3 Swift Run

by Laura Disilverio

  “How many?” Les asked. “How many husbands?”

  He looked like the answer mattered to him, and I felt sorry for him.

  Brett shrugged. “Six? Seven?”

  Les sagged back against the recliner cushions. “She lied to me.”

  “Well, you stole her money, so I’d say you were even,” Brett said nastily.

  “Only after she lied to me. I got that clipping in the mail … Why’d you send it? It was you, right?”

  Brett nodded. “Things started going wrong as soon as we got to Colorado Springs. Annie started talking about how she was getting older, about wanting to settle down. She got her own apartment for a while but then moved into the house with me. She even mentioned children once.” He barked a harsh laugh. “Can you imagine her as a mother?”

  “We talked about it,” Les said.

  My mouth fell open, and I stared at him. “You did? About having more children? With Heather-Anne?”

  Les’s chin sank down. He didn’t meet my eyes.

  “When Annie ran off with you to Costa Rica, I was as surprised as the business partners you embezzled from,” Brett said. “She didn’t tell me that she was leaving. If she’d left me my share of the money, I might have let her go. But no. She took it all. Cleaned out our account and transferred it somewhere. Must have been your influence.” He glared at Les. “I tried calling her, sending e-mails. She wouldn’t reply. I didn’t understand. Not after all that we’d been through together!”

  “She wanted her own life, you jerk,” Les said. “She was tired of being your puppet.”

  Brett smacked Les’s face with the hand holding the gun, and Les yelped. “So I sent you the clipping about Eustis. I thought it might make you ask some questions. If you showed it to her, she’d know I’d sent it. She’d have to respond. She did.” Smiling with satisfaction, he said, “She came straight back here to me.”

  As if he couldn’t stand to be still anymore, Brett stood and began pacing, his words coming faster. “She contacted me. We met. She was difficult. So I told her I’d called Eustis’s son, that he was on his way down from Wyoming to confront her, to accuse her of murdering his father. She’d end up in jail, I told her, if she wasn’t gone before he arrived. I didn’t know if he’d show up or not, but it scared her. She agreed to give me my share of the money. While I stood over her, she logged on to her computer—she was going to transfer the money from her account to mine. When she told me there was no money in her account, that it was gone, I thought she was lying. I—” He broke off and wiped a hand down his face.

  It took me only a moment to realize what he’d almost said. He’d killed Heather-Anne. Strangled her. My breaths started coming faster, and I felt light-headed.

  “It was your fault.” Brett whirled to face Les and spoke between gritted teeth. “I figured that out when it was too late. You stole that money from my sister, just like you stole everything from your business partners and your wife here.”

  “Ex-wife,” I choked out.

  “That’s why Annie hired her”—he nodded toward Gigi—“to find you. She knew you’d stolen our money. She wouldn’t tell me that because she knew what I’d do to you. I figured it out too late,” he said again. His eyes narrowed to slits. “You’ve got a nasty habit of cheating the people who trust you, don’t you, Goldman?”

  “I thought she’d left me. I didn’t know,” Les gobbled. “When I woke up after our fight and she was gone—no note, no explanation—I … I’d found her bank account data months earlier. Habit. When I realized she was gone, I transferred the money out of hurt and anger. I was going to give it back!”

  “It’s too late for Annie,” Brett said coldly. “And if you don’t transfer exactly three-point-eight million to my account within the next ten minutes, it’ll be too late for Gigi, too.” He swung the gun toward me. My eyes widened as I looked down the long, dark barrel, a tunnel leading nowhere good.

  37

  Charlie Swift pulled into Gigi’s cul-de-sac near the Broadmoor Hotel shortly before seven thirty. The sun was long gone, but a half-moon reflected off the snow to give the city a dim late-dusk glow. Her headlights raked a black car parked on the far side of the circle. As she beeped the Subaru locked, she gave the black car another look. Something about it … It was a Saab. The witness outside the movie theater had said a black sports car ran Les’s BMW off the road, and there’d been a black Saab in “Alan Brodnax’s” garage. Adam Bart was here. The knowledge froze Charlie momentarily. She cursed herself for not having insisted the desk officer have Detective Lorrimore call her. There was no telling when she’d get Charlie’s voice mail about Adam Bart.

