Wicked Beautiful

by J. T. Geissinger

  At least she doesn’t seem inclined to beat me. It’s a step in the right direction.

  I say what I didn’t want to say over the phone when I arranged this meeting, and declare, “Victoria isn’t dead!”

  Tabby’s rolled eyes and sarcastic “No shit, Sherlock” aren’t quite what I was expecting.

  Number one: nobody knows about the second note Victoria left but me and Connor. Number two: I know for a fact that she hasn’t accessed any of her bank accounts, used her credit cards, or made phone contact with either Tabby or Darcy, because Connor has been on top of everything. Victoria left her cell at my house—along with her handbag, wallet, everything—but all the calls coming in to her home landline and Tabby and Darcy’s phones since Victoria disappeared have been traceable. No mysterious numbers from the Caribbean, no random pay phones, no nothing. So unless Victoria sent a letter or a carrier pigeon, they should be in the dark.

  “You mind telling me how you know that?”

  The look Tabby gives me is meant to disembowel. In a voice dripping acid, she says, “You first, dickhead.”

  Connor snorts.

  Tabby cuts her eyes to him and narrows them. “And who the fuck is this, G.I. Joe on steroids?”

  Connor flexes an enormous bicep. “Ain’t no steroids in these guns, baby. That’s one hundred percent pure American male.”

  Darcy abruptly stops chewing. A few chips fall out of her open mouth and land in her cleavage. She mutters, “Man meat. Mmm.”

  Tabby says, “Call me ‘baby’ one more time, jarhead, and you and John Bobbitt will have something in common.”

  Apparently Connor has no problem being threatened with penile amputation, because a slow grin spreads over his face. “Feisty, aren’t you?”

  “Tabby, this is Connor. He’s a friend.”

  “Well I’m not talking about Victoria in front of your boyfriend, so come back when you don’t need him for moral support, you big pussy.”

  I scowl. Connor just smiles wider.

  He asks her, “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  “Fuck you.”

  He chuckles. “Gladly, sweet thing. Any time you want the ride of your life, just hop on.”

  Nostrils flared, Tabby looks at me. “Get this Neanderthal out of my face before I rip off his balls.”

  I want to break something. This situation is already out of hand, we’re getting nowhere, and all I want to do is find out where the hell Victoria could have gone and go after her. “Connor works for me, all right? He’s familiar with the situation, and he can help us find her!”

  He adds, “I’m in security.”

  Tabby looks Connor up and down, her gaze scrutinizing, calculating, and highly disbelieving. “You?” she says, a brow arched. “You’re his security guy?”

  The way she says it is so condescending, I feel insulted on Connor’s behalf. “We’ve worked together for years. You can trust him. He’s the best in the business.”

  Tabby turns her disdainful gaze to me. “If you think this knuckle dragger is the best, you’re as stupid as you look.”

  Connor laughs while I bristle in indignation. “What’s your problem with me, Tabby? I walk in here, tell you your boss isn’t dead, and you don’t even bother to find out how I know or what happened the night she disappeared. You just start breaking my balls. What the hell?”

  Tabby’s fierce eyes fill with tears. Her voice comes out choked. “She wasn’t just my boss. She was my idol and my friend and the only fucking family I have, and you’re the asshole who ruined her life!”

  Astonished, I blink. “How did I ruin her life? By falling in love with her?”

  Darcy drops the bag of chips. It lands on the floor, spraying Doritos at her feet. “You’re in love with her?”

  Tabby says bitterly, “He’s a fucking liar, is what he is. Always has been, always will be.” She turns and walks away, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around her body, shaking.

  As I watch her retreating back, I ask Darcy, “What am I missing?”

  Darcy purses her lips. She looks down at the bag of chips on the floor, and then back up at me. “I think we should probably go into the kitchen for this. I’m gonna need something stronger than Doritos. And you, Captain America, are probably gonna need a strong-ass drink.”

  She turns and follows Tabby. Connor and I look at each other, he shrugs, and I exhale through clenched teeth. If we want to find out what’s going on, we have no choice but to follow, and so we do.

