by Mia Caldwell
She paused, looking out the windshield at the playing children, then turning back to Ian. “We’re still left with the million-dollar question. Who created the fake marriage license and bribed Sylvia to file it and tip off CGTV? I think it has to be—”
“CGTV,” Ian said.
Jada’s brows shot upward. “It had to be one of Sasha’s model frenemies. What makes you still think CGTV is behind everything? It doesn’t add up.”
“Sure it does. They planted the license, they bribed Sylvia, they deliberately told her to leak it back to them so no one would suspect CGTV’s hand in the affair when the truth about the fake license was discovered.”
Ian knew he was right, but he didn’t want to push too hard. He didn’t want Jada thinking he didn’t take her suspects seriously, even if that were the truth. It was something Jada didn’t need to know.
“Why would they run the story about you and me getting married if they knew it wasn’t what they’d planted at the records department?”
“They didn’t care. One scandal or another, it’s all the same to them as long as the info’s juicy. The information was in the official record, so they figured why not run with what they had, even if it wasn’t what they’d planted.”
“I don’t know.” Jada’s phone buzzed. “Hold on. It’s a text from Marina. Maybe she found something.”
He watched her read the text. She was achingly lovely today. He hadn’t touched her once. Not even for a quick kiss. It had been a rough day.
Jada’s face fell. “Looks like we have to cross two of Sasha’s enemies off the suspect list. Marina says Esmer Granger and Petra Sukolova were working in Milan last week. She’s got proof.”
Jada sent off a quick response. “Esmer and Petra may have hired someone to do their dirty work for them.”
“Sounds like a stretch.”
“Probably, but I’m not counting them out entirely. Not yet. For all practical purposes, though, I’m left with Freya Volker as my prime suspect. I’m lukewarm about her. Sasha said they’d recently made up their differences and that they’d been friendly for a while. Marina still hasn’t been able to touch base with Freya, unfortunately.”
“Any ideas about what we should do while we wait for what’s next?” he asked.
“We could go to the city, to your offices. I’m sure you have work to catch up on and maybe I could help in the search for Sylvia. Is Raul still waiting with the helicopter at the armory field?”
“He is. Shall we head over?”
“Yes, please.” She smiled at him. “You know, you’re super sexy right now.”
“Is that so? How sexy?”
“I’d tell you, but the buzzing from your phone is distracting me.”
Ian hadn’t noticed, he’d been so intent on Jada. He picked up his phone and quickly read the text.
He turned to Jada with a wide smile. “It’s from my assistant, Cathy. Looks like our trip to the city will have to wait.
Jada’s wide eyes sparkled with excitement. “Is it ...?”
“It is. They found Sylvia.”
Jada clapped her hands in delight, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard.
For Ian, the day no longer had a single rough spot left on it.
Chapter Four
IT WAS NEARLY TWO IN the afternoon and the sun beat down on the blacktop, bouncing heat waves onto Jada’s legs as she and Ian crossed the motel parking lot. The tang of tar, gasoline and decaying vegetation prickled Jada’s nostrils.
The motel was depressing. Half the letters were missing on the motel sign, transforming EZ Rest Arms Motel into EZ Re m ote. The building hadn’t been painted any time in this century, and tall weeds lined the lot, doing little to hide the blown trash piled against the sagging chain link fence. On one side of the lot sat a small, kidney-shaped pool with cracking cement, its faded bottom half-covered in slimy, green scum floating on stagnant rainwater.
“Welcome to the other side,” she told Ian.
“I’m not as insulated as you think,” he said. “I know about places like these.”
Jada thought if he knew about motels like this one, it was only from seeing them on television or in movies. There was no way he could understand what it meant to only be able to afford a motel like this one, not with his golden-spoon life. But she’d never say that to him.
A couple of Ian’s employees already had the motel staked out by the time Ian and Jada had arrived. They’d assured Ian that Sylvia and her family were inside their room.
