Hell on Heels

by Carla Cassidy

  Harrah had spent most of the afternoon cleaning the house and transforming the dining room from a catch-all to an atmosphere perfect for formal dining for the twelve people who had been invited to the dinner.

  Chantal walked to the window and stared outside, but her thoughts were far away from the golf course and players in the late-afternoon sunshine. She turned back to face Harrah, who was in the process of blowing on her wet nails.

  “It’s interesting that Marcus’s parents loved and indulged him just like mine did me.” She found it not only interesting, but strangely disturbing. “They doted on him, gave him everything he wanted and needed, and yet he turned out to be a monster.”

  Harrah raised a perfectly arched black brow. “Honey, you aren’t anything close to a monster.” She shrugged. “Maybe his mama dressed him funny when he was a kid, or didn’t breast-feed him long enough when he was a baby.”

  Chantal threw herself back into her chair. “Why do people always assume it’s the mother who somehow screwed up a kid?”

  “Okay, then maybe his daddy dressed Marcus funny or didn’t breast-feed him long enough when he was a baby.”

  Chantal laughed again, then sobered. “I just find it interesting, you know, what makes a Marcus Willowby.”

  “So, what exactly is a narcissist anyway? I think I’ve dated some in my past.”

  “A narcissist is somebody who has an exaggerated sense of his own worth, somebody who can’t connect to people, doesn’t care about others’ needs or emotions. From what Marcus’s friends and acquaintances have told me, he has all the characteristics of a true narcissist.”

  “Is he dangerous?”

  Chantal frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. I think he could be. He has no moral compass except for how it relates to him and his needs. I would imagine him capable of anything if it came to his own preservation.”

  “Where do you think he is?” Harrah asked curiously. “I mean, do you think he’ll ever be found?”

  “I don’t know,” Chantal said honestly. “He could be on a mountain in Tibet or a ski slope in the Alps. He’s got enough money to disappear forever, but in my gut I think he’ll surface. If he’s a true narcissist, then he craves attention, and deep in his heart he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong.”

  She released a deep sigh. “He probably doesn’t understand what the big deal is, so he had sex with some unconscious women and videotaped his actions, they should be happy that he chose them.”

  “That’s so sick.”

  Chantal nodded. She’d spent the last couple of days trying to get into Marcus Willowby’s head and once she’d felt she’d succeeded, she hadn’t liked it there.

  Deep inside her, in the very depths of her soul, she worried that her life and Marcus’s mirrored each other’s so closely. She’d been as spoiled and as indulged as he had been and the comparisons were impossible to deny.

  Was there a streak of narcissism in her? Is that why at twenty-six years old she’d never had a relationship that really meant anything to her? Was she as incapable of truly loving another human being as Marcus?

  “I’ll tell you what would really be sick,” Harrah said, interrupting Chantal’s disturbing thoughts. “If your dinner guests arrive and you’re still sitting here dressed in your sweats.”

  Chantal looked at her watch and flew up from her chair. “Why didn’t you tell me it was getting so late?”

  Harrah grinned. “I just did.”

  It was almost five and her guests would arrive at six-thirty. She still had to take a bath, dress and check the final preparations.

  “I’m out of here,” Harrah said, also rising. “I’ll see you Monday morning.”

  “Thanks, Harrah.” As her assistant headed for the front door, Chantal went into the kitchen where Enrique, caterer extraordinaire, had taken control.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he commanded as she entered the room. He held a spatula in his hand like a weapon, ready to use it if necessary to keep her away from his creations.

  “Don’t worry, I have no intention of messing with a master at work.” Chantal grinned affectionately at the large man whose reputation for temper tantrums was as big as his reputation as one of Kansas City’s premier caterers. “I just wanted to check to make sure we were on schedule for dinner at seven.”

  “I’m on schedule, dear.” He raised a bushy black eyebrow. “But, I can’t imagine that you’ll look presentable by dinner time.”

