Passion, Betrayal and Killer Highlights

by Kyra Davis

  “Anything I can do to help?” I called up to Leah.

  “Climb up on the car and help hoist me up.”

  I was impressed. Leah had only achieved her criminal status a short while ago but she had already become pretty competent in the role. I made sure the wheels on Jack’s stroller were locked, climbed up on the Audi and, with a little help and a lot of struggling, got Leah up on the fire escape.

  “The window’s unlocked!” she called down excitedly.

  “Great.” I climbed back down as Leah crawled inside the apartment. My heart pounded as I waited to see if cops were going to come rushing out of their unmarked cars to haul us all in. But that didn’t happen. Instead the buzzer to unlock the front door sounded and I quickly opened it and wheeled Jack inside. I waited for Leah to come down to the lobby, and when she didn’t, I cursed under my breath. I had been hoping she would just leave the door to Cheryl’s place open, take Jack from me and wheel him across the street. Instead I was going to have to bring Jack right to the scene of the crime, which was not only irresponsible from a parenting perspective but also incredibly inconvenient. I was now going to have to lug him and his stroller up a flight of stairs.

  I rubbed my hands against my jeans before undertaking the endeavor, and when I finally got to Cheryl’s door I was out of breath and seriously irritated at Leah. But oddly enough, Jack didn’t seem bothered at all. He was quieter than I had ever seen him. I rearranged him in his stroller and opened Cheryl’s door.

  Leah was in the middle of the living room looking incredibly pale. Cheryl was standing at her side.

  “Oh God.” I stepped forward. “Cheryl, I know this looks bad but I can explain.”

  “No need.” I turned just in time to see James Sawyer closing the door behind me. The polished metal of a small revolver sparkled in his hand.

  “Go stand with the other ladies, please.”

  I opened my mouth but words failed me.

  “Now.”

  I mutely walked to Leah’s side, pushing Jack along as I did.

  James’s eyes traveled down to Jack and I thought I saw a flicker of regret cross his features.

  “That’s Bob’s gun,” Leah whispered. “He was about to use it on Cheryl when I walked in.”

  “I would have thought that would please you,” James said. His laugh had a slightly hysterical ring to it. Cheryl choked back a sob.

  My hand tightened around the handle of Jack’s stroller. “You don’t want to do this, James. You don’t want to kill a mother in front of her child.”

  “Of course I don’t want to do this!” James snapped. “I didn’t want to do any of this! Bob is the one who put me in this position. If he had had the common sense of a gnat none of this would be necessary.” James waved his gun at Leah accusingly. “It was your husband who set all this in motion.”

  “What went wrong?” I asked. Jack was whimpering in his seat. I had never heard the child whimper before—maybe he sensed the fear in the room. “Did Bob figure out that identity theft was…you know…immoral and stuff?”

  “So you know about that.” James let out a heavy sigh of resignation. “It was a temporary game plan and no one was going to get hurt. Not even the people whose credit information we used. Everything we charged to those accounts was promptly credited back. All Bob had to do was get the credit information on a few of the more affluent guests at the Gatsby and wait for his stock options to start paying off.”

  I looked over at Cheryl, but she didn’t seem to care about being exposed as a criminal. She appeared much more concerned with the prospect of her imminent death. For once she had her priorities straight.

  “What did Bob do?” Leah’s body was shaking. “Why did you kill him?”

  “He got greedy, that’s what he did! He didn’t bide his time like the rest of us. Instead he immediately started spending money like he was Bill Gates and he expected me to support his expensive tastes. He told me that if I didn’t give him money right away he would act as a whistle-blower. He said he would cut some kind of deal and give the DA my head on a platter. He made a floppy disk that illustrated what we were doing and gave me a copy to show me that he meant business. He was too stupid to see that even with the best plea bargain he would still have to deal with felony charges, and he was too callous to care that his sister would be sent to prison along with Taylor and me. What kind of man doesn’t care about his own family?”

  “Good question,” Leah muttered.

  “You still didn’t have the right to kill him!” Cheryl cried. “You could have let me talk to him or…or you could have just given him his stupid money! You didn’t have to murder my brother!”

  “Don’t pretend that you gave a damn about Bob,” James scoffed. “You have never cared about anyone but yourself. When I asked you to get close with Erika and shoot her up with cocaine, you didn’t so much as flinch.”

  “But you didn’t tell me she had a heart condition!” Cheryl protested. “You said that we just needed to make her look like a drug addict to ruin her credibility. I didn’t know she was going to die! And then you lied to me again to get me to come back to the city. You told me that you had a way of fixing everything. But really you just wanted the chance to kill me, too!” She turned to Leah. “None of this is my fault!”

  “Are you serious?” Leah hissed. “You have been stealing people’s identities in exchange for money! You told a woman you were going to administer her insulin and you shot her up with crack instead! I can’t believe the depths to which you’ve sunk!”

  “It wasn’t supposed to go this far,” squeaked Cheryl. “I just wanted to make a little extra money—just enough to get into the social events with high celebrity attendance, like award ceremonies and Democratic Party fund-raisers. I never meant to kill anyone!”

