Last to die
Page 19
“Huh?”
“Just kidding.”
They shared a smile, then Jack turned serious again. “I’m really sorry about what happened to your sister, so let me apologize in advance for some of the questions I have to ask.”
“I understand.”
“This might sound like a weird question, but do you have any reason to believe that Sally would have killed herself?”
“Suicide? She was shot in her car while waiting at an intersection.”
“I know. But what I’m really asking is, do you think it’s possible that she hired someone to kill her?”
She looked away, but Jack could still see the troubled expression on her face. “I don’t know. I have worried about her. She had a lot of issues, many of which I’m sure you already know about. Her money problems, the stalker, the murder of her daughter, her failed marriage.”
“What about the book that the reporter from the Miami Tribune was writing? Do you know anything about that?”
She paused, then said, “I do. If there was one thing that I think could have driven Sally toward suicide, it would have been that book. Or not the book, per se, but its premise.”
“What was your understanding of it?”
“Sally felt that she was being blamed for the fact that her daughter’s killer was never caught. We talked a lot about that. She was having an awful time dealing with those accusations.”
“Did you ever talk to her about the polygraph exam she took? I’m not insinuating anything, but my understanding is that it showed signs of deception when Sally answered no to the question, ‘Do you know who killed your daughter?’”
“You of all people-someone who has done death penalty work-should know that lie detector tests are not infallible. In my view, if that test showed signs of deception, the machine was wrong.”
“There was another area that the test said she was lying about. It had to do with some question about an extramarital affair.”
“If you’re asking me if Sally cheated on her husband, I don’t know. She never told me about a lover. I never got any awkward phone calls from Miguel asking, ‘Hey, did you and Sally really have dinner together last night?’-you know, the kind of checking up you’d expect from a husband if the wife was cheating.”
“Let’s assume she was having an affair. Was she the kind of person who would…how should I put this?”
“Who would cover up her own daughter’s murder to protect her lover? No way. I know that’s what the prosecutor said, and I know that’s what Deirdre Meadows wanted to write in her stupid book. Excuse my language, but that is total bullshit. Katherine was Sally’s life. She would never have covered up the murder of her own daughter out of love for some man.”
“What about out of fear?” asked Jack.
“Meaning what?”
“Again, I’m not making any accusations. Just want to consider all the possibilities. Is it possible that Sally was afraid to identify the man who killed her daughter because she was afraid he might come back and kill her, too?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know-knew-my sister.”
“Did you know that she was being stalked before her daughter was murdered?”
“I found that out when everybody else did, after the murder.”
“If she was being stalked, how can you completely dismiss the prosecutor’s theory that this stalker was her lover and that Sally was afraid to identify him as the man who killed her daughter?”
“Because I know differently. I know that after the murder, Sally was obsessed with trying to find out who her stalker was. She was hunting him down.”
Jack laid his fork on the table, absorbing what she’d just said. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
“It’s true. Unless Sally was the world’s greatest actress, I’m convinced that she had never even met her stalker, let alone fallen in love with him.”
“How do you know she tried to hunt him down?”
“Like I said, Sally came to Africa to try to get over the past. She was terribly distraught over the fact that her daughter’s killer had never been caught. Finally, over two years after the murder, her stalker contacted her by e-mail while she was here in Africa. We were down at the Internet café together, checking our e-mails, when she found it.”
“What happened?”
“I scrolled through my messages, then Sally scrolled through hers. All of a sudden, she went completely white. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, ‘It’s a message from that same guy who was stalking me before.’”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes. It was benign, really. Just, ‘Hello, how have you been?’ You’d never know it was from a stalker. But I guess that’s the way all communications from stalkers start out.”
“What did Sally do?”
“She started corresponding with him. She even had one or two on-line chats. She had a plan.”
“What was it?”
“She was trying to arrange a face-to-face meeting with him.”
“In Africa?”
“No. She was willing to hop on the next plane back to Miami if he would meet with her.”
“Wasn’t that a little risky?”
“That’s finally what I said to her: ‘Hey, Sally, this could be the man who murdered Katherine and stuck a knife beneath your ribs.’ Finally, I talked her into a safer approach.”
“Which was what?”
“Just continue the on-line communications, see if he’d divulge some tidbit of information that might help the police find this guy.”
“Did it work?”
“She tried. Week after week, doing her best to coax him into saying something about where he lived, what kind of car he drove, anything. He was smart, though. Never revealed much of anything about himself. He would always turn it around and ask questions about her: What she was doing, what she was wearing, how would she like a big you-know-what in the you-know-where?”
“Did she get anything at all out of him?”
“One night, she was totally frustrated. She threatened never to talk to him on-line again if he didn’t tell her his name. He gave her a name, but Sally and I both knew it wasn’t real.”
“What was it?”
“Gosh, I don’t remember. Kind of goofy-sounding.”
“Take a minute. Think about it.”
Her brow furrowed as the wheels turned in her head. “I think it was…no. Yeah, that’s it. Alan Sirap.”
