Michael took a sip of his tea, feeling the knot that was in his stomach twist tighter and tighter by the moment. The thought of going over to Addison’s home and threatening her was not a thought that he wanted to have in his head. He really didn’t even know what he could threaten her with. He didn’t have damaging information on her, not like she had on him. If news got out that he was sleeping with her and fathered her unborn kid, it wouldn’t touch her, it would only touch him. If anything, news of their affair would help her career while simultaneously incinerating his.
“What am I supposed to threaten her with?” he asked Violet.
“Threaten her with the only thing that matters. Her life,” Violet said.
He couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “Her life? What do you mean, threaten her with her life?”
“Just that. You tell her that you have high connections who can take care of her if she breathes a word about you. And you do. Remember, Sonny Mancino himself has strong mob connections. Maybe Addison doesn’t know that Sonny has these connections, so you need to tell her that he does. She has to hear it from you. You can’t send this message to her. It won’t have the same impact if you send some goon over there. You have to give her that message in person, and you have to do it now. She’s getting ready to tell the entire world about your affair, and you have to stop that from happening.”
Violet was right about that. After Addison found out from Sonny just what kind of a person he was, she was livid. She knew then that she wasn’t special, not in the least. She had called him the night that she found out and reamed his a new one. He hadn’t been able to talk her off the ledge, and she threatened him over the phone with going public. She had that baby inside of her, that baby that had his DNA, and that was her proof of the affair. That baby was like Monica Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress with the semen stain that had Clinton’s DNA, thus proving what Lewinsky was saying.
So, Violet was correct. He had to do something about Addison, and he had to do it yesterday. He just didn’t think that threatening her with death was the thing that he was supposed to do. Yet, he knew that he was going to have to do just that. Threaten her with death. Threaten her with a goon who was going to snuff her out if she breathed a word about him. He just saw no other way around it.
“Okay.” He felt defeated. “I’ll go over there with a credible threat. But I’m going to have to back it up.”
“Yes, you do. And you have to actually do it soon. Have her killed, and do it soon.”
He looked at Violet quizzically. “What do you mean, have her killed soon? You told me just to threaten her.”
“I’ve changed my mind about that already,” she said. “I’ve been gaming this out as we’ve been sitting here, and threatening her isn’t going to get us to where we want to go.”
“What do you mean?” This conversation was alarming Michael. He didn’t mind threatening Addison, but actually killing her? Or, rather, having her killed? That was another thing entirely.
“Because, stupid asshole, what are you going to do if she calls your bluff and goes to the press? You can’t have her killed after she does that, because you’ll be a suspect, and, at that point, the cat’s out of the bag. It does you no good to have her killed after the fact. No good at all. The whole point of having her killed is to shut her up preemptively.”
He took a deep breath. “So, why do you want me to go over there?”
“I don’t anymore. No, you screwed the pooch on this one. You can’t go over there. In the meantime, let me get in touch with Sonny. We gotta move on this one fast.”
“This won’t work. It won’t work at all. Listen, if Addison turns up dead, the first thing that’s going to happen is that Sonny Mancino is going to get a subpoena for his stories that he has on her. You know that that’s gonna happen. He has valuable information about who might’ve killed her. Somebody’s got to be tipping off the authorities to the fact that Sonny has this information. It’s going to lead right to me.”
“Not if we get rid of the body. Nobody will be able to establish any kind of motive for you to have killed her, unless they knew that she was pregnant. That’s the most important thing - nobody can ever know that she was pregnant with your child. You can survive an affair. Politically, you can. It’ll be dicey, but not fatal. People are pretty forgiving about that sort of thing. You can just say that the stress of my illness caused you to stray. Or, you can deny that it ever happened. Either way, your having an affair with her isn’t going to be fatal to your career.
But you impregnating her, that’s another story entirely. That’s career-ending. It’s career ending, and if the press ever found out that she was pregnant, and they were able to establish it was yours by doing some kind of testing postmortem, you’re not only finished, but you’ll be going to prison for her murder. So don’t doubt that I have that angle covered as well. We have her killed, to shut her up, and we make sure that we dispose of the body properly. That way nobody ever has to know that you got her pregnant, and that she was having your love child.”
