Girl Under Water: An absolutely unputdownable and gripping crime thriller

by L. T. Vargus

  “Unbanking?”

  “Yes. He began transferring large sums into luxury assets and alternate currencies. Unfortunately, it’s not all accounted for. What we’ve been able to itemize at the house adds up to a few million dollars, and that’s not nearly enough. I could bore you with the minutiae, but the bottom line is this: there’s about four hundred million dollars missing.”

  TWO

  Charlie’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Four hundred million dollars?”

  Gloria nodded.

  “The problem is that my family are a paranoid lot, and the rumors are already flying about where the money has gone.” Another gesture sent the gloves slapping against Gloria’s thigh. “Cryptocurrency and buried treasure and what-have-you. Items have started disappearing from the house. I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of my brothers are there now, ripping up floorboards and digging holes all over the property. They’ll be at each other’s throats until the money is found. And then of course there’s the elephant in the room: the possibility that one of my siblings murdered my father.”

  Charlie reached for her notepad but paused at that.

  “And what do you think?”

  Gloria opened her mouth, her head shaking from side to side.

  “I honestly don’t know. The inheritance would make for a compelling motive, of course. But now? With the questions surrounding the money and the fact that we can’t find his will—”

  “His will is missing?”

  “Yes. I’ve spoken with his lawyers and spent hours searching for it myself. I checked the safe in his office but only found a few pieces of my mother’s jewelry and some random bits of family paperwork. Birth certificates and such. Then I realized he probably kept a digital copy on his laptop. But I can’t find that either. The laptop, I mean.”

  Charlie tapped her pen against her lip. The details surrounding Dutch Carmichael’s murder seemed to grow more complicated by the second: the missing laptop, the estate in limbo, the bulk of his fortune unaccounted for. She braced herself as Gloria went on.

  “I’m afraid my siblings are already scheming against one another, convinced someone knows something about the money. My father always taught us to put family first. He would have been disgusted to see what jackals we’ve become. I’ve been chosen as the representative of the estate, and between itemizing the house and keeping my siblings from turning into absolute savages, my hands are full. I need you to work the murder angle, yes, but I also need someone—an expert—to figure out what my father did with the money.”

  “You have how many brothers and sisters?” Charlie asked.

  With her chin raised, Gloria pierced Charlie with her fierce green gaze.

  “Three brothers, two sisters, and you can spare me the Brady Bunch jokes. I’ve heard them all.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She passed,” Gloria said. “Many years ago now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The gloves flapped again as Gloria waved away Charlie’s condolences.

  Turning her notebook to a fresh page, Charlie passed it to Gloria, along with a pen.

  “I’ll need the names and numbers for your siblings and anyone else you think I should talk to. Any close friends of your father’s, business associates, that kind of thing.”

  Gloria nodded as she wrote.

  The rickety old chair listed slightly as Charlie leaned her weight against the backrest, and she reached out to steady herself against the desk.

  “If you had to take a guess, who’s your money on?”

  Gloria paused in her writing.

  “Pardon?”

  “Which one of your siblings do you think would be most likely to attempt to collect on an early inheritance?”

  Gloria sighed.

  “I honestly can’t decide.”

  “Are they really that bad?”

  Gloria looked confused for a moment and then shook her head.

  “Oh no. It’s quite the opposite. I can’t imagine any of them stooping to something so common as murder,” she said. “Believe me, I’m no rube. I’ve watched enough true crime documentaries to know that money is as good a motivator as any. And the truth of it is, as much as my father encouraged us to be independent, we grew up sheltered. Or perhaps ‘spoiled’ is really the best way to say it. We are used to the finer things. Big houses. Nice cars. None of us have struggled.”

  “Is there anyone else who would stand to gain from your father’s death? Anyone outside the family?”

  Gloria folded her hands in her lap.

  “As a matter of fact, there is someone who would better fill that role, in my opinion.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Vivien Marley. His mistress.”