  “But you knew James killed Bob,” I said, my anger matching my fear. “Yet you were perfectly happy to tell everyone Leah was the guilty one.”

  “James told me she did it! He told Taylor that, too! He said that if she wasn’t arrested quickly, everything we had been doing would come out!”

  “You believed what you wanted to believe,” James said.

  “That’s also why Taylor came up with that stupid lie about having an affair with Bob,” Cheryl continued, ignoring James’s comments. “James told us it was the only way to explain their being together at the Gatsby, and he promised to be her alibi for the night Bob was killed so she wouldn’t be a suspect!”

  “I knew he wasn’t sleeping with her!” Leah cried, then quickly shut up, apparently realizing that this wasn’t the time to gloat.

  “I don’t get it,” I said slowly. “Anatoly said your credit card record shows you were at the Grand Café that night.”

  “There are advantages to doing charity work.” James’s Adam’s apple slid up and down. “For instance, if you befriend the troubled youth, they will help you access drugs when necessary and they don’t question you when you tell them to enjoy a gourmet meal on your credit card.”

  “My God,” I whispered. “You really are a slimy SOB.”

  “No one was supposed to get hurt! When I went to see Bob that night I wanted to talk some sense into him. Killing him was a last resort. But what was I supposed to do?”

  “Well, you weren’t supposed to kill him!” Leah screamed.

  “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I didn’t want anyone to die.” He looked down at Jack, and to my utter amazement, a real tear rolled down his cheek.

  Leah moved closer to the stroller.

  “It’s just that Bob’s demands kept getting bigger and bigger,” he said. “When Erika found out, he told me we could buy her silence for fifty thousand dollars. When I gave him the money, he used it to buy some jewelry for his mistress and bought Erika’s silence by romancing her. He had no morals, no scruples—he was going to ruin all of us!” He looked down at the gun in his trembling hand. “I have a son, too. I’ve worked so hard to build a legacy for him. I couldn’t allow Bob to t
ake it all away.”

  “What about my son?” Leah pleaded. “I’m the only parent he has now. If you kill me, what will happen to him?”

  “And he needs his aunts, too—right, Sophie?” Cheryl looked at me to back her up.

  I had to bite my tongue to prevent myself from asking James to kill her first.

  James stepped closer so that he was just a foot away from Leah. “I promise you, Jack will be provided for. I’ll pay for his education. I’ll make sure he’s okay.” He bent down so that he was eye level with Jack. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Dear God, I am so incredibly sorry.”

  Jack’s eyes widened, and for a moment I thought he was going to tell James to “piss off.” But instead his little body convulsed and then lurched forward and before any of us had a chance to react, an obscene amount of vomit came spewing from his mouth. For a split second the room went silent as we watched James stagger backward, his face covered in regurgitated Cheerios. His foot caught on the floor rug, causing him to lose his balance and fall to the ground. With one look, Leah and I knew we were on the same page. We pounced on James. In one fluid movement Leah kicked the gun out of his sweaty palm and I jumped on top of him, punching him in the nose and then the chin.

  “Call the cops!” I screamed at Cheryl. But she just stood in the corner jumping up and down and screaming.

  Leah tried to move past me and James so she could get to the gun, but James recovered from his shock and grabbed her ankle. Leah went sprawling. I pressed my knee into his groin. James screamed and pushed me to the side with one arm, his other hand holding on to Leah’s leg.

  “I’m going to kill you both!” he yelled.

  “The hell you are!”

  We looked up to see Anatoly pointing the gun at James’s head. James slowly opened the hand that had been clutching Leah and raised it above his head. His left hand went to cradle his injured balls.

  I squeezed my eyes closed and thanked every one of my lucky stars.

  “Anatoly,” Cheryl cried. “Thank God you’re here!”

  If I hadn’t been so giddy with relief I would have strangled her.

  Leah rolled away from James and we both got to our feet, leaving James on the ground. I tried to will my heart to slow down but it wasn’t cooperating. Leah, on the other hand, seemed much more composed. She brushed herself off and stepped up to Cheryl.

  “We both could have been killed just now.”

  Cheryl nodded and dabbed her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Leah asked.

  “I think so,” Cheryl answered weakly.

  Leah punched her in the jaw so hard that Cheryl was knocked against the wall and slid to the ground. “How ’bout now?” Leah asked sweetly.

  I turned to Anatoly with a huge smile on my face. “Is my sister awesome or what?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Sex is so much better than Prozac.

  —Words To Die By

  “This has got to be the most fun I have ever had at a memorial service.” Marcus popped a cheese puff in his mouth.

  “Leah really did a good job, didn’t she?” I surveyed the crowd gathered together in Leah’s home. “Plus I think people are a little less depressed about Bob’s death than they usually are when someone they know dies.”

  “Leah looks great. That plum-colored sweater is to die for.”

  I giggled. “She’s been waiting to wear that for a while.”

  Marcus nodded and grabbed one of the mini knishes. “So give me an insider update on the evil trio.”

  “Ah, James, Cheryl and Taylor. Well, Taylor’s faring the best of the bunch. She still claims that she didn’t know anything about Bob’s or Erika’s murder, and I think I believe her. She just went along with the whole story about Bob and her having an affair, to cover up the identity theft and fraud stuff.”

