by Chelsea Cain
The car sat there for a minute. The windows were tinted and Susan couldn’t see inside. She stared at it anyway. Maybe Johnny Depp was inside.
Finally, the driver’s-side door opened and a huge man climbed out and started up the walk toward Susan. He was carrying a bouquet of pink roses, and was very definitely not Johnny Depp.
Susan continued to stare. He led with his chest when he walked, and moved at a quick, confident clip, his huge arms at his side. His long dark gray hair flapped at the shoulders of his dark leather jacket.
She recognized him. She didn’t know him. She had never been introduced to him. But she had seen him around. He was one of several men who always seemed at the periphery when she went out with Leo. He’d be at a nearby table, or at a club. Occasionally he’d appear and say something in Leo’s ear and the two of them would vanish for a while.
She didn’t know who he was. But she didn’t like him.
She took a drag of her cigarette and didn’t stand up.
The man got to the porch steps and proffered the bouquet like it was the head of a dragon he’d just slain for her pleasure. Susan took the flowers, but was careful not to look too enthusiastic about it. She gave them a brief inspection and then laid them next to her on the porch. There wasn’t a note. “Did Leo send you?” she asked skeptically. Leo had wooed her with flowers back when she’d worked at the Herald. But these weren’t his style.
Up close the man’s face was thickened with scars. They made his pale features blurry and uneven. “He’d like you to come to a party,” he said. His voice was hoarse, like he had a cold, but Susan had the feeling it always sounded that way. He made a florid gesture like a footman welcoming someone on board a carriage.
Mr. Gallant.
Susan looked at the town car and then at him. “When?” she asked. “Now?” She laughed nervously and shook her head. “No. No way. He can’t just ignore me all day and then send me flowers and expect me to drop everything at his beck and call.”
The man swallowed and his jaw tightened. She could tell he was someone who was not used to being told no. The corners of his mouth turned up, revealing a set of stained crowded teeth. “It would really mean a lot to him if you could come,” he said.
“What’s your name?” Susan asked, flicking ash from her cigarette into the herb garden.
“Cooper,” the man said.
“Let me tell you something, Cooper.” She picked up the bouquet and looked down at the plump pink blooms. “The chemicals they use on roses are some of the worst in the world,” she said, holding the flowers out so Cooper could see them. “Twenty percent of the pesticides they use on roses in Colombia are illegal in the U.S. Roses require a lot of fertilization. Do you know how much fossil fuel is needed to make fertilizer?” Cooper stared back blankly. “One kilogram of nitrogen-containing fertilizer takes two liters of oil,” Susan said. “Irrigation puts pressure on local water supplies, and results in salinization of local farmlands. That’s not even getting into the wage inequality endemic to most of the large corporations that dominate the global rose market.” Susan shook her head. “Don’t get my mother started on roses,” she said. She put the bouquet down and leveled her gaze at Cooper. “Leo knows my mother. And Leo would never send roses to me at her house, because he knows he would never hear the end of it. So I’m thinking Leo didn’t send these flowers, and he didn’t send you.”
Cooper’s smile was gone. It was probably for the best. It definitely didn’t make him look friendlier. “His old man sent me,” Cooper said. “He’s hosting a rather extravagant fete this evening. Leo will be there, and his father would like you to join them.”
Susan did want to see Leo. “Like a Halloween party?” she asked.
“More like a masquerade ball,” Cooper said.
“Seriously?”
Cooper shrugged. “Rich people,” he said.
Susan considered her options. Jack Reynolds was a criminal—a wealthy and socially prominent criminal, granted. She had met him once, through Archie, the same day she had met Leo. Jack had been rather charming, considering they were there to grill him about a murder. He had a private island. He probably had really good parties. Then there was her supposed boyfriend. Leo had gone off the grid before, but this was different. She hadn’t been entirely honest with Archie. The truth was that she had been the one to storm off last night, outside the club. She had blown up at Leo for making them miss the musical production of Road House and she’d called a cab. But really she’d just been mad about the lap dance he’d bought Archie. Now she was pissed that he wasn’t returning her calls. She wanted to see him, if only to read him the riot act. Susan stubbed her cigarette out, dropped it into the jack-o’-lantern, and stood up to go into the house. Cooper was up the stairs in one step. He didn’t touch her, but she stopped cold.
