Widows-in-Law

by Michele W. Miller

  Brian poured himself a drink. He stopped at the window to look at the Central Park Zoo, Sheep Meadow, and the reservoir, small dollhouse pieces amidst the green, orange, and red of trees just short of prime. He turned back to Jordan. “Shut down shop for a while. You have enough money to stop completely. Why would you bother?”

  Even as he asked that, Brian knew that it was easier to tell Jordan to stop than take his own advice. He’d made some bad decisions lately and, like Jordan, he felt incapable of putting the brakes on. Jordan’s weakness was money and maybe power. For Brian, the effect women had on him was as insidious as drug addiction. The alcoholics were right about “one is too many and a thousand never enough.” Once Brian had cheated on Jessica, the floodgates had opened.

  He’d been at a club in Miami with Jordan, and the women had been amazing, their nearly bare breasts and the space between their thighs beckoning to him like an oasis in the desert. That party had released the proverbial beast in him and, like usual, eventually led to far more entanglement than he’d planned. Not right away, but soon after. He couldn’t feel any sleazier. He didn’t love Nicole. She wasn’t exactly lovable. But his obsession with her had been all-consuming. He remembered something else Lauren had told him about addiction: if you were hit by a train, it was the first car that killed you, not the caboose. He totally got that now. It was the first woman who had led him to Nicole, which had risked everything. His marriage, his business, his friendship with Steve … and their partnership. He and Steve weren’t seeing eye to eye on anything anymore.

  Brian knew Jessica was getting double-screwed too, not having a baby. But he hadn’t even done that to Lauren, knocking her up and betraying her at the same time. The first affair hadn’t happened until after Emily was born, and he hadn’t planned it. But he knew he was a piece of shit when he told Jessica that Emily wasn’t ready for a sibling so soon after the divorce or that his career was taking off and he didn’t want the added stress. When they argued, he pointed out her issues with anorexia or the way she’d screamed at him in an argument, as if she weren’t stable enough to have a baby, even though he knew she’d make a great mother. It was the father, him, that was the problem. He’d read an article that said abusive men distracted their wives from the abuse by blaming them for unrelated things. Once he’d read that, he couldn’t unknow it. So he knew what a lowlife he was. But he couldn’t stop. He could give up the gambling business and the money that came with it, but he couldn’t judge Jordan.

  “Arena and his guys are the scum of the earth—crazy, sadistic,” Jordan said. “I don’t know what they’ll do if I refuse them. They could do more than shut me down. One of the girls at the Home Game told me some stories about Arena.” Jordan picked up a cigarette, his hand shaking as he lit it. “Arena won’t let me get out now, and I can’t shut down and leave town until I have the books straight. There was a bet, a very large bet. Xi Wen won. At least Arena didn’t win that one, or I’d probably have a lot of explaining to do. The money needs to be delivered. Twelve million this time.”

  “That’s some bet.” Brian studied Jordan, worrying about him. Jordan wasn’t the type to get hysterical, but whatever the woman at Home Game had told him, he’d bought it. Brian was surprised Jordan took a coked-up conversation with a call girl so seriously.

  “We get Xi Wen his payoff, and then I’ll close down shop. I’ll get out of town. Lay low somewhere for a few years. But I need to get Xi Wen his money first. The loser already transferred the funds. I can’t do the money transport without you. I could never trust anyone else. I’ll make it worth your while, the six hundred thousand house fee, all yours this time. Not bad for a one-shot deal. Then I’m done. We’ll both be done. I’ve got a few million saved. Some property. That’s enough. I’m done.”

  Brian thought it over. He could do this for Jordan. Then walk away. Walk away from this, walk away from all the insanity he’d created, walk away from Steve’s firm, and Nicole, too. He’d have seed money to start his own firm with it. Freedom money.

  CHAPTER 21

  Tuesday, November 5

  Sunlight streamed through the kitchen window, and Jessica smiled, appreciating its warmth through the glass. All her security and dreams were gone and, God, she was confused. But still, it felt good to feel pleasure again, even for a moment. Maybe it was a sign that the merciless darkness of mourning was starting to lighten. Maybe it was just a hint that it would eventually pass.