  * * *

  Darcy sits at the kitchen table, cradling a gallon of Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream to her chest. She’s spooning it right out of the container into her mouth. Connor sits opposite her, his big frame dwarfing the chair. His eyes are on Tabby, who’s pacing back and forth in front of the sink, chewing her thumbnail. I stand in the doorway with my arms crossed, watching everyone, waiting for someone to speak.

  Finally Connor cuts through the tension, addressing Tabby directly.

  “She left a note.”

  Tabby spins on her heel and glares at him. “The police told me about that bullshit note, and there’s no fucking way she wrote it!”

  When her eyes flash to me, I realize she’s accusing me of forging Victoria’s suicide note. “Hold the fuck on—” I begin, irate, but Connor cuts me off.

  “No, sweet cheeks, another note. She left two. One for the police, one for Parker. And for the record, she wrote both; I evaluated the handwriting. It’s hers.”

  Tabby’s big green eyes widen. She sucks in a hopeful breath. “Where’s the other note? What did it say? Give it to me!”

  She thrusts her hand into Connor’s face.

  He grins. “I’ll give it to you…if you promise to be nice.”

  Slowly Tabby lowers her arm. Her breathing is erratic, her spine is straight, and her eyes are steely, and full of venom.

  If I were Connor, I’d honestly be in fear for the future health of my testicles.

  Glaring at him, Tabby says quietly, “I’m good, jarhead, but I will never, ever, be nice. Nice is for preschool teachers, politicians, and cowards. I’m real, and I don’t give one single fuck about conforming to your misogynist ideas about how women should act, so you fucking hand over that motherfucking note right now, or I swear to the Goddess I will rain down a shit storm of such epic proportions on you, you’ll think your name is Noah.”

  Connor looks over at me. “It is inappropriate for me to have a boner right now? ’Cause my dick is so hard it might actually explode.”

  “Just give her the damn note, Connor.”

  Tabby says, “Thank you!” and snaps her fingers in front of his face.

  Smirking at her, he removes a folded piece of white paper from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. He flicks it out between two fingers like a magician with a card trick, and she snatches it from his hand.

  She reads it once, her eyes darting from line to line. She frowns, glances up at me, and then reads it again. She sinks into the nearest chair, staring at me with big, disbelieving eyes.

  “You asked her to marry you?”

  Darcy chokes on a mouthful of ice cream. Connor leans over and pounds her on the back.

  “Yes. Well, no, not exactly. I sort of…implied that we’d get married. Whatever. The point is that we agreed we’d go ring shopping when we came back to New York, and then we went to sleep, and the next thing I know she’s gone.”

  Tabby digests that in fraught silence for a moment. Darcy says, “Gimme that,” and rips the note from Tabby’s hands. She proceeds to read it silently, her lips moving, but I’ve already memorized every word.

  Dear Parker,

  Forgive me for leaving like this again, but you’ve left me no choice. I’m not interested in marriage…or any other institution.

  Thank you for everything you shared with me tonight. You have no idea what it means to me. I’ll never tell another soul, so please don’t waste one minute worrying about that.

  The other note is for the po
lice, so you won’t be a suspect in my disappearance. And no, I don’t have cancer. That’s just for the media. I plan on living a long and productive life, out of the spotlight. Please don’t try to find me. It will only make things worse.

  There are so many things I wish I could tell you, but there’s just too much at stake. Maybe in another life.

  I wish you happiness, Parker. You deserve it.

  Yours always,

  Victoria

  When she finishes reading, Darcy glances at Tabby. A look passes between them that prompts me to ask, “I assume you both knew all along who she really is?”

  Tabby—the fierce, indomitable Tabby—blanches to the color of a bedsheet. “She told you who she really is?”

  “Not in so many words. But she admitted it when I confronted her.” I think for a moment, and then correct myself. “Actually she didn’t admit it, but she didn’t deny it, either.”

