The Last Lie She Told (Lies and Misdirection Book 1)

by K. J. McGillick

  “Do you still carve wood?”

  “All the time. I recently finished making an oak dining room table for a friend. It took me six months to make, but it’s a beauty,” I said, remembering the feeling of pride I’d had when I’d finished.

  “Why not do it for a living now? If the pictures at your parents’ house were anything like what you can create now, you’d make a fortune,” she said.

  “It’s a pretty niche market. I still do it because it relaxes me, and I love it. It’s my passion, but I wouldn’t even know how to go about starting a business,” I said. As I thought about starting a new business, this feeling of exhilaration and fear washed over me.

  “You realize you could sell your products on the internet, don’t you? And with word of mouth, you’d have more orders lined up than you’d be able to handle,” she said. “All you need is a website, social media, and boom, you’re ready to go.”

  I’m sure my face looked like a bomb had exploded in front of me. The reality that I could make a go of it had never entered my mind.

  “People do it all the time. You register your business with the state, get a web designer to design your website, and do a few publicity stints, and that gets the word out about you. Before you can catch your breath, you’ll be hiring an assistant and expanding into a warehouse,” she said, getting excited.

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Mary, you’re quiet back there.”

  “I’m sitting here taking this all in,” she said.

  Was that good or bad?

  “I have a great handle on QuickBooks. I’ll just throw that out there.”

  “There you go! A business is born,” Belle said, gracing me with a beautiful smile.

  “Gives me something to ponder,” I said. “Back to business.”

  “You give any more thought to what you want to do about tonight’s party? Have you changed your mind?” Belle asked.

  “No. I still think it’s a bad idea,” I replied. I relied on my gut, and it rarely let me down.

  “Why, because we’ve already talked to Fiona? Or you don’t want to get naked in front of strangers?” Mary asked.

  “Both. The plus side would be we could watch Fiona interact with people in an environment where she felt comfortable. But the downside is she’s already told us she thinks we’re stalking her. These people are her tribe, and if she unmasked us, so to speak, we don’t have a clue what might happen. We could get arrested, or get our asses kicked, or worse. So considering she already knows we were at the club, it follows she’s already alerted them,” I responded, letting go of Belle to turn the wheel.

  We arrived at the hotel, parked, and agreed to meet in my room in an hour. Mary and I went to my room and Belle to hers.

  “That’s the girl for you, Lee. Don’t let her go,” Mary said, as if issuing an order.

  I smiled. But agreeing with Mary would be dangerous territory I didn’t want to tread yet. “Let’s table the matchmaking. Let’s do a video conference with Jax, so we can bring him up to speed,” I said.

  Jackson answered on the first ring.

  “Jax, we’ve run into a situation, and we need some direction from you,” I said. “We just had a face-to-face meeting with Fiona.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Well, it wasn’t what we expected. To be honest, she controlled the meeting, and I take full responsibility for letting that happen. As expected, she denied everything, but that’s not why we called in,” I said.

  There was silence, and as I was about to continue Mary spoke. “She said to tell Hightower to call off his dogs; his secret is safe with her. Now that could mean anything, but I took it to be a personal issue. Her exact words were she still had ‘it,’ and his secret was safe.”

  There was more silence.

  “Hold on; I’m calling him,” Jax said.

  We waited as he placed the call. However, we didn’t wait in silence.

  “You’re very good at woodworking, and I think you should only stay on with us for the occasional skip trace and follow your passion instead. We rent our office furniture, and I’m not a fan of renting anything. I’d be willing to spend up to a hundred grand for you to design and build what we need to make that office what it should be,” Mary said, looking at me intently.

  “Mary, that’s crazy!”

  “In case you hadn’t heard, I won a multimillion-dollar age discrimination lawsuit. They paid excellent money to compensate me. I earned every penny. I brought people to tears. I was a star witness. But regardless of that, I now have more money than I’ll ever need. How do you think I became a managing partner? By my wit and charm? So there’s your offer. You can still work your job with us as a freelancer, but I’d like to give you a start in your business. If you could only see how your face lights up when you talk about the sculpting. Don’t let the chance go by to stay in what you consider a safety zone,” Mary said.

  I was about to respond when Jax jumped back on and patched in Benjamin Hightower.

  “Sorry, guys. I brought Benjamin up to speed. Let me turn this over to him,” Jax said.

  Benjamin appeared on my screen, and he didn’t look happy. He looked like he had aged at least ten years overnight. The purplish discoloration under his eyes gave him a sinister appearance. His lips appeared a pale, waxy color, which was alarming.

