Life of Lies

by Sharon Sala

  “So am I. Hurts like hell, but I’m fine. No need to worry. It’ll leave a scar, though…” he grumbled. “It mars the perfection of my countenance.”

  She laughed. “Oh, Harold. You are good for what ails me,” she said.

  “You’re okay?”

  “Thanks to Brendan I’m still alive, so that’s good for something.”

  “That’s good to hear. Clearly he’s worth every penny! I’m so glad you finally came to your senses about hiring him,” he said. “Please be careful, though, okay? You are dear to me, Sahara. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”

  She sighed. “Thank you, Harold. I really needed to hear this today. Now I’m going to change the subject. The penthouse. What’s happening there?”

  “Nothing yet, but I don’t think it will be long. The elevator repair crew has been working long days. I got a text from Adam this morning that they should have the elevator up and running by sometime tomorrow. If so, I’ll get the cleaning crew in there ASAP.”

  “Okay, sounds good. Actually, there’s something else you can help me with. It was brought to my attention the other day that I don’t have a will, and that may be a lure for a killer who might show up later to lay claim on my inheritance after I’m dead.”

  “Good Lord, I already told you to see to that. I should have known you would put it off,” Harold said. “So they think these attacks are about inheriting your parents’ money?”

  “Nothing’s been confirmed, but it seems like the best motive at this point. It turns out Leopold wasn’t as devoted to Katarina as he seemed…”

  “Wait—you think he has other children? Oh, Sahara, this must be so difficult for you to deal with right now.”

  Sahara shrugged. “Honestly, I couldn’t care less about what he’d been getting up to behind Katarina’s back. And since this person is out to kill me, I’m pretty sure I don’t have a happy sibling reunion to look forward to.”

  Harold sighed. “How can I help? What do you want me to do?”

  “Just to expedite the matter, get a standard form and tell my lawyer that in the event of my death, I want everything I have to go to a woman named Billie Munroe.”

  “I haven’t heard that name before. Who is she?”

  “My biological mother—and don’t ask,” she added when she heard him exclaim in surprise. “It’s a long story, and I don’t want it bandied about.”

  “I’m in shock! Then Katarina isn’t… How long have you known about this?”

  “Always. I said, it’s a long story. Also, please make sure it’s noted that if anything happens to Billie before I die, then everything goes to Brendan McQueen, and in the event of his passing as well, it all goes to The Lillian Booth Home for Aging Actors of The Actors Fund.”

  He gasped. “Brendan? You’re naming him in your will out of gratitude?”

  “No, that’s not why. But it’s none of your business, Harold. Just do what I’ve said and fax everything to me so I can sign it and fax it back. I’ll bring the originals back to you, but the copy will be a safeguard until it arrives. If there’s someone who thinks they have a claim to the Travis family money and is killing us off to get to it, they’re going to be sadly disappointed. Leopold and Katarina’s estate has been left to me, and if I’m gone, it will lump in with my holdings, so Billie or Brendan will get it all. There is no law that says children automatically get family holdings, unless they are named in a will, and since they aren’t named, they don’t stand to inherit anything, regardless of whether they succeed in killing us all. There’s a fax in the office here. Do you have a notepad to take down the number?”

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  She gave him the number.

  “I’ll get right on this and text you when your lawyer is ready to fax it so you can be ready,” Harold said.

  “Okay, but tell him to expedite. My existence can change at a moment’s notice, and I do not want to die without this in writing.”

  “Absolutely. Consider it done.”

  “Thanks, Harold. And I’m so sorry about your fall. Be well.”

  “You, too,” Harold said, and disconnected.

  She sat there a few moments, listening to the water shut off and bracing herself to see Brendan’s gorgeous body again. He would be coming out any minute, and she needed clothes and her game face on, so she jumped up and headed for the closet, chose a pair of lightweight slacks, a sleeveless blouse and shoes.