“I need to change,” she explained. She pulled at her hoodie. Her black tights had a hole in the knee. “I don’t have anything to wear. I need makeup.” That was all true. But she also wanted to go inside and call Archie.
“We’ll take care of all that,” Cooper said. “What are you? A size four?”
Susan nodded, and fidgeted some more with her hoodie. She didn’t like that he was looking at her that closely.
Cooper studied her for a moment and then something seemed to dawn on him. “You’re scared,” he said. “You’re scared of me.” His eyebrows lifted awkwardly, like he was trying to seem amiable. “If Jack Reynolds ever wants you dead, lady, he won’t send me and a car to get you,” he said. “Too many neighbors. People see shit. They remember more than you’d think. Look behind me,” he said.
Susan looked over his shoulder and saw their across-the-street neighbor, Bill, standing in the street by the curb with a rake.
“You see that guy pulling leaves out of the storm drain?” Cooper asked. He turned and gave Bill a friendly wave. Bill waved back. Cooper turned back to Susan. “That guy’s a witness,” he said. “The lady who passed us with the dog?” Susan hadn’t even seen a woman with a dog. “She lives in the neighborhood,” Cooper said. “So she knows you. The cops come by later, start asking questions, she’s seen me and the car—she’s a witness.” Cooper nodded at her. “If Jack Reynolds ever wants you dead, you won’t see me. They won’t see me.” He smiled at her, seemingly pleased at the excellence of his explanation. “This isn’t how we do it. So you’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”
Susan’s spine was as rigid as a board. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asked.
“It’s a party,” Cooper said, his eyes pleading. “You want me to put a glass slipper on your foot?”
Susan didn’t know what to do. She looked across the street at Bill. He was wearing rubber rain boots and jabbing the wrong end of the rake into the sludge of dead leaves that filled the storm drain. “Hey, Bill!” she shouted. Bill looked up. Cooper was right about one thing, Bill noticed everything that went on in that neighborhood—she had no doubt he’d made note of her visitor and his car. So she’d just make sure it stuck. “I’m going to a party at my boyfriend’s house!” Susan called. “His dad sent this guy Cooper to drive me! Tell my mom, okay?” Bill flashed her a peace sign.
Susan looked at Cooper. He appeared vexed again.
“Let’s go,” Susan said. She left the flowers on the porch next to the jack-o’-lantern and started down the porch steps for the car. “Do you have a minibar in that thing?”
CHAPTER
9
Pay attention. It was one of the tenets of journalism. Susan fixed her gaze out the tinted window as the car went over the gated stone bridge to Jack Reynolds’s island and tried to take in as much as she could. The bridge was lined with lit torches that sent threads of black smoke snaking into the dusky sky. Traffic was already backed up, awaiting instruction from men in suits wearing earpieces and carrying clipboards and barking orders at hired valets in red jackets. Cooper ignored the line and went over the bridge in the wrong lane. Once they’d made it the two hu
ndred feet to the other side, he bypassed what appeared to be the main drop-off point. Susan could see partygoers up ahead, people in tuxedos and evening gowns, walking up the trails through the manicured grounds to Jack Reynolds’s neo-Tudor estate. They were all wearing masks—some elaborately festooned with feathers and gems, some basic black. Cooper hadn’t been kidding. This wasn’t just a ball; it was a masked ball. As social anxiety instigators went, masked balls were pretty near the top of Susan’s list, right after playing team sports and giving speeches to old people (the old people always fell asleep and Susan never knew if it was the speech or just their normal nap cycle). But people in masks were always assholes. It was a scientific law. Give someone anonymity and all social niceties break down. The Internet had proven that. By ten o’clock the couples would be fighting and the single people would be hooking up with people they wouldn’t be able to recognize in the morning. This was how masked balls went. This was what made them dangerous. Susan sank glumly in her seat as Cooper continued winding along a private lane that led around the side of the main house.
