The Beautiful and the Wicked

by Liv Spector

  Lila nodded.

  “Fine. Do it now. Bring everything to Mrs. Warren’s room and make sure not to uncover any of the mirrors or open up any of the curtains. Do precisely as I say. Now go!”

  And off Lila went to gather this small collection of items for the teetering mistress of the ship. A clink of ice cubes in the glass, a squeeze of lime, four ounces of tequila precisely measured, cucumbers—­cold and cut in a variety of thicknesses—­and the gauze soaked in the chamomile concoction chilling in the fridge. With everything arranged artfully on a lacquered serving tray, Lila made her way to Elise Warren’s room.

  When she opened the door to the master suite, she saw Mrs. Slaughter struggling to help Elise take off her jacket. The enormous room’s blackout curtains were drawn, and all mirrored surfaces were covered with silk scarves, giving the place a dark, cavelike feel. There were two large humidifiers by the bed pouring water vapor into the air.

  Elise Warren, still wearing large sunglasses and a now slightly askew silk head scarf, was muttering loudly and incoherently as Mrs. Slaughter tried to keep her upright.

  “Nicky,” Edna said sharply. “I need your assistance.”

  Lila rushed to her side. “You hold her here, right under the armpits, to keep her steady while I get her ready for bed.”

  Doing as she was told, Lila slipped her hands under the little bolero jacket that Elise was wearing over the Oscar de la Renta dress that Lila had pressed yesterday. Elise’s skinny arms hung limply at her sides. Lila could feel her rib cage through the dress’s thin fabric.

  “Good,” Mrs. Slaughter said, now standing behind Elise, “hold her just like that.”

  Though Elise was a hundred pounds max, Lila had to struggle to keep her deadweight upright. She looked into the woman’s face. Her eyes, of course, were hidden behind dark lenses, but her mouth was hanging slightly open.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Lila whispered to Mrs. Slaughter, who shot her a stern look and said nothing.

  Together they managed to get the tiny jacket off, and then Mrs. Slaughter unzipped the dress, which fell stiffly to the floor as Elise woozily swayed above it. They laid her down on her bed, and when Mrs. Slaughter removed the head scarf and sunglasses, Lila was barely able to suppress a gasp. The swollen, red, and raw-­faced woman that lay before them was no closer to the beautiful Elise Warren than a steak is to a cow.

  Careful to stay silent, Lila watched as Mrs. Slaughter expertly wrung out the gauze, then placed it on Elise’s face and applied two cucumber slices to the swollen slits hiding her eyes. She took several bottles of prescription pills out of Elise’s Céline handbag and set them on the bedside table. She opened the one labeled OxyContin, and propping her mistress’s head up in the crook of her arm, she placed the pill on her tongue and then coaxed Elise to swallow it down with a tiny sip of water.

  After Lila got over the surprise of seeing Elise Warren in such a debilitated condition, she was even more shocked by the tender care Mrs. Slaughter exhibited. Had she not been there to witness it, she could have never guessed that this hard-hearted hard-­ass of a boss could offer such a sweet and maternal touch. This went above and beyond the duty of a chief stewardess. This was an act of love.

  When Lila and the chief stewardess finally left the darkened bedroom, Lila could tell that Mrs. Slaughter was incredibly upset.

  “Barbarians,” she whispered to herself bitterly. “Butchers. Why a woman like Elise Warren thinks she has to do that to herself, I’ll never understand.” Lila couldn’t be sure, but she thought Mrs. Slaughter might have actual tears in her eyes. “Well, it’s not a world I want to have any part in, I’ll say that much.”

  “You really care about her, don’t you?” Lila asked, looking thoughtfully at Mrs. Slaughter.

  To Lila’s dismay, that brief glance, that small reach for a connection with her boss, pushed things one step too far. She watched as Mrs. Slaughter returned to her steely self. The iron curtain that she kept over her heart had once again been lowered.

  “That’s quite enough of all of that, Miss Collins. Thinking we are on familiar terms would be a mistake.”

  “I understand.”