As Violet spoke, Michael knew one thing. He didn’t want any part of this plot. He was a lot of things - a philanderer, a greedy SOB, and a sex addict.
What he wasn’t was a murderer.
He made up his mind as Violet was speaking that he was going to have to go over and see Addison.
He was going to have to warn her about what Violet was plotting.
Chapter 22
Emerson - September 2
I went to court on a motion to inspect the crime scene, which was granted, so I was on my way to Addison’s palatial mansion, which was just a few blocks away from my own condo. I was going to try to glean whatever I could from the scene.
Declan went along with me, at my request. When I went before the judge for permission to inspect the crime scene, I indicated that Declan was going to be there with me. He had agreed to second-chair Carter’s trial with me, and I had run this by Carter, who was more than happy that I was going to have back-up.
“Go for it, Ms. Justice,” he said, a big smile on his face. “The more the merrier, and I got literally millions to pay the two of you. Run up that legal bill, you guys deserve it. Whatever money I have left over in my Go Fund Me will have go back to the donor, so however much money you guys charge is fine with me.”
I actually was happy that Carter was just fine in paying me and Declan whatever we could charge. I hadn’t yet had the chance to look for an investigator, so I was doing all the investigative work myself. Carter asked me to charge my usual fee for his case, and I was billing at $1,500 per hour at my old firm, so I went ahead and billed Carter at that same rate. He had paid me an initial retainer of $250,000, which was what I was using to pay not only myself, but Declan, who was billing at $750 per hour. Carter was correct - he couldn’t keep whatever money was left over in his Go Fund Me, because his Go Fund Me was restricted for use in legal bills. He was going to have to give the leftover money back to Angel Eyes LLC, so I knew that I might as well make that money count.
I picked Declan up at his house, which was a condo in the Pacific Palisades. It was part of a beautiful and modern condo building that was just a few blocks away from the beach. It was a sunny day, as it always was here, especially in the late summer, and Declan greeted me casually in a green button-down and khaki pants. His dark hair was slightly uncombed, which made him look slightly devil-may-care and sexy as hell.
He grinned as I stepped into his place, and I had to admit that I liked his taste in decor. His condo had hardwood floors, high ceilings and skylights. His furniture was masculine, as he favored dark leather couches and distressed wood, which was what both his coffee table and dining room table were made of. He also had the requisite big-screen high-end television in high-def, but it was in the den. In the living room were a fireplace, a leather couch, a leather recliner and, fascinatingly, a baby grand piano. The keys were exposed, which told me that it had been recently played.
“Do you
play?” I asked him as I walked over to the piano and ran my hands over the keys.
“Of course,” he said. “I was forced to take lessons when I was five. My father is a concert pianist, so he figured that I was going to follow in his footsteps. At first, I hated playing, but, once I go the hang of it, I really started to enjoy it. It’s my stress relief. That and playing rugby on the weekends.”
He lightly punched me on the shoulder and grinned. “You should come out and see us play. We’re pretty good, really. None of us are professional, of course, we’re all a bunch of techies and lawyers and generic pasty white guys. But we play hard and dirty.”
For some reason, when he said the words “hard and dirty,” I wasn’t necessarily thinking about those words in the context of rugby. I blushed as I tried to contain my thoughts. Emerson, come on now, be professional. This is your second chair, not some beefcake poster boy up on your wall when you were 12 years old.
“I’ll come out and see you guys. I’ll probably have to drag my two charges along, though.” I rolled my eyes. “Unless my mother magically finds some way to move out of my house, I’ll never be able to trust Arabella to be alone with her, so I have to drag her wherever I go or find somebody to supervise her. It’s a mess, to be honest.”
