Girl Under Water: An absolutely unputdownable and gripping crime thriller

by L. T. Vargus

  Jude’s resolve wavered at the sound of Brandon’s voice, and he released his hold on the door. Charlie whisked it open, but Jude barreled through ahead of her, no doubt rushing to get away from the scene.

  An image of the car speeding away after hitting Gloria flashed in Charlie’s mind, freezing her on the spot.

  Brandon reached out and touched her arm.

  “Charlie? You OK?”

  She blinked the memories away.

  “Yeah.”

  “You sure? What happened? Did he corner you in here?”

  “He tried to bribe me to give him access to the laptop ahead of everyone else. When I said no, he got angry.”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry.” Brandon scowled. “Jude’s always had a bit of a temper. He stabbed me with a pencil once. He was twelve.”

  “Yikes. And ouch.”

  “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

  Charlie shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  “I’ll have a talk with him,” Brandon said.

  “Please don’t.”

  “Well someone needs to set him straight,” Brandon insisted. “It’s not right for him to act that way.”

  Charlie sighed and closed her eyes.

  “I know, but I think it’s better if we just try to keep the peace until Mason cracks the encryption.”

  “If you insist,” Brandon said, playing up his disappointment. “But when this is all over, I owe him a punch in the nose.”

  They didn’t have to wait long. Less than twenty minutes after Charlie and Brandon rejoined the group in the solarium, Mason held his hands in the air.

  “I’m in.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Charlie scooted a chair over so she and Mason could go through the contents of the laptop together. The Carmichaels gathered behind the desk, intrigued at first. But after about ten minutes of skimming extremely mundane documents—certificates of pedigree for Dutch’s many horses, a spreadsheet with Dutch’s to-read list, copies of all of Dutch’s email correspondence—the family lost interest and left Charlie and Mason to do the dirty work.

  Jude got out his vape pen, but after a pointed look from Wesley, he scoffed and went outside. Brandon and Dara started a game of checkers. Marjory sucked down Jolly Rancher after Jolly Rancher until her phone rang and she moved into the kitchen to take the call. The room was strangely quiet for some time. The calm before the storm.

  Charlie and Mason spent the first hour searching for the will with every combination of search terms and phrases they could think of. When that proved fruitless, they moved onto Dutch’s photos, which took even longer. There were several hundred gigabytes of pictures on the laptop—snapshots of family functions, headshots and promotional images for Dutch’s business, professional photographs of Dutch’s many horses. But the one thing they all had in common was they were totally benign. Nothing remotely sordid in any of them.

  It was past five when Dara suggested she might go get some food for everyone, which Wesley declared an “outstanding idea.” She came back forty minutes later with a tray of sandwiches, which Marjory promptly complained about.

  “Ham, salami, capicola. Everything has pork in it. I don’t eat hog,” she said, scowling as she set about picking everything off her sandwich but the lettuce and the cheese.

  Charlie and Mason each grabbed a sandwich and returned to their task. Having combed through the most obvious files and documents first, Charlie suggested they go back and peruse the few hundred email exchanges Dutch had saved. And so began another hour of tedium.

  Dutch arguing with an interior designer about what shade of red an accent wall in one of the conference rooms should be. He wanted “Elk Tongue” while she favored “Sangria.”

  Dutch inquiring about something called a “Demonzapper,” which Charlie eventually figured out was the name of a horse.

  Dutch demanding a contractor reimburse him for an antique sconce that had been damaged when workers were repairing some of the brickwork on the garage.

  Dutch scheduled lunches, brunches, tee times, and racquetball sessions with friends and colleagues. He did a surprising amount of administrative stuff like this himself, working through his private email, not seeming to delegate these kinds of tasks to assistants or secretaries. Perhaps that made him a bit of a maverick or lone wolf, but it also made his correspondence that much more of a chore to wade through.

  Charlie lost track of time until Marjory burst into the room from the kitchen sometime later. She stormed over to Charlie’s side of the desk and put her hands on her hips.

  “How much longer is this going to take?”

  “I’m not really sure.” Charlie glanced over at Mason. “There are thousands of files here. Without any idea of what we’re looking for, we have to go through them one by one.”

  “You’re supposed to be looking for the will. Can’t you just search ‘last will and testament’ or something like that?”

  “We tried that,” Mason explained. “We tried every combination of search terms and file types we could think of, but we didn’t find anything.”

  This time, Mason’s charm wasn’t enough to quell Marjory’s fit. One of her Jolly Rancher wrappers was in her hand, and when she squeezed her fist, the plastic crinkled.

  “Well, I’m tired of waiting. And I still don’t like the idea of two outsiders going through Daddy’s things. I think you should leave, the both of you.”

  Wesley got to his feet.

  “Marjie, the family agreed—”

  “I don’t care what the family agreed!” Suddenly, she burst into tears. “I just want this to be over already.”

  Wesley put an arm around her and pulled her close.

  “Oh, Marjie. I know you do. I think we all feel that way. These last few weeks have been hell.” He guided Marjory back toward the kitchen. “Why don’t we make everyone some tea? Some of that vanilla chamomile you like so much?”