  It seemed Emily was getting better too. She’d gone to school—yesterday and today—with barely a shove from Jessica to supplement her alarm clock. Lately, Emily spent all her time after school working on the computer downstairs, and Mr. Manley had told Jessica that Emily used the school’s computer lab during lunch hour. He said Jessica and Lauren should encourage her. A hobby, a passion for something, anything, could make all the difference to a troubled adolescent, and she wasn’t just playing video games. He said she was interested in coding and cybersecurity.

  Jessica went to the sink, rinsed out her coffee cup, and watched the dogs run around on the front lawn. She took a leather jacket from the hall closet and put it on over her running tights and long-sleeved T-shirt.

  She opened the front door and shouted out, “Hazel, Nuke!”

  She patted them as they strode past her into the house. She reached behind the door and pressed the activate code on the house alarm system. The air was crisp and still, the only sound the gravel under her feet as she walked to her car. She got in the car and drove onto the winding road lined with tall, graceful trees, their branches half bare. It took her aback. The last time she’d noticed, they’d been fully ablaze, raining down around her while she ran this same road with Brian.

  After a short drive, she pulled into a parking lot behind the small strip mall that housed her Pilates studio. A long stand-alone building surrounded by woods, it was her first time there since Brian. She found a spot next to a row of cars. A car pulled in behind her.

  The sky had begun to cloud over. She found herself wishing for snow, even though she would be on her own to deal with that contingency this winter. She brushed away a shot of fear and grabbed her gym bag. She didn’t need to deify Brian. It wasn’t as if he shoveled snow. She could call for a plow as easily as he did.

  She opened the door and set her feet on the ground when something slammed her from behind. Her shoulder and hip crashed against the door. The air flew from her lungs. An instant vision flashed: carjack, robbery, rape. Letting out a breathless, terrified half scream, she tried to unpin her body from the door, tried to twist and run. Something shoved painfully into her ribs. The man’s body pressed against her back. Oh, God.

  He hissed into her ear, “We’re getting in your car. Don’t scream.”

  She nodded. His body pressure let up, but the sticking in her ribs pinned her against the door while he bent to pick up her keys from the asphalt. Jessica looked back at him for the first time, every muscle in her body seized with fear. He unfolded from his crouch with the keys in his free hand and pushed her toward the driver’s seat. He’d made no attempt to disguise his face. Not even a stocking cap covered his sparse hair. That meant he’d kill her when he was done.

  “Move.”

  Jessica looked to her ribs as she bent into the car. It was a gun, a very big gun.

  Praying, crying now, she couldn’t help herself, she scrambled into the car, over the stick shift, and into the passenger seat. He picked up her gym bag from the ground, threw it over the seat into the back and sat in the driver’s seat.

  She unclenched her jaw, and her voice shook. “What do you want?”

  He turned the key in the ignition and looked behind him. “You know,” he said as he backed the car out of the spot. “You have to know.”

  “No.”

  “Bullshit.”

  She thought of her phone in her gym bag, in the back seat. Miles away.

  “I have important bu
siness to discuss, and you are so fucking hard to track down,” he said with disgust, turning the car onto the road. “I could find my dead relatives on Ancestry.com faster than I found you. I would also add that I tried to make an appointment to see you, to do things in a civilized manner, but you didn’t return my calls. I had to hire a private detective to get your address. Jesus-fucking-Christ, Jessica. Are you Queen Elizabeth?”

  His words struck like a physical blow. “How … how do you know my name?”

  He pulled into the stream of traffic. “I was a friend of Brian’s.”

  “No.”

  He glanced at her. “No? What do you mean no? What’s that even supposed to mean? No.”