Jada followed the plan she and Ian had devised. They stopped outside Sylvia’s room. Jada heard the muffled chatter of children behind the door. She knocked.
After some scuffling and the sounds of multiple locks clicking, the door swung open. Sylvia stood there, wearing a neon-colored tank top and shorts, her thick black hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She started a greeting, then paused as her jaw went slack.
“Jada?” She tilted her head to one side as if the angle would help her see past Jada’s disguise.
Jada lowered her glasses and peered over the top. “Hi Sylvia.”
Sylvia gasped then covered her gaping mouth with both hands. Behind her, from the room’s dark interior, came a man’s voice, presumably Sylvia’s husband.
“Is that the pizza?” he asked.
Sylvia snapped to, slipping out the door and pulling it most of the way closed. She called through the crack, “It’s someone from the front desk. They lost our registration info. I’m going to the office. Be right back.”
A child cried out, “I wanna go,” as Sylvia pulled the door closed.
“What are you doing here?” Sylvia hissed, low.
“Right back atcha,” Jada said. “We need to talk. Come on, before your family sees us.”
Sylvia frowned down at her bare feet.
“We’ve got a room only two doors down,” Jada reassured her.
Sylvia made a face like she wanted to argue, then she took stock of the tall man behind Jada. She goggled at Ian and whatever courage she’d mustered up to defy Jada evaporated.
Ian gestured toward the room and Sylvia trudged along, resigned to her fate for now.
The interior of Room 145 was no better than the exterior. It was dank, gloomy and depressing. It smelled faintly of dog pee and strongly of chemical sanitizer. At least the air conditioning was on, so it was cool, and once Jada removed her glasses and got a good look around, she saw that although everything was banged up, scratched and/or stained, it appeared to be decently clean.
She took a seat at a tiny table near the window and gestured for Sylvia to take the other. Sylvia sat and glanced at Ian, who removed his sunglasses and leaned against the white, concrete-block wall with his hands in his pockets, his expression nonchalant.
Jada didn’t blame him for standing. He probably didn’t want to sit on the dubious bedspread. Plus, she was pretty sure he was pulling the “put the ladies at ease” maneuver like he did at the courthouse.
“Sylvia, I’d like to introduce you to Ian Buckley,” Jada said. “Ian, this is Sylvia Watson.”
Ian smiled blandly and nodded at Sylvia who flushed a bright red.
Sylvia looked down at the carpet then over to Jada. She said nothing, just stared hard, her lips pursed tightly, cheeks and neck blazing.
Jada knew this game. She stared back at her opponent, keeping her face as blank as possible. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Silence continued. Jada squelched any temptation to bounce a knee or tap a finger on the table.
Tick-tock. Silence. Sweat broke out on Sylvia’s forehead and a single bead rolled down and dripped off her chin onto her chest. Her cheek and lips twitched.
Finally, Sylvia cracked. “Oh gawd! I’m so sorry, Jada. You don’t know. I’m a horrible person.” She began to sob and covered her face in her hands.
Jada wasn’t unmoved, but she did her best to look like she was. She pulled some tissues from her purse and handed them to the distraught woman. “It’s okay. Take these.”
> Sylvia scrubbed the tissues over suspiciously dry cheeks, particularly suspiciously for someone who had been making gasping sounds like she was crying her heart out. Jada’s wave of sympathy receded.
“I know I’ve done wrong,” Sylvia said in between panting hitches in her breathing. “I-I-I feel t-t-t-terrible. I’m so weak. And I needed the money so badly. I don’t know how I can ever forgive myself.”
She should be worrying more about getting forgiven by the people she hurt, Jada thought.
Jada nodded like she was buying the charade and handed Sylvia more tissues, which Sylvia wadded up and added to the other dry ones.
“I never thought in a million years that taking the money for that tip would ever hurt you in any way,” Sylvia said, giving a bad impersonation of someone sincere. “The woman who paid me said to tell the TV station there was something shocking about the supermodel Sasha in our records department. I don’t know Sasha personally, so I didn’t worry about it, you know? And we’re so hard up since my husband lost his job.”
