Not Quite Right (A Lowcountry Mystery) (Lowcountry Mysteries Book 6)

by Lyla Payne

  “Si, Don Corleone. Expect me then.”

  I hang up to the sound of her ringing laughter and can’t help but smile to myself. If we can truly wrap this thing up with the Middletons, it would be a huge weight off my shoulders. Mel and Leo could go back to their lives, and I could stop worrying that I’ve ruined the happiness of two families, which leaves me free to focus on the other crap swirling around my shitshow of a life.

  But first, the tacos.

  Leo, Mel, and Will are waiting in the driveway when I pull up, all raring to get to Brick’s office and see what he found in the files. We all pile into Mel’s SUV for the trip. She gives Leo the front seat, choosing instead to sit in the back with me, and demands that I tell her what’s going on with Beau while the guys talk about how long it might be before they’ll be able to go fishing again. Mel gives up when I admit that even though neither of us want it to be over, it still feels like things are unresolved. In my heart, I know it’s because of the curse on his family. How could I possibly look him in the eye every day knowing my part in that?

  The rest of the twenty-minute trip is spent arguing over the radio—Leo and Will want to listen to country, Mel wants NPR, and I insist that we listen to songs from our youth. In the end, the guys win since they’re in the front and closer to the dials, and we listen to Rodney Carrington’s new album on the way to Charleston.

  Brick’s office is quiet. It’s after five and everyone but the most dedicated lawyers have gone home for the night. I’m nervous thinking that Birdie might be working late, as I don’t really want to have my eyes scratched out for accidentally spilling her secret about her involvement in Lucy’s life, but Brick meets us at the entrance and leads us straight to his office. We don’t see anyone else along the way.

  I suppose he would have made sure his sister was gone for the evening since they’re supposed to be representing the Middletons together, and regardless of the fact that I’m starting to believe that none of the Drayton siblings live up to their mother’s brand of awful, no one has to tell me that Birdie doesn’t like to lose. If the Middletons are paying, she’s not going to be happy with Brick for sabotaging their case.

  “What did you find?” Mel asks before any of us even have a chance to find a seat.

  Brick shuts the door while we shuffle around trying to decide who will get the two seats. In the end, he insists Mel take his cushy lawyer chair and I take one of the guest seats. Will and Leo do some kind of macho dance where neither of them want the other chair, so Brick takes it, tugging a fat file folder over the desk in the process.

  “So this is the information that the investigator in Iran put together on Allied Pharmaceuticals.” The smile on Brick’s face is so big it looks out of place, like he’s been possessed by a happy person. “It’s everything we need to convince the Middletons we have proof. Hell, with a few well-placed subpoenas, we could prosecute the dickhead.”

  “That’s amazing.” I take the folder from him and thumb through purchase orders, notarized statements from girls who were given the test drugs, and even an interview with an anonymous Allied employee who wanted to do the right thing.

  I’m not an expert on international aid or pharmaceuticals, but I am an expert on documents and paper trails, and this is a thick one. Brick’s right. Except for one missing link…

  “Do we have proof that the senator is still active in the corporation? That he knew all of this was going on? I mean, Bette is the one who sits on the board. She’s the one who technically owns the majority share. What if he tries to pin it on her?”

  Will shakes his head, jumping in before Brick can answer. It’s been too long since we’ve talked. Just having him here with us, a gun on his hip and a badge in his pocket, makes me feel safer. In truth, the badge and the gun aren’t the main reasons. Will just has a way about him that makes everyone relaxed and hopeful.

  “If I’m not mistaken, Bette has never worked, and the fact that her family was on the verge of losing everything before she married Randall is a poorly kept secret.”

  “Got knocked up,” Mel adds, eyebrows raised. In that moment, I see her mother in her and want to shake a pregnant lady.

  I don’t need confirmation that we all turn into our mothers eventually, even if it’s only in bits and pieces. Felicia, at her core, is the one thing I hope never to be—unreliable. I want the people in this room—and all of the people important enough to be dear to me—to know the opposite to be true.

  “When did you two become such society gossips?” Leo asks, giving voice to my question.

  Will shrugs. “Mel’s family. We have to talk about something at holiday dinners.”

  We laugh, but it’s tense. It’s one thing to think we’ve got the Middletons pinned to the wall with nowhere to pee, but another to shove it in their faces and have them back down. I don’t see any of us, except maybe Brick, relaxing until both Mel and Leo get phone calls from the Charleston PD saying the charges against them have been officially dropped.

  Looking at the red rims and dark circles ringing Brick’s eyes, I realize that he won’t relax, either. He’s not going to be able to rest until we get Amelia back, and his loyalty makes me want to hug him.

  I do no such thing, held back by the status quo and the fact that I have no idea how he would react. Brick has become one of those rare people who genuinely could go any way at any moment, but he is helping us. He’s putting his reputation and his career on the line for no reason other than that Amelia asked him to. He doesn’t care for me. He hadn’t met Mel or Leo before this started, and his family had been entwined with the Middletons for generations.

  I reach over and touch his arm, my heart swollen by his affection for my cousin. There might even be a day, when she gets back and she’s safe and so is the baby, when I could approve of him as a suitor.

