The Beautiful and the Wicked

by Liv Spector

  In an attempt to center herself and focus her thinking, Lila had spent the last hour or so with the childhood picture of her and her sister, which she’d smuggled from 2019, pressed against her heart. Even though it was too dark in her cabin to actually look at it, holding it flat against her body gave her a strange kind of comfort. Thoughts of that sweet, sunshiny day so very long ago floated into her mind. She remembered Ava had just lost her front tooth, and both girls were excited about what the tooth fairy would bring that night. Ava, with her strawberry-­blond hair braided in a long, thick plait that reached to her midback, showed Lila which seashells were the most beautiful and how to hunt for sand dollars. Both sisters spent the day collecting all the exquisite bounty from the sea, and presenting their riches to their mom, who flashed them a heart-­swelling smile.

  But even this treasured memory had failed to soothe Lila’s mind. Lying there in her bunk bed, listening to the rise and fall of Sam’s breathing, she felt defeated and anxious. It seemed like everyone was a suspect.

  The other big question that kept nagging and nagging at Lila throughout the silent darkness of the night was the most important question of all: what did her sister have to do with any of this? With every passing day and with every port of call checked off the list, Lila was counting down the days until she’d see Ava. Sweet Ava, her cherished sister. Lila still couldn’t even wrap her mind around the fact that Ava’s life was in any way intertwined with these damaged ­people.

  But, amid all these puzzles, one thing was certain: time was running out. And Lila would have to work even harder, be even more vigilant, and risk everything if she was going to make sure that the innocent were exonerated and the guilty were punished.

  THREE HOURS LATER, as Lila was busy serving breakfast, the guests’ table was buzzing. Soon they’d be docking in Port de Gustavia, at the marina of choice for all superyachts visiting St. Barts. The women were the most excited because Esperanza Campos had arranged for them to visit the world-­renowned psychic Lady Kitty, who had a devoted following among the jet set.

  “Supposedly Lady Kitty told Jennifer Aniston that Brad would leave her!” Josie said with unbridled glee. “And the CIA is using her to help them find Osama bin Laden. But no luck there, right?”

  Lila smiled to herself as she refilled everyone’s coffee cup. She could tell these women a decade’s worth of predictions, all of which would come true—­because she’d lived through them. But nobody would believe her. And anyway, her knowledge wasn’t for sale.

  Mostly Lila was happy that the women would be off the yacht and out of her hair, as would the men, who planned to spend the day scuba diving with sharks at the bottom of the sea. Even Seth Liss had put business away for this one day to experience these glorious and deadly creatures up close. If only one of the sharks would have the insight and wisdom to gobble every one of these nasty characters up, Lila thought, then it would save her a lot of trouble.

  Minutes after the yacht was safely moored in the azure paradise of St. Barts, the guests filed down the gangplank one by one, excited for the adventures set before them. As Lila carefully watched them pair off into groups and wind their way through the French island’s main harbor of Port de Gustavia, she took in the overwhelming beauty and opulence of the place. Flanked on three sides by verdant mountains dotted with terra-­cotta-­roofed villas, the port was dripping with superyachts full of Russian billionaires, hip-­hop impresarios, Greek shipping magnates, and the supermodels who loved them. It was a landscape of oiled skin, string bikinis, Ace of Spades champagne, Montecristo cigars, thick gold chains, and diamond rings. Everyone within eyeshot was either very, very rich or very, very beautiful or maybe, for the very, very lucky, they were both. It was Caribbean exclusiveness and opulence in its most concentrated form. There was no mistaking the fact that this very elite port on this very elite island was the wealthiest place Lila had ever seen in her life—­and given her other undercover missions, that was really saying something.

  Standing on the main deck, Lila watched as Jack Warren led the men across the marina to board a speedboat that would take them diving, while the women, led by Esperanza, climbed into a black Cadillac Escalade for their highly anticipated day with Lady Kitty. As Lila watched a ­couple of surgically enhanced, bikini-­clad women standing on the dock in front of The Rising Tide, posing coquettishly for pictures that would be hitting Facebook within minutes, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Captain Nash descending the gangplank. He was carrying her blue duffel bag, which meant he was carrying the drugs. Lila knew, then and there, that she had to follow him.