  “I should hope you do. Now, in exactly two hours you must come back here with fresh gauze, more cucumber, and another drink. But this time, in addition, bring her some warm bone-­marrow broth. I’d do it myself, but my presence has been requested elsewhere by Mr. Warren,” she said with a curl to her lips, as if saying Jack’s name left a bad taste in her mouth.

  As instructed, exactly two hours later, Lila entered the dark and silent room with a tray stocked with new supplies.

  Elise was half-­propped up in bed. She wore dark sunglasses over her bandaged face, making her look like the Invisible Man.

  “Edna,” she called, her voice slurred by pills. “Is that you?”

  “No, Mrs. Warren. It’s Nicky. Mrs. Slaughter asked me to bring you some things.”

  “Oh, Edna.” Elise sighed, then emitted a teary whimper. “I’m in so much pain. Can you give me another pill?”

  “It’s Nicky, and yes. Do you know what pill you need to take?” Lila looked at the various bottles on the side table. OxyContin. Percocet. Zoloft. Senokot. Valium. Neurontin. Klonopin.

  “Where’s Jack?”

  “He’s still out sailing.”

  “Yes, of course. Always without me. Now, about that pill.” She tried to sit up farther, but even the simplest shift seemed to result in a great jolt of pain. A miserable groan escaped her lips. “Can you give me two Percocet, Edna? My angel.” She held out her hand toward Lila, who obediently tapped two ten-­milligram pills into her shaking hand.

  “That’s my girl,” Elise said. “Always on my side, right, Edna? Mr. Warren’s got nobody as good as you, does he? He doesn’t have anything that he didn’t buy. And soon he won’t have anything at all. Right, Edna? Now, here, help me with these pills, will you, dear?”

  “What do you mean, ‘he won’t have anything’? Is something going to happen to your husband?” Lila asked. She was hoping that, in her drugged state, Elise would be out of it enough to confess to the crime. It wouldn’t be enough to convict her of the murder when Lila returned to 2019, but it would be a damn fine place to start. “Elise?” she said, but there was no answer. “Elise?” Lila lightly shoved the woman’s shoulder, trying to revive her, but the drugs had taken hold of her body. She was dead to the world.

  Lila sat there for quite a while, staring at the pathetic shell that was Elise Warren. She felt alternating waves of pity and bottomless contempt for the woman she blamed for her sister’s ruined life.

  CHAPTER 11

  AFTER JACK MADE a brief speech and went through the tradition of breaking a champagne bottle across the bow for the dozen or so members of the press in attendance, The Rising Tide set sail on its maiden voyage, at sunset on August 26, 2008. Their first stop would be the Exuma Cays, a little-­known archipelago in the Bahamas where Paul Mason had a small thirty-­acre private island. The three-­hundred-­mile journey would take the grand yacht about twenty hours in total. They were set to arrive sometime the following evening.

  As Lila watched the glittering cityscape of Miami recede into the distance, she couldn’t help but feel overcome by a sense of melancholy. There had been no sign of Ava. She knew it was better if her sister wasn’t on the boat because it allowed Lila to do her job freely without worrying about Ava recognizing her. But in truth, Lila longed to be close to her sister once more. Even if she had to conceal her identity to do it, she was desperate to see her sister’s face, and see that smile of hers, which never seemed to fade, even in the worst of times.

  But Lila wouldn’t have to wait much longer. In just twelve short days, the yacht would return to Miami, and Ava would board The Rising Tide, which didn’t leave Lila much time. Luckily for her, now that the core group of passengers and all the crew were stuck toget
her on this giant yacht, she’d have an easier time tracking everyone. But she knew she needed to be extremely cautious. Getting caught, even for the tiniest slipup, could cost her everything.

  That night, the guests sat down to a light meal of charred octopus and Pinot Noir in the open-­air dining room on the main deck. Being at sea, with the brisk ocean breezes swirling around them, seemed to greatly lift the spirits of both the crew and the passengers, at least for a moment. It seemed there was a collective exhale throughout the entire yacht.

