I felt ill. I told them I hadn’t had sex with anyone in two years and wouldn’t, in any case, do it with a married man, especially one whose wife was a friend.
“You and Mrs. Donaldson are friends?” one detective asked me.
I thought of Tracy at the Four Seasons. “Not close friends. But—our daughters are friends.”
“And you were friends with her husband.”
“Junior. Yes.” I started to cry.
“Why are you crying, Mrs. Hochstetter?”
“It’s Miss Zaleski.” I was crying out of sadness, I said, which was true. But also, I was scared.
The detectives asked to look around the townhouse and asked if they could take Jillie’s gym bag, the one she used for riding gear. And my laundry. And then I was freaked.
“Why’d you do it?” one of the detectives asked me softly.
I stared at him, thinking I’d heard wrong.
“Surveillance footage,” he said. “We saw the whole thing. Why don’t you come with us to the division office and explain it?”
The room was spinning. I thought I would throw up. But I remembered my last conversation with Junior. “If you’re arresting me,” I said, “I’ll come. Otherwise, I’m picking up my child from school.”
They left. I called my divorce lawyer and asked if he knew any criminal defense attorneys.
MY NEW LAWYER was more basset hound than pit bull, but his retainer had been paid, he told me, and I wasn’t to worry about money yet. Useless advice as his hourly fee was my typical week’s take-home pay. He wouldn’t say who’d paid the retainer, but I suspected Bunny and Rick.
“The police are building their case,” he said. “Right now, let’s just keep you out of jail.”
“Keep me out of jail,” I repeated. Our big plan.
When I went to get Jillie now, I felt stares from the other moms in the Lower School pickup lane. Jillie did, too. She wouldn’t tell me what the kids were saying, but she wouldn’t go to riding lessons, so I left messages at the Donaldsons’. No one called back. Bunny said that paparazzi were seen on campus, and the headmaster sent a mass e-mail requesting cooperation with increased security measures, expressing condolences to the Donaldson family, and offering counseling services to any student disturbed by The Incident.
I was disturbed.
Bunny gave me sleeping pills, but I was scared of them. I stopped eating. I was too upset to practice, and I tried to imagine doing vocal exercises in prison and wondered how I’d live without singing.
I wondered how I’d live without Jillie.
I stopped answering the phone for anyone but Bunny or my lawyer. I lay on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket.
On the third day, I emerged from my emotional coma and called Guy Lasseter.
HE OPENED THE door to his ranch house, greeted me without smiling, and led me out back to a guesthouse. A German shepherd lay on the threshold, thumping a tail in greeting. “Is he your security system?” I asked.
“She,” Guy corrected me, “is the woman in my life.”
The guesthouse was a studio, outfitted with computers, monitors, and electronic gadgetry. Guy clicked a remote and a flat-screen TV came to life, playing a silent movie.
On-screen, in the Donaldson game room, Junior sat in his plane. Straddling him was—me.
I wore tight, dark clothes. And gloves. Junior and I kissed for thirty-eight seconds, according to the counter at the lower edge of the screen. When Junior reached under my shirt to unhook my bra, I reached behind him, and then there was a gun in my gloved hand, abnormally long. I shot Junior in the chest. His body convulsed and twitched, but I sat calmly on his lap until he stopped moving. Then I climbed out of the plane, collected something from the floor, and left the room.
Guy replayed it three times. I watched in silence, fighting panic, piecing things together. I assumed that the gun had a suppressor attached and the object collected from the floor was a shell casing. I figured that Junior had mostly bled out his back as there wasn’t much blood on his chest, facing the camera.
“The police have a copy of this?” I asked.
“Yes. Along with this.” Guy clicked the remote and the Donaldson driveway appeared, showing my Toyota parked between Junior’s Ferrari and the riding instructor’s Ford pickup. “And this.” He fast-forwarded to Jillie and me getting into the Toyota, post–riding lesson, and driving off.
