Lethal Trust

by Lala Corriere

  “But, I have a few more questions and a few more minutes,” I said.

  “You caught me. I’m a liar.”

  With the call ended, I jotted down a few notes with full intentions to meet the man face-to-face, no matter if it was in some men’s bathroom. I turned to the files and stacks of photographs and news clippings on my desk.

  Hunter might be easier to read than he thought. The man had no depth. He held an MBA with an undergraduate degree in economics from an online institution. From what I could gather he barely squeaked by at this lower university and I could see why.

  He wore the title of a ladies’ man well. I flipped through hundreds of photographs with him adorned by scores of stunning women.

  His longest relationship lasted only eight months with a beauty named Angela Fine.

  A collection of photographs captured the enraptured couple, always smiling and posing for the photographers. Whether on yachts, attending galas, watching polo, or attending the team football games, the couple caught the eyes of the cameras. When the games were away Ms. Fine was invited to be the second female on the team jet flying to the opponent’s field.

  Claudia Childs was the first.

  Now the name registered with me. The two women had gotten into a huge verbal brawl, in public, at a fundraiser. The cameras with audio betrayed the ugliness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I SAT PARKED in the cell phone waiting lot at Tucson International Airport.

  Thrilled to see Marcos Julian, my man, I arrived twenty minutes early, and that was after the hour I spent trying to decide what to wear. With all of my detective disguises I could pick him up as a stripper, a school girl, a librarian, or a man. Finally, I decided to go as me in shorts, a tee-shirt, and flip flops.

  My perfectly laid out plan was for limited distractions to entertain Marcos during his short stay back in Tucson. I wanted to be his sole entertainment.

  Sitting there waiting in the lot, that mind of mine went into full gear. Why did I have this unconventional strong need to make things more complicated than they were. Why?

  What did I have with this Childs’ case except for my gut instincts that weren’t cooperating with me at full speed?

  I had two separate suspicious deaths that were not suspicious to the local authorities.

  I had a break-in at Stacie’s home where the only items taken were a laptop, a tablet, files, and other sources of data. The police told me they were still investigating it. I doubted it. The burglary caused no bodily harm, and even though the place was trashed there wasn’t much physical damage, let alone the fact that all of her items of value remained untouched.

  Were Stacie and I the only ones connecting the dots?

  My wandering brain was interrupted with one phone call. Marcos had arrived and he now stood at passenger pickup awaiting his chariot.

  I zipped around in my red convertible Mustang that he couldn’t miss. I might have missed him. My prince had turned into some Judean desert hobo, based on both his clothes and gear.

  No matter, that was my guy and I slipped up to the curb next to him.

  We embraced and kissed for so long that finally we were firmly told to move it along by security.

  “My schedule is so crazy, Cassie. After my stay with you I’m off to two other back-to-back assignments.”

  “It’s because you’re good at what you do and you love what you do. I love that for you. You’re living your dream. I’m glad I’m in it.”

  “Oh, but how I dream of you and those legs wrapped around me.”

  “Five days?” I asked.

  He winced and bowed his head as he laced his fingers through thick black hair that I noticed now to be speckled with a little salt.

  “Only four days now, my love. Three nights is all I have here.”

  This seemed cruel to me. Inhumane. And then I remembered my own insane schedule. Marcos was worth it and he deemed me worthy, and we would rock our first night back together.

  Sex with Marcos was like slipping down into a warm spa while still being able to breathe. I had uncorked a bottle of Prosecco and we barely took a sip before we found ourselves naked on my bed.

  He knew how and where to push my buttons and I knew every inch of his body and what would most please him. While we were often half of the world apart, I knew how to rock his universe.

  Sometimes we just cuddled and spooned. Often we looked into each others’ eyes as if they were magnetized, our bodies motionless.

  Legs and arms would then wrap and flail with a sense of urgency for us to become one.

  Yes. Marcos was worth the wait.

  He had wisely leased his home in Tucson due to his travel schedule, so I gladly became his home base.

  That next morning he brought fresh coffee and fresh squeezed grapefruit he had picked off of my tree into my bedroom as I had barely stirred with exhaustion, and to think he was the one with jetlag!

  We knew one another and that sometimes that got in the way. While enamored in our love and our love making, he asked me what had me so troubled as I stared across at the pool outside my bedroom window.

  I gave him the Cliff notes report on the Childs’ trust. Just the jest of it in summation.

  “And what do you feel?” he asked, knowing that was a big part of my ability to solve cases.

  “I feel there’s another death around the corner.

  “There’s something else. I saw Bibbione the other day.”

  “No! I wish you no contact with that monster.”

  “Don’t forget, that monster saved my life, and it wasn’t any big deal. He just knew my curiosity would peak.”

  “And, it did,” Marcos scowled.

  “It was a quick coffee and it came with a warning.. He asked me to be careful in one of my investigations that doesn’t involve him.”

  I didn’t mention our follow-up meeting. Curiosity can kill the cat.

  Marcos started kneading his knuckles into the knots of my neck and shoulders. He lifted me from my seated position and removed my robe. Before it had fallen to the floor he had begun kneading both sides of my spine. Within moments we were on the hard floor and it only felt like cool clouds. He had learned some tantric secrets while he was abroad. I didn’t care where he learned his magic. He was home with me.

