Due Justice

by Diane Capri

  The other envelope was addressed to Ben Hathaway. It contained a full confession, executed and notarized by O’Connell Worthington, a gentleman even after death.

  O’Connell provided the hard evidence of his guilt that Chief Hathaway had been unable to find. Motive: O’Connell said he’d killed Morgan because Morgan’s theories were timed to insure his financial ruin. Means: He’d included a purchase receipt showing his ownership of the murder weapon. But he said he’d thrown the gun into the Gulf at the same time he’d thrown in the body. Opportunity: Well, we had Carly’s eye-witness account for that. He apologized for the inconvenience.

  EPILOGUE

  CHIEF HATHAWAY MARKED THE Michael Morgan murder closed. O’Connell’s firm was for sale, half a step ahead of foreclosure after over-extended their lines of credit for breast implant litigation. His written confession contained lengthy details of his downward financial spiral, meant to persuade doubters of his guilt. Hathaway and the State’s Attorney accepted.

  O’Connell and Pricilla had been the epitome of our society for fifty years, as had their families before them. Public disgrace was more than they could bear.

  I chose not to challenge O’Connell’s bluff.

  The Worthington’s joint funeral was standing room only. Everybody, including me and George, Kate, the Warwicks, Carly and Grover, and the rest of Tampa, was visibly saddened.

  Bill Sheffield told us his bank had been providing Worthington’s financing. The firm declared bankruptcy; lawyers scrambled for new jobs.

  CJ occupied in the family pew, sobbing like a child at the death of his only sister and his life-long friend. Would he be more antagonistic toward me, or less, because of the role I’d played in their deaths?

  When he couldn’t pin it on Grover, Ben Hathaway gave up and charged Fred Johnson with blackmailing Morgan. Johnson was disbarred, convicted and ordered to make restitution to Morgan’s estate. No one’s figured out what to do with the money. The legal wrangling will likely last beyond our lifetimes.

  The package Cilla left for me on her dressing table before she died contained her diary and the four missing pictures from Morgan’s piano. The two nudes were Morgan and the very young, very beautiful Pricilla Worthington. Glory days?

  I only read three sections of Cilla’s diary.

  First, the passage describing the coincidence placing both of us in Carly’s apartment. She’d been searching for Morgan’s disk; panicked when I showed up. She said she’d never hit anyone on the head before, and thought she’d killed me, but was glad she didn’t.

  Me, too.

  Not a bowling ball, though. She’d used a Steuben vase. Good to know. Maybe a bowling ball is softer.

  The second segment, her account of the night she killed Morgan, contained few surprises. After I’d discovered her name on Morgan’s list of accounts receivable and recognized her nude picture captured in Robin’s video, I’d suspected her. Saving her reputation, the rest of her money, and her husband was plenty of motive. Under the circumstances, many women would have done what Pricilla did. When O’Connell surrendered, my suspicions had been confirmed.

  The final pages outlined her plan to kill herself. Sooner or later, she said, Hathaway would have found the evidence to arrest Morgan’s killer even after her husband took the blame. Pricilla knew O’Connell Worthington III would never have allowed his wife to be charged or convicted. Her death, she thought, would set him free.

  Before she died, had she known she’d waited too long to save her husband?

  A few days after the funerals, I had lunch with Carly at Minaret. Gave her Cilla’s letter. I watched her read it, and watched her cry.

  Dear Carly,

  I’m sorry, dear, because he was your father. He didn’t deserve a fine daughter like you. You’re better off without him.

  He did deserve to die. When I first knew him, he was kind and caring. But he changed. Maybe it was the drugs, or the women, or the success, or the failure. I don’t know why. He became cold, greedy. The world is better off without him, too.

  Much too late, I learned he didn’t love me, that I was only one in a long line of women. I broke it off immediately, and then spent the rest of my life trying to buy his silence. He demanded money for years. He took everything but our house. O’Connell never knew. I never wanted him to know, but it took every cent of my inheritance to keep Morgan quiet.

  It was the video. He recorded our affair. Others, too. He threatened to show those tapes unless I paid him. I burned every last one after he died.

  I paid the money he demanded and other women did, too. I might have paid him forever. But he wanted to destroy O’Connell. That, I would not allow.

  Pricilla Worthington

  Carly cried for a while after losing her father. Maybe it helped that he wasn’t a father worth crying over, but I’m not sure.

  Unfortunately, Carly seems quite fond of Grover. Maybe her brothers can handle that catastrophe-in-the-making. Mark’s been promoted and is moving his family to Tampa. Kate, the grandmother, is thrilled. Jason called from Washington last night. He said he’d been in Romania for a couple of weeks and wanted to catch up on the boring stuff happening at home.