  But before she could do so, she’d have to disguise herself. After all, blending into the background of this playground for the very rich and very famous would be impossible if she was wearing her white stewardess uniform. As quickly as she could, she ran down the hall to Josie’s room, taking off her uniform as soon as she closed the door behind her. In a matter of a few frantic seconds, Lila threw on a Fendi string bikini, tightly wrapped one of Josie’s many sarongs low around her hips, put a pair of enormous black Hermès sunglasses on her face, Marc Jacobs flip-­flops on her feet, and a wide-­brimmed straw hat on her head. She threw her uniform, bra, and underwear under the bed, knowing that she’d be back at the boat hours before Josie and the gang returned.

  In a matter of thirty seconds, Lila had transformed herself from a servant girl into a carbon copy of almost every other young and beautiful woman decorating the streets of St. Barts.

  With her disguise in place, she blasted out of Josie’s room and hurried out to the main deck. Her prayers were twice answered when she didn’t run into any other member of the crew and caught sight of Captain Nash, whom she spotted turning onto the main oceanfront drag of Gustavia.

  Lila hurried forward, lagging fifty feet behind Nash to avoid being spotted. The mingling and flirty crowd enveloped them both almost instantly. It was clear that Nash knew where he was going. He walked purposefully through the center of town, past the entwined ­couples drinking white wine in open-­air cafés and the luxury boutiques housed in charming white clapboard buildings, even failing to notice that he marched right by the Hollywood starlet wearing a strapless terrycloth romper whose gigantic Céline bag dwarfed her tiny, underfed body.

  Nash ducked down a narrow alleyway, climbed up a steep set of stone stairs, then turned left and momentarily disappeared from Lila’s view. She followed him up the stairs just in time to spy him turning past a mint-­green stucco building with wooden shutters the color of a ripe papaya. Lila slowly walked by the colorful house and its adjacent alley, catching sight of Nash standing about a hundred feet or so away from her, in front of a small shack behind the green house. She doubled back and leaned up against the mint house, her shoulder pressed against the outer wall’s farthest edge, furtively peeking down the alley. She saw Nash put the blue duffel bag on the ground as a disembodied arm picked it up and dropped a red bag in its place. After Nash picked up the red bag, he started walking back to the main road, breezing by Lila, who turned her body away from the captain to avoid being spotted.

  Holding the red bag tightly to his chest, Nash walked a few doors down the road before slipping into the entryway of the Hotel Caraïbes, a very posh-­looking establishment. Lila trailed behind, walking through the hotel’s carved ebony entrance and stopping behind an enormous bird-­of-­paradise arrangement to quickly get her bearings. She searched the lobby, but couldn’t see Nash anywhere. And what with his cheap nylon sailing shorts and long silver beard, he wasn’t at all difficult to find.

  Then Lila spotted him. He was on the other side of the lobby, sitting in an old-­fashioned wood-­and-­glass pay-­phone booth. His back was facing her as he spoke to someone on the phone. Lila cut across the lobby and entered the booth right next to him. She picked up the phone, keeping her head angled down to avoid being recognized. Then she quickly turned toward him. In a brief glance she saw that Nash had the red bag u
nzipped on his lap revealing several stacks of 500-­euro banknotes. But it was what was on top of the money that took Lila’s breath away. She recognized it instantly—­a snub-­nosed .38 revolver with a cherrywood grip. The exact gun that would be discovered next to a pool of Jack Warren’s blood on the night of his murder.

  Shocked, Lila swiveled away from Nash and sank down in the booth’s upholstered seat, still pressing the phone against her face as the dial tone droned in her ear. Captain Nash had the murder weapon. She had searched the yacht over and over again for this very gun. And here it was. Lila had just discovered a major piece of the puzzle, but where did it fit into the big picture?

  Was Nash the killer?

