“Sure,” Carly said.”But—”
“You know where the bar is,” he chortled. “There’s a box of booze on the counter.”
“There is?”
“I brought it in when you went for your purse. And you might as well pour yourself something, too.”
“I think I’ll pass,” Carly said.
“Nonsense! I have the finest stocked bar in all of Los Angeles and I plan to have one here. Fix yourself a damn drink.”
Armand disappeared up the stairs and Carly turned toward the bar. Familiar with her surroundings, spying the liquor box already on the counter startled her. And where had his clothes come from? Why was he changing? And would he see that she had slept in his new bed and on his new sheets?
The ice cubes were out in a bucket, slightly melted and stuck together, requiring her to test her skills with the ice pick. Where had he found an ice bucket, let alone ice and a pick?
It was only two in the afternoon, but unnerved from Armand’s reckless driving and the imminent client inspection still facing her, Carly declared her father an angel for teaching her how to drink a Real Man’s drink. After filling each glass with ice, she poured a stiff drink for Armand, then poured about two fingers of a single malt scotch for herself. Her daddy would have frowned but she topped hers off with plenty of water.
She glanced around the room and its furnishings. True to what Armand seemed to want, the room already held the distinct ambience of luxury mountain living. Richly upholstered wing chairs, club chairs, and a sofa framed with solid wood and nail head trim offset the pattern of the tapestry rug. Ornately carved bookshelves gave the room depth. Distinct. Handsome. And then she remembered her client had had a few of his personal antiques delivered. They were supposed to be out in the garage.
Carly took a quick look around the garage and found a desk and two tables crowded into a dark corner. She looked closely through the smoldering light of a single dim bulb. Good enough light, though. She could see they weren’t antiques. Fine reproductions, but not saleable in the antiquity market.
Had she been had?
An itsy bitsy spider began crawling and creeping around the lining of her stomach.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Taste is for Sale
ARMAND WALTZED BACK into the room just after Carly had returned. He’d exchanged his sweater and black pants for black sweat pants and a flowing black tunic.
Snatching the glass of Jack waiting for him at the bar, he took a slug of it, then turned to the sound system left behind by the previous owner. He selected Rachmaninoff. The high ceilings amplified the somber notes, yet still Armand turned the volume higher. He downed more bourbon, then slid into one of his new wing chairs.
Was he agitated? Why?
Carly, left standing alone by the bar, couldn’t endure more discomfort in the absence of conversation. She struggled for words, fearful that her naiveté would reveal itself in each one, and fearful her naiveté, too, would appear through the cracks of any silence.
She had a job to do. A talented designer, she knew her stuff. She certainly knew those antiques in the garage weren’t worth taking on in any trade. But right now, she had to get through this job. This was the only project that mattered.
Anxious to get on with her work and get home to her Pugs and her home at The Centre, she pressed herself. “I have some catalogs in my van. The lighting that’s not all in yet. Stuff I’ve ordered. I’d like you to see how your home will look in another few weeks.”
“It’s fine right now,” Armand said. He smirked, scooting a misplaced ottoman over to prop his feet up.
Carly felt his taking pleasure in her dumbfounded expression. He hadn’t really even looked around. Not that she knew.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Give me a few more weeks.” I had two months, she thought.
Carly diverted her eyes to the center of the cocktail table and the thick spines of the art books she had carelessly splayed across it.
“Taste really is for sale, if you can afford the price,” Armand said.
Carly braced herself against the bar. She wasn’t sure what he saying anymore but she understood the warning bells in her gut. At any cost, she still selected her words with care. “Perhaps you aren’t in any further need of my services. Maybe my skills aren’t quite right for you.
“I’m sure your skills are exactly what I need.”
She watched him watch her. He enjoyed her frayed nerves. Her apprehension. Her inability to digest the situation. She realized she was fidgeting and he relished in it. She felt her neck tighten and she swallowed hard, and he watched her.
“I’d like you to show me my bedroom now.”
She had no response. Did he delight in that?
He pushed the ottoman aside and sprang to his feet. At her side. He caught her off guard. Instinctively she stepped back, far against the backbar.
“Forget the goddamned bedroom. We don’t need it. You really didn’t think this was about your stupid design services, did you, Ms. Posh?
“You are the posh possession. The first time I saw you I knew you would be a challenge. You aren’t like all the other sluts.”
When? When had he seen her?
Chapter Seventy-Three
The Violation
SECONDS BECAME MOURNFUL eternities. Carly slowly reached for her purse, but maybe only in her mind. She wasn’t sure. It really didn’t matter. Stupid her. Stupid. Keys. No good keys. Her van, the keys dropped somewhere as she unloaded goods. Stupid her.
“You don’t want to do this, Armand.” She raised her head high, summoning a false sense of fierceness. But her shaking rasping voice betrayed her fear.
Armand put his hands to her face. He touched her cheeks with his fingers as if she were a treasured old high school sweetheart.
“I do want to do this.”
She had to get out. How? She could run. Stupid. Stupid her. Stupid feet that stuck fast to the wood floor and wouldn’t give.
Armand pushed her farther into the corner of the backbar, sealing off any last means of escape. He moved fast. Jaguar fast.
