Stratagem

by Robin Caroll

  He nodded. “She sounded remorseful almost, which we both know is unlike her.” He saved all the voice mails and studied the data. “Nine twelve. That would’ve been after breakfast, right?” He ran a hand over his face, trying to remember the details of the game he’d created that he’d tried to forget this past weekend.

  Pam nodded. “Everyone was dismissed after breakfast, about nine, to go back to their rooms before the next stage of their tasks would begin.”

  “So she would’ve gone back to her room. I wonder what made her call me then.”

  “I don’t know, but it had to have been something important for her to have called you and sounded so … different.”

  What would have been the trigger that sparked her to call him? What could she say? The more he considered it, the more it didn’t make sense.

  So many unanswered questions, and to the outsider, he had to look guiltier with every twist and turn.

  Anna Belle

  Thursday

  Why had Emmi Dubois even come?

  Well, Anna Belle knew why. Because Emmi knew deep down that Tim was still in love with Anna Belle. It was tragically sad for the woman, but if Anna Belle had to watch her drape herself over her husband much more, she was going to be sick.

  She made her way up the stairs beside Hugh, who was telling her some stupid story about a client of his, but Anna Belle stayed in her own mind, mulling things over.

  Emmi was so obvious too. Like kissing Tim as soon as Anna Belle walked into the room. Practically lying in his lap when they sat down as a group to eat. So low class.

  Pathetic, really.

  As if Anna Belle wanted Tim back. She didn’t, but if she did, she’d only have to wag her little finger and he’d be at her side so fast it’d make Emmi’s head spin around.

  If the woman kept on trying to mark her territory in such a fashion, Anna Belle might be tempted to call Tim, just to put Emmi in her place and stop the nauseating public display of affection.

  Anna Belle giggled at something Hugh said, not that she was listening as they reached the top of the stairs, but she didn’t want Hugh to lose interest in her. He was interesting enough, usually, and certainly attentive to her. Normally, she would show more personal attention to the beautiful man. It was just that she was bone tired, her sleep last night broken by images of Mardi Gras masks and white gloves.

  At least in the light of day this morning, she hadn’t been scared of seeing her stalker, although she’d caught herself looking out every time she passed a window. How he found her, she would never know. It’d been years, but when he’d been convicted and sentenced to jail time, he’d swore he’d find her and come after her.

  He’d obviously succeeded.

  She was supposed to have been notified if and when he was released, but after a couple of years, and getting married and moving, she had considered his threat an unimportant thing of her past.

  Except now it wasn’t.

  She missed Grayson terribly right now. He had been her defender back when she was going through the trial. No denying her ex-husband was a strong man. Worked out. Lifted weights every morning at home. Ran when he could. She’d always felt safe with him, knowing he’d protect her until his dying breath if need be.

  Anna Belle certainly didn’t feel safe right now. Who would protect her here? Tim? She snorted. That was a joke. Franklin Barron? Please, he’d hide behind anybody. Hugh Istre would. He could. She nodded. He was strong like Grayson. Virile. Definitely manly and sexy.

  No, she needed to concentrate on whatever Tim had for her to complete today. Hopefully it wouldn’t be such a setup for failure like cooking.

  She said goodbye to Hugh in the hall, unlocked her bedroom door, and stepped inside. Tim had said they’d get instructions for their next assignment soon. She shook her head. That next assignment had better be more job related than cooking dinner or she was out of here, promotion or not.

  Grabbing her lipstick, she headed to the bathroom. There was something on the desk. Who had been in her room? There hadn’t been anything on the desk when she’d left for breakfast. She moved to yank it up. Just who thought they could march into her room—

  All the air left her lungs. Her hands trembled as she couldn’t stop staring at the foreign, yet familiar, pamphlet. She gripped it tighter in her hand, crinkling the glossy paper.

  Oh no. No, no, no, no.

  EIGHT

  “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Istre.” Brandon sat across the table from the younger African American man. While his multiple long braids were pulled back away from his face, his suit clung to his squared frame.