Susan had been to the island before. Once. Archie had gone to Jack for help on an investigation, and Susan had tagged along. That’s how she had met Leo. Leo had introduced himself as Jack’s attorney. He’d conveniently left out the part about being Jack’s son.
She hadn’t even known there were any islands in Lake Oswego before Archie had driven her over the bridge that first time. Lake Oswego was a large private lake run by the Lake Oswego Corporation and ringed by tony lakeside residences. The city of Lake Oswego, where the lake was, was a wealthy suburb of Portland, a place where Trail Blazer players lived, and people waited twenty minutes in line for a croissant. Most of the Portlanders Susan knew didn’t even know that Lake Oswego had a lake.
Susan hadn’t gotten to see much of the five-and-a-half-acre island that first trip. They hadn’t been invited inside the 1929 nine-thousand-square-foot Tudor mansion at the center of the island. Instead she and Archie had talked to Jack and Leo near the castlelike stone boathouse on the private dock next to Jack’s sailboat. Susan had Googled the island several times since then, and through old real estate records and Google Earth she had put together a pretty complete mental picture of what she had missed the first time—namely, the helipad, formal rose garden, guesthouse, waterfalls, lakeside pool, sauna, and the nearly one mile of walking trails.
She and Leo had been dating for nine months and he had yet to invite her to the family compound. She got it. His father was a drug lord and Leo was secretly working for the DEA. There were a lot of secrets to keep straight. He was probably afraid that she’d blurt out something she shouldn’t over canapés with dear old Dad.
Cooper parked the car next to a smaller Tudor structure, built out of the same old-growth timber and basalt as the main house. This was the guesthouse. Susan had seen pictures of it online in an old issue of Oregon Home magazine. Apparently Jack Reynolds entertained a lot of guests—his guesthouse looked twice as big as her mother’s place.
Cooper got out of the car and came around and opened the backseat passenger-side door for her.
“This way,” he said, lifting his chin toward the guesthouse. She followed him without question. It wasn’t that she didn’t have questions; just that she had so many that she didn’t know where to begin. Activity swarmed around them. The guesthouse was situated behind the main house, and was clearly being used as a staging area for the party. A caterer’s truck parked next to a florist’s truck parked next to an event supply truck. Men wearing windbreakers with the word SECURITY across the back muttered into walkie-talkies. Caterers in black pants and white shirts and black ties unloaded cases of wine.
“When can I see Leo?” Susan asked.
They had reached the guesthouse. The entry was an enormous arched oak door, framed with stone. Wrought-iron lamps hung on either side of the door under gargoyles that had been carved into the stone. It all seemed a little ostentatious for a guesthouse, even an obnoxious one.
Cooper turned the knob and went inside and Susan scuttled in after him. The door opened into a cavernous room with a half-timber-and-stucco ceiling and walls paneled with gleaming dark wood. Arched leaded glass windows looked out on the lake. Twilight was giving way to bona fide evening. Susan could see the lights of the houses along the shore. The lake was black and empty, like a patch of starless sky.
“You were right about her size,” she heard Cooper say.
Susan redirected her attention inside the room. It was the living room, or parlor, or whatever the very wealthy called places where they came together and drank sherry after eating escargot. The furniture was all dark wood and worn velvet and cracked leather. Oriental rugs blanketed the floor at carefully quirky angles. Antique books lined the built-in shelves. A young woman with long wavy dark hair rose from a chair and walked toward Susan. She paused at a portable garment rack, on which several evening gowns hung, and pulled one from its hanger. Susan saw the professional-looking makeup box on the coffee table—a tackle box full of blush and oily sticks of foundation. The woman strolling toward her with the gown looked familiar. She was tall and fit, in her early twenties but with the effortless confidence of someone older. Her black pants and black T-shirt were nondescript, but still showed off her curves. Her makeup was natural, her hair was loose, but there was something about the way she moved—she had the self-possession of someone used to people watching her. Maybe it was the way she flipped her hair, or the sway of her hips—but something clicked. Susan recognized her. And as soon as she did, Susan felt her cheeks burn. She was the stripper from the night before, the one who had given Archie a lap dance.
