Terry, of course, was as pleased as punch and let us know it the second he stepped back into the foyer. “Now that’s how it’s done!”
“I’ll be sure to nominate you for a Tony award,” his wife told him.
An hour later, Jeff and Rocky departed for Atlanta, never bothering to stop in and say goodbye. When he got off the phone with Rocky, Terry tipped me off that if I hurried, I might catch one last glimpse of Jeff over the railing, so I rushed outside in time to see the back of the SUV as it drove away. It was no surprise to my bodyguards that I burst into tears. I was genuinely frustrated, even angry, that Terry waited so long to tell me. One glance at him told me it had been orchestrated to create that reaction from me. I understood his strategy, but I didn’t like it.
Nancy took the little dog and me for a long ride; it was her attempt at consoling me. I cried most of the time. When we returned to Cinnamon Beach, I was red-eyed and miserable. Even a late afternoon trip to the beach didn’t cheer me up. I sat on my beach chair with the dog, moping.
Two days later, I was sitting in the shade out by the adult pool, reading A Whisper of Ginger. Terry, back from the local FedEx office triumphant, hailed me as he sauntered into the pool enclosure. In his right hand, he carried a manila envelope.
“Look what’s here,” he announced. He dropped the package into my waiting hands. With fingers trembling, I tore open the flap and unwrapped the bubble packaging. The watch looked as I had remembered it, still a shiny, sparkly piece of bling, with its diamond-crusted mother-of-pearl face.
Terry sat down beside me. He seemed to sense my hesitation. “Why don’t you put it on?”
Mixed emotions took over as I held it in my hands for the first time in weeks. It was a reminder of the relationship with Jared, something I desperately wanted to forget. But it was also a symbol of my future. This was what my tormentor needed. He was waiting for this, so he could make his next move on me, and my protectors were ready to stop him. Good or bad, my life was about to change. Taking a deep breath to steady my nerves, I slid the band over my wrist.
“Why don’t we go out for lunch today?” Terry suggested casually. “Come upstairs in twenty minutes.”
“I can come with you now,” I replied, slipping my bookmark into place.
“No, no. Twenty minutes will be fine. I wanted to have a private word with Nancy. I hope you don’t mind,” he apologized. “We were having a disagreement this morning and I said something that I shouldn’t have. I just want to smooth things over with her.”
“Sure,” I smiled. “Twenty minutes.”
I tried to pick up the story where I left off; Nora was vacationing with Jean-Claude in Oahu, in a borrowed condo on Waikiki Beach just after their wedding. I should have been enthralled in the honeymoon, but it was difficult to concentrate. Why did Terry need me to stay here for twenty minutes? I didn’t really believe he had an argument with Nancy. Something else was going on. Was I being observed? Had Terry brought me the watch at the pool so my stalker could see the package in my possession?
I glanced down and noted the time. I had fifteen minutes to kill and a mind that was anticipating the worst. What if we missed something? Would the contract killer approach me at the pool and shoot me at point blank range? No, I reminded myself. My unofficial witness protection program was better than that, I insisted adamantly to my doubtful self. Terry would have hung around. He would never leave me that vulnerable. Or would he?
I skimmed through another two chapters, keeping my eyes on the pages of the paperback, before closing the book and tucking it into my tote bag, along with my towel. Slipping on my sunglasses, I emerged from the shady oasis. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the bright Florida sunshine. I followed the path from the oceanfront adult pool back to our building. As I stepped into the vestibule, an older man joined me. He was huffing and puffing, sweating profusely. For a moment, I thought he might be having a heart attack.
“Sorry,” he moaned, obviously in pain. “It must have been something I ate. I’m not feeling well.”
“Do you want to sit down?”
“No, no. I just want to get back to my place and lie down. My wife’s a nurse.”
The elevator door slid open and I stepped aside to let him go first. He pushed the button for the second floor before slumping against the wall.
“Oh dear, I don’t...think...I’m going to make it,” he told me weakly. “Can you...can you help me?”
He leaned heavily on me as we stepped out onto the second floor corridor. With a wave of his hand, he pointed to his front door. “It’s that one.”
I leaned forward and rapped on it anxiously, even as I held up the sagging figure. The door opened seconds later. I expected to see a middle-aged woman. I expected the stricken man’s wife to rush out and do something, anything. Call 911. Ask for an ambulance. Lay the patient down and make him comfortable. Give him medicine. But there was no wife standing there. Instead, I got the shock of my life.
The man who appeared before me looked the same, right down to the smooth smile and twinkle in his eyes, but this time I wasn’t fooled. I knew I was seeing the devil incarnate.
“Jared!” I gasped.
“Here she is at last!” he grinned. “Not a moment too soon. How long I have waited for our reunion, Margot. Please come in, my darling.”
I froze, suddenly terrified at the thought of entering this condo, never to emerge alive. How would Terry and Nancy come to my rescue if they didn’t know where I was? Resisting, I tried to back away, but a hand on my back shoved me through the open door.
“In you go,” said the phony heart attack victim. There was -- that phrase again. It was the wrong thing to say to me, especially after all those self-defense lessons.
“Hell, no!”