Jack froze. “Alan S-I-R-A-P?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
She obviously had no idea that Sirap was the name of Sally’s sixth beneficiary, the “unknown” whom they’d been unable to identify. Jack settled back in his chair and said, “No, I don’t know him. But I’m starting to feel like I do.”
Thirty-three
After lunch Jack took a look under the hood.
He’d offered to drive Rene back to Korhogo, and her business was finished, so she’d gladly accepted. Unfortunately, their Land Rover had developed the automotive equivalent of a smoker’s hack. Jack was no mechanic, but he’d learned a thing or two from his treasured old Mustang back home, enough to know that he should at least check the filters before returning down the same dusty road that had brought them to Odienné.
Theo was reclining in the passenger seat, his feet up on the dash, fanning himself with a folded newspaper. “You know, I think this is actually going to work.”
Jack was inspecting an air filter, blowing out the dirt. “How would you know? You haven’t lifted a finger all day.”
“I’m not talking about the Rover. I’m talking about this chapalo.”
“Your what?”
He raised the bottle and said, “It’s a millet beer my buddies from Belgium gave me. They said it would cure my hangover.”
“You think drinking more alcohol is the way to recover from drinking too much alcohol?”
“It’s not just alcohol. It’s p
imenté, the way the Ivorians drink it. They add hot peppers to give it extra kick. All I know is that it’s kicking the crap out of my hangover.”
“Brilliant,” said Jack. “Next time I overeat, I’ll go stuff myself with a cheeseburger pimenté.
“Mmm. That sounds pretty good.”
Jack shut the hood, walked around to the driver’s side, and leaned into the open window. They were parked in the alley beside their hotel, taking advantage of the very limited shade of the two-story building. Jack asked, “Has your head stopped throbbing long enough for you to think about Alan Sirap?”
Theo sipped his beer and made a face, as if suffering from brief pimenté overload. “Doesn’t make no sense.”
“You mean Sally naming him as the sixth beneficiary?”
“This is the guy who stabbed Sally and killed her daughter. And Rene says her sister wanted to fly back to Miami and meet him? That’s what don’t make no sense.”
“Well, Rene talked her out of that. She realized how dangerous it could be.”
“Or how pointless it could be.”
“How’s that?” asked Jack.
“I’m thinking maybe the reason Sally wasn’t afraid to meet him is that she was convinced he wasn’t the man who killed her daughter.”
“So, you’re saying she was trying to prove a negative?”
“Huh?”
“The only reason she wanted to meet with the stalker was to rule him out as a possible suspect in the murder of her daughter.”
“Possible, ain’t it?” said Theo.
“Yeah. It’s also possible that she knew exactly how dangerous he was, but she wasn’t afraid of dying. Just like she wasn’t afraid to die two years later when she tried to hire your brother to shoot her.”
Theo squinted. The sun had moved just enough to create an annoying glare across the top of the windshield. “Either way, I guess she hated this Mr. Sirap as much as the other heirs.”
“Of course,” said Jack. “It was the stalking that led to the prosecutor’s accusation that Sally was trying to cover up for the man who killed her daughter.”
“Okay. That means five of the six heirs are connected to Sally’s past life. Which leaves a big question about my brother: What’s Tatum’s connection?”
Jack looked away, then back. “Maybe he’s the guy who made her whole scheme possible. She rewarded him for killing her.”
“No, no, doesn’t fit. She didn’t leave this money to reward anybody. She was trying to punish people. The only reason for her to punish Tatum is not because he made her scheme possible by killing her, but because he almost made her plan impossible. He refused to kill her.”
“But think about it. Doesn’t it make it more of a punishment for the other five if she makes Tatum Knight the sixth beneficiary?”
“She don’t need Tatum for that. She’s already got Alan Sirap, or whatever his real name is. Why would she need two-”
Jack waited for his friend to finish, and then he realized why he’d stopped. “Two killers? Is that what you were going to say?”
Theo chugged his beer, then threw the bottle out the open window. It smashed against the brick wall. “Was you who said it, not me,” he said angrily.
“Theo, come on.”
“Come on nothin’. I didn’t come all the way over here to prove my brother was guilty. It’d be nice if you could just pretend for ten minutes that you think he’s innocent.”
“I’m not-”
Theo got out and walked toward the hotel. Jack followed him inside, but Theo continued straight through the lobby and into the restaurant, probably for a replacement bottle of chapalo. Rene was at the front desk, checking out.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.
“Bad case of pissed-off pimenté.” Jack grabbed her suitcase and said, “We can load up.”
He led her outside and put her suitcase in back. She took shotgun, and Jack sat behind the wheel. Even with the windows open, there was no breeze to cut the mid-afternoon sun. The simple act of carrying her bag to the car had caused Jack to break a sweat.
Rene was checking her reflection in the rearview mirror, putting up her hair for the long and hot ride ahead of them. Jack averted his eyes when she caught him staring, though she didn’t seem to mind the attention.