  “Thank you, Brick,” I say. “For everything. You didn’t have to go out on a limb for all of us and you did.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, these people are real scumbags,” Will comments, thumbing through the file he’d lifted from my lap. “I’m starting to feel like the ass for using it as blackmail instead of taking it straight to the cops.”

  “Half the cops in this town are in their back pockets, so I wouldn’t advise it,” Brick replies grimly. “We’d have to take it to some federal office that investigates senators or something.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Will presses his lips together, closing the folder again and handing it to his wife. “All that matters is that Mel is going to be home to raise our kids.”

  As everyone thanks Brick again, to the point where he looks ready to burn the file because it caused him to endure so much social interaction with people he only marginally tolerates, Will’s words roll around in my head like loose, painful marbles.

  I can’t help but think about Marcia and utilitarianism’s rule about how to know the right action in any given situation. If Allied is still conducting illegal human drug trials, who are we to have the proof that could start a process to bring them down but only use it to save our two friends?

  Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill might say we’re doing the wrong thing, but as Mel loops her arm through mine and Leo gives me an encouraging smile, I know I’m going to do it anyway.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The last thing Brick tells us before we leave is where we can find the Middletons. They’re not at home, but they should be coming out of a monthly condo board meeting any minute. He says they always stop for coffee and gelato before heading home.

  The four of us head to their favorite shop down by Waterfront Park. Like all gelato shops, this one is small and has only a few tables, making the four of us seem more imposing than we are when we shuffle inside to wait.

  Nervous excitement pings between our anxious bodies. The woman behind the counter gives us more than a few exasperated looks, and it doesn’t take long for the guilt to work on Mel.

  “I’ll take a chocolate.” She nudges Will, who rolls
his eyes but complies, asking for the salted caramel.

  She turns her forceful mom-gaze on me and I’m helpless to resist, asking for the same as Will before Leo orders strawberry in a dish. I get a sugar cone, because what the hell. If I’m eating gelato under any circumstances, it would be a shame not to enjoy it.

  We’re halfway through our ice cream, crowded around one of the three tables but using all but two of the chairs in the shop, when I can’t help but wonder if the Middletons are going to show up. Brick wouldn’t mislead us, not after everything else he’s done, but they could have changed their plans.

  He advised us against going to their house. Mel and Leo do have cases pending against them and we don’t want to give the police any reason to come after our friends further. Or give the Middletons anything to fight back with.

  The ice cream churns in my stomach. Leo doesn’t finish his and neither does Will, but Mel’s the first one done and is eyeing the gelato display with a longing expression when I see him—Randall Middleton—in the flesh. He looks like the pompous ass he is, wearing a tailored navy suit, red tie, and open khaki trench coat. He towers over his diminutive wife; his belly must be four times as big as hers.

  It’s Bette who sees us first, her muddled gaze confused for a good five seconds before she places us. Her eyes are sunken and the whites are smudged with red. Her bone-thin shoulder nudges her husband, and then she tips her head our direction.

  He grimaces, not realizing yet that we’re here to see him, and grabs her elbow hard enough to make her wince. He’s intent on turning them both around but Will’s too fast, blocking the doorway to the gelato shop and barring their escape.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to get out of my way, boy.”

  “I don’t think so. We came to talk to you and we don’t mind making a scene if we have to.”

  They stand as still as statues, Bette’s eyes on her husband as though waiting for her cue.

  “You know,” I add, “people probably would just love to gather around and hear about how we just wanted to talk to our local representative over ice cream, real civil-like, and he ran off like a possum caught in the trash.” The acid on my tongue feels good.

  The look Randall shoots my way would have me in the ground and already haunting Daria, if such a thing were possible.

  “She’s right, you know.” Mel’s tone is more conversational as she maneuvers her belly from behind the table. “We just want to talk. No big deal.”

  “We were advised by our attorneys not to speak with either of you,” Randall booms, eyeing Leo.

  “I think you’re going to want to hear what we have to say,” he says, standing beside Mel with the folder under his arm. It attracts both of the Middletons’ gazes, but it doesn’t scare them. Not yet.

  “Why would we listen to anything a thief and a liar have to say?” Bette spits, hate brightening her dull gaze. “Come on, Randall, let’s go.”

  “I don’t think you want to do that,” Mel says softly. “See, since you’re the one sitting on the board at Allied Pharmaceuticals, you’re the one who’s going to get the worst of this if we decide to send it to the Washington Post.”

  Mel taps the file, and now they’re transfixed by it. It’s easy to see that they want to say we’re bluffing, want to believe that they and the company have covered their tracks well enough, but doubt hovers around them like a cloud. We’ve got them, and everyone in this gelato shop knows it.

  “I’m going to have another cone,” Mel announces. “Stracciatella this time. What about y’all?” Her question is directed toward the couple we’ve ambushed, and they have no choice but to turn away from Will and face the shop.

  The two people behind the counter do their best to pretend they’re not listening to us as the Middletons turn toward the counter. Mel gets her cone and gestures to Will for the cash, and the Middletons each order vanilla in a dish, which strikes me as hilarious.