Declan smiled. “Oh, yes, Arabella. That little kid who appeared to be 14 going on 40. You’re going to have a problem with that one. She seems like a mischievous one, that one does.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “She is, but she’s settling in. She tests me all the time, but I’ve managed to, somehow, stay three steps ahead of her at all times. That’s necessary with her, because you’re right. She’s so smart, its scary.”
“I got that from her,” he said. “She’s smart as hell. I know it’s not my business, but are Arabella and Luna yours? You called them your charges, which makes me think that they’re not biologically yours.”
I had to smile. He was direct, which was refreshing. No beating around the bush with this guy. “I inherited them from their drug-addict mother. She died in a car accident, but she was suffering from cancer, which was when I found out that I was going to get those girls, so I was prepared to get them at some point. I got them a lot quicker than what I anticipated, though, so it’s been a challenge. My mother moved in with me out of the blue, and I got the girls before I had the chance to get a bigger place. So, we’re all living in a two-bedroom condo. My real estate agent’s hot on looking for something else for us, though.”
“So, when you found out that you were going to be a guardian, you were living by yourself, then your mother came to live with you, and then you got the girls before you could find a bigger place.” He nodded his head. “That sucks, but that’s how life is sometimes, isn’t it? Things aren’t always convenient, like we would like for them to be.”
“You got that right,” I said. “Well, we better get a move on. I hope that reviewing the crime scene will be able to tell me something. BTW, have you ever seen the movie The Good, The Bad and The Ugly?”
Declan grinned and shook his head, as if to say where the hell did that come from?
“Of course. What self-respecting guy hasn’t seen that movie? Having seen that movie is a requirement to get our guy card. If you ain’t seen that movie, you just ain’t a dude, and that’s that. But, yes, I’ve seen it many, many times. Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “There’s a clue in that movie, or maybe with the guy who played Angel Eyes, Lee Van Cleef. A clue on the mysterious benefactor of Carter’s Go Fund Me account. At least, that’s what I gathered when I spoke with Devon McDaniel, who formed that LLC for an anonymous person. He told me that he called the LLC “Angel Eyes” because of that movie, and that, if I could figure it out, I might be able to figure out who the mysterious benefactor is. I don’t really know if knowing that information would help my investigation or not, but it’s worth a try.”
“That is a weird part of this whole case,” Declan said. “But I don’t know if finding out the benefactor is going to lead us to the actual killer. I’m glad that your little bright sunshine Arabella is on the case and doing some hacking. It sounds like her skills will be coming in handy on the investigative side. So maybe there’s a bright side to their crack-whore mother kicking it, huh?”
“Well, I don’t know that the girls’ mother was exactly a whore,” I said. “But I know what you’re saying.”
“Yeah, I know, she probably wasn’t a whore. I do feel bad for drug addicts. My sister’s an addict. Been to rehab five times. Five.Times. My parents could afford to send her to the best rehab places, too. Promises Malibu, Betty Ford, Passages. You know, places that literally charge $70,000 a month. She came out of those places having met movie stars and celebrities, and, oh, she learned how to ride a horse pretty well. But kicking drugs for good…” He shook his head. “Nope. Not even close. I guess my parents just have to face the facts that Natasha, my sister, is a heroin addict and we’re going to get that phone call in the middle of the night and our lives will change forever.”
He took a deep breath and his eyes suddenly looked sad. He was telling the story of his sister in such a matter-of-fact tone that, at first, I thought that maybe he didn’t really care about her. But his expression said otherwise. I could see a well of deep pain in his face, and I could tell that his sister’s dilemma was killing him.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m very sorry to hear about your sister,” I said.
He shrugged. “Bad genes, I guess. Our grandmother was an alcoholic and our grandfather was a drug addict. Back then, you didn’t necessarily become addicted to meth, but they had heroin and cocaine back then. Hell, they put cocaine into Coca Cola for the longest time. We’ve come a long way in learning about drugs and what they do, but not far enough. Anyhow, let’s get going.”