  Keeping low, she crunched across the melted and refrozen snow to Gigi’s front door. The blinds were drawn, and she could see nothing through the narrow leaded windows on either side of the double doors. The snow was still deep against the house, drifted in places, but she plunged in and slogged around to the back, wishing she had her H&K with her. If Bart was in there, Gigi was in trouble. Whatever he wanted from her, he was unlikely to leave her alive after he got it. Not with a track record that included a half-dozen deaths or accidents across several states and his own sister’s strangulation.

  Reaching the rear of the house, she climbed stairs leading to a deck that looked like it opened off the kitchen and living room. Snow slicked the steps, and she clung to the rail, her ungloved hands burning with the cold. She bumped a chair protected by a canvas cover, and it moved with a faint metallic scrape. Charlie stilled, listening for any indication Bart had heard the noise. After thirty seconds, when no one emerged on the deck, she crept closer to the French doors. Gauzy curtains obscured her view somewhat, but she could clearly see a woman who had to be Gigi seated on the sofa, with Les in a recliner catty-corner to Gigi. A second man stood with his back to the window, facing Gigi and Les, and his long dark hair convinced Charlie it was Adam Bart, alias Alan Brodnax and probably a dozen other names. She couldn’t see a gun, but she knew from the way he stood that he had one.

  A moment’s contemplation told her that trying to break through the French doors and tackle him from behind was a losing proposition. He’d have time to shoot Gigi and Les and probably compose a sonata before she’d be able to batter the doors in, sprint the fifteen or twenty feet from the doors to the seating area, and tackle him. There had to be another way in.

  Edging back down the stairs, Charlie pulled out her cell phone as she scanned the windows on the lower level. Reaching the same desk sergeant at the police department, she told him she now had an emergency with an armed man holding two people hostage at Gigi’s address. He promised to send a patrol car immediately and relay the message to Detective Lorrimore.

  “Don’t let the patrol car come screaming up with lights and sirens blazing,” Charlie cautioned. “This guy’s got nothing to lose, and if he thinks he’s going down, he’s the type to take the hostages with him.” When the officer asked for more details, Charlie hung up, having spotted an open window that apparently led to the basement. Gigi should be more careful about locking up, she thought, dropping to her stomach and sliding feet first through the opening.

  She landed with a barely audible thump, took off her boots, and looked around. A news show played quietly on a huge-screen TV. Comfy seating surrounded the television, which was mounted midway down the room’s longest wall. A Ping-Pong table sat nearest the window, and past the TV area, Charlie could see a pool table positioned crosswise. Passing the Ping-Pong table and TV, she ignored the hall leading off to her right. It was unlikely she’d find a weapon in what were probably only guest bedrooms. Instead, she pulled a pool cue from the rack on the wall behind the table. Not exactly the weapon she’d choose for going up against a gun, but better than her bare hands.

  Easing up the carpeted stairs, she considered her strategy. She’d only been in Gigi’s house a couple of times and wasn’t that familiar with the layout, but she thought the basement steps emerged into the kitchen. The kitchen, she was prett
y sure, opened to a dining room on one side and the foyer and living room on the other. Did the dining room connect to the living room? Almost undoubtedly. Reaching the top step, Charlie found the door open and nudged it a touch wider. She couldn’t see Gigi and Les and Bart, but she could hear the rumble of voices. Peering cautiously around the door, Charlie discovered there was no line of sight from the basement door to the living room.

  Relieved, she made herself as skinny as possible and edged through the door, immediately taking three steps deeper into the kitchen. It smelled faintly of bacon. Passing the acres of granite counters and top-of-the-line appliances worth enough to put a dent in the national debt, Charlie padded in her stocking feet into the dining room. She could suddenly make out words as Bart said something about it being too late for Annie.