  Jessica forced her brain to function. If this maniac hadn’t been kidnapping her at gunpoint, would she have considered it possible that he and Brian were friends? He wasn’t exactly material for the Westchester Country Club—scrawny, reeking of body odor, liquor stinking through his pores. But his leather jacket was expensive, very expensive. She looked closer. His face was bruised. He’d been in a car accident or beaten up. Maybe he didn’t always look like this. She wasn’t planning to join the Insane Carjacker Debating Society anyway. She forced words out: “You knew Brian?”

  “Look, I’m out of time. You’ve been avoiding me. You’ve got to give the money back. They’re going to kill me, and they’ll kill you.”

  “The money?” Jessica stared at him. If he stopped at a light, could she unlock and open her door, jump before he could shoot her? She remembered a post she read once about how the worst thing a woman could do was get in the car. She’d already done that.

  “I was locked up in Arena’s basement for five days.” He seemed to dissolve before her eyes, unwilling sobs breaking through tight lips. The car rumbled, inching onto the shoulder before he righted it.

  Jessica clenched the armrests, afraid they’d crash. He must have been stalking her. He knew Brian had died and created a whole fantasy about it. Was he on K2 or one of those crazy-making drugs she’d read about? She closed her eyes momentarily, trying to calm down.

  “They don’t believe … I don’t have the vaguest fucking idea where the money is.” He took in a deep shuddering breath, visibly calming himself, too. His face was sweaty, eyes wide, shell-shocked almost as if he were the hostage. “I’m sorry. I haven’t slept in days. Look, you know where the money is, and you have to give it back.”

  His words sounded like gibberish to her. Terrifying gibberish. She glanced surreptitiously out the window as the car turned onto a new road, her fear deeper with each mile he drove. She kept track of the turns. She knew the general terrain, that was a plus, but he was headed north toward more rural areas. He could kill her more easily the further they traveled this way. Her chest rose, breath short again. “Where are you taking me?”

  He looked straight ahead as he drove. “Look, Brian worked for me and left unfinished business.”

  She restrained her expression of disbelief this time, trying to drag her mind out of a vortex of panic that was only making it harder to decipher what he was saying. “Was he your attorney?”

  “In a manner of speaking. He was delivering money for me. It’s gone, and the people it belongs to want it back.”

  Jessica looked sideways at him.

  “They know who you are, and they’ll hold you and Emily responsible. Just like I’m responsible. They won’t let either of us walk away with their money.”

  Emily. He knew Emily’s name, too. Had he read it in the obituary, too? She modulated her voice, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She looked at the landscape they passed. If she had any opportunity to escape, it would be fleeting and she’d need to act fast. He made another turn onto a quiet two-lane road bordered by woods. He pulled over and stopped on a wide dirt shoulder next to a copse of trees. He could kill her here. The blood drained from her face.

  He put the car in park. “We structured it as a real estate deal.”

  “What?” Jessica’s heart battered her rib cage. “Brian … didn’t do real estate.”

  He sighed and leaned his back against the driver’s side door and looked in Jessica’s eyes. “I’m going to tell you what’s going on in case you really don’t know, but let me explain a couple of things first. Brian was in deep, and if you bring the authorities into this, your bank account and everything else you own are gone. Federal asset forfeiture. They’ll say it’s all fruit of illegal gambling. The cops find out, they take it. From what I know about you, you wouldn’t like that. And, believe me, the cops don’t give a shit about the innocent widow and kid. Breathe a word and you’ll end up broke and on a gangster hit list.”

  Jessica couldn’t believe this was happening. A hit list? Illegal gambling? He knew Brian was doing real estate deals. It wasn’t just a madman’s fantasy. And now he was holding a gun on her, saying that Brian was a criminal and owed somebody money. Now she owed them money? Suddenly, the pieces fell into place with nearly an audible click in her brain. “Are you Jordan Connors?”

  He cracked an ironic smile, and Jessica could see a glimpse of who this man might normally be. “So Brian did talk about me. My feelings were almost hurt. Look, there’s only one thing to do to avoid the Feds and Jorge Arena. Brian had twelve million dollars when he died and, believe me, it did not go up in smoke. Brian was too careful for that. It’s somewhere, and you need to find it before Jorge Arena comes for you and Emily.”