  Brendan came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist and headed for the closet just as she walked out. He gave her a look as she passed, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  Brendan sighed.

  So much for another confrontation. Just as well. She wants coffee. Maybe later.

  She was leaning against the door waiting when he came out fully dressed. No matter what he wore, he turned clothes into a sexual come-on. She would have blamed it on his body, but it was the attitude that sold it. She waited as he buckled on his gun and holster and pocketed his cell phone. As soon as he looked at her, she unlocked the door and walked out, well aware he would be right behind her.

  As usual, Lucy was already in the kitchen when they arrived. She was definitely the early riser of the bunch. The table was set and food was warming. Billie turned around, smiled when she saw Sahara and opened her arms for a good-morning kiss, which she promptly got.

  “What a night of storms! Did you two manage to get any rest?”

  “Not a lot,” Sahara said.

  Billie patted her daughter’s cheek. “Too much drama yesterday. Hopefully today will be calmer. Hope you’re hungry. French toast and sausage links.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” she said.

  Billie smiled at Brendan. “I hope you brought your appetite.”

  “And then some,” he said. “Can I help you in any way?”

  “No, but thank you for asking,” Billie said.

  “My mama would box my ears for not at least offering,” he said.

  “A good mother raises good sons,” Billie said. “Sit, everyone. Breakfast is served. Lucy, please put that trivet in the middle of the table. I’m going to set the platter of toast on it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lucy said, and took it from the sideboard to the table just ahead of the hot platter Billie was carrying.

  Sahara turned around to sit down and Brendan was standing at her chair, waiting to seat her. She sighed. He was determined to maintain the professional relationship despite her declaration, but it didn’t change her determination. It remained to be seen which one of them would prevail.

  He pushed her chair closer as she sat, then took his own seat. Within minutes they were all eating and so the day began.

  Fourteen

  With the two-hour time difference in California, Brendan’s email to Detective Shaw arrived while he was still at home and in the shower. It was the first thing he noticed when he logged on to his computer, and then it reminded him that he still hadn’t sent that security footage, and he did so right then before he opened the new attached file.

  He was unprepared for what Sahara and Brendan had found, but it did, however, explain why all of this was happening. What if there was another heir? One with a grudge of massive proportions? He printed off a hard copy for their working file and then saved it to the efile before he got up to refill his coffee cup. He took it and another Danish back to his desk as he settled in to study the new info in depth. Once he had this straight in his head, he was calling the New Orleans police.

  *

  Detectives Fisher and Julian received the email within moments of Brendan hitting Send. Fisher read the letter, then opened up the attachment. It was with no small amount of shock that he learned what a predator Leopold Travis had been. Knowing this and remembering how distant Sahara Travis had been about her relationship with her parents was now beginning to make a little sense. He could only imagine the turmoil that had gone on behind their privileged life.

  “Hey, Julian!”

/>   His partner looked up from his desk.

  “Did you get an email from Brendan McQueen?”

  “Yes, I’m reading it now. Don’t know what to think about all this. It’s sure not how the New Orleans elite thought of Leopold.”

  Once they were both finished reading, Fisher pulled the case file on Travis and found the address where his body had been found.

  “I’m gonna run with a hunch,” he said.

  “What kind of hunch?” Julian asked.

  “I didn’t think the house where Leopold was murdered was a random choice, and neither did you. So what do you think the odds are of one of these women’s names showing up as a prior owner?”

  Julian grinned. “So maybe Travis paid off a pregnant woman, and not just another affair gone cold? The killer chose this house for a reason. What if it was where he grew up?”

  “Why not? It happens,” Fisher said.

  Julian nodded. “Then let’s get busy. You take half the names, I’ll take the others. Let’s run background checks and see what comes up.”

  A couple of hours later Fisher got a call from Detective Shaw in LA and put him on speaker so Julian could hear.