“You never saw that shocking thing, whatever it was?” Jada asked.
“Oh no,” Sylvia said. “I had no idea what the woman was talking about, and I didn’t care. I took the money and went straight home. I thought about it the rest of the day, and came to regret taking the money, but it was too late. I didn’t know who the woman was so I couldn’t return the cash. I was too afraid not to go through with it, but I didn’t want to be connected to the tip, so the next morning I called and asked Marina for her help. Then I packed up my family and we hit the road. I didn’t want to be around when whatever was going to happen, happened.”
Jada looked at Ian to see if she could read what he thought of Sylvia’s confession. A slight lowering of his eyelids and a barely-discernible shake of his head told her he wasn’t buying the story any more than she was.
“What did you think when you saw what they did to me on CGTV Saturday morning?” Jada asked. “How they raked me over the coals and called me everything shy of a Jezebel, and probably only left out that because they didn’t think of it.”
Sylvia blinked, flinched.
It was time to hit her where Jada hoped it would hurt. “And what do you think about today, and the latest lies about me marrying Sasha? I’m the Bisexual Bigamist, have you heard? It’s probably cost me my job. I’ll likely have to leave Springers Glen forever because of this, even if my innocence is eventually revealed.”
Sylvia’s lower lip quivered.
Jada forged on with a final thrust. “People will never look at me the way they once did. Never. They’ll only see the scandal, not the person. And I may never be able to live that down. My life will never be the same. Because this happened.”
Sylvia’s eyes slowly filled with real tears. The tip of her nose turned red.
Jada thought about what she’d said, about how it was true, and how painful it had been to say it out loud. Her honesty radiated outward, reaching across the table and demanding Sylvia face her part in causing Jada’s pain.
Silence, but for a sniff from Sylvia. Then another sniffle and another. She blinked watery eyes, swiped her nose with the tissues still crumpled in her hand.
Any second, Jada thought, willing herself into complete stillness. To wait. Wait until ...
Sylvia sobbed once, hiccuped, then burst into wholesale tears. This time, when she buried her face in her hands, tears dripped between her fingers and splashed onto the tabletop.
In between sobs, she repeated, “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
This time, Jada believed her. She passed her all the tissues she had left. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” she repeated.
It took a few minutes for the worst of Sylvia’s tears to subside. Jada had to resist the urge to comfort and hug her, and she looked to Ian for strength. He gave her a stern, approving nod, encouraging her to be strong, to stay firm so they could get the whole story.
Sylvia’s wet face, her running nose and her bright red eyes, made for a heart-wrenching sight. She pressed soggy tissues against her cheeks. “Th-thanks for the tissues. You’re so kind, and I’m ... I’m such a shit.”
Jada straightened her back and her resolve while Sylvia moaned about how she’d done a terrible, terrible thing. Which was true, Jada told herself. Sylvia had definitely done wrong.
Ian brought Sylvia a glass of water, which she drank down quickly, thanking Ian profusely.
“Are you okay?” Jada asked.
Sylvia dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “No. But I’ll stop crying now. Sorry I broke down like that. I’ve been really stressed.”
“I know the feeling,” Jada said drily.
Sylvia’s thin shoulders sagged. “And it’s all my fault. I don’t know what to say. I’m so ashamed. I lied to you about everything. I don’t know why I did it. I mean, I know why I lied. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to me and my family when the truth comes out. What I meant was that I don’t know how I convinced myself to do what the woman wanted. That it would be okay and no one would get hurt. Know what I mean?”
Jada struggled to make sense of her jumbled sentences. “I think so.”
“I’ve been wishing so hard that I could go back in time, undo it all. How could I do what I did? And how could I do that to you? There’s no way to make it all right. You have to hate me, and I know Marina hates me, doesn’t she?”
“We don’t hate you.”