  George and I enjoyed nightly sunset cocktails. Early February breezes were soft, skies cloudless blue, and the temperatures near eighty. My feet rested in his lap; he massaged achy toes gently. Harry and Bess splashed each other in the salt water.

  “How much do you love me,” I asked him one night, eyes closed, totally relaxed.

  “More times than you can count,” he replied softly.

  “Would you die for me?”

  “You mean like Romeo and Juliet?” I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “No.” I said. “Like Cilla and O’Connell.”

  THE END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Thank you for reading my books. You’re the reason I write! If you liked my books, you can help keep my work going by “liking” the books on Amazon and everywhere the option is offered, and by posting your honest reviews of the book to help other readers decide whether it’s worth their reading time. I hope you will. You can find a complete list of my books with links to the book pages for reviews and other information here: Diane Capri Amazon Author Page

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  If you want to read the stories Behind the Book you can find them on my website. www.DianeCapri.com

  Readers know my books are heavily researched, edited, proofed and professionally formatted. If you find errors, please let us know and we’ll fix them if we can. We’re committed to presenting the best possible reading experience and we appreciate your help. http://www.DianeCapri.com/contact/

  While you’re there, send me your questions. http://www.DianeCapri.com/contact/ I love to hear from you and I answer whenever I can.

  That said, the criminal activities herein depicted are pure fiction, as are the characters. Any events or real places mentioned are used fictitiously. As we all know, truth is stranger than fiction.

  Thanks again for reading!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Diane Capri is a lawyer and multi-published author.

  She’s a snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers and is hard at work on her next novel.

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  Lee Child

  THE REACHER REPORT:

  March 2nd, 2012

  ....The other big news is Diane Capri—a friend of mine—wrote a book revisiting the events of KILLING FLOOR in Margrave, Georgia. She imagines an FBI team tasked to trace Reacher’s current-day whereabouts. They begin by interviewing people who knew him—starting out with Roscoe and Finlay. Check out this review from Amazon: “Oh heck yes! I am in love with this book. I’m a huge Jack Reacher fan. If you don’t know Jack (pun intended!) then get thee to the bookstore/wherever you buy your fix and pick up one of the many Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. Heck, pick up all of them. In particular, read Killing Floor. Then come back and read Don’t Know Jack. This story picks up the other from the point of view of Kim and Gaspar, FBI agents assigned to build a file on Jack Reacher. The problem is, as anyone who knows Reacher can attest, he lives completely off the grid. No cell phone, no house, no car...he’s not tied down. A pretty daunting task, then, wouldn’t you say?

  “First lines: “Just the facts. And not many of them, either. Jack Reacher’s file was too stale and too thin to be credible. No human could be as invisible as Reacher appeared to be, whether he was currently above the ground or under it. Either the file had been sanitized, or Reacher was the most off-the-grid paranoid Kim Otto had ever heard of.” Right away, I’m sensing who Kim Otto is and I’m delighted that I know something she doesn’t. You see, I DO know Jack. And I know he’s not paranoid. Not really. I know why he lives as he does, and I know what kind of man he is. I loved having that over Kim and Gaspar. If you haven’t read any Reacher novels, then this will feel like a good, solid story in its own right. If you have...oh if you have, then you, too, will feel like you have a one-up on the FBI. It’s a fun feeling!

  “Kim and Gaspar are sent to Margrave by a mysterious boss who reminds me of Charlie, in Charlie’s Angels. You never see him...you hear him. He never gives them all the facts. So they are left with a big pile of nothing. They end up embroiled in a murder case that seems connected to Reacher somehow, but they can’t see how. Suffice to say the efforts to find the murderer, and Reacher, and not lose their own heads in the process, makes for an entertaining read.

  “I love the way the author handled the entire story. The pacing is dead on (ok another pun intended), the story is full of twists and turns like a Reacher novel would be, but it’s another viewpoint of a Reacher story. It’s an outside-in approach to Reacher.

  “You might be asking, do they find him? Do they finally meet the infamous Jack Reacher?

  “Go...read...now...find out!”

  Sounds great, right? It’s available and you can get it HERE. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

  So that’s it for now ... again, thanks for reading THE AFFAIR, and I hope you’ll like A WANTED MAN just as much in September.

  Lee Child

  Due Justice (formerly titled Carly’s Conspiracy) is a work of fiction, revised from the previously released novel by M. Diane Vogt, Silicone Solution. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  © Copyright 2011 Diane Capri

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by: AugustBooks

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  Published by: AugustBooks

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  eISBN: 978-0-9837298-9-1