The Arrangement

by Suzanne Forster

  “It would help if you’d let your daughter answer the questions,” Tony suggested, again the excessively polite lawman. “How about you, Bret? Were you here, too?”

  “All night. We get the games live through our cable service. Did you catch that triple play in the sixth?”

  “Not a sports fan,” Tony said. “I was out walking on the beach tonight.”

  He let that sink in, and then continued. “Nobody went out for any reason at any time?”

  “No,” Julia said, becoming more emphatic, “we were here the entire night. Bret just told you that.”

  He nodded. “You and Bret were watching the game, but Alison was all alone, right? Up in her room?”

  “Actually, I went up to check on her about eight forty-five,” Julia said. “She was sound asleep, so I didn’t disturb her.”

  Tony didn’t believe Julia for a second. Eight forty-five was exactly the time he’d asked Alison about. Julia was going to try and provide her daughter with an airtight alibi, Tony realized. That was unfortunate.

  Bret stepped forward. “Are you here to charge one of us with something? What? Murdering LaDonna? That’s crazy.”

  “That’s up to the local police,” Tony said. “I’m just trying to clear some things up.”

  “Why would Alison want to kill LaDonna?”

  Bret had him there. Tony hadn’t had time to come up with a motive for LaDonna’s murder. But he wouldn’t be much of a G-man if he let a little thing like that stop him.

  “Are we done now?”

  Julia asked the question, but Tony continued to study Alison. He was fascinated by how shaky she appeared. “Where’s your husband tonight?” he asked.

  She looked startled. “He’s in Mexico on business.”

  “How did he get there? What airline?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t mention it.”

  He debated telling her that her husband hadn’t flown out on any scheduled flight with a commercial airline based in San Diego. Nor had Tony found any record of a private chartered flight. He also debated telling her that her husband may have fucking deserted her, but that would set off alarms, and he wanted to get to Villard first. “When’s he coming back?”

  “Soon—I don’t know. He was supposed to be back tonight.”

  “I’m going to want to talk to him.”

  Her eyes changed. It was weird, like fire burning through blue clouds. If he’d ever seen that before he didn’t remember it.

  “I’m sure you do,” she said, “but unless you’re here to charge me with something, he doesn’t have to talk to you about anything—and neither do we.”

  Tony grinned. He couldn’t help himself. She was kicking him out of the house the way she’d kicked him off the boat. He saw Julia coming for him, and knew he was about to be escorted out. He was far from done with these people, but he could save the rest of the fireworks for later. None of the suspects except Alison, but he didn’t have to let them know that.

  “There will be an investigation,” he said, looking at all three of them. “You can count on that. No one is to leave town for any reason. You’ve heard the old expression, you can run but you can’t hide. Believe it.”

  Julia reached for his arm as if she was going to forcibly escort the uncouth lawman from her home. Tony grabbed her by the wrist, clamping down hard enough to stop her in her tracks.

  He loved the shock that rolled through her cosmetically enhanced features. Nothing equaled the thrill of power—not sex, not booze or drugs. The food chain had just upended itself, and this woman was nothing but a tasty morsel. He wondered how that felt to a person of her stature. Probably not much different than it felt to a peon like him. There were a few things that actually did level the playing field.

  Birth, death, taxes—and this.

  “I know where the door is,” he said. “I’ll show myself out.”

  Marnie stood out on the bedroom balcony with the cell phone pressed to her ear. She’d come out here hoping for better reception. She’d been trying ever since Bogart left to get through to Andrew, but he wasn’t answering. His voice mail had kicked in the first few times she’d called, but the menu hadn’t given her the option of leaving a message. Now she was getting an automated response telling her the person she was calling was unavailable. After that the message cut off and she was disconnected.

  She flipped the phone shut, deeply frustrated.

  Not being able to leave a message was almost as bad as not being able to talk to him. He wouldn’t even know she’d been trying to reach him. She couldn’t tell him about LaDonna or find out when he was coming back, and she was worried that something had happened to him.

