairs something out of her imagination?”
Shannon pursed her lips. “How’s this for a scenario? The son finds out about his stepmother’s indiscretion with Taggart and threatens her with it. He loves his father and does not want to hurt him in any way, especially since he’s dying, so he tells Maxine he won’t tell his father what he knows. Could she take that risk? No. He’s going to take over the business. There was the very real possibility young Bernard would boot her out as soon as his father died.
“When I spoke to his fiancée, she told me Bernard III had been edgy all that last week, but wouldn’t tell her why. He did say something about how he had to protect his father. She also heard Bernard arguing loudly on the phone with Maxine two days before the family left for Florida.”
I nodded. “That all sounds logical.”
“We’ll never prove it unless Maxine develops a conscience. Hell, she’s going full tilt with a slate of high-powered lawyers to prove she’s innocent of all charges.” Shannon smiled again. “But there are some things she’s not going to wiggle out of. She’ll do time, but most devastating to her is that the estate is now out of her control forever. That’s Olivia’s revenge.”
“And this Taggart guy, what happened to him?”
“Unless someone squeals, we’ll never know. I doubt he’s alive, though. He was screwing Maxine. It’s my belief he asked for a big payoff to keep his mouth shut about it, and she couldn’t count on him to do that. Maybe Maxine was involved with the drugs he was supplying to Olivia. Our only hope there is that either Haggerty or Colville knows something and lets it drop.
“Maxine had known Richard Colville for a number of years. He used to be a PI, and I’ll bet he did her dirty work. He has a bad reputation in the business. He might have been the one who took care of Jack Taggart. The only thing we’ve got going for us is that Dave Haggerty is not too bright. The DA in California has them separated, hoping that will shake something loose. Without the brains of the out
fit around, Haggerty might say something interesting.”
“That sounds like a long shot.”
“I don’t think so. There are too many people around who know too much. Sooner or later, somebody is going to slip up or cut a deal for a lighter sentence, and Maxine St. James is going to go down for something really big. The trouble with people like her is that they believe no one can touch them. Jackie and I, not to mention my friend Roy, are committed to seeing justice done. We won’t let this one go.”
“By the way, thanks for sending over the series of articles that reporter wrote. She really gave it to everyone involved with Sunnyvale. I’m surprised she hasn’t been sued. Or has she?”
Shannon laughed. “Not the last I’d heard, but the articles have garnered a lot of notice in the New York press, and it’s taken some of the wind out of old Max’s sails.” She closed her notebooks and looked at me closely. “There’s one thing I haven’t told you yet.”
“What’s that?”
“The reason Haggerty and Colville got sent to Toronto is that somebody ratted Olivia out.”
“Who would have—” I stopped. I knew who it was. Ronald. I guess I’d known it all along. Always on the computer when he wasn’t playing piano, jealous of the notice Olivia was receiving, the way he’d acted that last night at the Sal. It all made too much sense. He would have had no more trouble than Jackie in finding out who Olivia was. I didn’t know if it was worth the energy to confront him about what he’d done, but I probably should. If he hadn’t opened his mouth, Olivia might still be alive.
Shannon let me mull that over, then said,“Andy, how are you doing?”
Looking down at the floor, I answered, “I have my ups and downs. Kate has been a great help. We bought a condo down near the waterfront. Lots of windows looking out over the lake. She’s fallen in love with it.”
Even with the fact that a body had been dumped on my porch, the house had sold very quickly – and for an absolutely astronomical sum.
