“You’ll get me to that launch, or I’ll show everyone the video of you and what you did to your husband. Even if I drop dead, the video will be released by my friends. I’ve got a friend in Russia who will make sure this all goes off without a hitch. The end. I have all the control over this situation. No more conversation.”
Tara paused the recording and stared at me expectantly. My brain was slow to catch up.
“Pennsylvania is a two-party surveillance state,” was all I could stutter out, “recording that was illegal.”
Tara rolled her eyes. “Yeah clearly, I’m the bad one here, aren’t I?” She asked me sardonically. I smirked at her and shook my head. This was going to be front page news from coast to coast.
“Where did you get the bear?” I asked her, still trying to figure out how it factored into anything else about her story.
“I swiped it before I quit,” Tara said, shrugging, “Angelica had thrown it away again, so I took it out of the trash. Once I got out of jail on Friday night, I went and got all my stuff from Angelica’s. That’s when I saw the bear and took it. Marcus gave it to her a while ago, and I thought it looked familiar but honestly the last time I saw it was three years ago. I’d forgotten about it. When Angelica came home with it, I thought it was just a lover’s gift. Maybe it will be useful? The memory card has been wiped, I checked. It’s still evidence though, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, pushing away from my desk with both hands and trying to assess this situation with some degree of professionalism and detachment. I couldn’t. I felt a slow smile spread over my face. Angelica was going to go down.
“Ok, walk me through the timeline again. When exactly did you learn about the murder?”
“Monday night,” she said. “I was sort of afraid of Angelica after that. And Marcus. I didn’t even have to act anymore.”
“That’s understandable,” I replied, “knowing your employer had killed someone while you were in the house would have been really creepy. Why didn’t you quit? Why didn’t you take your recording to the police right then?”
“At first it was because I wasn’t even sure what I was hearing. You wouldn’t believe all the weird shit I’ve seen and heard working for Angelica. I mean, the way Marcus said it, ‘what you did to your husband’? It could have meant something else. Maybe he had a video of her blowing his old, shriveled dick. Gross right? That would still totally work for blackmail purposes though. Later, when I figured out what Angelica had been talking about with Marcus, and googled Nathan Breyer, and remembered the bear… I didn’t have any proof except for my recording, and it seemed like it didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t know Marcus was trying to actually hurt Mr. Breyer. Who would believe me over Angelica anyway? I had no idea what to do for a while. I had to work it out all by myself that Oleg wanted to kill Nathan over screwing his wife who later died, and why Angelica was being blackmailed. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about things these last few weeks. I want to try and set things right.”
“We still have no proof that Angelica murdered Albert,” I argued, “all we really know is that Oleg blackmailed Angelica.”
“Unless you can get something off the bear,” Tara replied, “and still, isn’t proving that she lied about everything probably cause to get the police to investigate her for murder? Once this is out there, her family can’t cover it up.”
Tara was right. The pieces of a believable, verifiable story were coming together. I still had my share of doubts, but I also had a ton of new leads. The bear was the most promising. There were ways to get deleted files off memory cards. I didn’t know how to do it, but I knew someone who probably did—Nathan’s computer guru, Victor. I needed to talk to Nathan ASAP. If we could get the video off the bear, it would be the icing on the cake. Or the nail in Angelica’s coffin, more likely.
“What about the daughter that gave Mr. Hunt the bear in the first place, Evelyn Hunt? Will she give us a statement confirming that this was the bear she gave her Dad?” I asked. Having this story confirmed, even in part, was essential.
Tara shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s been three years since I spoke to Evelyn. She’s in community college now somewhere in upstate New York. Her mom and sister got screwed out of any money in the divorce, but they were still being supported by Albert. They went from super wealthy to super poor the second Albert died. They live the quiet life now. I’d think she’d do whatever she could to bring down Angelica though. Evelyn should be the Hunt petroleum heiress, not Angelica.”
“You’re still charged with criminal trespassing,” I told Tara seriously, “this won’t change that.”
Tara shrugged. “I really don’t care. I talked to a lawyer and it’s just a misdemeanor. Basically, a glorified parking ticket. What bothers me is that I was inadvertently helping Angelica help Oleg try to kill someone. If the rocket had exploded a lot of people could have died. That’s really messed up. I’m not a perfect person or anything, but I’m not a murderer. I just want Angelica to pay.”
I looked down at my mess of notes, the teddy bear sitting on my desk, and Tara sitting in front of me. This was not at all how I expected this day to go. I thought I would be getting reacquainted with the paper, not running with a huge story. Nathan was in for an earful of news from me when I got home from work today. God, it felt good to be back.
I reached out a hand to press the intercom on my desk out to my new assistant.
“Hi, Janice? Can you please send in whoever is covering the local crime desk in the metro section right now? I also need a tape recorder, a white board, some dry erase markers, coffee, and for you to get with someone resourceful in the bull pen and figure out how to get in touch with a woman named Evelyn Hunt.”
“Yes ma’am!” Janice replied promptly, and then a short second later her sheepish voice came through the line again, “um, could you please repeat all that for me again? I didn’t have a pen ready.”