  “You know, normally those seem like pretty big offenses, but considering everything that’s happened…”

  “They don’t seem all that serious?”

  “Not so much.” He smiled at a young man who reached around him to get to an hors d’oeuvres.

  “Nonetheless, she’ll still be doing time. Of course Cheryl and James are going to be doing a lot of time.”

  “Has anyone figured out how James got his hands on Bob’s gun?”

  “Bob usually left his keys in the top drawer of his desk while he was working. James just waited for him to step away from his office and then stole the keys long enough to have a copy made. Then he broke in here when no one was home and found the safe. He figured out the combo because it’s the same as all of Bob’s other combinations. I think at the time he was just looking for the floppy disk, but he saw the gun, and when James finally did decide to get rid of Bob he knew exactly where to get the weapon for the job.”

  “Mmm.” Marcus nodded thoughtfully. “I have another question for you. See that gorgeous homeboy over there drinking champagne like it’s beer? I’m getting a straight vibe, but I’m fighting a cold so I’m hoping my gay-dar’s on the fritz.”

  “Your gay-dar’s working fine, he’s very straight. Besides, Leah has dibs.”

  “Is she dating already? How wonderfully scandalous!”

  “She’s not dating—she’s decided that Jerome is going to be her grief-avoidance sex guy.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “According to Leah, many high-society widows have sex within a few months of their husband’s death as a means of avoidance. Or was it transference? I don’t know—the point is they get lucky with somebody they’re not serious about.”

  “That is so great!” He stomped his foot playfully. “I want to be a widow!”

  “Yeah, well, Jerome’s not getting lucky tonight. Apparently you have to wait a week or two for the grief avoidance to really kick in. Otherwise it’s uncouth.”

  “Has your sister ever thought of writing a book? She would just blow that Emily Post chick out of the water.”

  “I don’t think books are her thing. Actually, she’s been thinking about getting a job as an event coordinator.” I elbowed Marcus. “The Gatsby’s hiring—how ironic would that be?”

  “Excuse me, may I have everyone’s attention?” Leah tapped her glass with a spoon until the room fell silent and all eyes were on her.

  She smiled graciously. “I want to thank you all for coming. As many of you know, it’s been a hard few weeks for me for a variety of reasons and I really appreciate all the support everyone has shown me.” She smoothed her hands over the bottom part of her sweater. “Many of you have commented on this top I’m wearing. Normally I would say that this neckline is a little too low to be appropriate for a memorial service, but when I wear this sweater I remember the look in Bob’s eyes when he first saw me in it.” She held her glass up in the air theatrically. “So here’s to you, Bob. Wherever you are—” she looked pointedly at the ground “—I want you to know that I will be wearing this sweater frequently, and whenever I do I will remember that moment and I will smile.”

  “That is so sweet!”

  I looked to my right to see that Bianca had sidled up next to me without my noticing. “Did you just get here?” I asked.

  She nodded. Her hair was pulled back by a black headband that matched her black Wilkes Bashford dress. “I had to drive Porsha to the airport.”

  “Oh, so she’s gone?” My mood matched Leah’s smile.

  “Yes, back to practicing law in New Hampshire. Leah was sweet to invite me to this.”

  I didn’t say anything. Since she was no longer under police suspicion Leah had seen no need to be anything but disdainful of Bianca—until we rented Gone with the Wind. After seeing the scene in which Scarlett shows up at Melanie’s home in a red dress, Leah decided that Bianca simply had to attend the service—in hopes that it would bring attention to Bianca’s transgression and Leah’s overwhelmingly generous spirit.

  “That was some speech.” Anatoly approached our little group. “May I see you alone for a minute, Sophie?”

 
I handed Marcus my glass and followed Anatoly into the kitchen.

  “You look good in dresses.” His eyes moved over me appraisingly as I leaned my back up against the counter.

  “Thank you. You look…uncomfortable in a suit.”

  “Very perceptive of you.” He put his hands on the counter—one on either side of me, and leaned in so he was only half a foot away from me. “I was just talking to your sister a few minutes ago, and do you know what she told me?”

  “That earth tones are the new black?”

  “She told me that many people have sex after funerals as a way of dealing with their grief.”

  “Ah, I see. But this is just a memorial service.”

  “You’re a writer.” Anatoly leaned in closer. “Use your imagination.”

  He was an inch away now. “I can do that.” I took a breath deep enough to make my breasts press up against his chest. “Do you want to go back to your place and make…espresso?”

  Anatoly smiled. “I love a woman with a one-track mind.”

  First edition May 2006

  PASSION, BETRAYAL AND KILLER HIGHLIGHTS

  A Red Dress Ink novel

  ISBN 1-55254-468-0

  © 2006 by Kyra Davis.

  All rights reserved. The reproduction, transmission or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without written permission. For permission please contact Red Dress Ink, Editorial Office, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the author’s imaginaton, and are not to be construed as real. While the author was inspired in part by actual events, none of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  ® and TM are trademarks. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and/or other countries.