Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  First wife and second wife of this Glenn guy. Peter’s last name was Marchbanks. Glenn Marchbanks? The name sounded vaguely familiar, a breeze in the back door of my memory. I put my hand against the cool stone.

  “I just thought he’d treat me with a bit more respect and consideration.”

  “It’s disappointing when those we love decide we’re not worth their time.” I heard a bite in Holly’s tone.

  “You can’t resist the stab, can you?”

  “Audrey, he’s yours now. You won the prize.” Now I heard a harder edge in Holly’s voice. “If he had a negotiation that ran late and then he made a trip this morning, he does it. He’s going to send you a message and assume you’ve got your big-girl panties on and not throw a tantrum befitting a reality show.”

  “He’s never done this before.”

  “You’ve only been married a year. He keeps a change of clothes and a packed bag in his car. He has access to a private jet.”

  “Yes.” Audrey sounded uncertain.

  “Then he’s off to conduct business. Okay? Don’t worry. Go shopping, spend his money, make yourself even prettier. He’ll be happy you did.”

  And I heard the younger woman’s voice rip with a sob. “I think sometimes he lies to me about what he does with his time. When he’s out of town. Or even…I just don’t think he’s telling me the truth.” The words broke as she spoke them.

  A long, telling pause. “What do you mean?” Holly’s voice was cold.

  “I think he’s lied to me. Maybe the way he lied to you. I don’t think every business trip he makes is, you know, a business trip.”

  “Oh, Audrey. Please. I have a busy day ahead of me, so if you’ll excuse me…”

  “I always thought if he left me, he’d just come here. Back to you. He still cares about you.”

  “He cares about Emma and Peter, yes. Me, no.”

  “You’ll always be the first wife. The first love.”

  “Audrey, the first love is Glenn himself, and the second is success. I’m sure he’ll call you soon.”

  “Shouldn’t I call the police? He hasn’t texted me or called me since after midnight.”

  “Did he say specifically where he was going?”

  “No.”

  “He could still be in flight. Japan or Sydney or Europe. Do you really want to humiliate him by calling the police?”

  “Couldn’t you call the police for me? So he won’t get mad at me?” Now slightly coy, like she was playing a part and playing it rather badly. I nearly laughed. I wondered if Holly would just toss her at this point, but instead Holly said, “No, I won’t. But I would advise you strongly to wait a bit longer before you freak out.”

  The women had moved into the large foyer, and now from my viewpoint I could see their reflections in a mirror. Audrey, the younger, in her midtwenties like me, attractive in an assembled way, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Her skin was overbronzed and her nails an electric pink. She’d been the one driving the Mercedes ahead of me. The other woman, Holly, wore yoga clothes—soft, unstructured linen pants, a tight sleeveless shirt that showed her toned arms. She was the attractive blonde I’d seen in the family photos.

  Now Audrey hugged her, and wow it was awkward. I watched in the mirror and I could see the annoyance, for the barest moment, flash on Holly’s face. Her lips tightened, her gaze flared in controlled temper. I stepped back before she could see me in the mirror, hidden in a nook of the den, leaning against the cool of the brick. I heard more muttered farewells and then the door shutting. Silence. Then the sound of a car on the front drive revving into life.

  I took several steps back into the kitchen, still holding the photo of Holly and her kids.

  18

  Friday, November 5, morning

  JANICE SAT with Barbara Scott’s laptop on her lap, afraid to open it.

  The Portland airport was busy, and she’d snagged a seat on the next flight to Las Vegas. She’d hidden herself away in the executive lounge for the airline; she traveled so much for her legitimate business that she belonged to all premier flyer programs. She was flying as Marian Atkins, the false identity backed with driver’s license, passport, and credit cards that Belias had given her, but she’d just shown the attendant her membership card as Janice Keene. Right now the lounge wasn’t so busy; the early morning exec rush had already taken off, and she sat near the depleted buffet.