  And then my phone rang. Stacie. I had to answer.

  “I have another brother. Mason. Something terrible is going on in his life. I don’t know exactly what but he’s all but disappeared. It’s impossible to reach him and he always returns my calls and texts. He, too, should be at the top of that contender list. He’s athletic and played college football. Quarterback. He loves and breathes football. He might have gone pro but he elected to get his bachelor’s degree in sports administration with a minor in psychology.”

  “Slow down. Why do you consider him missing?” I asked Stacie.

  “I mean, it’s not something I would go to the police with, and certainly not with a flock of reporters at my heels, but we talk almost every day, or at least text. We have coffee together. I haven’t seen him since Mother’s damn fiesta.”

  “Stacie. You need to calm down. I’ll be on top of this.”

  An adult is never truly missing, but I didn’t like that she didn’t report him as missing as it had been two days and there was an established pattern of communication.

  “Give me an hour,” I said.

  Marcos, now sat up and yawned through that all knowing smile. That’s when I called Schlep.

  “My friend, I need you to call Stacie Childs. She thinks one of her siblings is MIA. She’s freaked out and I’m…”

  “In bed and otherwise occupied,” he laughed. “I’m on top of it this minute. Meanwhile, my first anniversary with my guy is coming up so you’ll owe me.”

  “Deal.”

  I hung up the phone and Marcos asked me again what was wrong and what I was feeling.

  Wrong questions for sweet romance or wild sex. I felt certain, in that way of mine, that Maso
n Childs was in danger.

  “You need to deal with this and I understand,” Marcos said.

  “Schlep can handle this development, and if not he’ll call me,” I said, and I selfishly rolled back over on top of my man with a few of my tricks.

  MURATORE SAT LOCKED inside his home and watched the movie, Trainspotting. It unnerved him. That’s it. He had fallen into the opioid void. He looked online for underground heroine. Was he that far gone that he would go to a not-so-safe safe house for heroin? In the movie Edinburgh, he thought, that would be too far away.

  He wondered how he was plunging from opiates into the deep abyss of heroin. For him, it wasn’t about the money.

  It made no sense and he was trying to make sense of everything. Muratore remembered being a good guy. Back then.

  But when?

  Oh, yes, he thought. It was him. He lured me in like a sucker fish. The booze, and then some marijuana and cocaine. And then the harder stuff and opiates were the harder stuff. It was one big rollout, and now he found himself shopping for heroin.

  He had no one to blame but himself. Or maybe him.

  Muratore couldn’t bear to look at himself in the mirror. Not that night.

  He called the magic number he had written on a piece of paper stuffed inside the folds of his wallet.

  He needed some H and nothing else mattered, including life itself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  AFTER A GLORIOUS day of staying home by the pool and delivery of Chinese food to tide us over, Marcos and I once again collapsed in each other’s arms after an exhaustive round of delicious lovemaking. He knew all of my body and how I reacted to his touch to my back, the backside of my wrists, my neck, and of course my female composition.

  I wasn’t sleeping. Marcos gently snored as I crawled out of bed and headed to my den.

  My original thought was that it was time to begin my new manuscript, but instead I did the unthinkable.

  I searched the name Marcos Juliano. As a reporter in Tucson, he went by Marc Julian. The station’s decision. Internationally, he drifted back and forth with the names but to me he was Marcos. His last name was Juliano but that got lost in translation. I searched all the names. I don’t know why.

  What did I find? An international reporter to be praised. Honest reporting. Heartfelt reporting.

  And the photographs? Marcos kneeling before a village that had been rampaged with influenza and little medicine. Marcos at a makeshift school, reading a book to the children. And Marcos, visiting the local hospital, room by room. And while a language barrier must have been an issue, it wasn’t evidenced in the photographs where he simply smiled and held the patients’ hands.

  I felt like scum. No mention of tantric sex schools.

  I moved on to Anthony Bibbione.

  There was nothing in the news about his nefarious dealings as our local King Pin. Nothing. Instead, articles cited him donating to charities and visiting the forsaken, and so on and so on. He presented himself as an upstanding and supportive philanthropist in the city of Tucson, although most surely knew how he made his money. Many charities, I had learned, were happy to accept dirty money. Not a big surprise.

  I heard Breecie’s car pulling up our shared drive. I had subdivided my lot and Breecie owned what was my former guest house.

  With Marcos sound asleep and me wired, that called for an impromptu happy hour. I flicked on the lights around what was our shared common backyard as I closed my laptop.

  I could hear Breecie dropping her luggage at her front door and she sauntered out toward me by the pool, with her long raven hair and those long legs.

  “Cocktails?” she said.

  “Always. Or I can make you a coffee.”

  She laughed and reached for the bottle of Irish Cream inside my bar refrigerator.

  “Cream. No coffee,” she laughed.

  “How did your case go?”

  She stretched out and fluffed at her full head of rich black hair. “Yikes. Phoenix is hot in the summer. Not like here, and we get plenty hot. The traffic is insane. I endured five days of depositions and who know what notes and recordings I came home with but a pasture of lies.”