  She heard him open the booth door. Staying seated, she watched him walk through the lobby, still clutching his bag, and out into the street. The moment he was through the door, she sprang up out of the booth and hustled after him. But as she was leaving the hotel, she collided with a large group of chattering, backpacking French teenagers loitering at the front door. By the time she had pushed herself past the adolescent cloud of Parisian laughter and Gauloises smoke, she realized she’d lost Nash. She ran down the steps and into the middle of the street. Seeing nothing, she ripped off her straw hat and dark sunglasses hoping to get a clearer view, but it was no use. He was gone.

  Cars puttered past, honking friendly warnings as she searched the streets. Lila took a deep breath, trying to center herself, but it was no use. Seeing that gun (the gun that she’d seen, blood-­smeared, in countless police photos from the night of the murder) made her realize she was closer than she’d ever been to actually finding out who killed Jack Warren.

  Not knowing what else to do, she headed down the street and back to the marina. Now that she’d lost Nash, she had to return to the yacht as fast as she could in hopes of minimizing any damage her absence had already caused.

  By the time she climbed on board, she’d been AWOL for only ninety minutes. If she was very lucky, Edna Slaughter wouldn’t have taken note of her absence. But Lila knew that was almost too much to wish for. It seemed that nothing got past Edna.

  She kept her head down as she rushed by Mudge and Pedro scrubbing the deck and then booked it back into Josie’s room, the whole time praying that she wouldn’t run into Sam or Edna. The moment she turned into the heiress’s room, she became a whirling dervish of activity. She slammed the door behind her, threw the Fendi bikini in the hamper, folded up the sarong, and returned the hat and sunglasses to the closet. She reached under the bed, retrieved her underwear and her uniform, and was dressed in an instant. Just as she was buttoning the final button on her shirt, the door flew open and the chief stewardess stormed in.

  Without any hesitation, Lila bent over Josie’s bed and began fluffing pillows.

  “Where on earth have you been?” the chief stewardess asked.

  “What do you mean?” Lila answered, playing the innocent. She tried to conceal how out of breath she was with a giant, lazy yawn. “I’ve been busy servicing all the suites.” She smoothed and tucked down the sheets, wanting to show Edna Slaughter that she’d just walked in on her stewardess tending to her daily rounds.

  Nothing made Edna Slaughter more ill at ease than a thwarted opportunity to do some serious scolding. “Fine,” she said, backing out of the room. “But don’t think you can slack off the entire day. There’s still plenty to do.”

  “Of course, ma’am,” Lila said with a subservient nod.

  Even though she tried to keep her eye out for Captain Nash’s return to The Rising Tide, Lila didn’t see him for the rest of the day. But an unexpected event diverted her attention from the gun-­toting captain—­the return of Daniel Poe.

  Lila was up on the third deck when she saw him. It was half-­past eight and she was getting the poolside area ready for cocktail hour. The low, red sun had just slipped below the horizon, turning the sky a dusty lavender color, which gave the night a surreal feeling. An adjacent superyacht was blasting cacophonous hip-­hop as a ­couple of girls wearing only gold bikini bottoms danced, while two men sprayed them with Methuselahs of champagne. But her attention was diverted from the bacchanal when, a few docks down at the marina, she saw Jack, Seth, Paul, Clarence, and Thiago hop off the speedboat they’d chartered to go diving.

  Everything looked normal until she noticed that Paul and Thiago were carrying a limp figure between them. It wasn’t until they got closer to the yacht that Lila realized it was a barely conscious Daniel Poe, whose pathetically dangling feet the two men were dragging across the ground.

  Once they huffed and puffed their way up the gangway to the main deck, the two men let go of Poe, leaving the enfant terrible of the art world to crumble to the floor a few feet away from Lila. He lay there with his skinny legs and arms splayed out around him. Lila could smell the days of unwashed excess on his skin as he mumbled something unintelligible to the men above him.

  “Who knew a bag of bones could be so fucking heavy,” Paul said as he stretched out his back.

