Deceptive Practices

by Simon Wood

  “You’ve made a very big mistake, friend,” he said.

  The blond held his ground. He wasn’t rushing in to fight Roy, despite still having the baton. No doubt he was trying to get his bearings back. Well, if the mountain wouldn’t come to Muhammad and all that . . .

  Roy dropped a shoulder and rushed the blond. The blond swung the baton and managed to strike a blow across Roy’s back, but Roy slammed into him, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the concrete wall. The blond crumpled. He lost his grip on the baton and slid down the wall to the floor.

  Roy picked up the baton. “You don’t mind dishing it out, but can you take it?”

  He grabbed the blond’s foot and dragged him to the center of the room.

  “You got a name, friend?”

  The blond, conscious but obviously rattled, said nothing.

  “Okay, then,” Roy said and struck him across the knee.

  The blond yelled out and clutched his knee with both hands. The second he did, Roy landed him one on the jaw. The guy clung to consciousness by a thread.

  He raised the baton to hit the intruder again. “Fuck it. I’m bored with this. It’s time to teach you a lesson, whether you’re aware of it or not.”

  “Leave him.”

  Roy spun around. Olivia was standing at the bottom of the stairs. How did she find me?

  “Beth is burning the house down.”

  He saw thin wisps of smoke behind her. Questions didn’t matter. He bolted for the stairs, brushing Olivia aside.

  In the hallway, he could see the smoke filtering through the house and hear the crackle of a fire consuming it. He ran for the foyer, calling out Beth’s and Luis’s names. Neither of them responded.

  In the foyer, he could see the upstairs was already ablaze from floor to ceiling. Why didn’t the smoke detectors go off? He knew the answer before he finished asking himself the question. Beth had sabotaged them.

  The crash of something falling to the floor in the kitchen drew his attention. He raced through the house, passing small fires as he went. He reached the kitchen in time to see the gas range explode into flames. The stink of gas was everywhere. And there was Beth at the center of it, a butcher knife in one hand and throwing cookbooks at the fire she’d created with the other.

  “Beth!” he yelled.

  She turned. Her grin was maniacal, but she’d never looked so happy.

  “What are you doing?”

  Her grip on the knife tightened. “Making it burn.”

  Olivia helped Andrew up. He was pale. “You okay?”

  He nodded. “Sore and nauseous but fine.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here. Beth has set the place on fire.”

  “Not yet. This is our chance. Look at this place. This is Infidelity Limited’s nerve center. Everything on everybody is in here.”

  It was. There were storage and filing cabinets, two computers, and whiteboards on wheels. She helped Andrew over to one. It was covered in notes about Heather and Amy and her. It was Roy’s puppet show laid out in note form. All the hoops they had to jump through so he could squeeze them for every penny.

  She went over to one of the storage cabinets and opened it. It was filled with sealed bag after sealed bag. Some bags held clothes. Some held knives, guns, and other weapons. In the filing cabinets, she found client files.

  “This is an evidence dump,” she said.

  “This place needs to burn too,” Andrew said.

  It did. If everything burned, Roy’s magic spell over her and all his other victims disappeared. She could be free, but more importantly, everyone could be free.

  Andrew sat down at one of the computers and started tapping away. “We need to find everything he’s got on you and Richard’s killer, but we can’t leave anything to chance. We have to burn this room. There’s a bunch of booze in Roy’s den. It’s by the gym.”

  “I saw it when I was looking for you.”

  “Bring as many bottles as you can.”

  Olivia raced up the stairs and tore through the house. Fires had broken out all over, and they were spreading. The smoke was building up too. She held her hand to her mouth to keep the smoke from her lungs. With the speed the fire moved through the house, either it was the world’s most flammable home or Beth had rigged this place to burn.

  Running through the foyer, she heard Roy and Beth arguing somewhere. She didn’t bother dodging them. They had bigger problems than her now.