49
Nathan
When I got home that evening after the ‘family meeting’, Zoey hadn’t returned yet. So, in honor of it being her first day at work, I decided to do something I almost never do: cook.
Having a twin brother who possesses a preternatural gift and singular obsession for food preparation, I’ve never much bothered with learning my way around the kitchen. I’m able to microwave things, and I’m excellent at ordering takeout, so it’s not like I starve, but I try to stay away from things like recipes or stoves. I’ll never be as good at cooking as David, I figured, so why try?
But tonight felt like a good night to give it a shot, and maybe it would buy me a few boyfriend points I could trade in for Zoey’s mercy when I told her the charges against Angelica had been dropped. That was the plan, anyway.
But like so many of my clever plans, this one didn’t quite pan out. I was only trying to make spaghetti and garlic bread. I figured I shouldn’t get too ambitious, but as soon as I had one pot boiling with pasta, one pot simmering with sauce, and bread under the broiler, I quickly got overwhelmed. Within moments I had ignited the bread and over cooked the spaghetti into a gummy, nasty mess. Meanwhile, the sauce overheated, boiled, and splattered explosively all over the place like I’d gone all ‘American psycho’ on a family of tomatoes. It was carnage.
“Oh. Wow,” Zoey said, breezing into the kitchen as I was running around like an idiot, opening windows to release the stink of burned bread and trying to turn off the smoke detector at the same time, “would you like some help there?”
She didn’t look impressed, but she did look amused. It was all I could do to stand helplessly and stare at her, looking so beautiful and polished and laughing at me while I floundered in my tomato-y disaster-zone. Eventually I regained my sanity and nodded.
“I tried to cook,” I said sadly, “it didn’t work out.”
She continued laughing while she helped me to clean up.
“You know,” she teased gently, “as a man who flies spaceships, I would have thought making some pasta would be p
retty easy for you.”
“It always looks easy when David does it,” I replied, trying not to get pouty. “Thank you for helping to clean it up. I ordered Chinese food when it was clear this wasn’t going to work out.”
Zoey laughed again, looking at me far more affectionately than I would have expected given the mess I’d made.
“You’re cute,” she said, kissing me on the forehead.
Cute? Puppies are cute. That really hadn’t been what I’d been going for… I would have preferred romantic, thoughtful, cultured, and debonair, but fuck it. Cute works. As long as she wasn’t mad at me.
I smiled at her weakly.
“How was your first day?” I asked as I continued to scrub the remaining red goo off my cabinet doors.
Zoey grinned. “You have no idea. I’ve got the biggest story ever to tell you about.”
“I’m glad it went well,” I said honestly, “because I’ve got terrible news. My uncle Robert engineered a way to get Angelica’s trespassing charges dropped.”
I figured it was better just to come right out and say it. To my shock and relief, Zoey shrugged.
“That doesn’t matter,” she said, “because I’ve got a source that says Angelica Hunt murdered Albert Hunt, and that was what Oleg used to blackmail her. The whole abusive romance thing was a lie.”
I froze from where I’d been about to wipe away some more sauce from the countertop.
“What?” I managed.
Zoey grinned before she repeated herself, “I said, I’ve got a source and evidence that Angelica killed Albert and then Oleg blackmailed her into everything. They were never a couple.”
I somehow found my way around the kitchen island and onto one of the barstools as I tried to wrap my mind around what Zoey was telling me.
“Who’s the source?” I asked.
“I’m not ethically supposed to share the source’s identity,” she replied mysteriously, and I frowned in frustration. “It’s Tara,” she admitted a second later, “but you have to promise to never tell anyone.”
I nodded distantly.
“What’s the proof?” I asked next, thinking about every time I’d ever seen Angelica, Tara, and poor old, dead Albert.
“That’s the thing,” Zoey said with a sigh, “it’s not perfect. Tara has a recording she made of Oleg and Angelica having a conversation where Oleg is clearly blackmailing Angelica into getting him access to you and Durant Astronautics. He also alludes to a video Angelica wouldn’t want released that shows ‘what she did to her husband’. But it’s all implied. The actual video, which apparently was recorded on a hidden camera that Albert’s daughter Evelyn gave him, was only in Angelica and Oleg’s possession. We actually have the camera, but the memory card has been erased. That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. Our IT department, which is really just one dude named Larry, didn’t know how to recover deleted footage. Do you think Victor might know?”
Zoey’s long monologue was more than I was able to take in at one time. I made her repeat it in smaller chunks a few times, trying to catch up to her conclusions and thought process as quickly as I could. I could already feel a headache coming on.
Did I objectively think that Angelica Hunt was a bad person? Yes, absolutely. Without a doubt. One hundred percent. Did I objectively think that Angelica Hunt was a murderer? That was a different thing entirely.
Angelica and I grew up together. Our families were irrevocably intertwined in the symbiotic, sometimes parasitic relationship that large corporations have with politicians. My uncle Alexander often called Angelica’s father, Senator Ellis, our family pet. It was pretty much true, but it meant that our families were so close I could remember when Angelica was born. I’d been in kindergarten, and remembered the very long, very boring baptism I’d been forced to attend. She was a bratty, spoiled little witch from the very start. Her little sister, Clara, was less attractive than Angelica, but a billion times more pleasant. I’d always tried to avoid Angelica, and thankfully she mostly left me alone.