“See?” I said. “I’m wearing different clothes.”
“You’re carrying a gym bag. You could’ve changed. They found blood in Junior’s bathroom.”
Claustrophobia overtook me, a premonition of prison. Cement floors. Caged rooms.
I turned to Guy. “I need your help. I need to convince the police that I’m not that woman.”
“First,” he said, “you need to convince me.”
WE DROVE GUY’S convertible to the fire road behind the Donaldson property.
I talked nonstop. It was Tracy, I said. Tracy in a long black wig in clothes she later disposed of. She’d done it perfectly, looking natural while keeping her back to the camera. The average viewer—cop, jury—knowing Tracy only as a blonde, wouldn’t recognize her.
Guy said nothing.
We drove onto the fire road, ignoring the AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY sign. We drove until we reached the point where we could look up and see the Donaldson property. Then I tried to find the place the Lamborghini had parked off road.
I couldn’t.
Deep in the canyon, every tree, copse, thicket looked like every other one. And what was I looking for, anyway? A yellow paint chip? A footprint?
“Okay,” I said. “Wherever she parked, she hiked up to the property. It’s steep, but she’s athletic.”
“I’ve got cameras covering the back of the estate,” Guy said. “Motion detectors activate them. They weren’t activated that day.”
“But I was jogging there. And when I left Junior, I went out the back to the stables. The same path. Why didn’t the motion detectors pick that up?”
“You tell me.”
His face was impassive, but his tone was skeptical: I hadn’t tripped the motion detectors because I was lying about jogging, about the Lamborghini. Tracy hadn’t tripped them because she wasn’t there.
“What’s Tracy’s alibi?” I asked.
“She was with a pillar of the community all afternoon.”
My throat went dry. “Helene Hochstetter.”
“Yes.”
“Helene’s lying.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So it’s a conspiracy.”
“It’s a tough crowd.”
We studied each other. I said, “If I came in the front door and went out the front door, where’s that footage? Where’s me watching the riding lesson?”
“I have cameras in the barn but not the show ring.”
“And the front door?”
He hesitated. “There’ve been installation problems. Those cameras weren’t working.”
“Or those cameras were unplugged.”
Something crossed his face. “But you haven’t suggested this to the cops.”
“I just figured it out.”
“What else have you ‘just figured out’?”
The canyon was quiet, except for chirping birds. “She used you.”
That killed his impassivity. I saw an opening and pushed it. “Doesn’t feel good, does it? Gullibility. Finding out you’re not as smart as you thought you were. That people can’t be trusted.”
Unexpectedly, he laughed. “But you trust me. You just pointed out some flaws, which I can now fix. What makes you think I’m not in on this?”
My heart stopped, but my mouth kept working. “What makes you think I’m not wearing a wire?”
His look of surprise would have been gratifying in other circumstances. But then Guy moved in on me. His hand grabbed my arm with enough force that I didn’t think twice. I didn’t think once.
I hit him with a left hook.
It wasn’t a great punch, but it was okay. It
broke his nose. And I dropped my guard, leaving my face wide open.
But Guy Lasseter wasn’t Stephen Hochstetter. He was occupied with his nose, bleeding profusely. He said son of a bitch twice. Blood seeped through his fingers and dripped onto the grass and rocks.
I wasn’t aware of my own reaction until he looked up, still holding his nose, and said, “What the hell are you crying about?”
“That felt awful,” I said. “I’m never doing that again. I hate this. I’m sorry, I can’t hit real people.” I was edging toward hysteria, which only fueled my distress. I was thinking how Junior would tell me to suck it up, that there’s no apologizing in boxing, that hitting’s the whole point, and thinking of Junior produced spasmodic sobs. I took off my sweatshirt and gave it to Guy, who used it to stanch the bleeding.
“I’ll live,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come at you like that. I wanted to see if you really were wired.”
I cried harder. “I’m not.”
He stared, as if meeting me for the first time. As if he were trying to picture me shooting a man at point-blank range, then waiting calmly on his lap, watching him die.
