Vegas Lies ( Lies Mystery Thriller Series Book 3)

by Andrew Cunningham

  “Assuming for a minute that Richard didn’t kill Peep’s father,” said Sabrina, “who did?”

  We were both quiet as we chewed it over. Then suddenly it hit me. I looked up to find Sabrina staring at me. As usual, she was a step ahead of me.

  The answer was chilling.

  Chapter 23

  We were exhausted and ended up going to bed early. Mo was good with that, as she was just as tired. As a result, we were up early the next morning and ordered breakfast in the room. But we had an itch that needed scratching and I had to see if I could get some answers.

  I took a chance that the coffee shop in the Mirage was a common morning hangout for Angel, and I was right. She was sitting in the same seat she had occupied when we first met, eyes staring down at the cup of coffee she was clutching. A half-eaten breakfast sat in front of her with her napkin thrown on top to indicate that she was done.

  As I approached, she looked up and let out a groan, rolling her eyes in the process.

  Before she could tell me to get lost I said, “Priscilla killed your father, didn’t she?”

  She was awake now, but she looked to be struggling with how to respond, so I continued.

  “That’s why you hate her so much, isn’t it?”

  Her whole demeanor seemed to suddenly soften. She indicated for me to sit.

  “Do I have to pay you again?” I asked, pulling out a chair and sitting.

  “We’ll call this a freebie,” she responded with a slight smile. “How did you find out?”

  “Just some detective work and connecting the dots. We researched Richard a little. He may have been a con man, but there was nothing to indicate that he was capable of killing. Then we thought about your hatred toward Priscilla. What would prompt that? Siblings can usually forgive each other for most things, but you couldn’t. And sisters who were both being sexually abused by their father would have an even tighter bond. But you two didn’t.”

  “So you know about that. Does Priscilla’s girlfriend know?” she asked. Kind of a strange question, I thought.

  “Not yet. Sabrina and I just figured it out last night. Sabrina might even be telling her our suspicions now.”

  “How do you think she will react?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Mo and I have been friends a long time. She can be rough around the edges, but she has a very strong moral compass. I guess it will probably depend on how it happened.”

  She was quiet, but I could tell that she was gathering up her words. Her eyes had glazed over. But then she was ready. She looked right at me, eyes clear as could be.

  “I don’t hate her for killing our father. If I’d had the courage, I would have done it. He was a horrible human being and no one should have to endure what we went through.

  She motioned to the waitress for another carafe of coffee.

  “Yes, Richard was a con man. In the beginning, I don’t think he truly intended to con people. He always had great business ideas—well, he thought they were great anyway—and he was a convincing salesman. When the businesses inevitably failed, he had every intention of paying his investors back, but it just never happened. He did, in fact, screw my father out of a good amount of money. That one was intentional, a blackmail scheme around what my father had done to us. I loved Richard and hated my father, so I didn’t mind.”

  “Were you okay about Richard stealing from his investors?” I asked.

  “It bothered me, but he assured me that he was going to pay them back. Besides, when you love someone, you tend to forgive a lot.”

  I thought of Mo. Was she going to be able to forgive?

  “Are you still in love with Richard?”

  “God, no,” she answered emphatically. “He’s an asshole to the umpteenth degree.” She poured from the new carafe and took a sip of coffee. “But I blame Priscilla for that. She ruined his life. I think he progressed to where he is today, a progression that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for her. And that’s why I hate her.”

  Angel continued. “I’m sure she killed our father because she had had enough. With Priscilla’s marriage collapsing, he might have tried to resume his perverted ways. I don’t know. It’s all speculation, because I never had a chance to talk to her directly about it, but she used a 7-iron from my father’s golf bag to crush his skull. The weapon is common knowledge. The police report said that he was hit multiple times. But the club was wiped clean, so Priscilla would never be implicated. And this is what started it all. She told police that she saw Richard kill him. Richard and I were going to run away together. I don’t know how, but I think she knew it. I think she waited for a moment when Richard was there, so she could kill my father right after and he would be seen on the driveway camera leaving.”

  “Why didn’t she tell the cops the truth?” I asked. “They would have believed her, especially if you sided with her.”

  “I never got the chance to side with her. The minute she accused Richard, we left the state. Priscilla was a coward. I had seen it many times over the years. But it’s one thing being a coward and another being so much of a coward that you would implicate an innocent person for a crime you committed. She didn’t want to take the chance that she’d end up in jail for a justified act, so she had to create a story and find a fall guy.”

  I thought of Sabrina being sent to jail for performing the justified act of killing her abusive husband.

  “So, Richard and I went to Vegas. After a few months, he paid a friend to run an article in a Central American newspaper announcing his death. Then the friend sent it to the FBI. But it was after that that Richard changed.

  “Okay,” I said, “so Priscilla wouldn’t go to the police and tell them the truth. If you loved Richard and hated Priscilla, why didn’t you go to the cops?”

  “Too complicated. They had already decided that Richard was the killer. If I couldn’t convince them that he was innocent, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison. I couldn’t take that chance.”

  “What did you mean when you said that Priscilla was responsible for the way Richard is now?” I asked.