When she’d married Albert Hunt a few years back, I’d been present, along with the rest of my extended clan. Their wedding had been exceedingly uncomfortable. Angelica looked great, but there’s nothing quite as disturbing as watching a twenty-eight-year-old woman and an eight-eight-year-old man kissing at the altar. She was obviously marrying him for the money. Angelica only had to wait a couple of a years for nature to take its course with Albert.
Could Angelica’s patience have run out? I didn’t want to believe that the blond bouncing baby I’d seen christened would murder her husband in cold blood, but yeah, I could believe it. Someone with no empathy was capable of anything given the proper motivation.
“You really think she did it?” I asked Zoey, watching her face carefully for any shred of doubt.
Zoey frowned, “Angelica? I don’t know. I do know that Tara’s audio recording proves that the story Angelica’s been trying to sell about her being a poor battered woman is a lie. I believe that Tara believes that Angelica killed Albert. I want to figure out about the bear.”
“What bear?” I asked, confused. I hadn’t remembered a bear in the story at all. This story was getting exponentially more bizarre.
“The teddy bear… oh I forgot to mention earlier, the hidden camera is one of those nanny cams that looks like a toy,” Zoey replied after giggling at my expression, “you thought I was talking about a literal bear, didn’t you?”
“I honestly have no idea what to think,” I admitted, running my hands through my hair. My head was spinning.
The doorbell rang then, startling us both. Thankfully it was just the Chinese food and not Angelica or a bear or anything else life or death. We sat down at the table and tried to eat but ended up just staring across from each other with chopsticks in our hands.
“It’s a lot to take in, huh?” Zoey said, smiling and shaking her head. “I’ve had all day to work through it, and I still feel really strange about the whole situation. But the more I think about it, the more I think it makes sense.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “it definitely would explain a few things. Especially about the relationship between Oleg and Angelica. I just couldn’t believe that she was in some sort of abusive relationship with him. She’s been the abuser and not the victim in every interpersonal relationship I’ve ever see her have. If he hit her, I’d expect her to have him murdered.”
“I feel slightly guilty admitting this, since I think women should be believed when they come forward with allegations of abuse, but I agree,” Zoey said, looking sheepish, “if it was anyone else but Angelica, I’d give her the benefit of the doubt. But not her.”
“Don’t feel guilty,” I told her, “because the more I think about this, the more I think it might be true. Remember, I’ve known Angelica forever. I’ve seen her do really awful things to people just because it’s funny to her, or because she wants something they had, or because she’s jealous. I told you before, she doesn’t recognize that other people are real people. If that isn’t the definition of a murderous mind, I don’t know what is.”
Zoey nodded, delicately scooping up a lo mein noodle between her chopsticks with her nimble fingers and setting it her mouth. She looked thoughtful as she chewed. I never thought watching someone using chopsticks to eat noodles could be sexy, but she managed it.
“I need to figure out if I can get the footage off the teddy bear. And I need to get in contact with Evelyn Hunt,” Zoey finally said after she swallowed, “Can you lend me some of Victor’s time to try and get the footage?”
Another thought, a pragmatic one at last, broke through the haze of my confusion.
“Zoey,” I said carefully, “Durant Industries owns The Philadelphia Monitor.”
She looked confused.
“Yeah,” she replied after a moment, “I know. Thank you.”
I swallowed before I continued. This was going to go over a thousand times worse than the trespassing changes.
“And Dura
nt Industries is owned by my family.”
“Right…” Zoey said, her eyebrows creeping together. I could tell by her expression that she had no idea what I was about to say, which only made it worse.
“I’m heir to one quarter of the business,” I continued, “and I sit on the board. Senator Ellis also sits on the Durant Industries board. He’s important to our family in a lot of ways. Angelica is his favorite daughter.”
“So?” Zoey said finally, “I don’t see how any of that matters.”
I took a deep breath.
“It matters because my family is going to want to protect Angelica for her father’s sake.”
She laughed in disbelief; a short, humorless little bark. She thought I was joking.
“Sure,” she said indulgently, “I mean I get why they would do that before. Trespassing is embarrassing and answering questions about the whole Oleg thing would have been unpleasant for her. But this is murder.”
Zoey clearly had no idea how my family operated. No one accumulates as much generational wealth and influence as we had by being one hundred percent good. My uncles Richard and Alexander were living proof, and Alexander III, David, and I weren’t far behind.
“Zoey,” I pleaded, “I hate that I’m going to have to do this, but this story can’t happen. It can’t come out.”
Her lips parted in disbelief.
“You’re kidding,” she said, her voice rising in intensity with each word, “you have to be kidding. I can’t just kill a story because it’s politically inconvenient for the parent company of my employer. Is that what you’re asking me to do? On day one of my job you want me to become corrupt?”
Kiss and Tell (Scions of Sin Book 2) Page 22