As if he couldn’t.
I DROVE BACK with Guy riding shotgun, still bleeding. “I’ll buy you a new T-shirt,” I said.
“I’ll let you.”
I steered carefully along the fire road, avoiding ruts. High above on a hilltop, the concrete mansion witnessed our slow progress.
“That porn producer,” I said. “Is he your client, too?”
Guy looked up. “He is.”
“Does he have cameras overlooking the canyon?”
“He does.”
“Do his work better than Tracy’s?”
Guy looked at me.
“Sorry,” I said.
In fact, the porn producer, a generous soul, gave us the whole week’s footage, including, on Tuesday afternoon, 1.8 seconds featuring a yellow Lamborghini.
THE ANNUAL WHITE Alder Spring into Life Silent Auction and Benefit was held at the Four Seasons in May.
Absent and much discussed was Tracy Donaldson. The Volunteer Association’s president-elect refused to resign her office unless she was convicted of murder, which, given the quality of her defense team, was no sure thing.
Few party guests doubted her guilt. None doubted her motive. This crowd understood prenups and how annoying they can be.
Helene Hochstetter was in attendance, wearing Scaasi. When confronted with the evidence, she’d told detectives she’d simply been mistaken about what time Tracy Donaldson had left her company. She was an elderly woman, her lawyer pointed out. There was no question of prosecution.
Maria, the Donaldson housekeeper, when threatened with deportation, had miraculously recalled giving bloody clothes and a wig to a cousin in east LA, something she always did with Miss Tracy’s discards. The items were presumed to be in El Salvador. Maria was not invited to the Spring Benefit.
Guy and I left the party early, once he’d determined that his clients’ bodyguards were appropriately dressed, their tuxes covering their firearms. We went home and played Scrabble with Jillie.
After Jillie went to bed, we changed the rules a bit and kept on playing.
THE CONTROLLER
BY DAVID MORRELL
You don’t have a first name?”
“I have one. I just don’t use it. The less people know about me, the better.”
“Sure. The bodyguard with only one name. Cavanaugh. Like a trademark. Creates a mystique. Clever.”
“Actually, Cavanaugh isn’t my real last name.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I try to be invisible, starting with my identity. What you called me just now—a bodyguard—that’s not what I am.”
“But I was assured you could help me.”
“A bodyguard’s what a mobster uses. His skills are limited to his size and his ability to inflict pain. I’m a protective agent.”
“Okay. All right. Fine. A protective agent.”
“If I take this assignment—”
“If?”
“I need to be assured of something. A man with your power and wealth. You didn’t get where you are by being passive. It’s your nature to take charge and assume control.”
“I have three former wives who’ll testify to that.”
“Well, I won’t risk my life for someone who’ll put us both in danger by not doing what I tell him. The paradox of hiring a protective agent is that while you’re the employer, I’m the one who gives the orders. Can you accept that? Can you follow my directions without question and allow yourself to be controlled?”
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD once wrote, “The rich are different from you and me,” to which Hemingway famously replied, “Yes, they have more money.” In Cavanaugh’s experience, however, the true difference was that the extremely rich were able to shield themselves so thoroughly from the basic messes of life that after a while they forgot that messes existed. Problems with vehicles, plumbing, appliances, hot water heaters, furnaces, roofs, and so on, the sort of breakdowns that a person of ordinary income might lose sleep over or feel was a sign of impending doom, were unknown to the very rich. Fixing messes—that’s what servants were for. That’s what personal assistants were for. That’s what money was for. Fires, floods, earthquakes. Inconvenient certainly, but while others took care of the mess, a Gulfstream V soared toward Rio or Nice or Dubai or one of many other resort locations. Of course, even the rich had dental problems, eye problems, bladder problems, but the best medical specialists in the world could correct those things if you threw enough money at them. Meanwhile, it was best to pretend that dental problems, eye problems, and bladder problems didn’t exist.
