by Anna Burke
“Boy Scout, is that what you said, Jessica? What does that mean?”
“Yes, I said Boy Scout, Margarit. It just means he was a decent man like you said.” Margarit’s pupils were shrewd little pinpoints, perhaps trying to determine whether Jessica was toying with her or making fun of her in some way. Then she gave her shoulders the smallest little shrug.
“Anyway, one day he picks me up and even though I’m wearing these dark glasses he sees that I am hurt. He is shocked by how I look and asks what happened. I tell him that I have an accident and he doesn’t believe that for even one minute. I decide to tell him the truth even though I start to cry a leetle. We are sitting in the café at the resort, you know where you meet with me the other day?”
“Yeah, the Adobe Grill.”
“Yes. So I tell him that Alan did this to me. He is very short of temper sometimes and that why I hope not to have to do the job I do forever. I tell heem that it’s more than the job I want to get away from. Roger said the ‘bastard’ word. That’s the first time I hear him use any kind of words like that. It makes me smile, but also cry more. He reaches out and covers my hands, so kind. Then he asks why I don’t just leave.” Margarit had tears in her eyes as she paused to catch her breath. It was very dramatic.
“I tell heem I can’t just leave. You don’t just leave Alan Bedrossian. Not unless he says you can leave or tells you to leave, which is not always a good theeng either. Roger, he got that. I told him, but he must already know that the driver before him didn’t end up so good when he was fired. For me it was even more difficult since I didn’t just work for him, like Roger. Alan and me are to be married soon, but I start having doubts. When I met Alan I was sweeped off my feet. I was a stupid girl, too easy to be impressed. I thought because he was a boss he could protect me and would never let anyone hurt me. I didn’t know that he was crazy—that he would be the one to hurt me.” A look of something softer, sorrow or pity, maybe, came over her, but turned quickly into fear and loathing.
“I understand Margarit. So what happened then?” Jessica asked, sensing this was a big wind up to something significant.
“I tell heem I have to get away and I make a plan. I tell heem that he can use the plan, too, since he was also hired by this crazy man. After all it was just a matter of time before Alan decided to fire him too. That always happens to the drivers. Roger got that right away. He was smart as well as kind, don’t you think?” Jessica nodded. Margarit squirmed in her seat, looking side to side.
“So then I tell heem my plan. I can get something that will make Alan leave me alone. Something for “insurance” so I can get away. But I need to give it to Roger for safekeeping. And I have been saving money too, leetle by leetle, over the year. We plan that Roger weel take the money and this theeng I can get when I go back to LA. I give it to him the next time I have a courier job and am at the resort. Then I wait for a time when Alan is going to be out of the country so I can make the getaway.” She paused again, sipping from the water glass she held tightly in her hands.
Jessica realized she was holding her breath. Taking a couple breaths, she spoke to Margarit, reaching out to offer her what reassurance she could.
“Okay, Margarit. I take it that you went ahead with your plan.” Margarit nodded as Jessica went on. “So what was it you gave to Roger?”
“They know what I did. I have to get it back. Do you understand? They won’t stop until they get it.” Margarit looked up at Jessica with a pitiful look that matched the pleading tone in her voice.
“Get what? What is it?” Jessica was exasperated. “I can’t help you unless you tell me what it is you’re looking for.”
“Oh come on, Jessica. You know what it eez. You were Roger’s friend. He gave it to you or to his wife or maybe she took it to her handsome young boyfriend Friday night.” Margarit smiled wolfishly. Her entire demeanor had shifted in a split second, so abruptly that Jessica was startled. It also shocked Jessica to hear that Margarit knew Laura was out with Eric Friday night. She sat up straight and moved away from Margarit, wondering if anyone would hear her if she hollered for help. Jessica spoke in a clear, calm voice that belied the apprehension she felt.