The first thing I did was punch Jared in the throat. The second thing I did was elbow the man behind me in the solar plexus. I didn’t bother to stick around to check on their injuries. I ran as fast as I could, taking the stairs down. My plan was to run back to the pool, where the lunch crowd was hanging out. I had seen a couple of burly men lounging around there.
Jared caught me by the hair as I ran out of the building, entangling the long strands in his angry grasp.
“Not so fast, Margot!” he growled. My right arm was shoved up behind my back while he yanked at the watch on my left. “Give that to me!”
I pushed myself away, not caring that the Citizen Chronograph was no longer attached to my arm, and as I did, the other man caught up with us.
“Now, boss?” he asked, out of breath. He held onto me as Jared examined the back of the watch.
“Son of a....Where’s my damn watch, Margot?”
“Your watch?” I replied, confused.
“The one I gave you? Where the hell is it?”
“That’s it!”
“No, it’s not. See?” He held out the back of the watch for me to see. “Not my engraving! How am I supposed to collect my money from the bank without the account number? What did you and your friends do with the real watch?”
“I...I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I cried, as the second man began to apply pressure. There was a bone-searing pain as he lifted my arm in an effort to dislocate my shoulder.
“Where is it?” Jared hissed, his face just inches from mine.
“I swear to you I don’t know!”
“Shall I kill her now?” asked the man holding me.
“No, you bloody idiot. I need that watch! We’ll take her back to your place and she can make a phone call. We’ll see whether your friends really care about you, Margot. It’s time to trade your life for the watch.”
My feet were heavy on the stairs as I reluctantly climbed to the second floor. With my hands restrained behind my back, I realized those self-defense lessons weren’t enough to save me from two assailants. Would Jeff return the watch or let me die? What if Jared double-crossed him and killed me anyway?
“You have your knife with you, Kornbloom?”<
br />
“Always, boss. Why?”
“We’re going to put her on the phone to her friends, and when she’s talking to them, I want you to use it, so they know we mean business.”
“My pleasure.” Kornbloom leaned over my shoulder, his menacing lips close to my ear. “And I do mean pleasure.”
Once inside the foyer, the door closed again and I stood quaking. My wrists, no longer restrained, hurt like crazy. I could see the telltale signs of bruises emerging my damaged skin. The azure blue ocean, visible through the open sliding glass doors of the living room, shimmered in the noonday sun, as if it were another perfect day in paradise, but I knew better. I was in serious trouble.
“What’s your boyfriend’s number?” Jared demanded. I started to answer just as an unexpected movement captured my attention. We weren’t alone in the condo. There was a furtive figure in the kitchen, hiding below the counter. What’s more, I didn’t think my kidnappers knew that.
“I’m only going to ask you one more time, Margot. What’s the freaking number?” Jared’s voice was high-pitched and edgy, suggesting he was close to his breaking point. Had he so counted on recovering that money that he was now desperate enough to do just about anything to get his hands on it?
I could see Kornbloom’s knife in his hand. But I could also see what the men did not. Silent figures moved into place behind them; I saw a hand waving frantically in my direction, motioning me to drop to the floor. I was more than happy to oblige.
I struck the tile floor hard as I landed, but I managed to roll at the last second and avoided hitting my head.
“Hands in the air! Hands in the air!”
“FBI!”
“Lock your thumbs and put your hands on your heads! Do it now!”
With so many people in such a small, confined space, the shouts reverberated with a deafening cacophony, especially when all those shod feet rushed in. I lay there, afraid to move, as federal agents stepped around me and over me. Minutes later, I felt myself being gently lifted to my feet in time to see Jared led out of the front door by a team of five federal agents. Kornbloom followed, accompanied by another four.
“It’s all over,” announced a cheerful voice. I didn’t recognize the stranger, but he wore an FBI vest. “How are you...in one piece?”
I nodded, still terrified. Nancy and Terry came through the door, satisfied smiles on their faces as they greeted me.
“What do you think, kid? Are we going to celebrate tonight?” Nancy wanted to know. She threw her arms around me and gave me a big hug as I burst into tears. “You were great, just great!”
“We’re proud of you,” Terry announced, leaning in, patting me on the back. “You did everything right.”
More people poured into the foyer, including a familiar face.
“Jeff!”
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” I felt those strong arms wrap around me, tasted those warm, inviting lips on mine. “You were absolutely amazing!”
“You were here the whole time?” I sobbed, disbelieving. “You never left?”
“I promised you a great life, Marigold. I intend to make good on that promise.”
“After that, you’d better!” I told him. “Don’t ever do that to me again, Jefferson Cornwall!”
Hours later, after a very long meeting in Jacksonville to brief the agents on the details of the case, Jeff and the others took me back to the condo. There was one very important question I had for the group.
“You all knew Jared was alive and you didn’t tell me?”
Chapter Forty Three
As I gazed around at the concerned faces, I saw the barely visible flinch of guilt pass through the crowd. One by one, they shifted in their seats, shuffling their limbs, as if to shrug it off. “When Jared and Kornbloom grabbed me, I thought you had no idea where I was. I was scared to death that was going to be the end of me!”