  Placing her feet lightly and holding the pool cue upright so it wouldn’t bang against anything, she edged along the wall until she could peer around it into the living room. She hoped Bart was still facing Les and Gigi. He was. She saw his back, rigid with tension, and saw Les sweating in the recliner. He looked awful, his face a clammy gray, his right arm rubbing his left shoulder. His pained expression could have been because Bart was aiming his gun steadily at Gigi. Gigi’s eyes slid sideways, as if she were desperately seeking a way out of the situation, and she spotted Charlie. Her eyes widened. Charlie hastily put a finger to her lips and was relieved when Gigi blinked twice and refocused on Bart.

  “Time’s running out, Goldman,” Bart said. “Tick-tock, tick-tock.”

  “My computer’s in the basement,” Les said. “I need to get it to make the transfer.”

  “Bullshit! I saw you dive through the basement window. You weren’t carrying a computer.”

  “I left it here yesterday,” Les said.

  “He did,” Gigi seconded.

  Charlie wondered if Les was telling the truth or if he was planning to escape out the basement window if Bart let him go downstairs. She wouldn’t put it past him. Apparently, Bart had the same read on Les.

  “We’ll all go down to the basement and get your computer. If it’s not there, if you’re lying to me…” He waved the gun menacingly. “Get up.”

  “I’m not sure I can,” Les said, his voice weaker. Sweat poured off him, and Charlie thought she saw panic in his eyes. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  He was telling the truth, Charlie realized, and she could see that both Gigi and Bart realized it as well.

  “Then the sooner we get the transfer done, the sooner you can get to a hospital,” Bart said coldly. He reached his left hand down to pull Les out of the recliner. Either by accident or on purpose, Les pushed the chair into its recline position and the footrest popped out, smacking Bart in the shins. He staggered and his finger tightened on the gun’s trigger, sending a bullet into the ceiling. Gigi jumped at the noise but then, taking advantage of Bart’s distraction, put her feet against the coffee table’s edge, braced herself on the sofa, and slammed it toward him.

  “Charlie, help!”

  Charlie was already moving when the heavy table cracked into Bart’s legs and set him teetering. Holding the cue like a baseball bat, she swung the fat end at his head. He had half turned at Gigi’s words, though, and she caught him on the arm as he raised the gun to fire at her, his lips drawn away from his teeth in pain and fury. The cue impacted with a crack that sent a jolt up Charlie’s arms. Bart cried out and lost his grip on the gun. He snagged the trigger as it spun out of his hand. A window shattered. Charlie ducked instinctively—like evasive maneuvers helped me dodge a bullet in my last gun battle, she thought—then lunged toward Bart, raising the cue over her head. She shouted, “Gigi, the gun!”

  Bart flung himself full-length at the gun before Gigi could get there, and she dropped on top of him with the full weight of her forty-too-many pounds. Bart let out an “Oof!” but managed to get his hand on the gun. Before he could bring it into firing position, Charlie drove the cue down onto his hand. The sound of bones snapping was almost drowned out by the doorbell.

  All four of them looked toward the door. Charlie took the opportunity to kick the gun away from Bart, even though his hand was clearly broken and she didn’t think he could pick it up or fire it. It skittered under the couch. Les lay gasping like a landed fish on the recliner.

  “Should we answer it?” Gigi asked. Her beigey-blond hair draped over one eye, the neckline of her sweater was pulled halfway off one shoulder, and her ample bosom heaved. She struggled into a sitting position so she straddled Bart and leaned forward to pin his shoulders to the ground. He bucked, and Charlie raised the cue threateningly.

  “Police!” came the muffled shout through the door.

  At the word, Bart went limp beneath Gigi. Seeing the fight drain out of him, Charlie hurried to the door and opened it. She knew she looked disreputable, her dark hair disheveled, her face flushed, breathing heavily. Before she could say anything, the female officer, a woman about Charlie’s height but half again as broad, said, “We received a phone call from a man saying he was being kept prisoner in your basement. May we come in?” Her tone was polite, and she seemed skeptical of the prisoner-in-the-basement story, but her eyes took in every detail of Charlie’s appearance, and she held herself as if poised for action.

  “Absolutely.” Charlie backed away to let them in. “We need an ambulance,” Charlie said. “A man’s having a heart attack.”