  About an hour ago, she’d pressed the panic button on the cell phone, trying to connect with the detective he’d hired, but no one had responded. She hadn’t seen anything of Sanchez since that morning. Bret may have sent him away, and Marnie didn’t even know if Sanchez was the detective.

  She’d thought she was isolated in Oyster Bay, but this was worse. She felt cut off from everything and everyone. She couldn’t reach Andrew, couldn’t talk to the people around her. There was nowhere to turn for help, and she had no idea what was going on with the search for her grandmother, or if anyone was even searching.

  She went back inside, tossed the phone on the bed and contemplated the liquor cart, wondering what she might take to slow down her madly racing mind.

  Glenfiddich, Absolut, Bombay Sapphire, Casa Noble Blanco.

  Her sense of despair grew as she scanned the labels. She’d read books on wines and spirits to prepare for this trip, but right now she barely knew one from the other. No booze, she decided. No pills, either. She couldn’t sleep her way through this.

  A wave of disbelief hit her, rocked her to the core. LaDonna was dead? Marnie couldn’t believe it. It was impossible to grasp that her friend had been murdered—and even more surreal that she’d fallen from Satan’s Teeth, just as Marnie had.

  No, not fallen. LaDonna hadn’t fallen. She’d been shot and then pushed from the cliffs, and for some reason Bogart thought Alison did it.

  Marnie turned to look at the nightstand. The gun! Andrew had left her a gun. Relief flooded her as she opened the drawer and saw that the pistol and the bullets were there. It didn’t look as if anything had been touched. Thank God.

  She sagged to the bed and leaned forward, palms pressed to her throbbing forehead. She was overreacting. The situation couldn’t be anywhere near as bad as her mind was making it out to be. Still, she couldn’t seem to push away the feeling that things were closing in on her.

  When she looked up, she caught a glimpse of herself in the armoire mirror. She looked like a transient, wild-eyed and crazy, and yes, maybe a killer who pushed people off cliffs. Worse, Tony Bogart had seen her looking exactly like this.

  The nightstand clock told her it was midnight. Andrew had been gone twenty-four hours, and given what had happened since he’d left, Marnie couldn’t wait any longer to hear from him. Bogart had promised an investigation, and as much as she might want to think he’d been bluffing, she didn’t dare let herself think so. She had to calm down and start reasoning her way through this mess.

  She left the bed and went back out to the balcony. No cell phone or panic buttons this time, just the cool, bracing air and the deep quiet of midnight. Within moments she had realized that she didn’t need sleeping pills or booze. What she needed was coffee. She had work to do and it might take her all night. Neither her own cell phone nor the one Andrew left her were set up for the Internet, and so she would continue to search the old-fashioned way, in the phone book. She had already gone through the hospitals and nursing homes in San Diego County, but could easily have missed something.

  It had become imperative that Marnie find her grandmother. She was worried about her health, and that was reason enough. But it was more complicated now. Marnie’s situation had escalated, and she was just beginning to understand how grave things were. She had to find her grandmoth
er to assure herself that she was safe, but she’d realized it was mutual. Josephine Hazelton might be the only one who could save Marnie now.

  “Vending machine coffee in the age of Starbucks?” Tony muttered. “Isn’t that against the law?”

  Gamely, he put several quarters in the slot, hit the buttons for coffee with double sugar, no cream, and watched the paper cup drop and fill, anticipating all the robust flavor of a bag of sawdust. This wasn’t his first trip to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, and it wasn’t his first experience with this coffee, probably from this exact machine.

  That was back when he was a punk-ass kid. He’d never been charged with anything, but twice in his teens he’d been picked up for fighting. Finally, he’d figured out there were easier ways to deal with difficult people. You didn’t have to lay a hand on them, just play with their heads until their brains liquefied and ran out their ears. He’d gotten good at liquefying brains, but every once in a while a man needed some instant gratification.

  “Hey, Bogart!”