  Hugh didn’t reply, just gave a half smile and a quick jerk of his head. Apparently not a man of many words. Everything about his appearance and demeanor gave the impression of reservation and professionalism.

  “We just need to go back over everything to get a full picture of events leading up to Anna Belle Thibodeaux’s death.”

  “So you’d like me to start with Wednesday?” The man’s voice was richer than Brandon would have imagined. Deeper than a baritone, more like a bass.

  “Please.” They could always fast-forward if the details weren’t applicable, but it might be nice to have more of an overview. However… “Actually, could you provide us details of what you were told about the events that were to take place at the rental house and what you were expected to submit?”

  Hugh’s forehead crinkled. “We were told that there were four of us employees who were under consideration for promotion to executive accounts director. The company planned a long weekend of events that would challenge us four candidates, individually and as a team, to give the board an encompassing report of our strengths and weaknesses so they could make an informed decision on who to promote.”

  It sounded logical when put like that, however, that they weren’t told they would be involved in a game seemed shady. “What information did you have to provide?”

  “A full dossier, basically, complete with access to our financial and medical information. We had to sign a nonliability waiver, which at the time I thought was a little over the top, but now I understand more fully.”

  Oh, the irony. Brandon nodded. “Okay. So now start me on Wednesday, if you will.”

  “We—Anna Belle, Franklin, Georgia, and myself—were all instructed to arrive at a house on Esplanade Avenue that the company had rented for a long weekend, and to arrive promptly at one. We were told to leave our laptops and tablets at home, and we could only use our cells in our assigned rooms. To violate this basic rule would remove our name from consideration of the promotion.”

  Harsh. Brandon nodded, making a mental note that Hugh alphabetized their names as he spoke. Telling of his personality type.

  “We all arrived on time and were assigned rooms. All of our rooms were located upstairs in the old house, which looked creepy enough but was actually quite comfortable.”

  Brandon thought it was something straight out of a horror movie himself. When they’d run the check on the house, they’d learned that the owner often rented it out to groups who used it as a haunted house. The lot’s upkeep was abysmal, to put it mildly, and added to the isolation, despite it being in a neighborhood, which played up the eeriness of the complete picture.

  “I’d barely gotten settled in my room when a card was slipped under my bedroom door. The card instructed me to go to the house’s turret where I was tasked with sweeping off the widow’s walk.” Hugh shifted his weight in the chair.

  Brandon didn’t miss the slight fracture in his facade. “Sweeping? How did that tell the directors anything about you?”

  “The sweeping part didn’t. The location and condition did.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Hugh’s head tilted ever so slightly to the left. “The widow’s walk had a rickety rail, if you could even call it a rail. It was broken in several places.”

  Brandon still didn’t follow.

  Hugh let out a slow, even breath. “I’m not
too fond of high places. Have felt like that ever since I fell out of a tree house as a young tween and broke my leg in four places.”

  “That’s rough.”

  Hugh nodded. “Tell me about it. Eight miserable weeks of my childhood.”

  “So you were told to go up there and sweep?”

  “That’s what my card said, so that’s what I did.”

  Seemed easy enough, even if it was nerve-wracking for someone afraid of heights.

  “Until the fire alarm went off.”

  This was new. “Fire alarm?”

  Hugh shifted again, more than a little visibly distressed. “I heard the alarm go off and turned to the turret. I could see smoke in the hallway beyond the room. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I yanked and tugged, but it wouldn’t budge.”

  A line of sweat beaded on Hugh’s upper lip.

  “When I was nineteen, my mother died in a house fire because she couldn’t get out of the house.”

  An ache knotted in Brandon’s chest. Suddenly the game had become very personal. More personal for Hugh than it seemed to be for everyone else. Brandon cleared his throat. “How did you get in?”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t know what everyone else was doing, but I could hear a couple of doors opening and closing, so I yelled out for help. No one came initially, so I kept hollering every minute or so.” Hugh ran a hand down his face. “Finally, Franklin showed up. I told him I needed help. He left and came back a few seconds later with a ladder. I was climbing down when I heard one of the girls scream, then the fire truck pulled up.”