  When Tabby and Darcy both give me the same bug-eyed look, I say impatiently, “Look, the bottom line is that I figured out she was Polaroid, I confronted her about it after showing her a bunch of my own skeletons so she’d feel secure that she could trust me, we agreed on marriage, and then this.” I point to the note in Darcy’s hands. “And I need to know where she might have gone, so I can go after her and fix this. Which is why I’m here—because I assume you two are my best chance at figuring out where she went. I would’ve come sooner, but the St. Thomas police held me up; I had to cooperate with the investigation there. I got back to New York only yesterday, and I spent most of the day with the NYPD.”

  There follows a silence so wide and cavernous I can hear my own heart beating. Then Tabby says hollowly, “Polaroid.”

  “Yeah,” interrupts Connor with a wry shake of his head. “Blew my fuckin’ mind, too. Never woulda thought a skirt could pull off the shit she pulled off. Un-fuckin’-believable.”

  Tabby’s face goes from white to red. The look she gives Connor should melt him into a puddle, but he remains unscathed, just shaking his head at the impossibility of it all.

  An obviously befuddled Darcy asks, “Who’s Polaroid?”

  I can tell Tabby knows, but maybe Victoria didn’t disclose quite as much to Darcy as she did to her assistant. It makes sense, I suppose; Tabby was with Victoria every day, all day, running her schedule, basically running her entire life. She’d mentioned once that Tabby was her right hand, the support she couldn’t live without. Tabby must know where all the figurative bodies are buried.

  In a casual tone at direct odds with the sharp look in his eyes, Connor asks Darcy, “You’ve never heard that name before?”

  Darcy opens her mouth, but Tabby cuts her off before she can utter a word.

  “Victoria didn’t tell her about Polaroid, or about her past. She doesn’t know anything.” She cuts Darcy a warning look. “Isn’t that right, Darcy?”

  Darcy carefully sets the ice cream carton on the table. Staring right at it, she nods. “Yep. I mean, nope. I don’t know anything. We weren’t even really that close.”

  Connor looks at Tabby, then at Darcy, and then chuckles. “Ladies, that’s just about the shittiest lie-telling I’ve ever seen.”

  “Agreed,” I snap. “Somebody better start telling me what the hell is going on, or I’ll get the police in here to get the story for me.”

  Tabby says coldly, “We’ve both already been interviewed by the police. And no, in case you’re wondering, I didn’t tell them about Polaroid. Did you?”

  “Of course not! I want to protect her, not put her in jail!”

  Her lips twist. “That’s clearly not what she thought, evidenced by that line in her letter, ‘any other institution.’ She was obviously talking about prison.” Her look darkens. “Or a hospital.”

  She’s glaring at me with such disgust, such open hostility, I’m taken aback. “I didn’t hurt her, or threaten to hurt her! I only wanted to make her happy—”

  Tabby leaps to her feet. “Make her happy? You drove her to the edge and pushed her off, you fucking moron!” she shouts. “Whatever you said to her that night forced her to do this! And now we’ll never see her again—thanks to you!”

  That hurts, all of it, mainly because I’ve been thinking the same thing. I never would have disclosed Victoria’s real identity to the police or anyone else, but the way I worded it…thinking back, I realize my attempt at trying to convince Victoria to marry me was an absolute fucking disaster. Never in a million years did I think she’d do something like this. Worst case scenario, I thought she’d refuse me and call my bluff, and I’d run home with my tail between my legs.

  I’m such a dick. And Tabby sees right through me.

  I try to deny it anyway. “We don’t know that we’ll never see her again. She could just be spooked, lying low—”

  “She’s not coming back,” Tabby interrupts bitterly. “She’d never have accessed the bug-out bag if she planned on coming back. I checked; it’s gone. And so is she. For good.”

  Now I’m confused. “What’s a bug-out bag?”

  Connor says, “A portable kit with supplies, typically used for short-term survival situations when you have to leave an unsafe area due to disasters. Earthquakes, terrorist attacks, the outbreak of war, that kind of thing.”

  He and Tabby lock eyes. He adds softly, “In this particular bag, I’d guess we’re looking at new identity papers, passport under a different name, and lots and lots of cash. Right, sweet cheeks?”