  “I’m calling about the email from Brendan McQueen. I would like to hear that you’ve got a handle on a viable suspect,” Shaw said.

  “And we’d like to tell you we do, but we don’t. However, the info Brendan sent might be the break we were waiting for.”

  “I started background checks on the names,” Shaw said. “But what’s going on in your city is out of my jurisdiction.”

  “Before the email, we had what we thought was a random crime scene where Leopold Travis’s body was discovered, but after reading through all of what Brendan sent, we’re checking to see if any of the women on this list ever owned that house. The killer had to have chosen it for a reason.”

  “Where was the house?” Shaw asked.

  “When Hurricane Katrina struck, the Ninth Ward was the hardest hit part of the city. It’s building up again, but very slowly, and there are a lot of empty houses that are still in the same shape they were when the water went down. It was in one of those.”

  “Wow. How did you ever find the body?”

  “Some kids messing around where they didn’t belong. They found it and their parents called it in.”

  Shaw made a few notes as he spoke. “I have a couple of leads, but so far they’re not going anywhere. The killer either hired out the hits or there’s more than one person behind all this.”

  Detective Julian broke in then, wanting to follow up on their earlier conversation.

  “Last time we spoke you were talking to a woman at The Magnolia who claimed she might have seen the man who planted the bomb where Sahara Travis lived. Did anything come of that?”

  “Grainy security footage. He was posing as an elevator repairman. Pretty sure he was wearing a wig and a fake mustache. He had a stolen ID and toolbox, and we found out later that the van he drove was a rental. There were fingerprints all over it, but nothing we could find in the system. I’m inclined to think this guy was just hired on to do the job. If he was a pro, he’d most likely have a criminal record.”

  “What about the bomb that was supposedly on Miss Travis’s private jet?” Julian asked. “How did you come to find that?”

  “Her bodyguard called us, told us they were flying commercial to be safe and asked if we would have someone check her plane for sabotage. But by the time we got out to check it, Homicide was already there working a murder. The mechanic had been killed and tossed in a Dumpster. That intensified our search, and yes, we found a bomb, so he was definitely trying to cover all the bases. However, once she left LA, our whole case here went cold, which led us to believe he followed her.”

  “And obviously you were right,” Fisher said. “However, this last attempt was most certainly a hired hit. The bodyguard took him out before he got a chance to launch any kind of attack, but the dead guy had payoff money on him, along with the address of the Travis residence written on a piece of paper. And he was a local with a known reputation to do most anything if the price was right.”

  “Which still leaves us both in the cold as to who’s responsible,” Shaw said. “At any rate, stay in touch. I’d like to tie this up as soon as possible.”

  “As would we,” Fisher said, and the call ended. He looked at Julian, and then glanced at the clock. “Let’s get some lunch before we get back to this.”

  Before Julian could answer, the phone rang, and Sahara Travis’s stalker was put on the back burner for a drive-by shooting that left a mother dead and her teenage son, a known drug dealer, wounded. When you lived life in the fast lane, some things never changed.

  *

  It was nearing noon when Brendan checked his email and found the security footage they’d been waiting for. He and Sahara had been sitting quietly in the library all morning, browsing through the books and mostly keeping out of each other’s way.

  “Sahara, pull up a chair,” he said.

  She was reading the very last pages of The Velveteen Rabbit with tears in her eyes—it was a childhood favorite of hers—when Brendan called her. She laid it aside and dragged a chair to the table where he was working and tried not to think about how she felt.

  “What’s up?”

  “The security footage came. It’s not very good quality. Let me know if he even looks familiar.”

  “Okay.”

  He hit Play and then turned the laptop toward her.

  She watched intently, eyeing the man walking into the service entrance, talking to a woman behind a desk and then walking out sometime later. Then she watched footage of him captured at the airport where her plane was kept. She gasped when she saw the body being dumped.

  “Oh my God,” she said, and pressed her fingers to her mouth to keep from screaming.