  Her face tightened when she said it, as if that last word tasted bitter in her mouth.

  “His…” Charlie blinked. “I’m sorry… you said your mother was dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then… I mean, wouldn’t she be your father’s girlfriend? Or fiancée?”

  Gloria scoffed.

  “Absolutely not. Their relationship began when my mother was still alive and continued up until his death. She’ll always be the other woman in my eyes. I honestly don’t know what my father saw in her. She’s barely older than me, for God’s sake.” Gloria rolled her eyes and laced her fingers together. “What you have to understand is that Mother and Father had an… arrangement, as sordid as that sounds.”

  “An arrangement?”

  Gloria studied her fingernails, the distinct pucker of distaste on her lips.

  “He was free to have other women as long as he agreed to never set my mother aside.”

  “So I guess all that ‘family first’ stuff was a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ type of deal,” Allie said.

  Charlie kept her focus on Gloria.

  “But then—”

  “You wonder why he didn’t marry Vivien after my mother died?”

  “Well… yes.”

  Gloria pinched the large diamond set into one of her rings and spun it around her finger absently.

  “I suppose he was a bit old-fashioned that way. His word was his bond. He told my mother he’d never marry his mistress, and I think in some way he felt that even after she died, it would have been dishonoring her to remarry. Anyway, I won’t deny that I have a certain bias against the woman. I’ve never liked her. Perhaps that clouds my judgment. Predisposes me to suspecting her.”

  Charlie definitely wanted to talk to this Vivien character.

  She hadn’t been sure what to make of Gloria at first. The woman had an air of snobbishness about her. But Charlie appreciated this sudden admission of a blind spot when it came to her father’s lover. She’d found that most people weren’t self-aware enough to realize they had them.

  “And to be quite blunt,” Gloria continued, “Vivien is such an airhead that I doubt she would have been able to pull something like this off.”

  Charlie handed Gloria a clipboard with the standard client contract attached. After a cursory glance at the pages, the woman signed her name to the bottom with a flourish of the pen.

  “I’d like to take a look at the house, if I can,” Charlie said.

  Gloria glanced at the thin, rose-gold Cartier watch encircling her wrist.

  “I can do it now, if we’re quick about it.” She stood and started pulling on her gloves. “You’ll follow me over?”

  Charlie nodded and grabbed her bag.

  THREE

  Charlie followed Gloria’s Bentley through downtown Salem Island, past the storefronts, and out to the end of the island where most of the wealthy residents lived. The “cake-eaters” as her uncle Frank called them.

  “Working a case for the Carmichael family,” Allie said, letting out a low whistle. “You’re a real hotshot now.”

  Charlie tried to ignore her, but as usual, Allie kept the conversation going all by herself.

  “Six kids. Old lady Carmichael was really pumping �
��em out,” Allie said. “She probably died just to give her vagina a rest. The ol’ dirt nap is one way to stop human beings from crawling out of the damn thing.”

  Charlie returned her coffee to the cup holder beside her.

  “Thanks for that visual.”

  The truth was, sometimes it was comforting to have Allie’s voice in her head. A little piece of her sister that never left.

  Other times, she just wished Allie would shut the hell up.

  Gloria’s Bentley slowed in front of Charlie, brake lights flashing red before swooping into a driveway flanked by two brick pillars. Charlie followed, rolling past a wrought-iron gate with a large copper “C” emblazoned in the center.

  A row of weeping willows lined both sides of the drive, their silvery-green foliage reaching almost close enough to brush the roof of the car. The house beyond was a mansion in the truest sense of the word: a Georgian revival masterpiece in red brick and slate tiles with formal gardens and hedges populating the grounds. Charlie’s mouth popped open at the sight. It looked like a postcard of an English country house where the queen might stay.

  “Damn. This is some classy shit,” Allie said.