  “He had been treading a thin line ethically before it all happened, so it didn’t take long for him to complete the transition. He got involved with the wrong crowd…”

  “Ludwick?” I asked, interrupting her.

  “You know Ludwick?”

  “I’ve met him,” I answered.

  “Yes, Ludwick,” she said, making a face. “Richard—they call him Dickie now. A stupid name—is in charge of Ludwick’s drug trade.”

  “Not the human trafficking?”

  “No. Just drugs.”

  “Why aren’t you with him anymore?” I asked.

  “Once he got involved with the drug business, I was out.”

  My face must have revealed my thoughts, because she gave me a dirty look and said, “I’m a prostitute. Judge me how you want. I don’t care. But I’m happy with what I do. I earn a lot of money, make people happy, and no one gets hurt. Despite what you might think, my ethics are impeccable. I don’t get involved in anything illegal, or hang out with people who do. Besides,” she added, “I had fallen out of love with Richard a year after we left. I stayed with him until I was able to strike out on my own.”

  “Do you ever envision connecting with Priscilla again sometime?”

  “I told you. She’s dead to me. How could I forgive someone who committed a heinous crime—no matter how much he deserved it—and then blamed an innocent man? That’s the part I find unforgiveable.”

  *****

  I got back to the room, not knowing exactly what I would find. It wasn’t good. Sabrina and Mo were sitting on one of the beds. Sabrina had her arm around Mo and Mo was sobbing. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She was sobbing and swearing. I knew right away what it was. She was devastated by the news that her girlfriend might have been a murderer, but she was super pissed at Peep for not telling her. So, between one sob and the next, I heard phrases like, “fucking bitch,” and “lyin
g scumbag.” She wasn’t taking it well at all.

  Sabrina looked up as I walked in. She looked at me expectantly and I gave a small nod. Her shoulders sank.

  Once Mo had calmed down, I related the story of my meeting with Angel. I didn’t hold back. Mo deserved to hear it all. When I was done, she shook her head.

  “I thought I knew her. All this time together and she never felt comfortable telling me? What does that say about our relationship? It was all a lie.”

  She talked for a while longer and we just listened. What could we say? The woman she loved killed someone—her own father—and placed the blame on someone else. There was no doubt that the father deserved to die, but ruining someone else’s life in the process was just wrong.

  I half expected Mo to hop on a plane and go home. But that wasn’t like Mo. She would see it through and find Peep.

  It was what she was going to do once she found Peep that worried me.

  Chapter 24

  They were back in the van. It was the middle of the night and the sounds outside the van were no quieter than they had been when they'd first been driven through the streets of Las Vegas. The city seemed to be wall-to-wall noise.

  They were back in the clothes they had been wearing when they were abducted. Sometime in the last day someone had washed everything, eliminating the smells of sweat and dried pee that they had lived with on the long ride to Vegas.

  Emma was feeling lower than she had at any time since the ordeal had begun, if that was even possible. She had had a chance to talk to her friends about planning an escape, but it didn’t go as she had hoped. Lindy and Hannah were hopeless. They hadn’t progressed much in their emotional state, alternating between catatonic and weepy. Emma tried talking to them, but got nothing coherent in return. They weren’t going to be of any help. Rebecca wasn’t much better. She was sitting in a corner of the van hugging her knees and whining that she wanted to go home. That left her best friend Lucy, the one she thought she could count on. They’d had a long conversation that included arguing and crying. Lucy didn’t think she had the courage to escape while Emma was having a fake seizure. If she got caught, they would punish her. Emma tried to explain that the men were probably going to get paid a lot of money for delivering the five girls to their buyer. Because of that, they wouldn’t be punished. But Lucy didn’t believe her. Emma was mad at her friend now and wouldn’t talk to her. They were sitting on separate sides of the van.

  It was up to Emma alone to escape. She was convinced now that the threats they had made against Rebecca were empty threats. They wouldn’t hurt Rebecca. As she had explained to Lucy, the men needed all five of the girls. Emma had spent a lot of time thinking about a plan and had finally come up with one. It was really her only option. She was scared beyond belief, but what choice did she have? A man and a woman from a karate school had come into her class once to talk about self-defense and personal safety. They had made the point over and over that a person should never let themselves be taken to a second location by someone trying to abduct them and that they should fight the potential kidnapper. They said that you might die trying to fight them off, but you would die if you allowed them to take you somewhere else. Well, they had already been taken to a second location. Emma and her friends hadn’t been able to fight their kidnappers off back in Vista because they had been caught by surprise. But she could fight now. Now they were going to a third location and from there to a fourth. She knew they would never live past the fourth. They might be there a long time, but it would be the last place they’d ever be.

  They had been on the road for what seemed like almost an hour. She didn’t know for sure because they had taken her watch when she was abducted. They thought it was some sort of iWatch that she could use to communicate with the police. In fact, it was a regular watch. She didn’t think these guys were overly bright. Regardless, she had no idea where they were going, but she suspected that they were probably getting close. After driving on pavement for a while, they were on a dirt road now. She could feel every bump and a fine dust was starting to filter into the van.