  We let them have two of the seats at the table. Mel and I take the other two, and the guys lurk in strategic places that make it hard for anyone else to come in off the street and harder still for the assholes to leave before we say they can.

  I know the Middletons wish we were doing this in a more private setting. To be honest, I kind of wish we were, too, because we’ve all agreed that the documents in that folder are for one purpose only: to get Leo and Mel off the hook. The Middletons can still prosecute from a jail cell. They have to drop the charges officially.

  “We’re all sitting here really friendly-like with our gelato now, so how about you tell us what this is about?” Randall growls, ignoring his scoop of vanilla. Mrs. Middleton does the same, pushing it away as though it’s offended her in some way. By the looks of her, she might only allow calories past her lips a couple of times a week.

  Whatever pills she’s on don’t make her hungry, that’s for sure.

  “This file contains documentation—verifiable documentation—that Allied Pharmaceuticals conducted illegal human drug trials on young people in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and various places in Africa five years ago,” I start.

  “What does that have to do with us?” Randall asks, still trying to play it cool even as a sheen of sweat appears on his massive forehead. A piece of gray, thinning hair falls out of place and sticks. “We sold the company years ago.”

  “Most of it, maybe,” Will chimes in. “But you maintained ownership over a majority share and Bette here sits on the board.”

  “Though I’m not sure we can prove she stays awake through the meetings,” Leo jokes, his blue eyes hard.

  The Middletons are silent.

  “We may not have solid proof as to how involved you are personally in the day-to-day decisions,” I continue, “or if you were the ones who agreed to the testing. Or to the kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping?” The word sounds like it tastes foreign on Mrs. Middleton’s tongue. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Nothing.” I don’t elaborate because it’s not important. We can use it as additional leverage if they won’t agree, but I think they will. “But I think that the Ethics Committee would be very interested in an investigation, probably the DOJ, too. Don’t you, Mr. Middleton?”

  He doesn’t answer for a long time. I expect him to demand to see the proof, and after a long pause, he does, holding out his hand for the file. Leo slides it across the table and we all sit quietly while he thumbs through it. Mel licks her cone. Mrs. Middleton toys with her gelato, now soupy in her cup, reminding me of a bored child.

  It doesn’t take long for the senator to come to the same conclusion Brick did after perusing the file. He might be evil, but one doesn’t obtain and hold a position of power for decades by being stupid or obtuse. The anger on his face is the kind an animal shows when its prey escapes, not the kind that means he’s going to fight.

  “What do you want?” he asks. “Not that I’m admitting to knowing anything, but I don’t need this coming out the year before re-election.”

  “We want the charges against Mel and Leo dropped,” I tell him.

  “And we want Allied to put a stop to these practices overseas,” Mel adds, her face a little green. It could be because of the double dose of gelato in a fifteen-minute span, but it’s more likely the same thing that’s bothering me.

  If we have proof this good, if we could take the people who run the company down for real, we should do it. There are lives at stake.

  We need this first, though. I resolve to see what Brick and Beau think about taking it further once we’ve got Mel and Leo out of trouble.

  “I’ll have Bette talk to the board. And the charges won’t be a problem.” His face is bright red, and his jaw is clenched, making the words tight and hard to understand. “I want something in return.”

  “I’m not sure you’re in a position to negotiate,” Will retorts, relief coloring his handsome face.

  “Perhaps not, but if I’m to agree to what amounts to—” He glances around the shop and finds
the workers in the back. They’re still listening, and we all know it “—blackmail,” he continues in a whisper. “Then I’m going to need some assurances that this will not be made public.”

  “We’re not giving you the originals,” Leo says, steady and firm.

  “What about signing an agreement to that effect?”

  My friends and I meet gazes around the table, none of us happy. I think we have to agree, though, because we need him to cooperate. If we drag this out, if we force things through legal channels, Mel and Leo will both be serving jail time before it even gets to court. Hell, with Congress shutting down the damn government every time we turn around, it could take years for them to prosecute.

  “Fine,” I agree for all of us. My stomach twists, regardless of the necessity.

  “I’ll have my attorney draw it up, and I’ll take these.” He grabs the file like a desperate, greedy child. It doesn’t matter. Brick made three copies. One is here, one is in the law firm’s safe, and one is back in Marcia’s safe deposit box. We figure if no one thought to look at her all these years, no one will now, either.

  “Can I ask where these documents came from? I’m more than a little curious, as—to my very limited knowledge, you understand—a company with the funds and reach of Allied would certainly take all precautions to cover their tracks.”

  My hands curl into fists, and my friends’ expressions flash with indignant anger. If Beau or Brick, or even Birdie, were here, I doubt they could have kept their cools in the face of this man basically admitting that Allied would have had Lucy—or anyone else who refused to take their blood money and shut up—taken care of by whatever means necessary.

  “I don’t know,” I lie, trying my best not to show him how bad I want to punch him in his smug nose. “I guess someone got tired of taking it lying down and hired a PI.”

  I stand up so fast I knock over my chair, but we have to get out of here before my fury ruins everything. Will helps Mel to her feet, and Leo slides to my side, one hand on my elbow as a warning to cool down.