  Charlie parked in front of the main entry and got out, catching a whiff of the spring flowers blooming along the path. As Gloria paused to inspect a silver Cadillac parked nearby, Charlie ogled the place, craning her neck to take it all in.

  She struggled to process that this vast estate existed on Salem Island. She’d known Dutch Carmichael was wealthy, but this was next level.

  Halfway up the marble steps of the entrance, Gloria turned back.

  “Are you coming?”

  With a final glance around at the exterior of the house, Charlie nodded.

  FOUR

  As Charlie passed through the front door, her mood shifted. The opulent awe of the exterior gave way to something ghostly inside, something hushed and eerie.

  Her gaze drifted up the sweeping staircase, lingering briefly on the crystal chandelier, roughly the size of her car, sparkling overhead.

  This was where Dutch Carmichael had met his demise. Tumbling down this long, curving staircase. Snapping bones. Crushing vertebrae.

  His maid had found him at the bottom in a pool of crusted blood. Cloudy eyes staring up at nothing.

  Charlie gawked at the spot where the body must have lain, the inlaid wood floor polished to a mirror-like sheen. Then her eyes swept back up the stairs.

  The tabloids had ghoulishly spread the leaked crime scene photos far and wide, and the graphic images flared in Charlie’s head now. The old man’s scalp had split and torn at the points of impact from the fall, flaps of skin coming free from the curvature of his skull.

  Gloria’s heels echoed as she strode beyond the entryway, and the clacking brought Charlie back to the present moment.

  “We might as well start here in the parlor,” Gloria said, sweeping aside a door across from the cursed staircase.

  A man stood in the room beyond with his back to them, pointing his phone at a large oil painting of a woman holding a spiked wheel and a book. The flash on his phone’s camera went off as Gloria and Charlie entered. He whirled around as he heard them approach.

  “Glori!” the man said, tucking his phone into his vest pocket. Charlie noted that he wore a full three-piece suit with no tie. “I didn’t know you were coming by.”

  Gloria crossed her arms over her chest. Charlie would have been able to read the displeasure in her posture a mile away.

  “Likewise,” she said, her tone flat.

  She allowed the man to plant a kiss on her cheek but didn’t exactly look pleased to see him.

  The man was familiar somehow. He looked around the same age as Gloria, with sandy hair and a smile he could flick on like a light bulb. It transformed his chiseled features into something softer. More approachable.

  He did it now, stretching his mouth wide and letting the skin at the corner of his eyes crinkle.

  Instead of smiling back, Gloria fixed him with an unwavering stare.

  “What are you doing in here, Wes?”

  “Me?” The man’s forehead wrinkled. “Well, I was talking with Tucker over at the Free Press, and they’re interested in doing a feature on Dad. A memorial of sorts. They asked me to write a little something about him, and they also want some photos. I was trying to find the one of all of us at Marjory’s cabin from a few summers ago, when we did the surprise party for Dad’s seventy-fifth. Do you happen to have a copy somewhere?”

  “I’ll have to look.” Gloria flicked her head at the painting. “And the reason you’re photographing the art?”

  The man blinked.

  “Photographing the… art?”

  “Don’t play stupid, Wes. I saw you take a picture of the Sabbatini.”

  “Oh, that!” He waved her away. “Tucker mentioned that Dad’s collecting might be an angle they would use in the feature. I thought I could take a few snapshots to give them an idea of what’s here.”

  The man squirmed slightly under Gloria’s fierce gaze. His eyes flicked over to Charlie, going wide as he made a show of noticing her.

  “Is this her? The crack investigator?”

  He moved closer, and Charlie noted how his brilliant white teeth were all the same size and shape, like a row of perfect little breath mints. At the thought, she realized he smelled slightly minty, as if he’d just gargled with mouthwash.

  He extended a hand.

  “Wesley Carmichael, pleased to meet you.”

  Of course, Charlie thought. That was why he looked familiar.