  She found the gym, then Roy’s den. She grabbed an armful of bottles of bourbon, then spotted an added bonus—a butane cigar lighter. She stuffed it into her pants and raced back to Andrew. She dropped a bottle on the way, but she had more than enough to do the job.

  Back in Roy’s bunker, Andrew was tearing through one of the storage cabinets. He brought out a sealed plastic bag containing a bloodstained knife.

  “Look familiar?” he asked.

  It was the chef’s knife from her kitchen, and it had Heather’s and Amy’s blood on it. She couldn’t speak and nodded instead.

  “I have everything. The knife. The files. You’ve got your life back.”

  The malignant fear she’d been living with for weeks disappeared, its oppressive grip gone. She could breathe again, and feelings snagged on her every breath. She let out a sob.

  Stuffing the knife into his pocket, Andrew limped over to her and took the bottles from her. “It’s okay. Almost home-free.”

  They opened up all the cabinets and splashed the bourbon over the files and the evidence bags. Olivia grabbed a bunch of the liquor-soaked files and tossed them at the bottom of each of the storage cabinets. Andrew grabbed an axe from one of the evidence bags. Olivia tried not to think about whom it had been used on. He brought the axe down on each computer tower. He whaled on them until the cases splintered. He didn’t stop there, and he smashed away the circuit boards and the hard drive until they were in pieces. Then he poured a bottle of bourbon over it all.

  She brought out the butane lighter and touched it to the files in the cabinets. The papers ignited. Roy’s expensive bourbon accelerated the speed at which the flames jumped from file to file. She could feel her life returning to her. She’d more than earned this moment.

  She went from cabinet to cabinet, setting fire to the contents, while Andrew packed her files and the knife into the grocery bag that was still filled with their cash. By the time she’d set light to the computer, everything in Roy’s bunker was burning pretty well. She wanted to watch his empire of deception and lies burn. But it was time to go.

  She took Andrew’s hand, and they climbed the stairs. The walls in the hallway were ablaze. The whole house seemed to be burning. She had no doubt that Infidelity Limited’s secrets would go up with this house.

  Andrew handed her the Trader Joe’s bag. “This way.”

  He limped over to a door and opened it. He pulled out a young Hispanic guy with his wrists and ankles duct-taped together. Despite the man’s attempts to fight Andrew’s approach, Andrew slung the man over his shoulder.

  “Grab my tool bag, please,” Andrew told her.

  She did, and they cut through the house, looking for the first exit. The main entrance was proving to be their best option as fire after fire cut off their escape routes. She didn’t want to die here. Not after everything they’d done to escape Roy’s grip.

  Just as they reached the foyer, Beth ran past them. She didn’t even see them. She just leaped barefoot onto the burning staircase and charged up the steps like nothing was on fire.

  Roy lurched into the foyer. He was holding his stomach with one hand. Blood was pouring from a stab wound. He stopped when he saw them.

  Beth wailed.

  He looked up, then back to Olivia.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  He looked at her with sadness and resignation. It was probably a look he’d seen in his victims’ eyes a hundred times before. He wouldn’t try to stop them now. There was nothing in it for him. In that moment, she felt sorry for Ro
y. Almost. He deserved his fate.

  “I have to,” he said and lumbered up the stairs into the flames.

  “Let’s go,” Andrew said.

  They pushed their way out of the house. It felt good to be breathing clean air and to be alive.

  Andrew waited until they were clear of the house before lowering the Hispanic man to the ground. He was conscious and writhing against his bonds. Andrew yanked his gag free.

  “I saved your life,” Andrew said.

  “Fuck you,” he spat back.

  “Let’s go,” Olivia said.

  They went back the way they came, over the fence and back down the hillside to the Mercedes. As they drove back down the road, they passed Roy and Beth’s house. Flames poured from every window.

