Deceptive Practices

by Simon Wood

  Just as his drive started to feel mundane, his thoughts turned to Beth. He didn’t like her mind-set at the moment. He didn’t understand her. Yes, she was angry at the world for all it had done to her, and she’d created Infidelity Limited to take her revenge. It worked for her. It kept her level. In the last year though, it didn’t seem to bring her any joy, and he didn’t get that. The business was fantastic. They were making more money than they ever had. He knew that part wasn’t important to her, but the lives they ruined were, and their head count was at its highest.

  After that shit with digging up Maxwell the other night, he needed to bring in a professional before she really lost it. Finding the right guy was the problem.

  He called Luis. “How’s Beth?”

  “Okay. I found a stash of empty acetone bottles in the garden. She bought off one of the housekeepers to smuggle it in for her.”

  “Goddamn it.”

  “I know. I fired the crew this morning. I’ll have another in by next week. I haven’t talked to Beth about the acetone, but I can.”

  “No, don’t. I’ll do it when I get home. While you’re looking into housekeepers, I have another job for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Find me a shrink who’ll get her off this downward spiral.”

  “You got it. Anything else?”

  “No, just keep an eye on her. If she’s hoarding acetone, she’ll be stockpiling other materials. I don’t want her doing some real damage.”

  “On it.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you when I see you,” he said and hung up.

  It was late afternoon when he reached Morro Bay. He drove by Heather Moore-Marbach’s beach house first. The place was silent and looked unmolested. He parked his Chrysler and came back. He tried the main gate and found it locked, so he scaled a fence to get into the courtyard, then used his lock picks to get into the house. The place showed no sign of a scuffle. Olivia was good. The use of a hand truck to move the body was a stroke of genius. Maybe he should sacrifice Proctor and take Olivia on full-time. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the feeling she would accept such a role. It was a shame.

  He went into the bathroom, Olivia’s makeshift killing room. The place was clean, but he did smell a whiff of bleach in the room. He’d leave the bathroom door open to help air it out. He brought out a black light and waved it over the bathtub and the tiled walls. It came back clean. No blood spray to find should the cops come a calling. They might squawk at the cleanliness of the bathroom, but that would be all they could do. It might be suspicious, but cleanliness wasn’t a crime.

  Thanks to Olivia, Heather’s position was looking pretty intact.

  He ran the black light over the other rooms Olivia would have had to pass through on her way out. She’d taken care of the bathroom, but she still could have tracked blood out of the house. Just as he expected, he found nothing. Good girl.

  He saw himself out and reclaimed his car, then drove out to the spot where Olivia said she’d cast Amy’s body into the water. He found the lookout point and waited for the couple making out in a car to leave before he climbed out of his vehicle.

  He walked up to what remained of the wooden railing that protected him from the three-story drop to the water below. The ocean rushed in and smashed into the cliff. The term “angry water” was invented for this little spit of coastline. He imagined Olivia releasing the straps on the hand truck and Amy’s body tumbling into the sea. There was no sign of her body on the beach or in the water below. He smiled. Olivia seemed to have executed a well-thought-out murder and disposal. He expected nothing less.

  It was time to move this game on to the next stage. He pulled out his cell and scrolled past the multiple panicked voice mails that Heather had left for him. He called Heather’s number. “Hi, Heather, it’s Roy. I’m calling you about Amy. Something terrible has happened.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Olivia arrived at the Central California Women’s Facility on an oppressively hot Tuesday morning to see Karen Innes. The prison stuck out against its surroundings. Farmland hemmed in the octagonal-shaped facility from all sides. Its concrete-and-razor-wire facade was the definition of institutional ugliness. Olivia’s palms began to sweat when she turned into the visitors’ parking lot.

  Entering the state prison was a chilling reminder that if she didn’t slip Infidelity Limited’s stranglehold, prison life would be her life. Olivia didn’t know what it was like to be an inmate, but she got the idea the moment she entered the visitors’ center. She couldn’t enter without complying with a specified dress code, passing through an airport-style metal detector, and being subjected to a pat-down. Her purse was searched and passed through an X-ray machine. Someone was always there to tell her what to do and when to do it. The rigmarole chilled her.

  The men, women, and children waiting in line with her all shared the same look of melancholy resentment. This place held someone they loved, and there was nothing any of them could do about it. At least if her future brought her here, there’d be no one to burden with the pain of losing her.

  Prison officers ushered her into a room of individual booths with bulletproof glass between her and the inmates. Karen Innes was already waiting for her when she reached her designated booth. She looked nothing like the pictures Olivia had seen in the online news coverage of her trial. In those, she’d been an attractive thirty-one-year-old, with long auburn hair and a pale complexion. Now her hair was shorter, with no discernible style, and the lack of makeup robbed her of her femininity. Five years into her twenty-five-years-to-life sentence, it wasn’t that she looked older but that she looked hardened. It was clear in her harsh stare and the set of her jaw. She could cut you down with a look. She eyed Olivia with contempt.

  Olivia took the phone off the wall to her right. Karen did likewise.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” Olivia began.

  “When someone says they’re from the Victims of Infidelity Limited Support Group, how can I say no?”