  She debated opening the laptop.

  In the corner the financial news network played. Not local news. She was dying to know what the news was reporting about Barbara Scott’s fire, but she didn’t want to ask the attendant at the desk to change the channel to the local news. It would be national soon enough.

  And then how much harder might her job be?

  Belias wanted three people dead. One presumption was that they knew each other. That together the three were a threat to Belias and to the network he’d built.

  But why?

  She opened the laptop, a silvery, aluminum Apple. She thought, Well, I didn’t bring a book for the flight, I can read hers. The machine had been open and had gone to sleep when she’d shut it, and so she didn’t have to worry about cracking a password. The battery wouldn’t deplete for a few hours. She ran a thumb along the thumb pad and guided the arrow to the search icon and that was when she noticed the little splatter of blood, right along the edge of the screen, the smears of it on the keyboard.

  She froze, her gaze locked on the blood—was that a little fleck of brain next to the stain—?

  “Janice! How are you?”

  She looked up past the screen. A man, fortyish, heavyset, grinning, in a dark suit and a blue tie. She blanked on his name.

  And he was a client.

  “Hello!” She closed the laptop, hid the blood from him. She stood. Diana worked on his account. She knew if her smile stayed in place, it would look frozen.

  “I didn’t know you had a client in Portland.” He sat across from her. “Am I interrupting your work?”

  “Oh, just writing up some thoughts,” she said. No. She didn’t want this man—Frank Laplace, now she remembered; he ran a software firm in San Francisco that sifted through social networking data to map purchasing patterns—to say to Diana, Oh, saw your mom in Portland. She was supposed to be at a retreat in Santa Fe with no phone. Her stomach hollowed out. “Trying to get a new client.”

  “Oh, you have people to do that for you, don’t you?” His laugh was hearty. “You on the flight back to San Francisco?”

  “No. I…” She faked a cough to buy a few seconds to think. “I have another client to go see.” She said nothing more and Laplace didn’t ask. He was a client and there was no escaping him as he sat down to chat. She could only hope that his flight would leave soon. He started talking about what a great job Diana was doing for him and she should have felt proud, and instead she simply thought, You’re a CEO, Frank, don’t you have phone calls to make?

  Finally—an eternity, every second ticking on the wall clock feeling like a century, but it was only an hour, and he talked of what he wanted his public relations approach to be, and she forced herself to be clever and insightful and all the things people expected of her, the whole time thinking, Just go get on your plane you idiot—he got up when his flight to San Francisco was called. “I’m supposed to meet with Diana early next week,” he said. “I hope I’ll see you then.”

  She forced herself to stand and nod and shake his hand. He got up and he left, hurrying from the quiet of the club to the noisy pell-mell rush of the terminal. She went to the small buffet table, dampened a napkin, and returned to the laptop. Gently she cleaned off the blood—and the whatever it was, particle of brain, ugh—and she folded the napkin. She was afraid to leave it in the trash; what if someone saw it? But who would think that here? Why, goodness, is that a fleck of brain in the trash? This place was full of people who worked hard, were highly successful, traveled to represent their fine companies, and were anointed with success. No one would see a napkin
and think there was a bit of brain tissue on it. She threw the napkin away.

  He will tell Diana he saw me next week. Guaranteed. Already something had gone wrong and maybe this was punishment for defying Belias’s orders. She wasn’t superstitious. But when you sold your soul…then she had to be done quickly with this devil’s errand. One down, two to go.

  But the why of it. She had to know the why.

  The cheap blue phone buzzed. Belias. No one else had this number.

  “Yes?”

  “Lazard. You go after a man named Lazard.”

  The name was vaguely familiar. “Who is he?”

  “Lucky Lazard. Real estate mogul. Make it look like an accident. I’ll send you details on him.”

  “I understand.”

  “Slight problem. He lives on the penthouse floor of a major casino resort that he owns. He has bodyguards. He’s rarely alone.”