  Wesley Carmichael, formerly Senator Carmichael. Or Senator Bar-michael as the tabloids often taunted, a cruel reference to his long-standing alcohol problem.

  The lurid headlines flashed through Charlie’s head. The mugshot where he looked like he was half dead, massive purple bags puckering under his bloodshot eyes. It had started with an arrest for drunk driving, then the media dug up more and more from there. Hookers. Gambling. Still, for the most part, the public forgave these indiscretions, offered him a second chance. When he got arrested with a kilo of cocaine some months later, it effectively ended his political career and his marriage.

  “Charlie Winters,” she said.

  His grip was firm yet gentle, and he gave exactly three pumps before releasing her. A practiced gesture.

  Gloria pulled her gloves off.

  “So that’s it?” she asked, redirecting Wesley’s attention. “I’m supposed to believe you came all the way out here to take some pictures for Tucker?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Wesley sounded more hurt than defensive.

  “It means I hope I won’t find any other items missing from the house. You know we’ve only begun itemizing the assets. This all has to go by the book, and no distributions can be made until the estate is closed. The probate judge was very clear about that.”

  “Damn it, Glori. I told you it wasn’t me. You know Jude always had a hard-on for the Picasso—why don’t you ask him about it?”

  “I did, and he denied taking it. The painting certainly didn’t get up and walk out on its own, Wesley. Someone took it. As soon as Father died, the lying started. It’s like everything he taught us, every virtue he tried to reinforce, went flying out the window the minute he was in the ground.” She sighed. “Meanwhile, being the eldest, I get saddled with all the responsibility of trying to hold everything together.”

  “Come on, that’s not true.” He reached out and put a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “We’re in this together. You know that.”

  Gloria glanced at Charlie, then to her watch. She swiveled back to face Wesley.

  “If that’s true, perhaps you can do something for me?” She cocked her head sideways at Charlie. “I told Ms. Winters I’d show her around the house, but I’m supposed to be meeting with one of the appraisers in forty minutes. Could you take over from here?”

  Wesley’s face relaxed, and he seemed relieved that Gloria had gone from gri
lling him to asking for a favor.

  “Of course.”

  “If that’s alright with you?” Gloria asked, directing the question to Charlie. “I do apologize for passing you off like this, it’s just that this appraiser is supposed to be the best, and it was his only opening for the next month.”

  Charlie shrugged. She’d need to talk to all of the Carmichael clan at some point, and she might as well check Wesley off the list while she had him here.

  “It’s fine.”

  Gloria nodded once then slipped her fingers back into her gloves and headed for the door.

  “If you have questions or need anything, please don’t hesitate to call,” she said, turning back before shutting the door with an imposing thud.

  Wesley made a sweeping gesture with his hand, flashing his minty smile at her.

  “Shall we?”

  FIVE

  Wesley guided her through the parlor, which featured a large marble fireplace and bay windows overlooking the gardens at the front of the house. Next came the formal dining room with another massive chandelier glittering over the table like a nebula of diamonds.

  “I got the impression that Gloria filled you in on what I’m doing here?” Charlie said, pausing to admire the set of antique Delft pottery displayed against one wall of the room.

  “Yes,” Wesley said. “We’re the two oldest, so we’ve always had a bit of a bond over that. Sort of pseudo-parental figures to the rest, especially now.”

  Charlie followed Wesley across a hallway carpeted with Persian rugs and into a glass-roofed solarium with a view of the back lawn. Potted plants peppered the space—a lemon tree, a banana leaf palm, and a hibiscus that reached almost to the ceiling. The greenery gave the room a more relaxed feel than the rest of the house.

  Beyond that lay a kitchen that could have housed Charlie’s entire studio apartment inside. Wesley pushed through a swinging door into a butler’s pantry and then jogged up a stairwell that led to the second floor.

  Upstairs, they did a quick circuit of a series of bedrooms, all roughly the same size and decorated in the same classic style as the rest of the house.