  Why was this the first they were hearing about a fire? Neither Georgia nor Franklin had mentioned it at all.

  “As soon as I got to the ground, I ran toward the screaming. It was Georgia, but one of the firemen already had her moving toward the street. They led all of us to the end of the driveway. Georgia was there. Anna Belle was already there. Franklin was right behind me. Within minutes, Tim and Emmi joined us in the yard, telling us everything was all cleared. The firemen got in their truck and left.”

  Brandon couldn’t believe no one had reported any of this. He’d pull the report from the firemen and see who had called 911. “Then what happened?”

  “We went back into the house, into the dining room where a sandwich and salad buffet was set up. Tim told us that I was the only one of the four who succeeded in our assigned tasks.” Hugh smiled. “The others didn’t seem too happy about that, but I was relieved, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “I bet.” Brandon shifted in his chair. Sounded like it’d been an eventful evening.

  “After we ate, we were told to get a good night’s sleep because we were expected to meet for breakfast at eight in the morning and not to be late. We all said our good-nights and left. I had time to take a shower, return a few messages and emails, and was getting ready for bed when Franklin started screaming like a girl.”

  Ah. “The snake in his bed?”

  Hugh grinned. “He told you? I didn’t think he’d ‘fess up to being such a wimp about it.”

  “He said you got it out for him.”

  Hugh nodded. “It was just a king snake. On the big side, but still. I let him loose in the backyard where it backed up to the greenbelt.” “You didn’t see signs of any other snakes or anything?”

  Hugh shook his head. “Nothing. I figured someone put the snake in there, just like they messed with me.”

  “With the catwalk and being trapped there?”

  “Yeah.” The wideness of his eyes said there might’ve been more, but he quickly moved on. “So we finally were able to get back to our respective rooms after ten.”

  “You didn’t see or talk to anybody there after that?”

  “No. It actually quieted down rather quickly after the snake. I don’t know if people were dealing with their own fear or worrying about it. Either way, I went on to bed by ten thirty and stayed there until I went down to breakfast at eight the next morning.”

  Thursday. The day Anna Belle Thibodeaux died.

  Hugh needed no prompting. “Breakfast was a nonevent. Georgia and Anna Belle weren’t speaking, but that just made the meal quieter and quicker.”

  “Why weren’t they speaking?” Another new tidbit they hadn’t heard before.

  “Something about Anna Belle not helping Georgia yesterday during the fire scare. But really, they’d never been friends anyway, and now they were competing for the promotion.” Hugh shrugged. “We finished by nine and were told to go to our rooms to get instructions. When I got to my room, there was this handmade, ugly doll with a couple of stick pins in it in a bag, with a note to me to wait until exactly ten, then to sneak into Georgia’s room and put the doll on her bed, but not to tell anyone, especially not Georgia, even if she asked, and return quickly to my room. That’s what I did.”

  So Hugh was instructed to put the voodoo doll in Georgia’s room. Had someone else been told to put the tainted energy drink in Anna Belle’s?

  “As soon as I got back from Georgia’s, there was a note to go to the sitting room where I would be partnered with Georgia to come up with a PR campaign for a potential client.”

  “The politician?”

  Hugh’s eyes narrowed. “I guess Franklin probably told you about that. He felt pretty confident that he and Anna Belle had come up with a winner.” He let out a slow breath and straightened in the chair. “They probably did come up with a better campaign, because Georgia wasn’t really any help. She was distracted and couldn’t come up with any ideas.”

  “Maybe because of the voodoo doll you put in her room?” Danielle asked.