  “Then how am I supposed to get to him…”

  “When you get to Vegas, there will be a package waiting for you at the Mystik hotel.” He cleared his throat. “You’re the best. You better prove it to me.”

  “Is everything okay?” she asked. He sounded angry. She thought he would be happy, the first target eliminated.

  “Fine. Everything is fine,” Belias said.

  “You sound upset.”

  “We all have aggravations now and then, Janice.”

  “I thought you made your aggravations go away.” She meant it as a joke, but the eerie, steely silence on the other end of the line took the slight smile off her face.

  “That’s what I do,” he said. “Make this look like an accident. Someone might be getting suspicious with both Scott and Lazard dead. Each one, it will get harder for you.”

  “They’re connected?” she asked before she thought.

  His answer was a stony silence.

  You might as well have said yes, she thought. “I understand.”

  “You’re the best,” he said.

  “You know why I’m doing this. For her sake. You’ll take care of her, won’t you? I know you didn’t think she could work for you, but she can.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m going to take care of Diana. No worries on that front.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “It’s not a problem. Call me when Vegas is done.”

  “It may take time given the difficulty.”

  “Hurry. But get it done right.”

  She nearly laughed. How often had she heard something similar from her public relations clients? You can have it fast, or you can have it right, or you can have it cheap, but not all of them. “I will get it done. For Diana’s sake.” Because if she got caught, there was nothing that Belias could do to take care of her daughter. Janice was destroying herself, both body and soul, for her daughter.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Fine. I’m fine.”

  “It will be all over soon,” he said. “And I’ll make sure Diana has every advantage in life. I promise you that.”

  She hung up. She didn’t want to hear any more about promises she wouldn’t be alive to see if he kept. The cancer would claim her soon enough, and she had miles to go before she rested.

  She typed on the dead woman’s laptop, considering a search on her own name, if Barbara Scott knew who she was. She opened up a search field for the hard drive and she typed in her own name.

  No match. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  She typed in Belias.

  No match.

  Holding her breath, she typed in pact. It was most likely the term to be used to describe the particular relationship Belias had with…people. It was always the term he’d used with her: the pact we’ve made.

  Two results: nothing to do with her or Belias.

  She didn’t really need to search anymore. But she kept her fingers on the keyboard and typed in The Network.

  No match that had anything to do with Belias.

  She pulled her hands from the keyboard and rubbed at her cheeks. Okay then. If Barbara Scott didn’t know about Belias and his people, then why had she needed to die? What was the connection between a best-selling author and a real estate mogul in Las Vegas?

  She went to the laptop’s Recent Files option and looked at what had occupied Barbara Scott. The writer had files on several famous people, loaded with articles and news clippings: a rising actor in Hollywood; a financial guru who hosted his own cable show with a devoted following; an economic adviser to the president; a New Mexico senator who was a leading contender to be appointed vice president—she had become a political celebrity for her outspokenness and wry humor that managed to charm both sides of the aisle; a file on her husband as well; another on a former senator who’d become a well-known author, trying to be the modern answer to Mark Twain. Nothing to connect them or to indicate that there was a pattern between them. All these files were just kept in a folder called RANDOM RESEARCH IDEAS. In each folder was a Word document with Barbara Scott’s notes in it.

  In the file on the vice presidential contender’s husband she read: how does a spouse help a politician or hurt a politician? What is the level of influence they can actually wield? Is this a liability or a drawback…consider historical antecedents—is there a book in this? Every file either began or ended with that same kind of question, Barbara Scott challenging her brain and writer’s instinct to shape a story from these bits of information, dramatic questions, and fact. It was just a clippings file, the kind any writer might keep.

  Could any of these accomplished people Barbara studied have made the pact with Belias, be part of his network? There was nothing in the files to indicate this was true or that Barbara Scott suspected this. No outlines, no damning documents.