  It was now or never. She moved away from the wall to the center of the van and started pounding on the floor with her hands and feet. Nothing happened at first and then the truck suddenly pulled over. She continued pounding, but moved next to the door. She heard the sound of running and then the door was flung open. She had positioned herself against the door so that when it was opened she would fall out. She knew it was a couple of feet down to the ground, but was hoping she wouldn’t break anything in the fall.

  She landed hard on the ground, bumping her head. It hurt like hell, but Emma was determined to keep up the act. She flopped around on the ground, slowly moving away from the van in the process. In the van she had worked up a lot of saliva in her mouth. Now she let it come out in a drool.

  The two men stood back and watched her, not quite sure what to do. Emma was putting on a great act, jerking and heaving like a fish out of water, but also staying acutely aware of where the men were standing. The moment of truth arrived when she saw out of the corner of her eye one of the men turn to the van and look inside. The other man was five feet away from her. Now was her chance.

  She rolled away from him and jumped up, breaking into an immediate run. The man was startled, but he managed to reach out and grab her. However, the grip was tenuous and Emma broke away, running for her life. It was almost pitch black, the only light coming from a sliver of the moon peeking out from behind a cloud and the red reflection of the tail lights. The landscape was flat. As she suspected, they were deep in the desert. She knew she had to get off the road, but didn’t know what the desert had to offer. She wouldn’t be able to see rocks and gullies. A broken leg was a real possibility. She might run into a cactus. Then there were rattlesnakes and scorpions. But better to die out there than to end up as a plaything to some horny pervert.

  She left the road and immediately tripped over something. She landed hard on her chest. It took the wind out of her, but she got up and continued on. Luckily, she heard her pursuer trip as well. She heard him cry out as he landed. She snuck a look in back of her, but couldn’t see anyone, but way off in the distance she could see a faint glow. The lights of Las Vegas. She was heading in the opposite direction. If she got away, maybe she could turn back toward the city. She was exhausted. She had to rest. She bumped into a rock, banging her knee. She moved behind it and rested a moment. She listened, but couldn’t hear anyone moving. Then she heard someone call out.

  “Hey, bitch. Do you want your little friend to get cut? Cuz that’s exactly what I’m going to do if you don’t get back here now.”

  She knew now that they were bluffing. If only she had known that the first time she had tried to escape. She'd been on a real road then.

  “Emma!” It came out as a scream. It wasn’t Rebecca this time. It was Lucy, her best friend. “Please come back. They’re going to hurt me.”

  Emma wanted to yell back to her that they wouldn’t really do it, but she couldn’t let them know where she was. If she survived, she would apologize to Lucy later. It was a big “if.” She waited another minute to catch her breath, and then continued on her way. She had no idea where she was going. She just knew that it was far from the men. And she had to get far away while it was still dark. She also had to get away from Lucy before her resolve vanished.

  She heard Lucy scream again. “Please, Emma. Please come back.”

  No. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She was their only hope for survival. She kept on at a trot. She tripped again. This time her elbow scraped something sharp as she went down. She could feel the blood running down her arm and the pain was tremendous. She had to slow down, but not too slow. She glanced back. A flashlight! No, two of them. Lucy had stopped screaming, so they must have locked the girls back in the van.

  The men were a couple of hundred feet behind her, but it was still too close. She kept low, using rocks as cover whenever possible. The men were catching up, the
flashlights making for an easier path. This went on for another ten minutes. By now the men were only maybe a hundred feet behind. But suddenly they stopped and Emma heard one of them yell out, “Shit!” She could hear them talking, but couldn’t make out the words. She saw them turn back. She waited behind a rock as she watched the flashlights swing back and forth, getting further away. Finally, she saw them get into the front of the van and close the doors. The van took off.

  As she watched the tail lights recede, the realization came to her that she had escaped. She was free. But she was also lost in the middle of nowhere and in a few hours the sun would come up and the desert would heat up.

  She might be free, but she had no water, and from what she could see, nothing that would provide shade.

  And then the realization hit her that she would probably die alone in the desert.

  Chapter 25

  Waiting for Richard to call was excruciating, made even more so by Mo’s mood. I wasn’t sure if I had ever seen anyone as depressed as Mo. She felt hurt in a way that I’m not sure I could understand. I think if Peep had had an affair, Mo could forgive her more easily than this. She felt deeply betrayed. More importantly—at least from my viewpoint—was the fact that Peep was a coward for having blamed someone else for her act. Mo’s personal ethics left no room whatsoever for cowardice.

  She wasn’t crying anymore. She wasn’t even talking about Peep. She had moved into the stoic phase—kind of an ugly stoic phase, if you asked me. There was a simmering anger. Maybe some embarrassment as well. She had come to Las Vegas with nothing but love and concern for her best friend, her life partner. All of that was dashed in a few minutes. I knew that nothing would ever be the same between them. In some ways, I felt sorry for Peep. She knew none of this. Assuming we were able to rescue her, she would think she was returning to the life she had with Mo, and that just wasn’t going to be the case. She would be leaving her nightmare for maybe even a darker place.