  Enrique also had the reputation of being a catty bitch, but he was always forgiven because of his talent. “I’m headed to my room to get ready now.”

  “Good, go.” Enrique waved his hands to get her out of the kitchen.

  Minutes later in the master bathroom, Chantal sank down into a tub of hot water and scented bubbles. She leaned her head back against the cool porcelain, closed her eyes and drew a deep, long breath.

  For the past week she’d felt as if Marcus Willowby was slowly consuming not only the hours of the day and her dreams at night, but also her very soul.

  She’d spent the week talking to Marcus’s friends and relatives and had watched as Belinda threatened to fragment into a million pieces.

  Chantal’s friend was drinking too much and living on tranquilizers, increasing the pressure on Chantal who had begun to think that the only way to save her friend was to find Willowby.

  She’d tried to talk to the two victims, but they had refused to speak with her and had referred to their lawyers. She’d pored over the trial transcript and read the victims’ accounts.

  They’d met Willowby in a club. He’d been charming and pleasant and when he’d invited them back to his place neither of them had hesitated.

  Once at his condo he’d offered them his specialty, a fruity drink that had gone down easily. And that’s the last thing they remembered. Both of them had awakened the next morning in his spare room, embarrassed at the thought that they’d passed out.

  He’d assured them that it was no problem, that perhaps he’d made the drink too strong, then he’d offered to cook them breakfast, but by that time the two had realized something bad had happened.

  It was bad enough that he’d raped the women and videotaped the act while they’d been unconscious, but it added a touch of twisted perversion that the next morning he’d acted all charming and solicitous and had wanted to fix them breakfast before they left.

  She thought of the dinner party tonight. Normally Chantal hated to entertain but she was looking forward to tonight for one reason, the opportunity to talk to Frank Shofield about his friend Marcus.

  Frank was one of the few people she hadn’t spoken with yet and she was hoping that after a few drinks and a good meal, he might be loose enough to share something that would help.

  An hour later she stood in front of her bathroom mirror, checking her reflection. Tonight she looked like Chantal Worthington, heir to a fortune. Clad in a light-blue Carolina Herrera dress and bedecked with jewelry by Harrah, there was no hint of Carol Worth, bounty hunter, in the mirror.

  She turned away from the mirror and as she left her bedroom the doorbell rang. The first of her guests had arrived.

  Two and a half hours later, dinner and dessert had been consumed and everyone lingered at the table over coffee. Frank Shofield pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and looked at Chantal questioningly. “Do you mind if I step outside?” he asked.

  His wife, Jackie, rolled her eyes. “I’ve managed to break him of most of his vices, but that’s a habit stronger than me.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Chantal replied, secretly pleased as she got up and led Frank to her patio door. She stepped outside with him and gestured to the ashtray she kept for her smoking friends.

  Frank lit a cigarette and gestured toward the golf course. “You play?”

  “No, but I like the view. What about you? Do you play?” She knew he did, knew that one of his golf partners was Marcus.

  “As often as I can.”

  Chantal tr
ied to figure out a way to smoothly work the topic of Willowby into the conversation. “Terrible about Marcus Willowby, isn’t it?” she finally said, smoothness be damned. “You and he were good friends, weren’t you?”

  Frank drew on his cigarette, his forehead wrinkled in a frown. “I guess as much as anyone was friends with him.” He leaned with his back against the patio table. “Even though we basically grew up together and hung out, I never felt like I really knew him.”

  He shook his head and drew another drag on his cigarette. “But I would have never suspected him of doing the kind of crap he was arrested for.”

  “You never saw anything that would make you think he was capable of raping a woman?”

  “God, no.” He shook his head vehemently, then frowned again. “But, in a lot of ways Marcus was a private person. Oh, he could be fun and he could charm a snake out of his skin, but he didn’t talk much about important stuff.”

  “You have any idea where he might be now?”