  There was nothing specifically on Belias, on the pact, on his network with its secret reach into the corridors of power and money and influence. She searched for locked or passworded files and found none.

  Janice closed the laptop. The search was fruitless. She should reformat the laptop, erase the information, throw the system away. She was walking around with a laptop used by a dead woman, whose death was at this moment a major story on the national news.

  But she didn’t destroy the hard drive. Information was here; this was what Barbara Scott was working on and surely her work was why she died. There was an answer in this laptop; only she did not know the question. She had to focus on the second target. Lazard. She…

  She stopped. She opened Barbara Scott’s laptop again, went back to the search field for the hard drive. She typed Lucky Lazard. No hits. She just typed in Lucky. Many hits, as any mention of the word in an e-mail or a PDF document or a spreadsheet or a Word document returned a positive result. She scanned through them and she found one. Not from Barbara Scott’s main e-mail account, but from another account, one hosted by a large search engine, the kind of account you open and you throw away when you don’t need it anymore. The kind you open to protect your main account from spammers, the kind you use to sign up for a newsletter or mailing list.

  Or maybe the kind you open when you want to be more anonymous.

  Lucky: I think all of us are about to live up to your name, aren’t we? The payoff is here. Think about how best to profit. We should work together, not apart, so we don’t go to the wishing well at the same time and exhaust the generosity. Hope you are well. Behave or I’ll put you in a book, ha-ha-ha. I kid. See you soon on even-easier-street.

  Dated a week ago.

  The receiving e-mail address was not one obviously connected to Lucky Lazard’s businesses; it was another throwaway account. But how many guys were nicknamed Lucky?

  She searched for more messages from that account, but there were none. And no further exchanges between Barbara Scott and Lucky Lazard. Would he be running scared now that Barbara Scott was dead? They’d been in contact. They’d been planning something that would profit them both. What could profit both an author and a real estate tycoon? And now Barbara was dead and Lucky Lazard should be glancing over his
shoulder. This e-mail meant her job was now a hundred times harder. He would be on his guard. Although the news accounts had not said murder yet, it was only a matter of time. The fire wouldn’t burn the bullets away.

  Maybe they knew about Belias. Maybe they knew about his secret network. Maybe they thought they could blackmail Belias. There was a reason why they needed to die. And she had to decide now if she was going to find out what it was.

  The airline called her flight. She slipped Barbara Scott’s laptop in her carry-on and wondered if she could find out that truth from Lucky Lazard before she killed him. Because she hadn’t much liked the tone in Belias’s voice when he spoke of Diana. Maybe she could find some extra insurance to protect her daughter.

  19

  Friday, November 5, morning

  CONFRONTING SOMEONE in their own home is an extremely risky proposition. It’s a violation to stand in their space, unexpected. It can cause panic.

  I turned the photo of Holly and the kids from the mantel and held it, facing her. Most burglars or rapists or murderers—however she classified me on first sight, unwelcome in her home—didn’t hold family photos.

  Holly was talking to herself. “I am so going to need yoga today.” Holly walked into the living room, her hands folded together and pressed up to her lips as though lost in thought.

  She saw me.

  Holly froze. She kept her folded hands close to her face. She didn’t scream; she just froze, watching me. In her expensive yoga pants, and blonde hair pulled up in a simple ponytail, and her T-shirt for her kids’ school with an uplifting motto about teamwork on it, she looked like soccer mom the same way I’d thought of her ex-husband as suburban dad. The roles I’d loved for my parents to play when I was a kid, but that wasn’t meant to be. But she was staring at me like I was here to shatter her sweet life. She didn’t shriek or run out of the front door or dash to the alarm system to key in a distress code.

  She just looked at me.

  I played it just like when I did undercover work for Special Projects. Kept my voice calm and quiet. “Holly Marchbanks? I’m very sorry to intrude. I’m not going to hurt you. I need to find your ex-husband, Glenn.”