  The women, who’d come back from their rendezvous with Lady Kitty just fifteen minutes earlier, gave one another solemn, amazed looks.

  “I can’t believe it,” Elise said.

  “I know,” Josie responded, her eyes wide with astonishment as she pressed her hands against her cheeks.

  “What?” asked Jack. “What’s the big deal?”

  Josie said, “Lady Kitty literally just predicted this would happen. She told us that someone who our family had treated unfairly would return into our lives within two days. And here he is.” She walked over to Poe, who reached up toward Josie and began to inappropriately run his hand up her long, tanned leg until she kicked him away.

  Jack shook his head. “First off, this fuckup was not treated unfairly by our family. And secondly, that psychic stuff is bullshit.”

  “But where on earth did you find him, and why in heaven’s name did you bring him back here?” Charity asked, not at all attempting to mask her displeasure about Poe’s return. It was clear to Lila that Charity was still anxious over the fact that she had been the one responsible for spreading the news about Jack tossing Poe’s golden phallus overboard.

  Charity’s silver-­haired and rather dramatically sunburned husband answered. “The boys and I went to quite a lively bar after we were done diving. And who should we see there but Daniel Poe. Apparently, he’d made friends with the crown prince of Benin, who brought him over to St. Barts on his yacht a ­couple days ago.”

  “But what is he doing here?” Elise asked. Her voice sounded slurred, whether from pills or alcohol or both Lila didn’t know.

  “You’re not mad at him anymore, Daddy?” Josie asked. She’d been calling him “Daddy” since the whole Asher affair exploded in her face. It never failed to turn Lila’s stomach.

  Jack waited a few seconds before responding to his daughter. “Not in the least,” he said finally.

  Lila didn’t believe him for a second. Jack Warren was the type of guy who could hold on to even the tiniest of grudges for decades. So, why would he let the man who literally shat all over his boat back on board? Then again, Jack had been skewered by the press since word got out that he threw Poe’s sculpture into the ocean. Over the last few days, many opinion columnists had been busy calling Jack a cultural vandal and an enemy of the avant-­garde. Had he brought Poe back to rehabilitate his image? Except Lila knew that Jack didn’t care what the press wrote about him. It had to be something else.

  “Anyway,” Jack said, stepping away from Poe, who was still on the ground. “It wasn’t my idea. It was his,” he said, pointing at Liss. “That pain in my ass over there wants me to make nicey-­nice to this drunken reprobate. He’s saying it’s good for my reputation.”

  “All I want, Jack,” Liss said with a sigh, “is for you to look like less of a goddamn loose cannon. I don’t think that’s so difficult to comprehend, is it?”


  Jack gave Liss a terrible little smile that turned into a shark-­eyed stare and sneer. He was baring his teeth at his enemy. Most importantly, Daniel Poe was back on board, and back on Lila’s suspect list.

  “I’m not so sure this is the way to rehab my image, Seth,” Jack said, shaking his head at Daniel Poe, who had started mumbling something incomprehensible. “And I don’t know if it’s the best thing for Daniel’s image either. I mean even you should know that any half-­decent artist is much more beloved once they’re dead.”

  CHAPTER 20

  WHILE DANIEL POE spent the following morning in his plush guest room, recovering from days and days of untold excess, his patron, Jack Warren, was on a treasure hunt. It seemed that the now-­legendary story of Jack throwing Poe’s multimillion-­dollar statue overboard had not only caused a major sensation in the art world, it had also resulted in a bunch of modern-­day buccaneers scouring the Caribbean Sea in search of the golden phallus.

  But to Jack, what was his to throw away was his to take back. He was hell-­bent on getting to it first.

  Working with Captain Nash, First Officer Ben, and some very advanced navigation software, Jack calculated the sculpture’s approximate location—­about 225 to 236 nautical miles southeast of the Exuma Cays. He then got on the phone with a ­couple of professional deep-­sea treasure-­hunting outfits and contracted them to bring the statue up from the depths. He boasted to his guests while slurping down his breakfast miso soup that he expected it to be back in his possession sometime within the next twenty-­four hours.