  Tony turned to see Vince Connelly coming toward him. He’d been the detective at the LaDonna Jeffries’s crime scene last night, and Tony had shown up this morning specifically to track Vince down and get an update. Not that Connelly owed him one. Tony was an eyewitness, not a member of the investigative team, but it was a courtesy from one law enforcement officer to another, one agency to another.

  Vince punched Tony on the arm, hard enough to hurt. He was a big guy in all ways, tall and thick with salt-and-pepper hair and an ebullient personality. He was also the county’s hotshot homicide detective, and he didn’t let anyone forget it.

  Tony didn’t punch him back, although…

  Vince was the rookie deputy who’d caught Tony fighting all those years ago. He’d lectured him, embarrassing him in front of all his friends, and then let him go. Twice. Big fucking man, Vince was. Tony had hated him back then the way he’d hated all authority figures. There’d been no bonding between the troubled teen and the law enforcement officer. And time hadn’t changed the hostile feelings all that much on Tony’s part.

  He figured it was mutual.

  Fortunately, he was essential to Vince’s case.

  “Let me get some of this stinking stuff,” Vince said, kicking the vending machine, “and then, if you can fit me into your busy schedule, I’d like to show you some of the forensic evidence we’ve collected.”

  “All the time you need,” Tony said. The man was a raving dickhead. Punch his arm? Tony should have laid him out right there, but he wanted to see that evidence.

  Vince got his coffee, and as they walked back to his office, he sipped from the cup and greeted people by name, as if he were the office’s ambassador of goodwill. But Tony could feel the aggression rolling off the man. He was a bully, even when he smiled at people. They had to smile back or be on Vince’s shit list. That was the implication.

  “We got something interesting, Agent Bogart,” Vince said as they entered his office. “How the hell did you get into the FBI?” He chuckled and went to his desk.

  “Same way everyone else does,” Tony said evenly. “Let’s see what you got.”

  Vince grabbed a large manila folder, from which he pulled out several clear plastic evidence bags, and spread them out on the desk.

  “Recognize any of this stuff?” The bag he picked up and handed over had a small navy-blue button in it.

  Tony studied it for several seconds. More than anything the color seemed significant. The button had clearly been torn from a piece of clothing. An image of Alison’s dazed expression—and her missing navy-blue cardigan sweater—flashed into his mind.

  He looked up at Vince, his gut twisting. “Yeah, I do.”

  27

  Rebecca knocked on Julia’s door, carrying a tray of coffee, juice and fresh fruit. Julia was expecting her, so Rebecca nudged the door open with her hip and backed in, carefully balancing everything.

  “Incoming,” she called, noticing that Julia was still in bed in her silk pajamas, absorbed in her reflection in a hand-held mirror.

  “Put the tray on the table by the chaise,” Julia directed without looking up. “Any luck with those flights I asked you to check on?”

  “To Mauritius? It’s a twenty-four hour trip, you know.”

  “Rebecca, I didn’t ask how long it took. I asked—”

  “I know what you asked,” she stated. “I can get you connections through DeGaulle. It depends on when you want to go. This is a pleasure trip, right?”

  Rebecca had never heard of the exotic island off the coast of South Africa until this morning, when Julia asked her to check on flights, and she was more than curious why her boss would want to go to the ends of the earth—or anywhere—right now.

  Julia sighed. “I don’t know about pleasure. I just need to get away, and Mauritius is sublime, although probably deadly hot this time of year. Could you check on that?” She glanced up from the mirror. “There was a murder on the cliffs last night. Did you hear? The police were here asking questions. Well, not the police. It was that thug who used to sneak around with my daughter, thinking I didn’t know. He’s an FBI agent now if you can believe.”

  Rebecca felt a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach. It was like a leaky faucet dripping into an empty sink. Anxiety. She told herself to keep busy. She set the tray on the table and began turning cups over and arranging things. Julia was still peering at her face in the mirror and tweezing the fine hairs above her lip, one by one. Crazy woman. Why didn’t she just get the hair zapped with a laser? She could afford it.