  With everyone out of their rooms and seated around the table, Lila knew that now was the perfect time to grab that secret memo off Liss’s computer. After she and Sam had finished serving, she told her fellow stewardess that she’d bring some more wine up from the cellar on the lower level. That bought her some time. Instead, she ran up to the third deck, headed as quickly as discretion allowed toward Liss’s stateroom. Once she reached his door, she looked around to make sure no one had followed her, then snuck into his room.

  It was filthy and smelled of cold french fries. There were clothes all over the floor and stacks upon stacks of financial documents on every flat surface. She grabbed a few of Liss’s dirty shirts with one hand while she looked for his laptop. If someone walked in on her, she’d at least be able to say she was there to get his dirty laundry.

  After a few minutes of frantic searching, Lila finally found his laptop in the bathroom leaning against a cabinet adjacent to the toilet—­meaning the last time he was on his computer, he was on the can.

  “Charming,” she said as she picked up his computer, closed the bathroom door, lowered the toilet seat, and sat down.

  The first place Lila went was his email. If Liss sent the presentation to all the board members, she’d be able to find it in his “sent” folder. His email was password protected, but in her present world, in 2019, even a toddler could crack a password this rudimentary. Still, every second that passed put her in more danger, and she knew it.

  Then, finally, she was in his email. And there it was: a PowerPoint presentation saved as Project King Charles. With her heart racing, she plugged her thumb drive into the computer and copied the file, along with several others that might or might not be useful. The handful of seconds that she waited while the information was transferred to her drive felt like the longest moments of her life.

  Then she heard the door to Liss’s room open. She froze, moving only her eyes to locate where she could hide. Unfortunately for Lila, the bathroom presented few options. The shower stall was glass and the sink cabinet was too small. Without pausing to think, she pulled the thumb drive out of Liss’s laptop, and taking a few wide strides on tiptoe across the tiled floor, she threw herself into the giant marble bathtub.

  She lay in it, pressing her body as far down as she could, trying to quiet her panicked breathing while she listened to the sound of footsteps in the bedroom. The anxiety in that moment was further sharpened with the fear of fumbling the most important case of her life. What if this one misstep ended her quest to clear Ava’s name?

  The bathroom door opened. Lila stopped breathing entirely. Then she heard Edna’s voice. “What a cretin,” she muttered to herself. “Just thinks none of us have anything better to do than clean up after him.”

  Lila’s heart was pounding so hard that she was convinced Edna could hear it. Then she heard the sound of Edna snapping Liss’s laptop shut and walking back into the bedroom. A ­couple of minutes later, Edna was gone.

  Lila, still feeling the flood of adrenaline pumping through her body, gingerly climbed out of the tub, and noticed the fresh flowers and clean towels that Edna had just dropped off. There were more fresh flowers next to the bed, which had been turned down, along with a little box of Teuscher’s Champagne Truffles set on his just-­fluffed pillows.

  As she left Liss’s room, she finally exhaled, knowing that calls don’t come much closer than that.

  By the time she got back to the dining room, the guests were starting on dessert.

  “Jesus Christ,” Sam said, looking at Lila’s disheveled appearance. “It looks like you just got chased by a tiger.”

  “Did anyone notice I was missing?”

  “I think they’re all too drunk to notice,” Sam answered. “They’ve plowed through all the booze. Where’s the wine?”

  “The wine?” Lila gave Sam a confused look, then she remembered. She had said she was going to the cellar. “I couldn’t find the bottles I was looking for.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, smirking. Then she leaned in and whispered, “I think someone might’ve left for a quickie.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got all the telltale signs! The flushed cheeks, the mussed-­up hair, the lame excuse. Just tell me, who was it with? Mudge? Ben?”

  “Oh, stop,” Lila said, with a shake of her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t worry.” Sam grinned. “I’ll get it out of you soon enough!”

  AFTER DINNER, THE guests gathered by the pool, drinking themselves blind, while Lila, her heart rate finally settled after the scare in Liss’s room, longed to be back in her cabin. All she could think about was what could be in Liss’s files. By the time the guests were drunkenly poured into bed, and Sam and Lila had cleaned up, it was 2:15 in the morning.