  The cops took one look at Les, and the rangy male cop radioed for an ambulance while the female officer, whose name tag read PADGETT, asked, “Is he the one that was imprisoned in the basement?”

  “No one was locked in the basement,” Charlie said impatiently, wondering if maybe Dexter Goldman or one of his buddies had called the cops as a prank.

  “Actually…” Gigi said, a guilty look on her face.

  At the sound of her voice, the officer walked toward the living room and looked over the sofa to see her sitting atop Bart on the floor.

  “Actually,” Charlie said, “that man”—she pointed to Bart—“was holding the Goldmans hostage. I phoned it in ten minutes ago. We disarmed him—his weapon’s under the couch—”

  At the word “weapon,” the cops drew their guns and backed away, looking much grimmer. Through the open door, Charlie saw two more squad cars skid into the cul-de-sac with the big black SWAT van trundling behind. Ah, the response to my call about the hostage situation, she thought, beginning to see some humor in the situation. An ambulance, siren screaming, pulled up seconds later. Neighbors cracked their doors or opened their blinds, and chaos reigned as the EMTs raced into the house while cops in full protective gear jumped out of the SWAT van and fanned out.

  All we need now is a news crew or two, Charlie thought. She groaned as the Channel Five van passed the crowded cul-de-sac and parked half a block away.

  The EMTs prepared to cart Les off to the hospital, hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, and Gigi clambered off Bart to go with her ex-husband in the ambulance. “He’s got to have someone,” she said to Charlie, giving her a beseeching look. “I’m sorry to leave you with this … this…”

  “Go,” Charlie said. She noticed Adam Bart crawling toward the deck on his knees and one hand and trotted over to head him off, holding the pool cue like a spear.

  She convinced Officer Padgett to cuff Bart by pointing out that the gun recovered from beneath the couch was his and by suggesting that Detective Lorrimore would want to interrogate him about Heather-Anne’s death. Bart shot Charlie a venomous look but refused to say anything at all as Officer Padgett dragged him to his feet. He bit out a curse when she pulled on his injured hand to cuff him, and she had him loaded into a separate ambulance with a policeman to accompany him to the hospital.

  A thumping sound came from the direction of the basement stairs, and Charlie spun around. So did half a dozen cops, guns leveled. They stared in astonishment as a man, feet bound with hot pink duct tape, hopped into the kitchen. With his hands bound behind him, he stum
bled but managed to stay upright. A piece of duct tape dangled from his face where he’d managed to mostly scrape it off his mouth. “I’ve really gotta take a piss,” he announced.

  38

  For most of a week, I thought I was going to jail again, but then Charlie looked at that little notebook I found in the bedroom after Les ran off the second time, and she rubbed a pencil lightly over the top page. Turns out, Les had used it to write down the number of his offshore bank account. Charlie talked me out of turning it over to the police right away and went to visit Dreiser. I’m not sure exactly what she said to him, but I know she offered to repay him the money Les had stolen from him, plus interest. I think she pointed out it might be months, or even never, before he got his money back if he waited for the police to sort through everything and decide who got how much from the account. Dreiser dropped the kidnapping charges. Thank goodness!

  So now the police have the notebook, and they’re trying to figure out what money belongs to the investors Les embezzled from and what belongs to the people swindled by Adam Bart and Heather-Anne. (I just can’t call her Annie because that name makes me think of the musical and that darling curly-headed orphan who would not have grown up to be anything like Heather-Anne.) Her brother’s in jail, awaiting trial for her murder (among other things), and the district attorney told me I’ll have to testify. The thought makes me nervous—I never want to see that man again!—but I can do it if I have to. I’m thinking about wearing the blue Chanel suit, the one with the bouclé jacket, but only if the trial comes up in the winter. I’d need a new cami to wear under it, though, and maybe a brooch big enough to make a statement …

  Kendall’s been to see Les in jail a couple of times, but Dexter won’t go. They’re both mad at me for not transferring the money from Les’s offshore account to our account.

  “It’s not our money,” I told them again and again. “It belongs to the investors your dad cheated and the men or their families who Heather-Anne and her brother cheated.”