  “I want to thank you for your hard work. It sounds like we’ve reached the point where you’ll need to bring Fiona back to Seattle so I can speak to her,” Benjamin said.

  “I’m sorry; I must have misunderstood you. Are you saying you want us to invite Fiona back for a chat?” I asked.

  “That would be a place to start,” he said.

  “And—” I started.

  “And if she declines? Well, you are a bounty hunter, aren’t you?” His voice held a tinge of annoyance.

  “No, I am not. A bounty hunter captures fugitives and criminals for a monetary fee,” I said.

  “Yes, well isn’t that what I hired you to do? In my opinion, Fiona stole my drive and that makes her a criminal,” he replied.

  “This is something you and Jackson need to discuss. However, Fiona isn’t a fugitive, and right now there’s no evidence she’s a criminal. The woman might have a personality disorder, but she hasn’t been arrested. In this instance, I could justify she falls under my job description of skip trace. She skipped; I traced,” I answered, a bit annoyed.

  “Semantics. She has something I want, and I’d like you to bring her to me,” Hightower insisted.

  Was he for real? Was he suggesting we kidnap Fiona?

  “Let’s start with what she has that’s yours. I assume it isn’t only the drive we’re talking about any longer,” I pressed.

  “No, it’s something more personal,” he replied with hesitation. “But I still believe she has the drive. The fact she mentioned the other issue leads me to believe she’s cooking up an extortion plan.”

  Could the man be any more cryptic?

  Jackson appeared back on the screen.

  “Benjamin, what you’re asking Lee to do is tantamount to kidnapping.”

  Good. Even with all that money at play, Jackson was standing firm. What was with Hightower? What did Fiona have he didn’t want to tell us about?

  “Do you know where she is right now?” Hightower asked.

  The app still displayed a location, so I confirmed we did.

  “I’m leaving right now to board my company jet. I’ll be there in three hours. Then you’ll take me to her,” he said.

  Hightower said he’d call when he was close and disconnected.

  “OK, Jax, there are several problems here,” I said as he came back on screen.

  “Like I can’t figure the liability facing us, right?” Jackson said.

  “First, Fiona already warned us that she considered what we were doing as us stalking her and this will verify her claim. Second, how do we explain how we found her? The tracker is an invasion of her privacy, and it further proves to her that we’ve be
en stalking her. Third, what if this gets out of hand, and he becomes violent; are we then accessories?”

  He rubbed his forehead, as if to draw answers and guidance from somewhere.

  “All right, this is what we do. Don’t tell Benjamin about the tracker; you tell him you had her under surveillance. You tell him she might be at the party tonight, and give him those coordinates. Nothing more. If he wants to crash the party, so be it,” Jackson said in an exasperated tone.

  “How will he get in?” I asked.

  “That guy at the club said he’d send you an invitation code; did you check your email?” Mary asked.

  I checked, and the invitation was there with a code, address, and instructions. The dress code was explained along with the reminder that masks were optional.

  “I suggest you give him that information, and if he wants to chase her down that’ll be on him. It won’t be considered stalking; well potentially it might be, but it’s him and not you. God, what a legal mess this is becoming,” Jax said, removing his tie and unbuttoning his collar.

  “This is turning into quite the clusterfuck. We work for someone who may be lying to us about the proprietary information that was stolen from him. What’s the real reason he’s not being straight with you? And in following Fiona, we stepped into a murder investigation that might have nothing to do with her,” I said.

  “Right, and that’s where we need to draw the line. We have no business at all in Dennis’s murder in Seattle, Mahir’s in New York, or Evans’s murder in Massachusetts. I realize the detective is with you, but you need to make sure your fingerprints, so to speak, are not on any of her reports. Nothing we gather can be shared with her. We on the same page?” he asked.

  “Yes. Some lines have been blurred, but she’s smart enough to sharpen the line when doing her reports. And, Jax, straight up, I don’t think Fiona had anything to do with the murders. She might be a sociopath, but all my years of experience say we would be going down the wrong path to look at Fiona for the murders,” I said, looking at Mary who nodded.

  “Well good thing that’s not our call, because we weren’t hired to solve a murder,” he said. “Lee, as former law enforcement, we want to solve this crime, but we now have a new role and have to adapt to it. Get with Benjamin when he arrives. Give him what he needs, but stay away from Fiona.”

  “Will do,” I said, and we disconnected.

  Annabelle

  My phone flashed; it was my partner, David, an unwelcomed intrusion on my little piece of solitude.

  “Hey, what’s up?” I asked.