  “I’ve missed our girlie time, too,” I said, filling in the blanks.

  “Let’s skinny dip,” she said.

  “Tempting, but I have a guest.”

  “In your guest room or bedroom?”

  “The later. Marcos is in town,”

  “Then why the hell are you out here?”

  I did that turtle thing and told her I had worn him out. He was sleeping.

  “Wait,” she said spying my laptop. “Are you working on the Childs’ case?”

  “Either that or I’m searching porn sites.”

  “Unlikely, with that glow on your face and your Italian Stallion sleeping and presumably exhausted inside.”

  I shoved my laptop to the side.

  Breecie’s eyes followed the movement. “Come on. You’ve peaked my curiosity. What are the details you’ve dug up on the Childs’ saga?

  “You know I can’t share that.”

  She pulled her shoulders back. “What do you mean? I gave you that case.”

  I tilted my head back as I moved my chest closer to her. “By your decision, you have not been retained by Stacie Childs. I’ve been retained by Stacie Childs to investigate certain incidents within her extended family. I’m really not working for you on this one, Breeze. My rules are no different than yours. It’s about client confidentiality. When you’re her lawyer, if that happens, I’ll share every finding I have, but it’s ultimately up to her to decide.”

  For the first time since university Breecie glared at me. While brief, I caught the tension. And in spite of the conviviality, I had a nagging feeling her happy face was all for show.

  “It’s about ethics, and you’re one of most ethical persons I know,” I said.

  Her eyes softened as she reached for her stem of the liquid leaded cream. Still, the lawyer in her persisted.

  “You can’t tell me anything? I thought we were a team.”

  I decided to pour me one of those drinks. The gap in conversation did us both well.

  “I can tell you that I’ve taken on the case because I believe there is a case.”

  Breecie cocked her head to one side and asked, “Do you know it or do you feel it?”

  “You know me. One leads to the other but usually it starts out with that hair flaring up on the back of my neck.”

  “Is Schlep in on this?”

  “Yes,” I answered. What I didn’t tell her was that my sixth sense seemed to be on the fritz. And I didn’t tell her I had been in contact with Anthony Bibbione.

  “Between his brain and your intuitions, Stacie is in good hands. I’ll meet with Stacie in the next day or so and see if I can glean any other facts from her that will help me in a legal capacity to represent her,” Breecie said.

  That was the end of our mini-feud, but I did tell Breecie, because it was a matter of public record and because she was out of town at the time, she may not know that Stacie Childs’ home was broken into and only a computer, pad, electrical data and documents were stolen.

  “So, facts aside. What does this mean to you?” she asked. “For me, most of our files are digital and stored in the cloud.”

  “It would seem to confirm Stacie’s theory that there is a devil in the field of heirs apparent.”

  Breecie stood up and said, “Your bedroom blinds are closed.”

  “So, let’s go skinny dipping!” I said as she had already stripped off her top.

  I COULD NO LONGER ignore Anthony Bibbione’s words of warning, as much as much as I wanted to sweep them away. Strange, though, I didn’t really feel anything. I didn’t feel any connection to my case, although Hunter Childs was certainly a player and he could possibly be playing dirty.

  I had had no contact with Bibbione and suddenly he appeared back in my life. Crazy. It drove me nuts that this didn’t disturb me. I accepted the
fact with the old saying, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  SCHLEP AND I MET AT his preferred conference room.

  While I knew he wore his swimming trunks under his baggy cargo shorts, we conducted business first.

  “We need to take a second look at Hunter Childs, and also his mother,” I said.

  Schlep, uncharacteristically, leaned forward and said nothing.

  “A little tip came in and I assure you the source might be believable. Nothing menacing,” I said with a quirky smile.

  Schlep lunged closer forward to me. In my face-space.

  “Give it up, Cassie.”

  Never confrontational, I knew that Schlep deserved the facts.

  “Anthony Bibbione gave me with a warning on our field trip the other day.”

  “And you give this credence? Shit.”

  Schlep wasn’t one to curse. I would have used the F-bomb.

  I said, “Let’s just dive in a little deeper. It’s clear to me that Hunter Childs believes he should win the grand prize. That whole enchilada.

  “His mother? She’s a hard one to figure out and maybe I didn’t do my job in investigating her. I’d like to zero in on her first, but it’s just the two of us, Schlep. No one else.”

  Schlep was loyal to me. He would not say a word.

  I saw Breecie leaving her own home that affronted the pool area, and taking a long look our way as Schlep and I remained in conversation.

  On so many levels I hated keeping things from her, but as far as I knew my client, Stacie Childs had only divulged things about the work and issues that would let me into her world and help her sort out information in order to move on with her life safely. For the time, it appeared Breecie had rejected taking on Stacie Childs as a client.

  Unless she had something to keep from me.

  And then I saw Marcus hauling his luggage to the front foyer.

  I screwed it up without being screwed enough. Damn me.

  Schlep knew me and my urgency to run.

  “Take your laps and I’ll be right back,” I yelled back to him.