“I can explain,” Jeff told me. “We weren’t keeping secrets from you, love. We were keeping them from the bad guys.”
“I don’t understand. Why couldn’t you just tell me Jared was still alive?”
“Remember the other night, when you thought you had a bad dream about Jared being angry that you kissed me? And you later found your computer had been remotely turned on?”
“I really did hear him talking to me?” I wondered.
“Oh, yeah!” Rocky nodded. “You heard him alright. He was video chatting with you while you slept.”
“No wonder it felt so real. I thought I was losing my mind,” I sighed. Nancy sat down at the table and shook her head, as if she didn’t believe it herself.
“Of all the cases I’ve ever worked, this one takes the cake for sheer chutzpah,” she told me. “You have to remember, Marigold, he was supposed to be your dead fiancé. He wanted everyone to believe it was your fault someone murdered him. He needed you to feel guilty you were falling in love with Jeff and he needed Jeff to suspect you were up to no good. You had to get the blame for what happened to your WitSec handlers, so no one would figure out he was still alive and go looking for him. It was such a convoluted plot, the United States Marshals Service fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”
“We almost did, too,” Terry admitted. “That bastard might have succeeded if Nance and I hadn’t spent all this time with you. We were able to vouch for you.”
“Jared spied on you every chance he got; he dug through your computer to check on everything you did,” Tom told me. “You have to remember that he was in hiding, and that meant he had plenty of time on his hands.”
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you stop him? Why didn’t you just turn him over to the FBI?”
“We needed him to believe he was safe,” Tom reminded me, “so he would come out of hiding and we could catch him. And we couldn’t afford to tip him off, in case he hired more help. As long as Spears thought that everyone believed he was dead, he could remain a ghost in the shadows and haunt you. That way, he was comfortable, thinking he had all the bases covered.”
“Remember when the hit woman demanded your phone at the Gilded Nest?” Jeff asked me.
“Yes. She tossed it into the bushes. It had all my information on it.”
“Philomena arranged for a couple of New York state troopers to retrieve it. It was your saving grace, Marigold, when you were under suspicion. They checked your phone records, your emails, even your Internet activity. That’s how the FBI found out Jared had cloned that phone of yours and was using it to set you up.”
“It’s also partly why you came under suspicion briefly, because people wondered if you two were in cahoots,” Rocky added. “Once you stopped using the phone after it was stolen by his hired hit lady, Jared figured you’d be given a new phone with a new number, but he’d have all your information on your old phone, and if you were like most people, you’d stick to familiar passwords. He bided his time until you got the new laptop.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this was happening?”
“Two reasons. The FBI needed time to investigate Jared’s financial dealings, most of which were outside the United State, and we had to be absolutely sure you were innocent, because if you were, it was the mother of all set-ups, and that meant you were in grave danger. It took time to understand what Jared did to you, love,” Jeff explained, reaching out to me. I felt the warmth of his hand on mine.
“In other words, I was under surveillance the whole time?”
“We call it protective surveillance,” Nancy told me. “We needed to be able to vouch for you, to show people you were the victim of the crime. Don’t forget, Jared was determined to implicate, especially once he knew you were in the witness protection program. He was sure it was his ‘get out of jail free’ card.”
“Holy cow....”
“But the best piece of evidence we had was that watch of yours. You had no idea Jared had engraved coded information onto the watch, so you didn’t think twice about handing it over to us. Better still, you didn’t even know that he put
millions of dollars of real estate in your name all over the world when he was laundering money,” Tom informed me.
“I own property?” I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding! I’ve barely got two nickels to rub together!”
“It turns out that Jared had a girlfriend named Leesa at the time he met you. He decided you were close enough in looks that he could use that to his advantage.”
“Yeah,” Rocky agreed, “and that was even before he knew you were in witness protection. Those trips to Curaçao? Leesa was holed up in their condo while you were at the hotel of choice. People in Willemstad got to know her as Marigold Flowers. She’s been all over the place, pretending to be you. Cyprus, Isle of Man, even Grand Cayman Island....”
“She did it in a way that made it seemed credible that you were behind all these things. She and Jared needed to get the money and run, but they wanted to leave you holding the bag,” Tom added. “The people they ripped off would hunt them down if they figured out Jared didn’t really die in Newport.”
“But, I don’t understand. How could she pose as me?”
Jeff took over the telling of the story, detailing the plot. “You got a passport for those trips you took with Jared. The marshals approved it, using your WitSec alias. Once that identity was established, Jared stole your passport and had a duplicate made for Leesa by a very talented forger. She’s been traveling for the last year as Marigold Flowers. That’s what confused the marshals. They thought you had lied to them about your activities.”
“But how could she get in and out of the United States on my passport?”
“She didn’t have to, because she has her own. She only used yours for identification purposes in other countries, in banks, at hotels, and so on. That meant there was never an official record of you entering or leaving, which made it look like someone smuggled you in and out of these countries.”
“Shut the front door!” I exclaimed in disbelief as I sat there stunned, thinking about all the terrible things that had happened to me ever since I met Jared. “Boy, do I feel stupid.”
Reluctant Witness Page 36