  She was sick to her stomach when it ended.

  “I don’t know who that is, and he didn’t look at all familiar. Not even the way he walked. I’m sorry.”

  “No. Don’t be sorry. It was just something that needed to be run by you. I’ll let them know you couldn’t identify him.”

  She nodded and was getting up from the chair when the house phone rang. When she turned to answer, Brendan caught her by the wrist.

  “Aren’t you going to let Billie answer?”

  “She went to the store. Don’t worry, it will be fine.” Then she picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me, honey.”

  “It’s Harold,” she said, eyeing the satisfied nod from McQueen, then turned her attention to the call. “What’s up?”

  “Your lawyer is faxing over the will. He says to tell you it’s a basic boilerplate, but it would stand up in court should the need arise. When you get back, come in and he’ll itemize it all to specify your holdings.”

  “Okay. Many thanks for this,” she said.

  “You’re welcome. Stay safe.”

  “That’s all up to Brendan, and he’s doing a rather spectacular job. All I can say is, so far, so good.”

  Harold sighed. “Just so you know, I hate that you have to live like this.”

  “I don’t like it, either, Harold, but right now we have no other choice.”

  “I know, but I had to say it.”

  “Thank you, and you stay safe, too. No more falls in the shower, okay?”

  He groaned. “Deal.”

  “Oh! Please give Adam a hello from me next time you talk to him.”

  “Sure thing.”

  She replaced the receiver.

  Brendan listened to the whole one-sided conversation and thought nothing of it until her last comment.

  “Who’s Adam?” he asked, without looking up from the computer screen.

  She glanced over her shoulder and thought about making something up to see if he cared and then thought, what the hell. Playing games wasn’t her style and she wasn’t starting now.

  “The security guard at The Magnolia,”
she answered honestly.

  “Oh,” Brendan said, and for the first time in hours, he met her gaze.

  Sahara looked back, then put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin.

  “Were you jealous?” she asked, and then walked out of the library.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, shut down the laptop and followed.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, as he caught up.

  “To the fax machine in Leopold’s office. I have some papers coming that I need to sign.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  She entered the room without hesitation. Whatever ghosts had been there before were off her radar. She went straight to the fax and began gathering up the pages and the cover letter that came with instructions.

  She stood there long enough to scan the pages, then picked up a pen from the desk, signed the papers, then turned around and faxed them back.

  “That didn’t take long,” he said.

  She shrugged. “I already knew what was coming.”

  As soon as the last page ran through, she gathered them up, found an empty file folder and slipped them inside.

  “I’m through. I guess lunch will be ready soon, but I don’t want to eat. I want to go for a walk. I want to go to the French Quarter and get a box of pralines. I want to hear the music on Beale Street. I want to go down to the river and watch the riverboats. Did you know the streets on the riverfront are paved with ballast stones? You know what ballast stones are?”

  Brendan heard in her voice a longing to revisit her childhood, and frustration at being cooped up in a house she hated because showing her face could get her killed.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me about the ballast stones.”

  She sat down on the edge of the desk, her long legs dangling almost to the floor.

  “Back in the late 1700s and early 1800s, plantations ruled, cotton was king, and slaves were bought and sold like products rather than people. If a ship would sail into the harbor to pick up goods, like bales of cotton or whatever else was being shipped out of New Orleans, they usually came laden with goods to trade, which were unloaded on the docks. But if they set sail without goods, coming only to pick up the huge bales of cotton, they still couldn’t sail empty, because they needed weight in the hold to keep from tipping over and sinking in storms. So they loaded up stones for ballast, big heavy stones that were put down in the hold. Then when they got here, the slaves had to bring the stones up and dump them in the river to make room for the goods. As the city grew, someone got the fine idea that the riverfront needed to be paved and that same someone thought those ballast stones would be perfect for pavers, and they were free. So they made the same slaves who dumped them in the river dive down and bring them up.”