We walked to my car and got in. I drove to Addison’s home, finding that Declan was being strangely quiet. “I don’t know what I hope to find at this crime scene,” I said to him, trying to make conversation. “But I guess if I find a good clue, I’ll know it.”
He nodded his head. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry for laying all my bullshit on you earlier. I’m also sorry for calling the mother of your girls a crack whore. I guess that I have some unresolved issues about my sister, and I get angry when I see people destroying themselves with substances. It just seems to be such a goddamned waste, you know? But, then again, I guess I probably shouldn’t talk. I’m the lucky one of the two of us. The addict gene apparently skipped right over me, so I should count my blessings. But I do wonder what people do when they’re addicted to drugs and their parents don’t have $70,000 a month to send them to rehab. I would imagine that was the situation with your girls’ mother.”
“Oh, of course that was her situation, and you’re right. If you don’t have money, you can’t get good treatment. But, as your sister’s situation shows, sometimes even if you can get the very best treatment that money can buy, it’s not always enough. And don’t worry about admitting to your anger about people who abuse substances. I think that a lot of us feel that same way, even though, intellectually, it’s not fair to feel like that. Addicts can’t necessarily help the fact that they’re addicts. They have a disease and I guess we should have compassion.”
“Yeah.” Declan sounded unconvinced. Then he whistled as I drove up Addison’s long driveway. The paparazzi was right outside the gate, and, when I drove through, they tried to thrust their microphones into my car. I just rolled up my window and drove right on.
“Damn,” Declan said as we got closer to Addison’s enormous mansion. It was in the modern geometric style, all windows and steel, and there were some three stories to it. To the right were the tennis courts and we could see horses grazing in the field just beyond the horizon. “Well, she was a Hollywood star, so I guess she needed to live like this. They all do. But don’t you sometimes wonder why they need such an enormous place? It’s not like she was having parties all the time. The producers, directors and agents
are usually the ones who host the best parties.”
“I know,” I said, as I parked the car and unbuckled my seat belt. “All I can think of when I see a house this size is how hard it would be to keep clean. I mean, it’s so close to the water, and everything rusts so quickly. But also there’s so much dampness that gets into these houses from the ocean. I don’t know, I would hate to be the person who tries to control all the yuck that this house is subjected to every day.”
Declan grinned and put his arm around my shoulder. “Emerson, I’m quite sure that keeping this place clean was the last thing that Addison worried about. I’m quite sure that she had a team of cleaning people working here. Along with a personal chef, personal trainer and personal ass-wiper. Because you know that those celebrities aren’t able to wipe their own ass.”
I laughed. “Well, she probably had one of those fountain things on the toilet. What are they called, a bidet?”
“Yep, a bidet. Those bidets aren’t a bad idea, by the way.”
We walked to the front door and I rang the doorbell. There was a yellow crime scene tape that covered the door, and I was greeted by a man in his 50s. He was around 6’0”, with a large belly and jeans that were belted right below his gut. He looked like he had had a few rough nights, or rough years maybe, for his face was pinched, his nose bulbous and red and his eyes were rheumy.
“Emerson Justice?” he asked me as I stood there. “Detective Paulson.” He waved his cup of coffee at me as a kind of greeting. “Come on in. I got the order from the judge to allow you guys in here. I’m also here to answer any questions you have, although things are pretty straightforward.”
I walked in and saw that there was still a crew of people, processing every inch of the palatial mansion. As I walked along, looking up at the fifty-foot ceilings, the enormous living spaces, the clean walls and hardwood floors, I thought about how I always admired people who could afford to live in such luxury. I never quite understood how they did it, though. This place was as big as a shopping mall, it seemed, and Declan was right - why does anybody need this much space, especially if they’re living here alone, as Addison was doing? I liked to think that, even if I became an A-List movie star or singer, I would probably live as I was living at the moment - in a modest beach condo that has all the amenities that I would ever need or want, and enough space, but not too much. But Addison probably felt that she needed to keep up appearances. After all, In Touch magazine won’t be doing a spread of your home if you lived in a smallish place like mine.
Dark Justice Page 16