“Look, Margarit, Roger didn’t give me anything. I have no idea what you’re talking about. If he gave Laura something, she doesn’t know about it, either. You wouldn’t be here with me now if that poor waiter had what you and your friends are looking for. Don’t pretend you don’t know what’s happened to him. If that’s why I’m being tackled in parking lots, you need to tell Al and his boys to back off. And, we’re done right now if all you came here to do is accuse me of being in on something that I’m not part of. I can’t help you, nor can Laura.” Margarit must have realized she’d made a mistake because she recomposed her face, the beleaguered victim was back. A glint of suspicion still in her wary eyes.
“I’m sorry, Jessica. I’m just so scared and confused. You’re a lawyer and you came to me. I thought maybe to do the shake down, you know? So Alan figures out right away who you are and he knows I was seeing Roger so he asks me all sorts of questions. He smacks me around a leetle, see?” Margarit lifted her glasses and there was a dark shadow under one eye. She dropped the robe from one shoulder and revealed a gruesome bruise before quickly putting the robe back in place.
“I think he’s going to kill me next so I tell him everything. That Roger was holding money for me but also something more. I gave him an SD card with serious information stored on it. You know what SD card is, right?”
“Yes, I know Margarit, but not because Roger gave one to me.”
“Well this card has important information about Alan’s business with important customers. I take this from Alan’s computer last time I go to his office in LA. I’m not sure what it all means but I take it thinking I could use it to get away. That way he would have to let me go, see? You know, so I won’t geeve it to the police or the FBI? Kind of like insurance.”
“Or kind of like blackmail,” Jessica thought. “Okay, Margarit, I get it. Did you tell Roger what was on the SD card?”
“Yes, I tell heem but he wasn’t sure it was such a good idea that I took it. He was nervous after I tell him what was in the bag of money he was holding for me. He said I should geeve it to the police instead of trying to use it for my getaway. Now, because of me, he’s part of big trouble with Alan. I said he should go with me. His business was bad and he wasn’t so happy in his marriage. I knew that from our talks together. He was thinking and thinking about it. Finally, I told heem it was time to stop thinking and take action. Then I got his answer. He gave the money back and said I should leave.”
“When was that, Margarit?”
“Last week, Jessica. I stopped by his house on Friday night to try to talk to heem. To have heem make up his mind. I couldn’t wait longer, but he wanted more time to decide. But what was to decide? Alan knew something already. I’m at Roger’s house and Al he calls me to see where I am, like he didn’t already know. I make up some story, but after that I know it was just a matter of time before Alan would decide he was done with Roger and with me.”
“So what happened then, Margarit?”
“Roger went to his car and gets the money. He geeves it to me and said I should just go. So I left. That was the last time I see heem. Then I hear from you, the next thing that he’s dead.” Tears filled Margarit’s eyes.
“I think maybe one of Alan’s men was watching when Alan called me. They must have come in after I left, and killed Roger. If only we had left that night. Maybe we could have gotten away and we’d be somewhere beautiful together waiting for the sun to set.” Margarit reached over and pulled a tissue from a box on the end table. She dabbed at her nose and eyes then her face did one of the momentary morphs into something more like predator than prey.
“Instead, I’m trying to stay alive. The only reason I’m still alive is that Alan is looking for that SD card. It was not in the bag with the money where I put it. I get my money back from Roger b
ut he keeps the SD card. Your Boy Scout turns out to be a double-crosser after all. If I don’t get my hands on that information I’m dead.”
With those last words, the pity party started inside Margarit’s head again and she snapped back into desperate prey mode. Her eyes darted about from side to side, her shoulders drooped and the tears fell freely. Jessica was fascinated and repulsed at the same time. How could someone so skillfully move between those roles? What might Margarit-the-predator, mastermind of a plot to put one over on Bedrossian-the-mob-boss-wannabe, actually be capable of?
“That’s why I have to find it, Jessica. You have to help me, please. You must have it. It wasn’t in his house.”
Jessica was startled again. “How do you know that, Margarit?”
Her eyes narrowed a little, making her nose look beaklike. She was a hawk or a falcon, sizing up its quarry. A chill ran through Jessica.