“You should. You don’t know what I did. All for money. We needed it so bad, though, but if I’d realized ... it kills me I can’t make it go away.”
“Maybe not, Sylvia, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to help.”
“I’ll do anything you want. It’s only right and I need to do the right thing now.” Sylvia looked down at the scratched formica tabletop. She was limp and emotionally defeated. “I’ll do anything, even ... you know.”
On their way to the motel, Ian had helped Jada build a brick wall inside herself as self-defense against Sylvia playing on her sympathies. It had protected her well, until now. When Jada heard the desperation and fear in Sylvia’s voice, the wall crumbled away, disappeared. Jada suddenly felt like crying, too.
“I’m not going to ask you to turn yourself in or anything like that, Sylvia,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that.”
Ian scowled at Jada and she ignored him. She knew she was going against the plan. He’d made it clear that they should maintain a silent threat of exposing Sylvia to the authorities as a means of coercing her to tell them everything she knew.
Now Jada had removed that threat. And she didn’t care that Ian wasn’t happy about it. She had to go with her gut, and her gut was telling her to relieve Sylvia’s fears, not as a ploy, but as a simple act of compassion.
Sylvia’s head lifted and she gazed at Jada with wide eyes. “You’re not? Why?”
“Because I know why you did it. You have children, a family to support. You needed the money. Your husband got laid off, the unemployment is gone, and the bills are piling up. Looking around this motel, it’s clear you didn’t take the money and blow it on a fancy vacation and five-star restaurants.”
Sylvia half-laughed and half-wept. “Yeah, well, this is still the first vacation I’ve had in six years.”
“Pizza any good?” Jada asked.
“The kids love it. I like the five-dollar subs down the street.”
They sat for a moment in silence, contemplating one another. Jada didn’t look at Ian.
Sylvia took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “Well, you’re not here to take me in, so what do you want? You name it, you’ve got it.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me everything that happened and everything you know about the woman who started all of this last Wednesday morning.”
“Yes. Of course. I’ll tell you everything I know.” She took a drink of water and readied herself. “Where do I start?”
Jada flipped open her notebook and prepared to take notes.
Chapter Fiv
e
IN A DIFFERENT RENTAL CAR this time, Ian drove away from the rundown motel, heading back to the small airport where Raul waited with the helicopter. He was a little tired and contemplated stopping for coffee.
Jada sighed deeply. “I’m starting to fade.”
“Me too. Coffee?”
“Please.”
As he drove, he kept an eye out for somewhere to stop.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We didn’t learn much from her.”
“I think she told us everything she knew, don’t you?”
“Yes, and that makes it worse. I was hoping to get more. I thought she’d be the key to solving the whole thing.”
“You got her to admit that she lied, that she was bribed to file a forged document,” Ian said.
“True, but we already had that figured out.”
Ian spied a fast food place ahead. “How’s the coffee at that place? Any good?”
“It’s not a specialty blend from an exclusive plantation in Java, brewed with the purest water from the most remote mountain in the Himalayas and delivered on the backs of endangered ducks, if that’s what you mean by good.”
That was a mouthful, Ian thought. He glanced at her to see if she was joking. Nope. More like bitter sarcasm. “Did my question offend you?”
“No. I’m just ... out of sorts. The coffee at that place up there is plain old average coffee that doesn’t cost a lot. It tastes how you’d expect ordinary coffee to taste. Does that answer your question?”
“Sort of,” he said. “So should we go through the drive-thru, or no?”
“Yes, please,” she said, and turned her head toward her window, shutting him out of view.
Something was wrong, he thought, and it wasn’t merely that they hadn’t gotten much useful information from Sylvia. He wished Jada would tell him what it was.
He’d been impressed with how she’d handled herself all day, but particularly impressed with how she got Sylvia to open up. At first, when she’d blown the plan by letting Sylvia off the legal hook, Ian had thought it was over, that they’d get nothing out of the records clerk.