  Frank took another long drag on his cigarette. “No, I haven’t talked to him since before his arrest. Why are you interested?” he asked.

  “Just curious. I was just wondering where I’d run if I were a fugitive from justice.”

  “He could be any of a dozen places, but my money would be on Tamillo.”

  “Mexico?” Excitement surged through Chantal’s veins. This was the first hint she’d gotten of any location where Willowby might be found. “Tamillo…why would he be there?”

  Frank shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette. “That was his place to go and escape. He’d fly down there for a week or two about four or five times a year. He loved it there, said it was his haven away from the madding crowds. Me, I’d head for Switzerland.” He flashed Chantal a smile. “I like to ski almost as much as I like to play golf. We’d better get back in there or Jackie will give me hell tonight.”

  An hour later Chantal told her guests goodbye. She couldn’t kick them out the door fast enough. She wanted to get to her computer and do a little research on the Mexican town.

  She had spent time in Mexico visiting Puerto Vallarta and Cancun on several occasions, but she’d never been to the smaller town of Tamillo.

  By midnight she had all the information available on the booming resort town. Up until five years ago, Tamillo had been a quiet little coastal town mostly populated by fishermen.

  Beautiful beaches and a depressed economy made the area ripe for development and in recent years five-star hotels and restaurants had sprung up and the town promoted itself as the new playground south of the border.

  She clicked off her computer and reared back in her chair, her mind working as effectively as an experienced shopper figuring out a thirty-three-percent discount without a calculator.

  In the relatively short time she had been bounty hunting, she’d learned several truths about criminals. One, they were never as bright as they thought they were, and two, they were creatures of habit.

  It wasn’t out of the realm of reality that Willowby would go someplace he’d been before, a place where he’d felt safe. Any place in Mexico made sense. There were no laws of extradition and the country had long been a refuge of fugitives fleeing the long arm of American law.

  She rubbed her eyes and slid her chair back from the desk. She needed some action. She’d spent far too much time in the past week sitting at her desk and talking on the phone.

  While she’d been chasing down leads on Willowby other criminals were running the streets or being brought in by Coleman.

  It pissed her off that some scum-sucking punk-ass dope dealer had put a price on her head. It pissed her off even more that she had to take the threat seriously and in doing so, she’d had to change her routine and stay away from Big Joey’s.

  It pissed her off that Luke Coleman was probably cleaning up the streets of Kansas City without any real competition. She could just imagine his monumental ego getting bigger with each day his crown as king of the bounty hunters wasn’t challenged.

  As she walked from the office to her bedroom she unzipped the back of her dress and smiled. Let Coleman run around the streets of the city picking up penny-ante bail jumpers.

  She had visions of a bikini, a bottle of sunscreen and the beautiful beaches of a quaint Mexican town called Tamillo.

  “You’re on an eleven o’clock flight tomorrow morning,” Harrah said the next morning as she entered the office where Chantal sat at her desk. Even though it was Sunday, Harrah had agreed to come in to help with the clean-up after the party. “The ticket is going to be faxed here in the next few minutes.”

  “Great. What about a hotel reservation?”

  Harrah sat in the chair opposite the desk. “You’re booked into the Hacienda Hotel, one of the newest up-scale hotels in the area. I told them you needed an open-ended reservation and that wasn’t a problem.”

  Chantal nodded. “Perfect. That gives me today to take care of last-minute details.”

  A deep frown cut across Harrah’s broad forehead. “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, do you have a plan?”

  “Sure. Find Willowby and bring him back.”

  Harrah’s frown deepened. “You make it sound so simple but Willowby isn’t going to just let you waltz right up to him and handcuff him. Honey, you don’t know how dangerous he could be.”

  Chantal leaned back in her chair. “I’d like to tell you that he’s not dangerous at all, that a man who rapes unconscious women is nothing but a coward and therefore not a threat. But I’d be a fool to believe that.”