“My friend, he goes to search for me but then he runs into you and that handsome guy with you at Roger’s house. I don’t know this when we meet at the Adobe Grill. Then I put two and two together after my friend tells me that he has to stop before finishing his search. Carlos says he has to fight off a crazy woman and punches her in the face. I have a leetle laugh about it. His face eez bigger disaster even than yours, Jessica.” Margarit made no effort to hide the cruelty in her smile.
“So it was you, not Alan, who sent the guy we caught hiding in the closet?”
“Yes! Carlos, he ees idiot! A nobody, who did leetle things for Alan and for me. A nobody who wanted to be somebody. He thought he could get on Alan’s good side by doing me a favor. Some favor! He gets drunk and goes to sleep when he should be doing what I ask. He should go and look around in the night while it’s dark out and no one is around. But no, he waits ‘til next morning and then, there you are. He better hope the poleece find him before Alan’s men do. Alan doesn’t believe my story about my meeting with you at the Adobe Grill, so I have to tell heem everything. Then he sends his own guys back to the house to look. They finished the job Carlos started, I think.” She paused a moment searching Jessica’s face to see if that registered. It did. Jessica had learned, that morning, that Laura’s house had been searched again, leaving it in ruins.
“You have to help me, Jessica or you’re going to end up just like your friend Roger. You’ve been lucky so far, but that can’t last too much longer. Alan wants that SD card back and so do I. It’s better for you if you find it, then geeve it to me first. You can make a copy, I don’t care. I use it to get away or as a get-out-of-jail card. You use your copy to put Mr. Bedrossian behind bars where he can’t hurt either one of us, or anyone else again. You saw what his men do to people who don’t cooperate, Jessica. Your friend’s waiter boyfriend was not at all helpful. I don’t know what to think when Alan tells me Roger’s wife has a boyfriend. Roger was such a fool. Then I think maybe the wife was not a fool, that she knew what Roger was up to trying to help me and takes matters into her own hands. Maybe she and the boyfriend have plans of their own for the missing information. I tell that to Alan and he looks at me like I am lying. Then he hits me a couple more times but leaves, thank God, and I am still alive.” She paused and looked Jessica in the eye with that penetrating mind-reading stare at work again.
“Margarit, I don’t understand. If I can make a copy of that card why does Alan want it back?”
“I make a leetle mistake and move some files from his computer. I think I only make a copy. How did I know this?” She spread her hands and shrugged her shoulders, the bewildered victim of circumstance.
“All you need to understand is this: Al, he wants that card back or else. Alan and his men are not so charming as I am. No spa treatments and conversations over tea will come from them. So, you can deal with them or me, Jessica, you choose. Go have your facial. I call you later and you tell me how you can help me find what we all must find.”
The last few words were spoken in a near-whisper. Their estheticians had come into the room just as Margarit finished issuing that ultimatum. As Margarit left the room she blew a little kiss to Jessica, smiling brightly.
“Wonderful chat, Jessica, dear. I’ll call you later, ciao!”
CHAPTER 30
Jessica was a basket case. The replay of her conversation with Margarit ran over and over in her head. There were a lot of things about Margarit’s story that just didn’t sit well. How could Roger have been such a sap or so desperate that he let himself get entangled with the likes of Alan Bedrossian or Margarit Tilik? He was desperate for money. Money, while not the root of all evil, was certainly fertile ground for misguided choices. Her own life of privilege had shown her that. She had met plenty of men, much better off than Roger, who let the pursuit of money override their better judgment. Such poor judgment had helped push the economy off a cliff, landing a few of the more egregious profligates of unbridled greed, like Bernie Madoff, in prison.
Roger’s financial situation was pretty tough but was he a rube or rogue? Was he a Boy Scout conned by Margarit, or was he actually considering Margarit’s offer to run off and leave his troubles behind? Did he keep the SD card because he had plans of his own for the information on it? If so, did he plan to give it to the police or back to Bedrossian—for a price? He had told Sara and Dave he expected to get enough money to pay them back. Did that expectation involve extorting money from Alan Bedrossian? Surely he couldn’t have been desperate or foolish enough to believe he’d come out ahead on such a scheme with a man like Bedrossian?