  Darcy groans. “Oh Lord, another fake name? That poor thing!”

  The three of us look at her, Connor and I with eagle-eyed interest, Tabby with a death glare.

  When Darcy realizes her mistake, she winces. “Oops.”

  I whisper, “Her real name isn’t Victoria Price?”

  “That’s impossible,” says Connor, his body still, his ruthless gaze on Tabby. “Everything checked out, right down to her birth certificate. Her entire background checked out. It was spotless.”

  Tabby lifts her chin, gazes down her nose at Connor, and sniffs. “I said you weren’t the best in the business, didn’t I?”

  My heart is doing something unusual. It might be trying to rip itself out of my chest. “What’s her real name?”

  Tabby looks at me. “Fuck you, Parker Maxwell. Fuck you and your pretty face and your prettier lies. I’m not telling you anything.”

  My mind is going a million miles an hour. My hands shake. I feel a bit dizzy, so I pull out a chair and sit.

  “Darcy,” I say hoarsely, looking at her. “What’s Victoria’s real name? And why does Tabby keep calling me a liar?”

  “If you tell him, I’ll push you into traffic,” snaps Tabby.

  “Pipe down, woman,” says Connor, rising to his feet. He puts his hands on his hips, towering over Tabby. Unintimidated, she rolls her eyes and turns her back on all of us.

  I reach out and touch Darcy’s arm. “Darcy. Please. I have to know. I have to find her. I need to make this right.”

  She looks at my face for a long, silent moment, her large dark eyes sizing me up. Finally she exhales and shakes her head. “Sorry, Parker, but after everything you’ve put that girl through—”

  “Darcy, if you don’t shut up, I will personally ensure that you’ll never walk again!” yells Tabby.

  My fingers tighten around Darcy’s arm. “What did I do? Tell me—help me understand!”

  Tabby glares at us. Connor folds his arms over his chest and steps in front of her like a barrier. Darcy simply shakes her head again, mute.

  I set my elbows on the table, drop my face into my hands, and emit a noise of frustration that sounds like a cross between a gorilla giving birth and a berserker battle cry.

  They’re not going to tell me anything. I’ve hit a brick wall. There’s something else at play here that I can’t fathom, and probably never will, because Tabby and Darcy are too busy protecting Victoria…from me.

  Why are they protecting her from me?

  What did Victoria tell them about me
?

  I think of the trip she took to Laredo—which I stupidly neglected to ask her about during our stint in St. Thomas—and wonder for the hundredth time what that was about. But there’s no way I’ll ever find out now. Unless they’re willing to give me something, some detail of the underlying plot that I’m missing, I’ll never…

  Hold on. What if I give them something first?

  It comes to me as if I’ve been slapped upside the head; I’ve got to tell them what happened that night. I’ve got to tell them the truth, the whole truth, dangerous as that might be to my reputation, my career, and everything else. It’s the only card I’ve got left to play. It’s the only way I’ll get them to trust me.

  I’ve got to put my future into the hands of Psychotic Redheaded Goth Barbie and her sidekick, the Stress-Eating Bloggess.

  I’m fucked.

  I lift my head and stare first at Darcy, and then at Tabby, who’s still glaring at me from around Connor’s shoulder. Because Tabby seems the more furious and emotional of the two, and I suspect she knows more than Darcy does, I address her first.

  “My father was a drug lord.”

  Connor swings around and barks, “Fucking shit, Parker! You high?”

  I don’t even bother answering him. The look of shock on Tabby’s face tells me I’m headed in the right direction. “He imported cocaine from Mexico by the truckload during the eighties and nineties—”

  “Jesus Christ,” Connor groans, lifting his hands to his head.

  “—and when I found out about it, I blackmailed him into stopping by telling him I’d turn him in to the police.”

  Darcy says, “Huh. And I thought my family was interesting.”

  “I also spent six months in prison on a drug charge unrelated to my dad’s thing. I was just really fucked up at that point in my life. Connor helped me make all that information disappear, by the way.”

  “That’s it. We’re outta here.” Connor strides over to me and waves me up. “Not another fucking word, brother.”