Hell to Pay

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Looking at his watch, he thinks about Richard Jollston and Myra the maid and the murderous woman in the monk robe.

  Brandewyne looks at Meade looking at his watch. Some kind of creamy sauce is smeared in the corner of her mouth. He does his best not to make a face.

  With a sigh, she stands and dumps the rest of her lunch, including her half-full Diet Pepsi, into the trash can.

  “Why’d you do that?” Meade asks.

  “Because I can’t eat with you breathing down my neck.”

  He’s hardly breathing down her neck, but . . . “No, I mean why’d you throw away the bottle? Someone can return it for a nickel.”

  “So let him work a little to find it.” Brandewyne wipes her mouth on the sleeve of her coat, already mucked up with food stains, and takes a pack of cigarettes from her pocket.

  God, he misses Tarrant—and not just because the guy was a good-hearted, fastidious nonsmoker.

  Tarrant was more efficient, if that was even possible, than Omar Meade himself. Together, they were a well-oiled machine.

  Now Tarrant spends his days golfing in the South Carolina sunshine, and Meade is saddled with a woman whose slovenly habits—along with just about everything else about her—have been driving him nuts. None of it should matter as much as it does, but he can’t seem to help it. After six weeks, she’s wearing on him. Too bad his own retirement is still a few years off.

  He’s not one to give up on anything—even his marriage. He stuck it out till the bitter end. But he’s starting to think that this partnership might not work out.

  Brandewyne puffs away on her cancer stick as they head back toward the hotel a few blocks away.

  It’s a crappy day—cold, misty, rainy—and the sidewalk is a sea of umbrellas and trench coats. Plenty of Burberry plaid on this particular stretch of Park Avenue, and glossy paper shopping bags from fancy stores.

  “You think it’s some kind of cult killing?” Brandewyne asks.

  “That, or Little Red Riding Hood’s gone psycho.”

  Little Red Riding Hood assassinates Chicken Little. Yeah, that’s good.

  Veiled in smoke, Brandewyne coughs a smoker’s cough before asking, “You think the cloak was red?”

  He shrugs. The surveillance tape was black and white. Anyway, he was kidding.

  Pretty much.

  Then again, if all these years on the job have taught him anything, it’s that you just never know who you might be dealing with: serial killers, terrorists, cult leaders, random nutcases . . .

  He’s seen ’em all. A psycho Red Riding Hood isn’t that big a stretch.

  Omar’s phone rings just as they reach the hotel entrance, which is festooned with a wreath the size of the Rockefeller rink. “Silver Bells” is piped over a speaker above the doorman’s post. Ah, life goes on. You’d never know a gory murder took place here last night.

  Not even breaking his stride, Meade answers his phone immediately with his customary “Yeah.”

  “Thought I’d check in and see how you two lovebirds are making out today. Pun intended.” Doug Alden, a fellow detective down at the precinct, loves busting his chops about Brandewyne.

  Meade responds with an expletive, which brings a laugh from Alden—and then it’s down to business.

  “Some bum found Jollston’s wallet in a garbage can and turned it in looking for a reward.”

  “Really.” Meade stops walking and raises an eyebrow. “That was noble.”

  “No kidding.”

  Brandewyne, too, has stopped walking. She mouths, What up?

  Not what’s up. What up. Fortysomething middle-class white woman gangsta talk. That kind of crap drives Meade crazy.

  “Listen, we might have to give him one hell of a reward,” Alden is saying, “because we lifted some prints off the leather.”

  “Yeah? They probably belong to the bum or Jollston.” After all, there wasn’t a single print at the murder scene. The killer monk had been wearing gloves that were plainly visible in the surveillance video.

  “It looks like there are three different sets of prints on the wallet, Meade.”

  “Now you’re talking.”

  Of course, random prints only tend to be helpful if whoever left them has a prior criminal record on file in the system. Hopefully that will be the case.

  “So listen, they’re running them now at the lab.”

  “Let me know what comes up, Alden.”

  “Will do.”

  Meade ends the call and turns back to Brandewyne in time to see her grind out a cigarette on the sidewalk a few feet away from the doorman, who sees it, too.

  “What up?” she asks aloud this time, and this time, Meade tells her.

  “Know what, Omar? This might just be our lucky day.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “Yeah, well, you never want to count on anything.”

  Thinking of all these years on the job, and the kid he rarely sees, and the wife who left him for another man—one who has time for her—Meade doesn’t argue with that.

  At four o’clock, Lucy closes the door to her office, picks up her cell phone, and dials her mother’s number in Florida.

  Lauren Walsh picks up on the first ring. “There you are. We’ve been playing phone tag.”

  “Hi, Mom. Sorry I couldn’t pick up when you called me back earlier. I was on the other line.” Actually, she’d been on both other lines when her mother buzzed in on her cell phone. She’s spent the day juggling phone calls, as usual. And being relieved that she hasn’t had the slightest hint of a cramp all afternoon.

  “Aren’t you still at work, Lu?”

  “Yes, but I figured I’d better call before you and Sam head out to the early-bird special or something.” Lucy smiles.

