by Stephen Frey
“The woman you worked with at Merrill Lynch?”
“Yes.”
Conner gritted his teeth. “Ginger never worked at Merrill,” he snarled, aware of a siren in the distance. “I talked to Ted Davenport. You lied to me about that. That and everything else.”
Liz moaned as his dug his knees deep into her arms. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. Give me answers. How do you know Ginger?”
“She works at the club,” Liz said, nodding back toward the parking lot. “She’s my roommate here in Miami. We’ve known each other for a while.”
“Is she working tonight?”
“No. She’s back at the apartment.”
The siren was growing louder. Someone must have called the cops. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling her up off the ground roughly.
“Where?”
“Your apartment. You, Ginger, and I are going to figure this thing out.”
Twenty minutes later Conner pulled to a stop in front of the entrance to the Ocean View Condominiums. “This it?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
Conner glanced at the address on the side of the building. It was the same as the one on the mortgage invoice in Gavin’s kitchen drawer. This was Gavin’s place. “You’re going to answer a few more questions before we go upstairs.”
“Okay,” she agreed meekly.
There was no fight left in her. Conner could see that. “So Ginger had you seduce me?She’s the one working with Paul Stone.”
“Yes,” Liz confirmed. “Ginger met Paul when he was here in Miami on a business trip about a year and a half ago. Paul’s the one who arranged for us to move into this building. It’s nice. It’s a two-bedroom on the fifth floor. We were living in a rat’s nest before on the south side, and Paul got us out of there.” She hesitated. “I think your boss is the one who actually owns this place. What’s his name? You mentioned him to me a couple of times.”
“Gavin Smith.”
“Yeah, that’s it. I think this is Gavin Smith’s place.” She rolled her eyes. “Paul told us Gavin wouldn’t mind if we stayed here, but I think he was lying. We had to clear out one weekend a few months after we moved in and make it look like we’d never been here. That happened a couple of times, so all I can think of is that Gavin doesn’t really know we’re here. But it’s worked out all right. And, like I said, it’s a lot nicer than the place we were in.”
Conner’s eyes narrowed. “It was Ginger who had you come on to me at that bar back in May.”
Liz looked down. “A few months after they met, Ginger and Paul hatched some kind of crazy get-rich-quick scheme. I don’t know any details. They didn’t tell me anything, and I didn’t really want to know. But part of it involved me being your girlfriend. It was creepy, but I did it because they paid me.” She slipped her hand to his. “I’m sorry about this,Conner. I just—”
“How much?” he asked, picking her hand up and placing it back in her lap. It was the first time she’d ever called him by his first name. “How much did they pay you?”
“A hundred grand,” she answered. “But they’ve given me only five so far.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “I was down to my last dime. That’s the only reason I did all this. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I almost told you so many times, but I was scared. You don’t screw with Ginger. She can go psycho sometimes.” Liz paused. “I think Paul might be capable of some pretty whacked out stuff, too.”
“So Ginger never told you anything about what was really going on?”
“No. Like I said, all I knew was that I was supposed to be your girlfriend. But I wasn’t supposed to let you get too close. That’s why Ginger cooked up the story about me being engaged. She said that would keep you at a distance. I wasn’t supposed to go out in public with you at all.”
“But we did go out a few times,” Conner reminded her. As a result, the man working for Gavin had seen them over at that place on First.
“Ginger was afraid you were going to say the hell with it and screw up the whole thing, so she said I needed to go out with you a couple of times. But they were always out-of-the-way joints.”
Conner nodded. “And I could never come to the place they had for you over on Fifty-first. Where the doormen know you by the name Tori.”
Liz’s eyes widened. “You know—”
“Just keep talking,” he ordered.
“That was really it,” she mumbled. “I had to report to Stone constantly. He called me all the time. I had no idea we were going to stage my murder until the day before it happened.”
“Who was the guy that chased me down the fire escape?”
Liz shrugged. “I don’t know. After you and he went out the bedroom window, I took a shower real fast to clean up. To get the dye off me. Then I went down the fire escape, too. It was all prearranged. Another guy was waiting for me in the alley and he helped me get down there at the bottom. You know, where the ladder was pulled up off the alley. Then he drove me to the airport and handed me a ticket to Miami. That was it. I swear to you. I still don’t know why Paul and Ginger did what they did to you.”
Conner was silent for a few moments, thinking. “All right, let’s go upstairs. I want to talk to Ginger.”
Liz glanced at the building fearfully. “Can I just stay down here? She’s crazy. I promise I won’t go anywhere.”
Conner shook his head. “No way.”
Lucas and Brenda sat on a bench near the Washington Monument. It was early evening and the sun was casting long shadows.
She’d called him this afternoon as he was returning from Middleburg. She wanted to see him, she said. She couldn’t wait until the weekend. He’d agreed to get together with her immediately, making a quick stop in Georgetown before hurrying over here.