The hussy.
Susan had tried not to wonder what had gone on in that room. What, exactly, the woman had done to get Archie off, and if he’d liked it. Susan had tried, but she couldn’t get it out of her head. Archie had seen this woman almost naked. She had rubbed herself against him. Had he put his hands on her? Had Leo?
Susan took a long breath, willed her face to cool, and smiled.
The hussy stuck her hand out and smiled back. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Star.”
CHAPTER
10
A valet had taken Archie’s city-issued Taurus. He often felt the need to apologize when valets took his car. They always looked so disappointed. He wanted to explain that it wasn’t his car; that it belonged to the city—but the truth was, if he ever bought his own car, he’d probably end up with something just as boring.
The invitation had gotten him over the bridge.
Now a thick-necked man wearing a dark suit and an earpiece looked Archie up and down. He had a broad chest and deep-set, watchful eyes, and his hair was shaved down to a stiff bristle. He looked like a cop—though Archie didn’t recognize him—or maybe ex-military. “Name,” he demanded.
“Archie Sheridan,” Archie said.
Archie produced the invitation Sanchez had given him but the man waved it away, and instead scanned a printed list he had on a clipboard. Archie could see the bulge under his suit where he was wearing a gun. That kind of thing could be hidden, but he wasn’t trying. “I don’t see you,” the man said. Archie saw his body language shift. He straightened up, his chest expanded. He rotated a finger in the air, and two other men in suits looked up and started to make a beeline for them.
“I’m a friend of Leo’s,” Archie said quickly. “Maybe you should check with him.”
Archie had a brief fantasy of the man with the clipboard calling Leo down from the house and then Archie and Leo jumping into a car and driving away together. Could it be that easy?
The other two suits arrived on either side of Archie. They looked like they’d come out of the same Humvee that the first guy had—same body type, same general facial structure, same military bearing.
“Stay with him,” the first suit told the other two, and he gave Archie a skeptical look and stepped back, already lifting a cell phone to his ear.
The two new suits crosse
d their arms in unison. Party guests streamed past them, jewelry glinting in the torchlight. They were all wearing masks. Archie was pretty sure his tux hadn’t come with one. Maybe he could cut two holes in his sock and tie it around his head. He thought about making that joke out loud, but he had the feeling it would go unappreciated.
“So,” Archie said. “Nice place, huh?” The island was over five acres. Archie wondered how many bodies were buried on it.
They didn’t answer.
“Have you seen Leo around?” Archie asked. Just an old friend, dropping by for a visit.
Nothing.
The first suit returned. “You’re wanted inside,” he said.
* * *
Jack Reynolds was waiting in his office for them, wearing a tuxedo and puffing on a cigar. Music from the party was a distant thrum through the textured stucco walls.
It had been over a year since Archie had seen Jack. When they’d first met, almost fourteen years before, Jack had been leaner, almost hawkish. He was one of those men who seemed to get better-looking as they aged. Though he was sixty-five, the lines around his eyes and mouth, the silver in his dark hair, only made him look more dashing. He looked like one of those grinning silver-haired men in Viagra commercials who were always getting off motorcycles and heading inside to get it on with their waiting wives.
Now Jack sat on the edge of his desk, the desk lamp behind him the only light on in the room. Cigar smoke hung like a cloud over his head.
Archie had been in this room before. It was a masculine lair, the stucco walls hung with photographs of Jack’s sailboats. A built-in bar sparkled with crystal glassware and expensive liquor bottles. Leather chairs and a leather sofa created a sitting area in the middle of the room under a massive wrought-iron light fixture. Behind Jack’s desk, the room’s leaded glass windows looked out into darkness.
Jack grinned and rolled the cigar between his fingers. “Do you know who this guy is, Karim?” he asked. He wasn’t talking to Archie. He was talking to the caramel-skinned man sitting next to Archie.