  “Twelve million dollars? Listen, no offense … Jordan,” she forced herself to sound friendly. “I still don’t understand. That can’t be true.”

  He exhaled in frustration and talked to her like she was an idiot: “Twelve million dollars needs to get to its rightful owner. ASAP.”

  Jessica’s eyes met Jordan’s, his gun only inches from her head. Jessica swallowed hard and eked words out. “You’re saying that, when Brian died, he had twelve million dollars and it had something to do with a real estate deal?”

  “You could say that, although the deals were just cover in case the Feds noticed the money moving.”

  She tried to process that. “And where am I supposed to find this money?”

  “You knew him best. Think like Brian, figure it out.”

  “I knew him best?” She started to get angry—at this guy and at a Brian she obviously hadn’t known. Rage shot out of her before she could stop it. “You’ve got to be kidding! I knew him best? I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. What do you think I’m supposed to do?”

  Jordan’s eyes shifted. His face—every muscle and tendon—went hard. “I have no intention of dying for you, Jessica … as much as I liked Brian. You and I are in this together. Find it or Arena will kill you, me, and everyone you ever loved.”

  She took in a harsh lungful of air, tears close to the surface again. Why did this whole shit-show make sense to her? Why did it feel like this man had given her the missing piece in a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle that she hadn’t even known was incomplete? Brian had been hiding things for a long time, she’d known it in her gut. It hadn’t been irrational jealousy. She talked herself down: Don’t come unstrung, Jessica. You can put it all together once you get away from him, but you need to get away first. Tears streamed down her face.

  “Look, don’t cry. I know this is out of your league, but I have it on good authority that you have a helper. Baby mama.”

  “What?”

  “Lauren Davis. She’s my next stop anyway. I’m sure she’ll understand. It’s the one interesting thing I learned while they had me cuffed in Arena’s basement. He told me all about it when his guys got tired of kicking my ass. It was a surprising story, really, the way Brian always made her out to be the frigid, nagging first wife. You tell her Bobby Karate left a contract on the street for her, fifty thousand. Arena and his crew know where she is now. They’ll buy the contract back for her if she h
elps. Otherwise, well, you can imagine. They’ll cash in. She won’t be able to hide in plain sight anymore.”

  “What? Lauren? She’s a lawyer. What the fuck is a Bobby Karate?”

  “Ask her. She’ll know, and she knows the streets. It’s like riding a bicycle. She’ll help you. You’ve got forty-eight hours. After that, the Arenas and God knows who else will start making personal visits. Folks will do a lot for the amount of money that’s missing.”

  Jessica took a deep breath, feeling as if she were clawing at the edge of a rabbit hole. Who were all these people she thought she knew? Brian? Lauren? And she had one question that she needed answered. “Did Arena kill my husband?”

  He laughed. “Why would he? You’re not listening. They’re out all that money and still need to pay it to the rightful owner. Brian wasn’t stupid enough to cross them, and I can say one thing for your husband: he could be trusted.”

  Jessica nearly laughed. He could be trusted? By whom? By this insane yuppie gangster? She had no time to think about that now. She had more questions. “Did you know his partner, Steve? Did he kill Brian?”

  “I don’t know him. I don’t know whether he killed Brian. But you gotta wonder—how could something that causes so much shit be an accident? They hadn’t been getting along lately,” Jordan said, thoughtfully. “Brian mentioned that. Damned if I know what happened though.”

  He shifted in his seat and reached to open his door, taking the keys from the ignition. “Don’t go anywhere, Jessica. I need to take a leak. They punched me so many times in the kidneys, it’s got me all fucked up. I have a few more things to tell you about how Brian did the deals. It might help. Then I’ll drive you back to pick up my car. We’re in this together now.”

  Jessica stared in disbelief as he walked away to a tree in the midst of a carjacking. She considered diving for her phone in the back seat or running, but her best bet would be to take no chances now that he seemed close to letting her go.