  “A man who rapes women is capable of anything,” Harrah exclaimed.

  “A man who has been convicted of rape and sentenced to years behind bars definitely is capable of anything when it comes to maintaining his freedom,” Chantal agreed.

  “That’s what I’m talking about. I wish you weren’t going to try to do this all alone.”

  She smiled at her assistant. “Harrah, I’m not a stupid person and I don’t intend to put myself at risk. I’m just going down there to check things out. Right now I don’t even know if Willowby is there. It’s very possible I’ll have a couple of days in Tamillo and will only discover Willowby is nowhere in the area.”

  “Maybe you should just let this one go,” Harrah said softly.

  She stared at Harrah in surprise. “What are you talking about?” She’d never seen Harrah so serious. “You know I can’t let this one go.” Her stomach knotted at the very thought. “You’ve seen Belinda, you’ve talked to her. She’s falling apart and the only thing that’s going to put her back together again is if I get Willowby in custody.”

  Harrah raised a hand to her neck and worried her beaded necklace between two long fingers. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about all this.”

  “Maybe it’s heartburn,” Chantal replied dryly.

  Harrah gave her a dirty look. “I’m serious, Chantal. The last time I had a feeling like this my mother died.”

  A wave of apprehension swept through Chantal, but she offered Harrah a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine. I promise. I don’t intend to take any unnecessary chances. The worst that will happen is I’ll get a sunburn while I’m there.”

  “That’s not the worst that can happen and you know it,” Harrah replied with a scowl. She sighed and dropped her hand back to her lap. “How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

  “Three or four days…a week at the most. You’ll see to Sam and water the plants?”

  At that moment the fax machine began to work, spewing out the e-ticket for the flight the next day. Harrah got up to retrieve the ticket. “I’ll put this on the kitchen counter for now.”

  Chantal nodded absently, then stood as well. “I’ve got some errands to run. Why don’t you meet me back here about nine in the morning to take me to the airport.”

  Harrah nodded, although Chantal could tell her friend didn’t want her to go. “It will be fine, Harrah. I promise.”

  “Yeah, that’s just what my mama said when the doct
or told her it was just a shadow on her X-ray. Three months later she was dead.”

  “Believe me, I have no intention of being dead anytime soon.” She offered Harrah a reassuring smile. “And now, I’m going to start packing, then meet my mother for a late lunch.”

  It took her over an hour to get packed. Not only did she pack beach and casual wear but also clothing for clubbing and upscale restaurants.

  When she’d finished with the packing she left to meet her mother for lunch. Katherine had survived the wild car ride no worse for the experience and their lunch together was pleasant. After lunch Chantal shopped for a few last-minute items for her trip.

  She hadn’t talked to Joey all week and felt cut off from everything and everyone there. Unless she disguised herself she didn’t think it would be a great idea to go to the office. She hadn’t forgotten the taste of fear that had filled her mouth the night in the car with her mother.

  “If the mountain won’t come…” she murmured and punched in the number to the office. “Hi, Monica. It’s Carol,” she said when the phone was answered.

  “Hey, girl, you’ve been scarce the last few days.”

  “I think I’ve got some punks hunting me down so I’ve stayed away. But, I’m having withdrawal and wondered if maybe you’d be interested in meeting me for dinner and filling me in on any news.”

  “I’m on duty here most of the night. About all I could do is meet you at Danny’s for a quick bite around six.”

  “That would be great and if you could bring me copies of anything new that’s hit the boards or new information on any pending cases, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Will do. See you at Danny’s at six.”

  Chantal disconnected the call and headed back home. She had several hours to kill before meeting Monica and she intended to use those hours making phone calls to Tamillo.

  Using the Internet she got a listing of hotels in the city, then called each one and asked to be connected with Marcus Willowby’s room.

  Although most criminals would not be foolish enough to use their own names, Chantal knew that Willowby was no ordinary criminal. He might just be arrogant enough to register under his own name.