  As Marjory and Wesley disappeared into the kitchen, Charlie turned to Mason, expecting to exchange some kind of knowing glance about the uppity rich folk. But Mason wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the computer screen, his brow furrowed.

  “What is it?”

  “Read this email and tell me what you think.”

  The first thing Charlie’s eyes locked on was the sender’s address: gkentwood@carmichaelinvestments.com

  “This is from the vice president of Dutch’s old firm.”

  “Read it.”

  The subject read: PROBLEM.

  Her gaze slid down to the body of the email.

  Dutch,

  The Silvestri and Walsh accounts have requested substantial redemptions this morning. We’re talking seven figures. The main account is pretty much tapped out. Thoughts?

  Greg

  Charlie shook her head.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Read the response,” Mason whispered.

  Charlie scrolled down and read Dutch’s email back to Greg.

  Greg,

  There should be enough in my JPM account to cover the redemptions. Let me check, and if not, I have a few big fish on the line. I can try to reel them in this week.

  Dutch

  That did get Charlie’s attention. There was something off about it, but Charlie wanted to be certain it was what she thought it was.

  “My retirement account consists of some novelty two-dollar bills my uncle got me for my birthday when I was ten and an old Pepsi Gotta Have It card, so I’m far from being an expert on this stuff,” Charlie said. “But a redemption is like a withdrawal, right?”

  Mason nodded.

  “Right. This Greg guy is saying that two of their account holders want to withdraw money. A lot of it. That’s not so unusual. But what first caught my eye was when he said the main account is tapped out. Because first of all, ‘tapped out’ doesn’t sound great. But then Dutch says there should be enough money in his account to cover the redemptions. By law, clients’ money should be kept separate from personal or business funds.
” Shaking his head, Mason went on. “To top it all off, Dutch says the thing about having a few big fish on the line… It sounds to me like he’s saying if they get some new investors to give them money… I mean, it sounds like some Bernie Madoff scheme.”

  “It’s not exactly hard evidence,” Charlie said. “But it looks bad.”

  They scrolled through more correspondence, focusing just on emails between Dutch and Gregory Kentwood. There were several similar messages from Kentwood, who seemed increasingly panicked about the state of their accounts.

  In one, he wrote:

  The Legrands were in today, grumbling about closing their account out entirely, but I just managed to convince them to stay. We’re on thin ice, Dutch.

  For the first time, Charlie had an idea of where Dutch’s massive fortune had gone. Or rather that it hadn’t gone anywhere. It had simply never existed.

  Could the great Dutch Carmichael have been a fraud all this time? She shouldn’t let herself think that. Not yet. It seemed the most likely explanation, but this kind of thing was hardly her area of expertise.

  “What are you going to do?” Mason asked, his voice low.

  “I mean, I have to tell them, right? It’s what they hired me for.”

  Charlie’s eyes flitted about the room from one Carmichael to the next, wondering how each of them would react to the notion that their inheritance had probably just gone up in a puff of smoke.

  “So… I don’t mean to be a dick, but I think I’m gonna duck out now,” Mason said, already packing up his gear.

  Charlie smiled.

  “No, I get it.” She patted his arm. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Any time.”

  Marjory and Wesley came back in the room just as Mason was leaving. Marjory frowned as she watched him slip into the hallway.

  “Where’s he going?” Her head whipped around to face Charlie. “Are you done then?”

  Charlie chewed her lip, bracing herself for what would come next.

  “I think we all need to have a little talk.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  “That’s outrageous!” Marjory shouted when Charlie explained what she and Mason had found. “There’s just no way that it’s true.”

  “It’s not definitive evidence, but I think the authorities will want to take a closer look,” Charlie said, shrugging.

  “Are you sure the emails are legitimate?” Wesley asked. “Isn’t that something that can easily be faked?”

  “Why would your father encrypt fake emails that seem to implicate him in fraud on his own computer?” Charlie asked.

  “Well when you phrase it like that…” Wesley said.

  But Marjory wasn’t finished with her outburst.

  “This is some kind of smear campaign. Someone obviously hired you to come in and destroy our family, and I will be damned if I allow that to happen!”

  She lurched for the computer, sending it skittering across the massive desk. Charlie darted around and barely managed to keep it from falling off the far end of the desk.

  When her attempt to destroy the computer failed, Marjory picked up a lamp and hurled it at Charlie. She side-stepped it rather easily, which only seemed to enrage Marjory further.

  She screamed and tried to rush Charlie, hands out in front of her like claws—to attack Charlie or destroy the computer, Charlie didn’t know. It took Brandon, Jude, and Dara to drag Marjory out of the room and into the kitchen. When they’d gone and some semblance of order had returned to the room, Wesley heaved a sigh.

  “I assume you plan to deliver that to the police?” He gestured at the laptop now clutched tightly to Charlie’s chest.

  “I have to, legally. It might be evidence of fraud,” she said.

  Wesley ran a hand through his hair.

  “Could you do me one small favor?”

  “What?”

  “Hold onto it for just a little while. Give us a day to get things figured out, as a family?”