“It was just that I had such a good time at dinner, Lucas,” she murmured. “And I feel so guilty about what I did to you at Northwestern. It was such an awful thing. I want to make certain you know how much I regret all that. Just telling you on the phone didn’t seem like the right way to do it. I had to see you.”
Lucas patted her hand gently. Her skin was so soft. “That’s very nice,” he said quietly. He took a deep breath and raised both eyebrows. “I can’t say that it doesn’t still hurt. What you did crushed me. I was a basket case for months. I . . . I still have that picture of you. Do you remember giving it to me?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve looked at it every day since you left.”
Brenda leaned forward and kissed him. “I’m sorry.” She sighed. “Maybe I should go. Maybe this was wrong. I don’t deserve another chance,” she said, rising from the bench.
But he pulled her back down onto the bench. Closer this time. “Another chance? What do you mean?”
Brenda moaned. “I’ve had enough of the macho types. I want a man who’s caring and considerate.” She paused. “Like you.” She turned away. “But I know you could never trust me . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Never.”
Lucas took her gently by the chin and turned her face back toward his. “You don’t know that.”
She smiled sadly. “How could you after what I did?”
He glanced around, then clasped her hand tightly. “There’s something I need to tell you. And something I need you to do.”
She gazed into the intensity of his expression. “Of course, Lucas. Anything. Are you in trouble?” she asked, her voice rising. “My God, what is it?”
Lucas reached into his jacket and pulled out the marble notebook he’d carried with him from Georgetown. “Take this and keep it safe. If I haven’t contacted you within forty-eight hours, you need to open the sealed envelope that’s taped to the inside of the back cover and follow the instructions printed on the page inside the envelope. Do you understand?”
“Lucas, I—”
“Do you understand?”
She searched his expression again, then nodded. “Yes.”
. . .
“You better be careful,” Liz whispered, removing
the key from her purse. “I’m telling you, Ginger can go off in a heartbeat. She does crazy things sometimes. And I’m not sure, but I think she has a gun in her bedroom closet.”
Conner leaned close to the door, listening for any sound from inside. But there was nothing.
“She’s probably asleep,” Liz whispered. “She worked real late last night.”
“Give me the layout of the place,” Conner ordered, taking the key from Liz’s trembling fingers.
“When you go in, her bedroom is ahead and to the left.”
Conner nodded. “All right. You go first, then I’ll follow.” He pointed at her. “So help me, if you try anything, I’ll—”
“I just want to get this over with.”
“Good answer.” He slid the key into the lock and turned the knob, then slowly pushed the door open and followed Liz into the condominium.
Liz pointed toward a closed door to the left. “That’s her bedroom.”
He motioned for Liz to stay where she was, then stepped noiselessly to Ginger’s door. He was about to turn the knob when he looked back one more time. He wanted to know where the bed was in the room. As he glanced over his shoulder, he noticed that Liz had edged farther away. Close to another door, also shut.
“It’s to the right,” she said quietly, anticipating his question.
He gazed at her, adrenaline pumping through his body. Then his eyes fell to the coffee table. On it was a handwritten note.
“Have a great week, T,” it read. “See you Friday. Love, G.”
As Conner scanned the note a second time, it hit him. There was no one behind this door. Ginger was gone.
He glanced up into the mirror above the couch. Liz was staring back at him.
As he turned, Liz bolted for her bedroom, hurling open the door and vanishing inside.
“Christ!” Conner tore after her, leaping over the couch and bursting through the door she’d slammed shut behind her. He caught a glimpse of her disappearing into a walk-in closet, and raced toward it. As he rounded the corner, she was pulling a gun from a shoe box. He lunged at her, grabbing her hand before she could point the weapon. Ripping the pistol from her fingers.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go!”
Conner clenched her wrist, pulling her out of the closet even as she dropped to her knees and tried to grab the door. He dragged her to the bathroom and slammed the door shut, shoving her ahead of him. Then he leaned down, jammed the plug into the tub’s drain and turned on the hot water.
Liz’s eyes grew wide as the tub began to fill. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice trembling as steam begin to rise.
“Answer my questions and you won’t have to find out,” he answered, standing up. “Now get on your knees,” he ordered sharply, pointing at a spot beside the tub.
“No, please, I—”
“Get on your knees!”
Liz sank down. “Please,” she begged. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“How did it start?” he asked above the sound of water rushing from the faucet. “Start talking,” he ordered, gripping a fistful of her hair.
“They came into the Executive Club last December,” she said quickly, turning her head to the side as steam rushed past her face. “Right before Christmas.”
“Whocame in?”
“These two corporate types.” The words were tumbling out now. She was terrified. “It was almost midnight, and they were already pretty drunk when they got there. They wanted company so I sat down. I recognized them. They’d been in before.”
Conner released his grip on her and allowed her to sit up. Then he pulled the picture he had run off the color printer this morning at Phenix from his pocket, then unfolded it and held it. Jim Hatcher, Global Components’s CFO. “Is this one of the men who came in that night?”
Liz nodded, wiping tiny droplets from her face. “Yes. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess. So, what happened?”