  The support group was the line Olivia had used on Karen’s lawyer to get her a visitation appointment. The name wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, but Olivia knew Karen would read between the widely drawn lines.

  “How secure is this line?” Olivia asked.

  “No one can listen in. These handsets are connected to each other and nothing else. They’re magnetic or something.”

  That gave Olivia some comfort. This wasn’t the most secure location for this discussion. The burble of conversation did more for privacy than the wooden partitions between the booths. She decided it was safe to talk because the visitors around her were more interested in talking to their loved ones than listening to anybody else’s conversation.

  “I didn’t think I’d hear from you people again,” Karen snapped. “I don’t know why you’re here. You’ve gotten all you’re getting from me.”

  “I’m not with them. I’m what you’d call a kindred spirit.”

  The remark caught Karen’s attention, but Olivia didn’t think it bought her trust, judging from her piercing stare.

  Karen leaned forward in her chair. “Is that right? How deep are they into you?”

  Olivia knew she was taking a risk admitting anything to Karen. There’d be nothing stopping Karen from selling the knowledge for a reduced sentence. But Olivia was past the point of safe solutions. Everything she did held a risk. Even doing nothing was a risk. She’d prefer to go down fighting. “I’m at the point where you were when you tried to kill my brother-in-law, Nick Bonanni.”

  That cracked Karen’s prison-hardened shell. A flicker of fear shot across her face. “How did you find out about him?”

  “I’ve been doing a little backtracking. It led me back to him, and he led me to you. He remembers how frightened you were.” The way you look now, Olivia thought. “You want to tell me about it?”

  Karen licked her lips. “If you’re where I was, you know the story.”

  “But I want to know your story.”

&nb
sp; Karen just stared at Olivia. She appeared to be weighing the pros and cons of telling Olivia anything. After a long moment, she said, “Screw it. What does it matter anymore? Roy came to me after my husband was killed. I used to be an interior designer. I went to a property for a consultation, and Roy was there. He told me I had to kill Nick Bonanni. When I told him I couldn’t do it, he told me he’d frame me for my husband’s murder. It was a him-or-me situation, so I went through with it.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  Karen barked a bitter laugh. “I wanted to, needed to, but when it came to the squeeze of the trigger, I couldn’t do it. Just like you.”

  Olivia’s body tingled. “What makes you say that?”

  “Something dark like that sticks to you, and it can’t be washed off, regardless of how much soap and lies you use. You’re still clean. Not for long though.”

  Karen was trying to frighten her. Olivia wouldn’t let her. “What happened when you didn’t follow through?”

  “I pleaded with Roy for a second chance, but there are no second chances when it comes to Roy.”

  Olivia got that impression. He was the definition of self-preservation. It didn’t matter what happened to anyone else as long as his security remained intact. Maybe that was a weakness she could exploit.

  “What happened then?” Olivia asked.

  “Roy wanted money. I paid him off. Have you paid him?”

  “Not yet. How much did he get from you?”

  “Fifty grand.”

  She got off cheap. Roy wants twice that much from me, Olivia thought.

  “My advice is to delay the payment for as long as you can, because the second he’s got it, he’s gone. After I paid, he cut me off. He stopped answering his phone, but he found a new way of communicating. Evidence from my husband’s murder started turning up. Eventually, the cops had enough to charge me, and the rest is history.”

  “So Roy framed you?”

  “Of course he did. I was a liability. If I’d killed Nick, maybe things would have been different, but I doubt it. He would have screwed me regardless.”

  “Why?”

  “My husband’s murder was a public one. The cops were all over it, and someone had to go down for the crime. If Roy hadn’t set me up for it, it would have tracked back to someone close to him. He had to give them a scapegoat. If the cops hadn’t gotten involved, Roy might have taken the money and left me alone.”

  Karen’s tale mirrored her own so closely that it left her cold. Roy was going to screw her. He was probably working on framing her as they spoke.

  Karen smiled. “Don’t tell me. Yours is a messy one too, isn’t it?”

  Olivia said nothing.

  “You’re fucked. Whatever Roy tells you, don’t believe him. No matter what you do, it’ll never be enough. You’re a liability. He will burn you to save himself.”

  Olivia refused to accept her fate. She wouldn’t be another of Roy’s victims. There was still time. She hung up the phone.

  Karen knocked on the glass and pointed to the phone. Olivia put the receiver back to her ear.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be cruel. I got a little carried away. You want a way out, right?”

  Olivia nodded.

  “Roy likes to boast that he leaves no trail. That’s bullshit. He might not blaze a trail to his door, but he leaves one. Roy burns his clients. Whatever happens, you’re going to end up like me, so my advice to you is to burn him before he burns you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Refill?” the waitress asked Roy.

  He smiled and held up his cup. “Please.”

  As she poured coffee into his cup, she glanced over at the diner’s owner at the register. Roy could feel the guy willing him to leave. The place was cramped with a dozen tables. He had a four-top to himself, and he’d been nursing a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper for over an hour while hungry people stood waiting on the Long Beach streets.

  “Is the food okay?” the waitress asked.