  After a moment of hesitation, Charlie nodded. Wesley walked her out to the entryway, holding the door open for her.

  “And I apologize for Marjory. She’s not herself lately. I think Gloria’s death in particular has hit her harder than any of us realized.”

  Outside, Charlie climbed into her car and nestled the laptop safely in the passenger seat beside her.

  “Dude, really?” Allie said. “You’re gonna sit on this bombshell just because Wesley asked nicely?”

  Starting the car, Charlie scoffed.

  “No. I told him that so he’d let me leave without a fuss.” She put the car in drive and headed toward the road. “I’m going straight to the police with this.”

  FIFTY-FOUR

  As the Carmichael mansion disappeared from view behind her, Charlie glanced at the clock on the dash. It was getting toward evening, and she wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep the rest of the day. The sooner she got the computer to the police, the better.

  She didn’t know what exactly Wesley had meant when he’d asked her to give the family time to “figure things out.” Maybe he’d only meant that they’d prepare themselves for the shitstorm that would inevitably rain down when the public discovered the truth about Dutch’s firm. But she couldn’t help but wonder if what he really wanted was an opportunity to grab anything he could from the house and bank accounts before the Feds descended upon them like buzzards.

  She entered a rural stretch of road with woods crowding the shoulder, too thick to see through. Everything was shady over here, what was left of the fading light blotted out by tree branches, creeping vines, and moss.

  Charlie couldn’t stop glancing over at the laptop on the seat beside her, like if she let it out of her sight for longer than a minute, it might vanish. It might not have led her to the will, but what she had found was important, even if she didn’t know the exact extent of its meaning yet.

  A Ponzi scheme. Was it really possible the Carmichael fortune had been a sham all along? Dutch Carmichael’s face had been plastered on so many magazine covers for decades. He’d become synonymous with the term “billionaire,” the human avatar of success, and all the while he’d sat atop a rotting empire merely pretending at greatness?

  A fake. A phony.

  She shuddered at the thought. Surprised that it would affect her this deeply. Perhaps it was the size of the lie that got her.

  Could it be a misunderstanding? She didn’t think so. The emails were straightforward evidence of extreme neglect and carelessness at the very least. It had to be deliberate, she thought. Dutch seemed the meticulous type, even scheduling his own meetings and lunches. Everything was intentional with him.

  The car snaked around turns now, the road going curvy here along the water’s edge. The dark woods densely packed the area to her right, but the expanse of Lake St. Clair glistened on her left, open water that reached out to the horizon.

  She looked out over the choppy blue waves at the bottom of a small cliff, the jagged decline making it seem as though the water lay at the bottom of a flight of stairs. Sunlight glittered against the roiling surface, refracting jewels of white that made her squint.

  The steep drop-off and deep waters on this side of the island made it a favorite swimming spot for the local kids in the summer. When tourists clogged the beaches, the Salem Island natives would flock here instead, away from the crowds of out-of-towners. She’d spent hours here with Allie, jumping off the sheer edge into the water below, perfecting swan dives, and trying to see who could make the biggest splash with a cannonball.

  Charlie brought her eyes back to the road, and again her gaze crept over to the laptop resting on the passenger seat.

  Her stomach gurgled. Some part of her was nervous, restless, overcome with anticipation, though she didn’t know why. She just needed to get the laptop to the police and be done with this part. The law would take over after this short car ride across town. Simple. Routine. So why was her chest so tight?

  The red car flashed in her head again. The
sound as it struck Gloria. That lone flare of the brake lights. And then it had sped away as if Gloria had been nothing more than a raccoon or a squirrel. Roadkill.

  She remembered running out into the road. Her bare feet touching the warmth of the asphalt. Her eyes locking on the broken figure.

  The fluttering of Gloria’s chest. The blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

  She had seemed so small in that moment. So fragile. A baby bird knocked out of the nest.

  Yes. That was why Charlie was nervous. Because nothing was quite what it seemed with this case. Because the threats were everywhere, circling her like predators, hiding in plain sight.

  She gripped the wheel tighter.

  Just get the laptop to Zoe, that was all she needed to do. Turn over the evidence. She’d figure out the rest later.

  A movement in the rearview mirror caught her eye and interrupted her thoughts.

  The car rose up over the hill behind her. The fluctuating shade from the trees made it hard to make out at first—a sports car, she thought, but was it gaining on her? There was something aggressive about the way it moved, flickering through the dappled light, getting closer every second.

  She could see it finally. Really see it.

  It was a sports car, for sure. Red and sleek.

  Just like the one that had hit Gloria.

  The car built even more speed as it hurtled down the hill. Faster. Faster. It erased the space between them. Raced up behind her.

  Then it fanned out into the next lane. Moving alongside her.

  Charlie could hear the panic in Allie’s voice as she spoke.

  “It’s… it’s going to—”

  The sports car bashed into her fender, its front end jamming her rear end into a fishtail.

  The Focus went squirrelly. Skidding. Out of Charlie’s control.

  She strangled the wheel. Jerked it.

  Watched the world spinning around her. The car careening toward that empty space where the road ended and the drop to the water began.