  “Infidelity Limited is closed for business,” Olivia said, as the distant wail of sirens drifted up the hillside.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Sitting behind the wheel of Richard’s Mercedes at the top of Mount Diablo, Olivia was on top of the world. She’d succeeded. She’d rescued her life from Infidelity Limited. The fire at Roy and Beth’s home had been a week ago. News reports out of Santa Barbara pointed no fingers at outside suspects. The fire and police investigation blamed arson, and theories abounded that Roy and Beth were responsible. Landscapers and other witnesses remarked that Beth had a pyromania problem. Olivia’s safety was further assured when fire crews recovered two corpses from the fire. IDs hadn’t been confirmed, but the corpses were of a man and a woman fitting the size description of Roy and Beth. There’d been no mention of the young man Andrew had fought with, so he’d likely escaped. He was a loose end, but not a worry. If he was smart, he would have made for the hills. The same would apply to Roy’s entire band of helpers. They’d lost their leverage. The vice grip of incriminating evidence Infidelity Limited had held over its victims had gone up in flames. The only thing for them to do was move on to other illegal activities.

  The police hadn’t reported finding anything unusual, other than a bizarre cache of charred weapons in the basement. Even if they did recover records in the fire, nothing would come back to her. She and Andrew had made sure of that when they took her files and evidence with them. Within miles of leaving Santa Barbara, they had burned her file in a barbecue pit at a park and tossed the chef’s knife used to kill Heather and Amy into the sea. As her mistake turned to ash, relief swept over her.

  The Morro Bay police were just as lost when it came to Heather’s and Amy’s murder investigation. Nothing would track back to her door. As much as it pained Olivia that it would go down as an unsolved case, she took comfort in the fact that their killer was dead.

  Gault had come looking for Clare, and when she told him Clare had skipped town, he demanded that Olivia cover her sister’s debts. She told him Clare’s debts weren’t hers to settle and if he didn’t like it, he could take her to court.

  She’d forgiven her sister, as hard as that was. She knew it was just Clare’s nature, and having seen so much human loss in the last few weeks, she didn’t want to lose her sister too. So far Clare hadn’t called, but Olivia knew she would, likely when she needed money. She hoped Clare would prove her wrong for once.

  Two days after the fire, Finz had made an unannounced visit to her door. She thought he’d come to arrest her. It would have been the irony of all ironies if after all she’d done to find Roy, destroy Infidelity Limited, and get all their victims off the hook, Finz had finally made his case against her.

  “We both know you were behind your husband’s murder,” he’d told her.

  “So you’re here to arrest me?”

  “No, the district attorney doesn’t think we have a strong enough case against you,” he said. “The DA only prosecutes the cases he knows he can win. It’s too costly to try a case unless it’s a slam dunk. But you know what? That won’t stop me. There’s no such thing as a cold case in our department. We keep working them until we get to the truth. That’s what I’m going to do with your husband’s case. I’m going to make it my pet project to learn the truth. I just wanted you to know that.”

  The speech had sounded heavily rehearsed, like the product of some major obsessing. She guessed the DA had killed the case days ago and it had been eating the detective up.

  “And when you do, Detective Finz, you’ll learn that I didn’t kill my husband.” It was the truest thing she had ever said to Finz or ever would.

  He’d left after that, but not before delivering what he thought was a final “fuck you.” There’d be no insurance payout any time in the near future. He’d seen to it by sharing his theories about her involvement in Richard’s death with the life insurance company. That was fine with her. She had no intention of taking the insurance payment. She didn’t want it. She didn’t deserve it.

  Despite all she’d done to release herself from Infidelity Limited’s hold, she had one last thing to do. There was still Richard’s killer to deal with. Olivia knew his name, John Proctor, and his address from Roy’s files. She’d taken a leaf out of Roy’s book of intimidation and left a burner phone with a single number in the contacts, along with a note attached to it, in Proctor’s mailbox. The message had been simple: “Infidelity Limited. Call me. Speed-dial #1.”

  Andrew had watched Proctor’s house after dropping the phone off. Proctor had called her within minutes of picking it up.