  Back in their tiny prison, Lila sat cross-­legged on the bed and pulled out her computer to review the files. Sam was off God knows where, probably with Asher. Lila was thankful for the solitude as she opened the files titled Project King Charles.

  A quick search online told her that Charles I was the king of England who was executed in 1649, and that his death brought an end to the rule of the monarchy. A pretty pointed name for a presentation outlining how to oust Jack from the company he’d founded. Lila began reviewing the presentation, which began with two charts linking Warren Software’s waning market share and declining stock price to Jack’s dwindling participation in the company’s day-­to-­day operations. This was Liss’s call to action to murder the king of Warren Software. Kill the tyrant to save the union.

  As she made her way down the list of recipients who were sent this presentation, she saw Warren’s board of directors, along with the name Urs Hunziker, the person Liss had been speaking with on the phone. Lila had never heard the name before, but a quick search told her that he was a Swiss banker, head of the wealth management division of a small private bank in Geneva, which had been the underwriter for a number of Warren Software’s recent acquisitions.

  But among the fifteen ­people who received this poison pill of a document, Lila was most surprised to see the names “Paul Mason” and “Thiago Campos.” Two of Jack’s best friends and closet advisers were in on a cabal to overthrow him. They were swimming in mighty dangerous waters.

  About forty-­five minutes later, as Lila was reviewing some of the company’s financials, Sam finally returned. She entered the room smelling of booze and sex, and in the mood to talk. Lila didn’t mind. Her brain needed a break. There was so much information to digest and she needed time to let the pieces all fall into place.

  “I know it sounds dumb or conceited or whatever, but I always thought I’d be famous. It was just something I believed about myself,” Sam said quietly, drunkenly, as Lila stared up into the dark. “I grew up in bum-­fuck nowhere Florida, where everything was cheap and small and dingy. I hated my hometown like you can’t believe. For as long as I can remember, I wanted out. I tried everything I could think of to get discovered. I did beauty pageants. I got a few small-­time modeling jobs where I’d have to do my own hair and makeup. I’d take the bus, even when I was little, to Miami for any open audition I heard about. I got head shots and some crappy agent that didn’t do shit. But soon enough I’d spent all the money I had, plus some I didn’t have, and I was right back where I started, stuck in hicksville living in my mom’s double-­wide with no cable and a busted
swamp cooler.”

  The ocean was calm that late August evening, and their cabin rocked gently as the yacht headed south. Lila’s seasickness and feelings of claustrophobia had mostly subsided by day three on the boat, but she was far from comfortable. If she even allowed her mind to drift toward any tiny thoughts about how confined she was on this boat, a claustrophobic panic would overtake her. Her trick to avoid the anxiety, when she felt it coming, was to focus her mind on the only thing that mattered: Ava.

  “It’s so tough out in the real world,” Sam continued, her Florida accent deepening the more freely she talked. “In school I was treated like some kind of royalty. I didn’t get good grades or anything, not by a long shot, but I was always popular. Prom queen dating the quarterback. You know, that whole thing. And I’m not bragging about it. Trust me. I know enough to understand that it’s not much to brag about.”

  Lila didn’t doubt Sam in the least. Her beauty was indisputable. She had an effortless, healthy, blond gorgeousness that Lila knew was both a blessing and a burden. Lila understood quite well that beauty wasn’t always a woman’s quickest way to happiness or to power. She figured Sam had learned the same lesson, though neither of them said as much out loud. Few subjects garnered less sympathy than the burden of beauty.

  “But it didn’t take me long to figure out that I wasn’t one in a million. I was just like everyone else. Moments like that can change a person, harden a person, you know?” Sam paused. “When I was a kid there was this amazing carnival that used to come to our town, full of lights and games and rides. It had this fun-­house room that was all mirrors. You’d walk in and all you’d see was yourself reflected thousands of times over and over and over. I don’t know why, but it terrified me. My mom said the first time I went, I just broke down into tears, that she had to carry me out. I think I was five or six. Anyway, that’s how I felt every time I went to an audition, like I’d just walked into that mirrored room surrounded by thousands of versions just of myself. That’s when I decided to call it quits.”