Heck, for all she knew Margarit might just be toying with her. Maybe she already had the SD card and was trying to determine how much Jessica and the police knew about what went on Friday night. Or perhaps she was just using Jessica, feeding her a line about her jealous, murderous boyfriend to deflect attention from herself as Roger’s killer. Margarit was a proficient liar and as capable of killing Roger as anyone Jessica had ever met. She could easily have gotten her hands on a .38 like the one used to kill Roger, from her friend Carlos or elsewhere. But then, why send Carlos back into the house on Sunday unless the SD card was, indeed, missing?
At least one part of her story sort of made some sense. Why Bedrossian was still chasing that SD card even though the information on it could have been copied a dozen times had been confusing. It seemed believable that the wily Margarit botched her ill-conceived caper by moving, rather than merely copying, files from Bedrossian’s computer. She could easily have made a mistake like that if she was as loaded as she had been on the phone the night before.
That would explain how Bedrossian knew the SD card, or something like it existed, before he apparently beat a confession from the love of his life. He must have had some reason to suspect the lovely Margarit was up to no good and finding some important files missing from his computer would have done that. Of course you’d think a guy like Bedrossian would have had a system for backing up such important information, and he had to know that anyone coming into possession of the missing SD card could make a copy. Perhaps he was intent on killing anyone who had access to the SD card, whether or not it was in their possession. In that way he would get rid of everyone who could have made a copy too. Jessica’s head was spinning. That was potentially a lot of people Alan Bedrossian had to kill if it included, not just Roger’s family and close friends like Laura and Jessica, but poor unwitting acquaintances in their circle like Eric and Joe.
What was still most puzzling to Jessica was how he, or anyone else for that matter, found out about Eric before Jessica identified him to the police? Eric and Joe were no shows at work on Sunday. That meant by Saturday or early Sunday they were already dead or at least being detained by the thugs who searched their house, beat them and then, shot them. How long had she, and Laura and others embroiled in this fiasco been under surveillance as Margarit now indicated was the case?
Her head hurt from the effort to untangle the knots in Margarit’s web of larceny and deceit. Jessica thought about leaving the spa immediately but was in no sha
pe to drive or face what awaited her outside the doors of the spa. She opted instead to get the facial using the time to try sort out her jumbled thoughts and calm her jangled nerves.
By the end of the hour with her esthetician, not Barb this time who had gone off with Margarit, Jessica had decided a number of things. First, Margarit had told her some version of the truth. If she had money and the SD card, whether or not she had killed Roger, she’d be on the run or dead. Margarit had confirmed for Jessica that someone was indeed looking for something and willing to kill to get it back. More importantly, that “something” was a little flash memory device not much bigger than a postage stamp containing information that put Alan Bedrossian in a compromising position. That SD card was last seen in a bag of money given to Roger Stone by Margarit and was missing when she retrieved that bag.
Jessica wasn’t sure how Margarit was still alive, but her days were surely numbered. Maybe Bedrossian had some feelings for her after all, although that was hard to believe. More likely he wasn’t sure what to believe about Margarit’s story either and was waiting to get the goods back. He was making his way through possible co-conspirators, one maimed or dead body at a time, and would continue until he retrieved that card. Then he would tie up loose ends.
That Jessica and Laura were on Bedrossian’s list of possible co-conspirators and loose ends was also obvious. Margarit was, no doubt, pointing fingers anywhere she could in her effort to stay alive, get the SD card back, and maybe still get away. Eric and Joe Abernathy were sheer collateral damage. No more than a piece of the furniture that happened to be in the room when the killers trashed their place during that search for the missing SD card.
Jessica needed to find that SD card and fast. Something that small could easily have been concealed in any number of ways. One thing was certain. The card was not at Roger and Laura’s house, or what was left of it anyway. Margarit had been right about that, too. Roger’s mother, Sylvia, was visibly shaken when she arrived at Desert Memorial for the visitation. Sylvia had made a last minute decision to stop by and pick up a watch that Roger’s grandfather had given him when Roger was still a teenager. She wanted to put it in the coffin with Roger. Laura had not objected, since the clean-up crew had completed their work the day before.