Inevitably, even the rich encountered a problem so severe that it couldn’t be ignored or fixed by wealth—a mortal illness, for example—and it always came as a shock that they weren’t as entitled as they assumed. Something similar had happened to Martin Dant. At the age of twenty, he’d inherited his father’s oil refinery business. Because of not-in-my-backyard issues, it was almost impossible to expand that business and build new refineries, so Dant invested in the broadcasting industry. Photogenic, he appeared frequently on news programs he owned, and after expensive instruction by several advisers to former presidents, he became—at the age of twenty-eight—a wunderkind public affairs moderator to whom politicians learned to pay court. At the age of thirty-five, he almost entered the governor’s race in Georgia, but by then, his numerous affairs had jeopardized his first marriage (to a television producer), and he decided that the freedom to have a private life was more appealing than the nuisance of hiding scandals. Besides, he could gain far more power by using his wealth to influence politicians than he could ever gain by being a politician himself.
When Dant was forty-two, his second marriage (to a Washington political commentator) went the way of the first. By then, his empire included a motion picture company, which resulted in his third marriage—to a Vogue model, who aspired to be a movie star. She shared his interest in environmental issues, particularly wetland preservation, and in the pursuit of that goal, Dant acquired huge tracts on the U.S. eastern seaboard and in South America. His marriage to the fashion model lasted even fewer years than did his previous marriages, however, and at that point, Dant decided that connubial bliss was probably not something he was destined to achieve. Acquiring possessions and power was far more rewarding and long lasting.
Cavanaugh knew these details—and considerably more—because of a thick profile that his security company, Global Protective Services, had compiled. The extent of Dant’s financial tentacles was even greater than Cavanaugh expected, but the strength of the man’s ambition, determination, and sense of destiny didn’t surprise him at all. Cavanaugh had provided security for tycoons on numerous occasions, and they all exhibited the same confidence, bordering on ruthlessness, when it came to generating wealth and getting what they wanted. Some had a degree of charm comparable to the Great Gatsby. Othe
rs made no effort to ingratiate themselves. If you didn’t like the crude, cruel, or imperious way they treated you, well, tough shit. There were plenty of others who’d be more than happy to take your place.
Cavanaugh had no opinion. People without money could be crude, cruel, or imperious also. His business was saving lives, not making judgments. He protected the defenseless against predators, and sometimes even the very rich could be defenseless.
That was the case with Martin Dant. No one amassed an empire without making enemies. Over the years—Dant was now sixty-four—his enemies accumulated until it was impossible to keep track of them. One particular enemy had decided to get revenge. A month earlier, a sniper fired at Dant as he stepped from his limousine and approached his private jet at Teterboro Airport outside New York City. Dant heard the snap of the bullet passing his head and then its impact against the limousine. Two weeks afterward, as Dant and a female companion approached a boathouse at his Cape Cod estate, the building exploded, knocking them to the sand. Two days ago, a bullet shattered the window of a Grand Cayman office where Dant was negotiating to buy a struggling airline. Glass cut his face.
“PERSISTENT,” CAVANAUGH SAID.
“More frequent,” his partner noted. Her name was Jamie Travers. Trained by him, she was also his wife.
“Not good at it, though.”
“Unless the idea is to scare Dant for a long time before killing him,” Jamie observed.
“If so, the tactic’s working,” Cavanaugh said. “Whoever’s doing this has definitely got Dant’s attention. He’s not twitching or sweating or pissing his pants, but I can see in his eyes how much strength he needs to appear calm.”
“Right,” she agreed. “For most of his life, he controlled everything around him, and now someone’s showing him what it feels like to be controlled.”
They got off the private elevator and reached the entrance to the penthouse of Dant’s Fifth Avenue office building in Manhattan. In the marbled lobby, a guard had phoned to announce that Cavanaugh and Jamie were on their way up. The elevator had a security camera. So did the vestibule to the penthouse.
Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead Page 22