  He’d hardly touched his eggs. There wasn’t anything wrong with them. He just needed somewhere to hole up while he waited on a call from Carrington. He and Dolores were in the process of picking up and frisking Heather Moore-Marbach before he dropped his facts of life, Infidelity Limited–style, on her. “Yeah, it’s good. I’m just taking it slow.”

  That answer earned another shared glance between owner and waitress. He’d make it up to them by leaving fifty bucks for the inconvenience and their foresight in not fucking with him.

  The waitress left for the next table, and he returned to his paper. Not that he was truly reading it. His thoughts kept turning to Olivia. She continued to astound him. The woman had some real grit. She followed through and did what had to be done. As soon as he’d gotten a string of calls from Heather saying that Amy had gone missing, he’d known Olivia had followed through. He didn’t know too many people who killed without a fuss. He wished he didn’t have to burn her at the end. She deserved a win.

  His cell rang. Carrington’s familiar number appeared on the display with no identifier. Always numbers. Never names.

  He picked up the phone. “Yeah?”

  “She’s on the boat, primed and ready for you,” Carrington said.

  “Be there in ten.”

  He dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the table and left before the check could be presented.

  During the drive, he refined his pitch. He was playing things a little differently with Heather Moore-Marbach. She represented a different class of client. He estimated he could take her for a million, as she was by far his highest-earning client. He didn’t have to take her for everything all at once. Olivia had presented him with a clean kill. His plan was for a two-part payoff. The first stage was to hit her with the story that there’d been a terrible accident and he’d require a fee to cover it up. Then, he’d follow up again in a year’s time with the truth about Infidelity Limited and explain that if she wanted to avoid killing someone, she’d have to pay her way out. He liked this double play because Heather didn’t come off as the type who could keep her powder dry in a clinch.

  He arrived at the boat ramp across from Mothers Beach on the east side of the city and parked on the street. The cabin cruiser Carrington had chartered for the morning with a fake ID wasn’t much, just a twenty-footer with an enclosed pilothouse, but it was good enough for what he needed. He didn’t want anything that stuck out. Anonymous worked fine.

  Carrington stood on the jetty next to the stern line. Dolores stood over Heather in the pilothouse. The boat’s engine chugged lazily, all ready for him.

  Roy put on his game face as he stepped aboard, saying, “A glorious morning.”

  “What’s going on?” Heather said with fear in her voice.

  “Just going out on the water for a private chat.”

  He nodded to Dolores, and she left without acknowledging him. She tossed Carrington the bow and stern lines before she stepped off the boat. Roy took the controls, eased the throttle forward, and took the boat out onto the water.

  “Why haven’t you been answering my calls, Roy? I went out the other night, and I haven’t seen Amy since. I thought that maybe your people had gotten to her and she’d run off, but she didn’t take anything with her. She’s not at our home or at the beach house. She’s not with her friends. I’ve tried her cell, and it goes straight to voice mail. What’s going on, Roy?”

  “Take a breath, Heather.”

  “But—”

  He raised a hand. “Take a breath.”

  She looked ahead at the water and did as she was told, inhaling and exhaling a few times. Each breath was ragged and untidy. For someone who ran a burgeoning gym empire, she seemed to know little about breath control. Roy noticed her grip on the handrail. It was white-knuckle tight, a little too tight for the motion over the water. A nervous sailor? He didn’t think so. The fear was in her, and that was a good thing. Fear kept clients on the straight and narrow.

  What do her fears
whisper to her? he wondered. What delusions will she respond with to keep her fears in check?

  “What’s happened?” she asked. “Please tell me. I haven’t seen Amy since the weekend. Your people did their thing, didn’t they?”

  He got the boat out past the breakwater and cut the power. The noise level dropped, and it became stunningly quiet on the boat. All he could hear was the slap, slap of the water against the hull and the distant murmur of the road noise from the city. He didn’t drop anchor, choosing to let the tide take the cruiser wherever it decided.

  “Yes, my people did their thing,” he replied.

  “Oh God, she’s angry, isn’t she? Shit. This was a mistake. I overreacted.”

  This was the kind of self-recrimination Roy had heard dozens of times, and he was okay with it. He needed a little panic in the bloodstream to get the best effect from his clients.

  He placed a comforting hand on Heather’s shoulder. “Now, I’ve got something serious to tell you. It’s important. I need you to prepare yourself for this. I just want you to know it wasn’t meant to go down like this.”

  Heather chewed at her lip until a pinprick of blood appeared.

  “There was a problem.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I’ll be honest. We underestimated Amy. She fought back. It turned into a struggle. My people were forced to defend themselves, and I’m afraid to say in that struggle Amy was killed.”

  “What?”

  “This is an unpredictable business, and sometimes things like this happen. It’s the risk that we all have to accept.”

  “Amy’s dead?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  The slap took him by surprise. It wasn’t the first time someone had lashed out at him when he dropped the bomb. He hadn’t quite expected it from Heather. He would have put his money on a crying jag.

  She swung at him again. He caught her wrist, twisted her arm around, and pinned it against her back. He wrapped his free arm across her chest. She squirmed under his grasp, but he pulled her tight against him, bringing the fight to an end.