He cuffed his leg against the back of Carly’s calf, causing her to buckle. Her last sense of balance crumbled. She fell hard against the polished wood floor.
Armand was all over her. He had a small frame but his muscular strength yielded hardened evil. He ripped open Carly’s cherished silk blouse. He yanked at the navy slacks. He tore into her pretty ivory panties.
Carly tried to move. Any way. Left or right. Up, if only she could. Cornered behind the surrounds of the bar, she was no match for the forceful hands now yanking at the short tresses of her dark hair.
She begged him to stop. Screams became shrieks.
He didn’t even try to silence her. It was as if he got off on hearing her yelp for justice.
No neighbors nearby. Every resident, part-time or full, lived well out of ear shot. She knew that. Stupid her.
Too late. No options. Her hand had been dealt.
Armand reeked of alcohol, and the last thing Carly saw before squeezing her eyes shut was the white powder up inside his flaring nostrils.
She would not be delivered from his madness. The pain was excruciating. He ripped at her. He tore and slashed at her with his manhood. He pierced through her virginity.
Her virginity. Yes. She had saved it. For someone special. Someone she could love. Forever. It was supposed to be a good thing.
Carly couldn’t cope any longer. So scared she neared insanity, she didn’t want to be there any longer.
Her only escape route would be that through her own mind. She didn’t want to be behind that beautiful bar anymore. With him. She couldn’t and she wouldn’t.
She allowed herself to fade into that hidden darkness. Somewhere hidden in the caverns of her subconscious, Carly slipped away deep into hiding. She waited there, somewhere away from her body and into a surreal existence of protection. She waited there, patiently. She waited to see if her body would survive
this violent sexual attack. She waited to see if ever she could return to her suffering body and get out, with it, alive. If not, she would be content to stay where she was. It would be okay.
“You wanted it, you whore. Maybe you won’t admit it now, but you wanted it. I’m your ticket to a new life and you like it.” Armand chuckled with a shrill and giggling falsetto voice.
One cell at a time. One second more ticked off the clock. Carly finally returned to the violated human body that lay in a crumbled heap on the floor. Time to get out. Not too late.
She slowly pulled herself up off the hard surface of the cold wood and rose to her knees, grabbing at her shredded clothing.
Unfortunately for Carly, Armand was there to lunge at her once again.
“I don’t think I have your attention, bitch,” he raged. “You gotta prove to me you aren’t talking. You gotta prove to me you want my offer. We can be a team. I can use a class-act like you around me, and I can pay for you beyond your wildest, fucking-ass dreams. I can buy every fucking antique you want, and fifty times more. I can set you up for life, but you aren’t leaving here, bitch, until I know you’re taking my deal and that you're not talking!”
Her head burst with fireballs of rage. Quick. She painstakingly tried to assess her options, but she had to be quick. Okay, be real. No options. He would never let her go because she would never take his deal. Never. She didn’t want his ticket to paradise.
Barely standing, she reached to steady herself against the bar. Her hand felt the cold metal of the instrument and she grabbed it like the wild animal her attacker had forced her to become.
Armand’s eyes betrayed his shock. The ice pick penetrated his main artery and blood squirted out of his neck in bursts like a frozen garden spigot. He grabbed at his neck, foolishly pulling out the silver ice pick. Not a good thing to do. The blood now gushed through the deep hole in his jugular vein, spurting rivers of red everywhere. He held the ice pick up and attempted to lurch at her again, but instead he blacked out, hitting his head hard against the green marble bar-top and then collapsing to the floor. His glass of Jack Daniel’s, left behind on the bar, was now topped off with a streaming sea of red blood. Carly watched as Armand's blood poured onto the wood, mixing with that of her own. That blood of a virgin.
Curled up in the corner behind the bar, she tried to move but her body became a puddle of nightmares. She tried to scream but she had no voice. She tried to move away but had no limbs. She tried to see but had no vision.
If she had, she would have seen Armand’s last bit of life energy as he reached for the Glock tucked under the waistband of his sweat pants and said, “Yours is an inconvenient death.”
Chapter Seventy-Four
Unfinished Business
STERLING HANDED ME the piece of paper with an address scribbled on it.
“Big Bear,” I read. “It’s not like I can call their police department on a vague whim of a bad feeling and a photograph of an elephant statue.”
“But you can already prove some sort of child sexual abuse. From someone!”
“And how will that tie into Carly? We need to find her, first. How did you get this address?”
“Some guy came in here wanting to sell loose diamonds. He said he was a friend of The Centre and that Carly was doing a big design job for him.”
“You saw him?”
“No. Dad took care of it. Later he asked me about The Centre. I told him I really didn’t know much, but for Harlan. He liked Harlan...
“We’re normally not a street buyer but Dad quickly deduced that they were good quality stones with legitimate papers. Still, we take our time. Dad’s insistent on following his procedures to make sure we aren’t peddling blood diamonds.”
“Did your dad end up buying them?”
“He never finished the paperwork. I remember one thing Dad said was that the guy wouldn’t give him a local address—only this one in Big Bear. That bugged him. And his name was practically nothing but initials.”