  She can hear the smile in her mother’s voice, too, when she replies, “We might be snowbirds, but we’re not quite that stereotypical just yet. Although Sam did say he wants to give me golf lessons for Christmas so that I can join him on the course.”

  Golf.

  Lucy’s smile fades.

  Every time she hears the word, she thinks of Jeremy wielding a bloody seven-iron over a helpless little girl.

  No matter how you look at it, La La Montgomery, regardless of whom—of what—she grew up to be, was once a helpless little girl.

  Lucy makes appropriate comments as her mother talks on about golf lessons and the great weather they had for last weekend’s visit from Lucy’s Aunt Alyssa and Uncle Ben and her cousins Trevor and Courtney, who are still in high school.

  But mostly, Lucy’s thoughts are settled again on Jeremy.

  She doesn’t know why, but she’s still feeling uneasy—mostly about him. About the way he was acting this morning. Dark, distant.

  Something’s bothering him. Possibly something other than the fact that she rebuffed him this morning in bed, even something other than his Friday visit to Marin, which is always a downer.

  Lucy frequently offers to accompany him, but she didn’t today. Anyway, he usually doesn’t want her there. He said it confuses Marin.

  He’s right about that. On one recent occasion, Marin lit up as she walked in the door with Jeremy—before she realized who Lucy was. Or rather, who she wasn’t. Then Marin started sobbing in despair and had to be tranquilized.

  “It’s not that she didn’t want to see you,” Jeremy later explained. “It’s just that she thought you were my sister.”

  “Which sister?”

  He just looked at her. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  No. It didn’t. Either way, it was heartbreaking.

  Earlier, Jeremy called to say that he was headed from Parkview to a family meeting for one of his “guys,” as he refers to the troubled youths at the group home. From there, he was going to a children’s court hearing and then on up to the Bro
nx to put in some time on the grant he’s writing, capped off by a group session at six-thirty.

  “I’ll try to get home before eight,” he’d told Lucy, who then reminded him that she’s going out tonight with Robyn.

  “I won’t be home too late,” she promised. “Do you want me to bring you some Mexican takeout from the restaurant?”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll figure out something for dinner. See you later.” She couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or just in a hurry to get off the phone, but again, he didn’t seem quite like himself.

  Now, hearing her mother chatter on about what a nice time she and Sam are having in Florida together, Lucy feels a pang. Between the lost pregnancies and Sylvie’s death and the move, it’s been so long since she felt as though she and Jeremy were really in sync, enjoying life.

  Then she reminds herself that Mom and Sam went through a lot before they got to this place—and not just the usual second marriage/blended family stressors. Sam was shot right after they met, for Pete’s sake, trying to help Mom protect her family from Garvey Quinn.

  Yeah, they deserve some happiness.

  So do Jeremy and I. I just hope we can get back to that good place soon.

  “How have you been feeling?” her mom is asking.

  Should she mention the cramping? No. Patrice said it was probably just Braxton Hicks contractions, and when Lucy looked that up on the Internet at lunchtime, the symptom matched.

  “So far, so good,” she tells her mother.

  “Good. Everything’s going to be okay this time, Lu.”

  Of course, Mom doesn’t know that for sure, but there’s a certain comfort in her words, in hearing her voice.

  “I really think it will,” Lucy agrees.

  “That’s my girl. How’s the new apartment?”

  “Big. Fancy.”

  “I can’t wait to see it—and you. Don’t forget—I’ll be on a plane the second you go into labor, unless you need me sooner.”

  “No, I’m fine.” And even if she weren’t, she would never ask her mom to cut short her time in Florida.

  “What about Ryan?”

  Lucy hesitates just long enough for her mother to ask, “Lucy? Is Ryan okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s . . . I mean, he’s . . .”

  Something tells her not to get into Ryan’s relationship with their mother. She doesn’t know how much her brother has told Mom, and it’s not up to her to complicate his life.

  “He’s good, Mom. Actually, he came over last night after work.”

  “How did he look?”

  “Like Ryan.”

  “And Sadie? Have you heard from her?”

  “No, but I never hear from her.”

  “I don’t, either. Not as much as I want to, anyway.”

  Hearing the worried note in her mother’s voice, Lucy points out, “She’s away at school, Mom, and it’s finals time. Did you hear from me regularly when I was in college?”

  “Pretty much. But you were the model child, remember?”

  Lucy is smiling again, until her mother adds, “I just hope Sadie’s not involved in anything she shouldn’t be . . .”

  Drugs.

  Mom doesn’t bother to say the word, but Lucy hears it loud and clear.

  Sadie was only four when their father moved out, and she had a hard enough time adjusting to that, let alone everything that came after. When she got to middle school, she fell into the wrong crowd—the crowd with a lot of money and no supervision.

  It happens to a lot of kids—but Sadie, given what she had already been through, was especially vulnerable.

  Lucy’s always thought that if she had still been living at home then, she might have been able to help Sadie work through her horrible memories, rather than resort to chemical attempts to block them out.