  “Voodoo doll, huh? Yeah. That makes sense.” Hugh gave a little nod. “I thought maybe she was rattled about the doll, and I almost said something, but then I remembered my instructions and wondered if it was all about testing me. What if she had been told not to be helpful and see if I broke the rules and told her I was the one who put the doll in her room? That would hurt my chances of promotion if I couldn’t follow orders. And I was personally in the lead, since Tim said I was the only one who met my challenge the night before.”

  “Right.” Logical, but Brandon was having a hard time keeping up with all the mind games. Was everything coordinated to pit one against another, or was someone else using the corporate game to further their own personal agenda?

  “Tim didn’t say which campaign he preferred. He told us at lunch that he would take both campaigns to the board, and we were given notes on where we were supposed to go next.” Hugh stiffened in his seat. “This time I was told to report to one of the rooms downstairs. Anna Belle was there just a minute after me. We went into the room that had two desks, two filing cabinets, two floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and two high-back chairs. There was a note on one of the desks that said we were now locked in the room and had two and a half hours to solve the riddles and escape. So we did.”

  “You figured it out and escaped?”

  Hugh nodded. “The riddles weren’t all that hard, to be honest. A little uncomfortable to figure out with Anna Belle there since they were about my past or hers, but we figured it out and found the key in a little over two hours.”

  “You two were able to work together even if the clues were embarrassing?” Brandon asked. Franklin had made it seem like the extreme personal information couldn’t be shared.

  Hugh shrugged. “I mean, it’s not a big secret that Anna Belle was hot and she and Tim had been a thing for some time. I figured she’d done enough on her own that nothing I said would shock her, so I just didn’t hold anything back. Besides, we’d gone out the weekend before.”

  Interesting. “Oh?” Another new layer of information they didn’t have.

  “It was nothing serious. She had broken things off with Tim and just wanted to have some fun, that’s all. Nothing serious or anything.”

  “She’s the one who ended things with Tim?”

  “Yeah. I mean, if they were still going at it, the whole weekend would’ve been unnecessary
because she would’ve just been given the promotion. But she broke it off with him, which I bet she regretted doing once she found out the position was available.” Hugh shrugged. “And his wife stuck to him like crazy, so she took him back, apparently.”

  “Apparently.” Danielle’s tone had hardened.

  “I’m betting Emmi fought like everything not to have Anna Belle under consideration for the promotion.”

  “But she was.” Brandon studied Hugh’s reaction.

  Hugh’s expression was as neutral as if they were discussing the weather. “She was good at her job, no doubt about that. She might’ve been a bit sharp and driven, but if she’d been a man, nobody would’ve thought twice about her attitude.”

  Danielle’s harrumph was so low that Brandon almost missed it, but her disdain showed in the beginning lines around her eyes.

  “Anyway,” Hugh continued, “since we’d just gone out and it wasn’t serious, we were able to solve the riddle and get the key and get out of the room.”

  This wasn’t going to be glossed over. Brandon glanced at Danielle before asking Hugh. “You two went out to eat or to a movie, or what?”

  For the first time all day, Hugh looked uncomfortable. “We just hung out together.”

  “Hung out? At a bar? Restaurant?”

  “At my place.” Hugh’s face darkened. “We hooked up, if you get my drift.”

  Oh, Brandon got the drift. He resisted the urge to flash a smile at his partner. Hugh had been with the victim the weekend before she died, and he was one of the last people to see her alive? “I get it. But it was just that once?”

  “The Friday and Saturday nights, but we weren’t dating or anything.”

  “Just hooked up. For fun.”

  “Right.” Hugh pushed onward. “Anyway, we unlocked the door, and Emmi was in the hall. She told us to go to our rooms and get ready to meet in the dining room for dinner at four thirty. I had some emails and calls to return, then checked my cell just before I heard screaming. I ran toward the sound, and it was Georgia, outside Anna Belle’s room. There were people I’d never seen before in the hall, and Tim was performing CPR on Anna Belle. I asked Emmi what happened, and she told me Georgia had just found Anna Belle like that.”