‘Initials?”
“Look for yourself,” Sterling said, pointing back to the slip of paper she’d handed me.
“A. J. Ehmm,” I read. “And did anyone else around here see this guy?”
“Nope. I’ve asked. And I have a bad feeling.”
“So do I,” I said. A feeling as nervous as a stick in a beaver pond.
Chapter Seventy-Five
No Ambulance Required
HARLAN COAL PHONED Gabriella Criscione.
“Our relationship is over,” Coal said in a measured and hushed voice, as the dutiful new servant provided his morning cocktail.
“We’re family. We’ll always be relatives and we’ll always be the family with the secrets,” Gabri replied.
“Not if someone digs deep enough,” Coal said.
“I think they’re digging our graves, good doctor.”
“I’m sick and tired of cleaning up other peoples messes.”
“I forked over several million dollars in leads to you,” Gabri warned.
“And you’ve made as much in those leads,” he warned.
While still listening to his angry outburst, Gabri decided she would host an intimate dinner party that night. Even for a few guests. She sharpened the knives and then began tackling the venison, with the phone cocked between her ear and shoulder and listening to the rants coming from the other end.
It mattered not what Coal had to say.
As always, she would cut her own meat. Her servants would prepare and serve and take no credit.
STERLING REGRETTED THAT she couldn’t leave the store. She protested too much. She almost rambled in her graveling. I knew she was bone dry scared.
Again Brock came to the rescue. He’d be a handful on the 100-mile drive to Big Bear, loathing his aching shoulder all the way. Loathing the fact he was benched. Still, he proved to be the better driver.
The navigational device led us straight to the driveway of what I’d call a mansion cabin. Like none other I’d seen. Carly’s van was at front. I sighed with relief. A black jaguar had pulled in behind the van. All good. Given the late hour, maybe Carly had finally found her Romeo. I felt better. I made myself feel better. I’d already been calculating how to ask Carly for her forgiveness that we interrupted her private time.
After ringing the bell and knocking on the door and having no answer, Brock turned the doorknob to find it unlocked.
My concerns over any apology careened to the porch stoop.
I guess Brock moved in ahead of me. I remember both of us calling out for Carly. I remember thinking all about me. I’ve just entered a stranger’s home. Breaking and entering. And I remember thinking about the Visconti Curse. My very own curse. And I thought it was time for me to be a savior, damn it!
Brock grabbed my arm. Of this, I am certain. He shoved me back toward the front door and I resisted all the way. And I was glad I lost.
“Get out of here. Call 911. Tell them two people are down and we need ambulances.”
I obeyed. I had hoped for the adrenaline rush we all see in the movies but instead I got a slow motion film. And no cell phone reception.
Brock appeared out on the front porch. After understanding my shock and inability to place the call, he tried from his phone.
Now he didn’t ask for any ambulances. Only for the local police.
ANOTHER LOVED ONE had died. We were four girlfriends, then three, and now two.
Brock escorted me to the front pew. After all, Carly was his grade school friend, too. Carly had long ago abandoned the notion of making amends with her family. No representative of the family appeared.
Sterling showed up for the service in a draping black dress that covered her arms, legs, and even her lacking cleavage, usually trumped up with jewels. Perhaps death was getting to her, too. We were morphing into God knows what. My world had already spiraled down from down.
We’d all noticed Detective Wray at the back of the church. As the service drew to an end he stood still in the
same spot. Only the slightest nod indicated he wanted a word with me. Sterling and Brock followed.
“I know my timing stinks,” he said.
“Good. That’s one thing you got straight,” I said.
“No good time for these things. I understand you knew the deceased male,” he said.
“It depends on your definition of the word knew.”
“Ms. Visconti, I need some answers.”
“Not here, Detective Wray. Please.”
Wray thumped on his unopened writing pad. “I thought this was one of your best friends. And you found her. I mean, if that’s true wouldn’t you want to tell me everything you know, and as quickly as possible. Our killer may be catching a jet to Malaysia by now.”
I backed into the corner of the church. Wray, Brock and Sterling all followed.
“Wait a minute. What killer? I thought you had this one figured out. The man raped Carly, she stabbed him with the only weapon she could find, and then he shot her dead. Am I missing something?”
“I want to know about the man.”
I gulped. I held my breath. I bit my bottom lip to keep it from quivering. I couldn’t hide my eyes refilling with another stream of tears.
“Ms. Visconti, you’ve yet to tell me what you know about this place called a center. You’ve left me flying and flitting around like a bat without sonar.”
“But these deaths and their causes are explained, right?”
“Yes. But we still have no ID on the male. No driver’s license. The Jaguar turned up as stolen. Did you know this man?”
Brock tightened his grip on my arm. He whispered in my ear that maybe it was time for me to get my lawyer involved.
“I don’t know him, but I think I’ve seen him”.
I turned to ask for Sterling’s help since she had the Big Bear address. She had disappeared from sight.
As if reading my mind Brock said, “We got the address from Sterling Falls. She has all the information on this guy.”
“All false. A phony name. Probably heisted diamonds. And that address at Big Bear? It’s tied up in an estate probate. The owner died almost a year ago.”
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