  “Infidelity Limited is dead,” she told him. “It’s time to get your life back.”

  There were no screams of hallelujah, just silence. It was understandable. She would have reacted the same way in Proctor’s position. Anyone who’d gone through the Infidelity Limited wringer no longer took the world at face value.

  “Did you hear me?” she’d asked.

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone like you. Another client. Another victim.”

  Olivia had hoped those credentials would be enough for Proctor to trust her, but her explanation hung in the dead air between them.

  “It’s really over,” she added.

  “It’s never over.”

  That was true. Infidelity Limited might be ashes—Roy and Beth were dead—but its aftereffects were not. Olivia, Proctor, and everyone who’d ever employed Infidelity Limited would have to live with the guilt of setting events in motion that had resulted in the death of a loved one. The one regret Olivia had was that she couldn’t help more of the other Infidelity Limited victims, like Karen Innes, who was still in prison. Olivia could have grabbed the evidence that would have helped Karen prove her innocence, but it would have only implicated another victim. Letting everything burn had been the best solution. Nobody was entirely innocent. As clients, they’d all committed crimes. Some people were just luckier than others.

  “It’s as over as it can be,” she told him.

  “How do I get my life back?”

  “Meet me.”

  “And how much will it cost me?”

  There’d been a weary tone to Proctor’s speech, but a bitter edge had replaced it now. She guessed Roy must have milked him hard. “No cost.”

  “Where?”

  Andrew wanted to go with her when she met with Proctor, but she told him no. Proctor wasn’t someone to be taken lightly. He’d been battered by Infidelity Limited, which made him unpredictable, and he’d killed Richard, which made him dangerous. She and Proctor had a connection. They were both victims. Proctor would understand that.

  Andrew deferred to her but insisted on looking out for her. He was positioned a couple of miles down the mountain at one of the lookout spots.

  Her cell phone rang. It was Andrew.

  “He’s on his way up,” he said. “Blue minivan.”

  “Alone?”

  “No one in the car with him, and no one following.”

  That had been her only fear. Finz had been trying ceaselessly to incriminate her. There could be another Finz somewhere doing the same to Proctor. But so far, so good.

  A few minutes later, the blue minivan pulled into the p
arking lot. Olivia climbed from her car and waved at him.

  Proctor didn’t smile—and neither did she.

  She grabbed the backpack from the trunk and slung it over her shoulder. She approached his car but stopped short, forcing him to get out.

  At the first sight of the man who’d killed her husband, Olivia didn’t know what to feel. She’d expected anger and contempt. Instead, she felt only a mess of half-formed emotions that bordered on compassion. After all, Proctor hadn’t killed out of spite or financial gain. Roy had coerced him. He’d been an unwilling participant under extreme duress, just like her. Victims of Infidelity Limited had to support each other, not turn on each other.

  “John?”

  Proctor nodded. Andrew had told her the guy was big, and the photo he’d snapped of him on his cell phone bore that out, but in the flesh he was bigger than she expected. It was easy to see why Richard had been no match for him.

  “Let’s go somewhere private.”

  “Okay. I’ll drive us,” he said.

  She shook her head. One of Andrew’s rules had been to make sure to meet in the open. She wasn’t going to get into his car, and he wasn’t going to get into hers. In close quarters, Proctor had the upper hand. In the open, she stood a chance of getting away.

  “No need. We’re not going far,” she told him.

  She walked him down to the overflow parking lot where Roy had dropped his Infidelity Limited bombshell on her. It was deserted, just as before. They were alone.

  “Did you deal with a man calling himself Roy?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She had wondered if Roy used a raft of aliases on his victims. It didn’t appear so.

  “He’s dead, and so is his partner.” She’d decided not to provide the nitty-gritty details, just the raw facts. She didn’t want anyone tracing anything back to her involvement in Infidelity Limited’s downfall. “All that Infidelity Limited is and ever was has been destroyed in a fire. Any hold they had over you is gone.”