With a bobby pin in her mouth she asked, “When are you going to get around to asking me?”
“Asking you what?”
“The question that must be on your mind: Why didn’t Sally leave one red cent of her forty-six million dollars to her darling sister, Rene?”
Jack removed his dusty Australian-style hat and wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a bandanna. “That’s definitely near the top of my list.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“Honestly, my plan was to give it a day or two, get to know you a little, so I could tell if you were lying or not. Then I was going to ask.”
She cut her eyes and said, “You think you’re going to get to know me that well, do you?”
“No, I wasn’t implying-I’m a pretty quick study, is what I’m trying to say.”
She seemed amused by his embarrassment. She took his hand and said, “Put your finger right here, would you, please?”
Jack pressed his finger to the center of a long, twisted braid at the back of her head. Rene tied it all together with a colorful piece of rope, the kind he’d seen African women selling on the streets of Korhogo. In seconds, she’d completely transformed her look, and somehow it came as no surprise to Jack that she was just as striking with all that hair tucked up under her hat.
She looked at Jack and asked, “Should I tell you now?”
“Tell me what?”
“About me and Sally. And her will.”
“Now’s good.”
“You sure? I can wait, if you think you’ll be a better judge of my truth telling after we’ve bounced all the way back to Korhogo together.”
She was clearly poking fun at his “plan.” He said, “I’ll assume the risk. Go ahead.”
She took a breath, adopting a more serious air. “Truth is, Sally and I had a little falling out.”
“How little?”
“Actually, not so little. We were barely speaking to each other after she left Africa.”
“What happened?”
“Things were great while she was here. Everybody at Children First loved her. Two sisters working side by side for a good cause, fighting against the use of children as slave labor in the cocoa fields. I was truly sad when she decided to leave, and I thought I understood. Till about two months later. That’s when I found out Sally was getting married.”
“To her millionaire husband.”
“Not just any millionaire. Sally’s mega-millionaire actually owns a cocoa plantation that hires child slaves.”
“I had no idea,” he said, shaking his head. “Wow. You must have felt totally betrayed.”
“I was furious.”
“Are you still?”
“In hindsight, I realize that Sally was so screwed up over the murder of her daughter. Like I said before, she tried everything from working for charity to marrying for money. Nothing made her happy.”
“Except for maybe one thing,” said Jack.
“What’s that?”
“Based on her will, I’d say revenge.”
Their eyes met and held. Finally she said, “You’re the first person I’ve talked to about this. I don’t even think Sally’s estate lawyer knows everything.”
“Thank you for telling me. I was hoping that if I came all this way I’d get to the truth.”
“Maybe it’s time I got to the truth, too. The whole truth.”
“How do you mean?”
“I was thinking about what you said yesterday, how you wondered if Sally might have reached such a low point in her life that she hired someone to shoot her. Other than myself, I can think of only one other person who would have known her well enough to answer that question.”
A sparkle came to her eye, as if she were suddenly energized. “How’d you like to meet Sally’s rich ex-husband?”
“I thought he lived in France.”
“He’s French, but he lives here most of the year.”
“You can arrange a meeting?”
“No promises, but with your friend Theo tagging along, I think we can pull off just about anything. Brains, beauty, brawn. How can we miss?”
“I know which of us is the brawn. So that must make me-”
“The baggage,” she said with a wink, as if to confirm that she was two of the three. “Now go get your brawny friend. Time’s a-wasting.”
Thirty-four
The road south was paved all the way to Man, a city of about 150,000 people in a breathtaking geographical setting. It was called the “town of eighteen peaks,” perhaps an overly romantic appellation for a confusing and frankly unattractive collection of urban districts that were spread across a valley and surrounded by mountains. Jack had no preconceived notion of West African cities, but Man reminded him of something else entirely, a place he just couldn’t put his finger on, until Theo spoke up.
“Like a shitty Colorado town without all the white people.”
They spent the night in Man, then set out in the morning for the coffee and cocoa farming region in western Côte d’Ivoire. The air had been scrubbed clean by an early shower, one last tropical blast at the tail end of a seven-month rainy season. Driving at the higher altitudes was a pleasant change from the dusty trek across the baked northern grasslands, but it wasn’t as beautiful as Jack had imagined it. High, forest-strewn ridges offered some insight into how the entire region had looked years earlier, before logging and agriculture claimed the rain forests.
“Are we there yet?” asked Theo.
Jack and Rene were in front, Theo in back. Theo flashed him a big grin in the rearview mirror, revealing not his teeth but the wedge of an orange that for some childish reason made Jack laugh. It reminded Jack of something Nate would have done, which made him think of Kelsey, which made him feel slightly guilty for having discreetly but frequently admired the shape of Rene’s legs since leaving Man. It got him to thinking that maybe he wasn’t interested in Kelsey after all. Maybe she’d simply managed to breathe life into a part of himself that he’d left for dead with his divorce.