“They kept getting drunker and drunker. They could barely stay in their chairs they were so wasted, but they were tipping me good, so I put up with it. I mean, they were tippingreally good. Two hundred bucks for a one-song lap dance, and they kept doing it. I asked them how come they had so much money and that guy,” Ginger pointed at the picture, “he told me how he ran the money for this mammoth public company—Global Components—like he owned it himself. The other guy slapped him on the back and started bragging about how they’d created billions of dollars of phony earnings out of thin air and nobody knew about it but them. How they were keeping all these expenses in something they kept calling a shadow account in Minneapolis. And how the two of them were the smartest executives ever to hit corporate America. They told me they were senior executives at Global Components a couple of times. And they told me I ought to buy the company’s stock because it was going to keep going up.”
“You figured there might be an angle,” Conner said calmly.
Liz nodded.
“And you called Paul Stone. You were the one who had met him, not Ginger. He put you up here and let Ginger live with you.”
“That’s right.” Liz’s voice was barely audible. “Ginger’s just my roommate. She doesn’t know anything. I told her I was dancing at a club in New York City for the last few months. She didn’t question me, because the people who run these clubs have us move around every once in a while. So we don’t get too friendly with the regulars.”
“You talked to Stone because you figured he would know what to do with the information about Global Components?”
“I figured there was money to be made. But I didn’t know how to do it. I thought Paul would.”
“Did Stone get you the job at Merrill Lynch?”
“Yes. I needed spending money while I was in New York, and he knew someone over there. All I had to do was take people to lunch and walk their dogs. It was easy.”
“Until that guy from Miami showed up a few weeks ago in New York. Then you had a problem.”
“Yeah, right.”
Conner shut off the water. The tub was almost full. “Why did you tell me that Ginger worked with you in New York?”
“When she called your apartment that first night back in May, you asked me about her. I blanked. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. It was stupid, but you’d promised not to come to Merrill, so I wasn’t that worried about it.”
Conner watched as a drop formed at the end of the faucet, slowly growing larger until finally it fell into the tub. “So a couple of guys come into the club one night drunk off their asses and start telling you to buy their company’s stock. Just to impress you.”
“Men try to impress me all the time. They want to think that somehow they’re different from all the others. Most of the time they’re lying.” She hesitated. “This time, they weren’t.”
“And that’s how it all started,” Conner said quietly.
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “For some reason I think you’re finally telling me the truth.”
Conner slipped behind the steering wheel and checked his watch. It wasn’t even seven. He was going to make that nine o’clock flight to Washington with plenty of time to spare.
He slid the key in the ignition and turned the engine on. He’d call the Miami police and tell them about the young woman who was bound and gagged on the floor of the walk-in closet upstairs when this thing was over. Which ought to be by this time tomorrow, he figured.
“You’re doing the right thing.”
Brenda glanced up at her managing partner. She didn’t have a choice. She’d missed the statute of limitations on a personal injury case for the second time in three months. Both clients had lodged complaints with the D.C. Bar Association, and she was looking at a bad situation. Maybe even disbarment.
“Just take care of the complaints for me,” she said. “Please, Hootie.”
James “Hootie” Wilson was one of the most well-connected attorneys in Washington. A white-haired sage who spoke with a s
oft southern accent and seemed to know everyone in town.
“Call the people you know at the association,” Brenda continued. “I can’t have this on my record.”
Wilson looked down at the marble notebook lying on his desk and smiled. Perfect. It was exactly as Bennett had explained. “Don’t worry that pretty little head of yours one more second,” he said comfortingly. “Consider it done.”
Brenda hesitated. She shouldn’t ask this. She shouldn’t care. This was all about saving herself. But she couldn’t help it. “Hootie, what’s going to happen to Lucas?”
Wilson picked up the marble notebook and slipped it into his briefcase. “Don’t you worry about that either, sweetie.”
22
Cheetah picked his way carefully through the tombstones of the vast graveyard. He’d never met his contact here before, but that wasn’t what concerned him. They were constantly changing the locations of these rendezvous points. What concerned him was that they were meeting in broad daylight. That had never happened before. There must be an emergency, particularly since the order to meet had such a short fuse.
He spotted a mausoleum down the hill near a tree line and headed for it, making certain to give a crew of men excavating a fresh grave a wide berth. The mausoleum was the rendezvous point, and he didn’t want the workers getting suspicious and interrupting the meeting.
Cheetah trotted the last few yards to the marble structure, past two matching headstones, putting the building between himself and the workers as he slipped around one corner. He didn’t like graveyards. Never had. Not because he harbored some irrational paranoia about specters or was uncomfortable with death. He just hated such a blatant waste of good real estate. He’d already given his father strict instructions to have his corpse cremated—if there was one.
Cheetah’s contact was waiting, leaning casually against the mausoleum wall.
“What’s going on?” Cheetah demanded. “And why was I given so little notice?”
“Our source believes Conner Ashby may be getting close to something.”
“So?”
“What information do you have on Ashby?”