  “Bret told me about it.” Rebecca poured a cup of coffee and added artificial sweetener and nonfat creamer for Julia. God forbid she put a calorie of food in her bony body, other than pinot, of course. “He said Tony Bogart asked each of you to account for your whereabouts.”

  “Yes, he did. Can you imagine? Luckily, we were all in the media room, watching the Padres, except Alison, who wasn’t feeling well. Is she up yet? I’d like the entire family to meet here in my room this morning. We need to make sure our stories match, just in case.”

  “Just in case of what?” Rebecca had to set down the coffee before she spilled it. A sudden rush of giddiness had made her unsteady. Afraid she might hyperventilate, she consciously slowed her breathing. Who would have dreamed it could feel this good to witness the implosion? She also felt racking guilt and remorse, which was probably why she couldn’t stop her legs from shaking. But the thought of the Fairmonts getting sucked into a criminal trial and a big juicy scandal was just too delicious.

  “I don’t trust the law—or the media—in these things,” Julia said. “They’re always out to get their betters, as my mother would say.”

  Especially when the “betters” were as obnoxious about it as Julia.

  “Bret’s up,” Rebecca told her. “Alison may be out taking a walk. I knocked on her door this morning, but she didn’t answer.”

  “How odd.” Julia looked up from the mirror. “Walking again? That’s so not Alison. Did she leave a note?”

  “I didn’t find one. It sounds like you’re worried about her. Was she okay last night?” Rebecca tried to sound concerned, but she really didn’t give a damn about any of them anymore, including Alison. Maybe she just knew too much. The Fairmonts were like wormy fruit; the rotten stuff was deep in the core where you couldn’t easily see it, but that didn’t make it any less putrid.

  “Of course I’m worried,” Julia said impatiently. “People are being murdered and fingers are being pointed at my family!”

  Rebecca changed the subject. “Do you want anything besides coffee?” she asked. “Orange juice? Some fruit?”

  “No coffee. I’m jittery enough already. I can’t even pluck my damn facial hair.”

  “You specifically asked for coffee.”

  “I shouldn’t have. Let Bret have it. Or you drink it.”

  “I’ve already had my coffee—Julia, what are you doing?”

  “Tryin
g to get these last hairs. They’re driving me crazy.”

  “Let me help,” Rebecca said, rushing over to her. “Julia, stop. You’re bleeding. That’s your skin you’re plucking.”

  The doorbell sounded downstairs, and Rebecca glanced at her watch, wondering who it could be. It wasn’t even nine o’clock.

  She grabbed the tweezers from Julia’s fingers, knowing the woman would be furious, and headed for the bedroom doors. “I’ll get the bell,” she called back.

  Rebecca got no farther than the hallway. Bret had already answered the door and now he was bounding up the stairs. He grabbed Rebecca’s hand and dragged her with him back into Julia’s bedroom.

  Julia threw off the bedcovers and got out of bed. Blood oozed from what looked like small nicks above her lip.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Bret.

  “The police are here,” he said, “two of them. They have two warrants, one to search the house and another for Alison’s arrest. Apparently there was an eyewitness to the murder last night.”

  Rebecca gaped at Bret, realizing as she saw the tense white line around his mouth that it was true. He was terrified. Julia was, too. She looked about to crumble. This was beyond anything Rebecca had imagined when she’d been secretly orchestrating the Fairmonts’ downfall. This was awesome.

  Marnie heard a horn blaring and glanced in her rearview mirror. It was the guy right behind her, driving the fancy sports car. Apparently she wasn’t going fast enough, because he was waving at her and making what looked like obscene gestures.

  Probably a smart-ass teenager who thought he owned the road.

  “Back off!” she yelled, knowing he couldn’t hear her. He wanted her to speed up or get out of his way. No way was she going to do either in this traffic. It was the middle of summer, and she was on Pacific Coast Highway, heading south toward San Diego. Several of the nursing homes on her list were in this direction, but the PCH was jammed with beachgoers and tourists.