  But who knows? Mom couldn’t get through to her, nor could Sam. They looked for help in every direction—Sadie’s guidance counselor and teachers, her child psychiatrist Dr. Rogel, even Father Les.

  In the end, Sadie’s badly needed wake-up call came in the form of a tragedy that hit much too close to home.

  Sadly, it was too late for Jeremy’s sister, but not for Lucy’s.

  “I’ll give Sadie a call over the weekend,” she promises her mom.

  “Do that. And give Ryan a hug for me when you see him. Jeremy, too. How is he? It must be hard for him to live in his grandmother’s apartment so soon after losing her.”

  Hmm . . . maybe that’s it, Lucy thinks. Maybe Jeremy is just mourning the loss of Sylvie, and that’s why he’s seemed so down.

  Maybe they shouldn’t have moved into the Ansonia after all.

  Sitting on the hardwood floor in front of the tall living room window, staring bleakly at the monochromatic skyline beyond the iron scrollwork of the Juliet balcony, she remembers waking up one morning to find herself in prison.

  Andrew Stafford came, of course—only the very best legal representation for her family—and they talked about why she was there, and she could tell he suspected she was faking when she claimed she didn’t remember any of it . . .

  She was faking.

  She remembers everything: the fury bubbling up inside her, and feeling as though she was going to lose control and do something horrible—

  And then you did.

  But she learned long ago that you don’t necessarily have to own up to anything. If you’ve been through what she’s been through in her lifetime, people tend to give you a pass.

  Unfortunately, as it turned out, no one gives you a pass for committing murder—even if the murder was justified. Even if the brilliant Andrew Stafford fights for an acquittal after you’ve been deemed mentally competent to stand trial.

  Chaplain Gideon was right. What she did last night was dangerous.

  She has to tread carefully from here on in.

  Has to suppress the fury once again stirring inside her, and the overwhelming desire to kill again.

  Williams might be the third most common surname in the United States—an odd thing for someone to have mentioned, now that Ryan thinks about it—but Phoenix is one of the most unusual first names. You’d think that would help, when it comes to tracking down information about her past.

  Nope.

  He hasn’t had much free time at work this afternoon, as his boss, Rachel, has pretty much been breathing down his neck. But as the day winds down, he’s finally able to get on the Internet and look for his girlfriend . . . only to find that she isn’t there.

  There are plenty of hits for Phoenix, and Williams, and even Phoenix Williams, but none of them is his Phoenix Williams.

  Which means she isn’t.

  She isn’t what? he asks himself, annoyed with his own paranoia.

  Isn’t yours?

  Or isn’t Phoenix Williams?

  Maybe both. Oh hell.

  In this day and age, if you plug a name into an Internet search engine, chances are you’re going to come back with something relevant. The person’s Facebook page or LinkedIn profile, or the fact that they broke a high school track record—something.

  His own name, for example, generates pages and pages of hits. Yeah, there are a lot of Ryan Walshes out there, but there are plenty of links to Ryan himself.

  In his case though, most of them have something to do with Garvey Quinn’s terrible crimes. There are press photos of him and Lucy and Sadie when they were kids, after the kidnapping and their father’s murder. The pictures ran again when the whole La La Montgomery thing happened, and again after that, when Garvey was tried and convicted and sentenced to life in prison, when he died, when his daughters died . . .

  Every Quinn tragedy generates press coverage and renewed interest in the Walshes—nowhere near as many photos of Ryan as there are of Garvey himself, and his own family, but still—Ryan’s face, his name,
are out there.

  Phoenix Williams—his Phoenix Williams—is not.

  What, if anything, does that mean?

  And what, if anything, is he going to do about it?

  He has yet to figure that out when his cell phone rings at a few minutes before five. Seeing that it’s Phoenix, he lets it ring into voice mail.

  The moment it stops ringing, though, he regrets doing that. He should have just picked up. What if she didn’t leave a message? What if she did? What if she’s in some kind of trouble and needs him?

  Idiot. You could have just answered the phone to see what she wants. You didn’t have to get into anything serious right now.

  He waits an agonizing minute, then checks for messages, not sure whether he’s hoping she left one, or that she didn’t.

  She did. When he hears it, he’s glad he didn’t pick up.

  “Hi, I just wanted to let you know I’m stuck at the office working late, so I have to cancel tonight. Sorry. I’ll talk to you over the weekend.”

  Short and not all that sweet.

  But at least it buys him a little more time to figure out how he’s going to break things off with her.

  Wow. So that’s it, then. That’s what he wants to do.

  The realization brings only mild surprise—and surprising relief.

  Even if she didn’t lie about any of it—her name, or who she is, or where she’s from . . .

  And even though he loves the way he feels when he walks around with her on his arm, loves being alone with her, loves waking up with her . . .

  He doesn’t love her.

  He doesn’t trust her, either.

  In fact, right here, right now—he’s almost afraid of her.

  Maybe it’s just that seeing those old news accounts and photos online brought back all the fear and uncertainty he’d experienced as a child whose life was in jeopardy.

  A child whose parent was murdered.

  A child who learned the hard way that people aren’t necessarily who they seem—or claim—to be.