  “We got the analysis back on the hair,” David said. “Hey, where are you? I went to your place to surprise you and bring you some Chinese, and you didn’t answer.”

  I considered taking him into my confidence. But David had feelings for me, and he might misinterpret me following Lee out here. Keeping David at a distance at work was challenging enough. Telling him where I was might cause a significant rift between us. If David said anything bad about me, the squad would undoubtedly take his side.

  “I decided to take a mini vacation and flew out to California,” I said. It wasn’t a lie but wasn’t the entire truth.

  “Yeah, I’m aware,” he said, with a slight edge to his voice.

  “How?” I asked both surprised and angry. I could guess what he’d done to locate me; I just didn’t understand why.

  “I was concerned when you weren’t at home, and your answers to my texts sounded off. So, I pinged you,” he said.

  “David, that is wrong on so many levels. We’re going to have a serious talk about boundaries when I get back, but this isn’t the time. What did you want to tell me about the hair?”

  “It’s a wig, made from real hair but definitely treated, so we’re back to square one. I’m waiting for Boston to give me the results of their test. If their sample is from a wig as well, and it matches our wig, then we might have something to go on,” he said.

  “Since it’s blonde and long, you think someone’s trying to set up Fiona?” I asked.

  “It would appear that way, or possibly the perpetrator wanted to look like her so when she approached they wouldn’t suspect anything. Or she might have worn a wig to make sure none of her real hair fell at the crime scene. But, that’s not all. No DNA from her hair could be picked up in a struggle. Now, I saved the best for last,” he said, with a hint of mischief in his voice.

  “Go ahead,” I said, falling into our usual dance.

  “This is so good it requires an exotic dinner when you get back,” he said, and that was our pattern, but something felt different. I couldn’t think about that now, though.

  “Done. What gives?”

  “Curare, or I should say a curare-like substance, likely coated the blade, because they found traces of it in the wound,” he said.

  “You mean like the stuff Native Americans used to lace the tips of their arrows?” My stomach clenched.

  “Yep,” David said, and I heard his hand hit the desk for emphasis. “Believe it or not, you can buy it on the Internet.”

  “So, the perp had the advantage of surprise and then paralyzed the victims to maintain control of the situation,” I said.

  “It seems that way,” he replied.

  “Well, this puts a whole new twist on things. All of this points to Fiona who had a motive, but we still have no evidence at all. Either she did it, or someone who hates her went to a lot of trouble to make it look like she did it,” I said. “It could also be a man in disguise. I can’t see Mahir or Chuck not noticing if a man dressed like a woman approaching them. A man would put them more on guard.”

  “To sum everything up, we have more information than we did, but we still aren’t even close to figuring out if the killer was a man or woman. The only thing that ties this together is Fiona.”

  “Alright, keep me posted. Any other updates on our other cases that can’t wait?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he said. “Just don’t forget about our dinner when you get back.”

  “Right,” I said knowing I would need to find some way to get out of dinner. His feelings toward me made me uncomfortable. He was pushing me to the point where we needed to have a difficult talk. We needed to discuss some ground rules so we would be able to continue working together. The call had almost made me late. I needed to get a move on for our meeting in Lee’s room.

  I barely tapped on the door, and it swung open. Before Mary and Lee could say anything, I told them about my phone call.

  “David called, and I’ve got an update to share.”

  Mary poured coffee and arranged pastries on a dish as I made myself comfortable as I sat across from Lee. They both seemed distracted and didn’t seem to be paying attention to what I was saying.

  “Hey, you look upset; what’s up?” I asked. Lee’s body seemed tight and guarded, and his face was pinched with conflict. He looked haggard.

  “Belle, sometimes it’s difficult working in the private sector. I have a fiduciary duty to our client, and yet my years of law enforcement are screaming at me and messing with my head,” he said, rubbing his face.

  My God, what’d happened in the few minutes I’d been gone?

  “Lee, let me,” Mary said, placing creamer and sugar on the table. “I’m a partner, and I will make the executive decision what to share and what not to share. This case is a mess.” Well, this sounded ominous.

  “Benjamin Hightower is flying in; he wants to confront Fiona,” she said, raising her coffee to her lips.

  “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. Hightower does have a stake in this whole mess. It’s his property that’s missing,” I said. But, by the way Mary avoided my eyes and Lee sat back and looked toward the window, I gathered that was only the tip of the iceberg of what was going on.

  “So there’s more, and you can’t share it?” I asked. “You both realize that if he said he’s going to hurt Fiona, you have to say something, or you could be accessories to a crime.”

  “Not helping,�
� Lee said, still not moving.

  We sat in silence while I leapt to the worst conclusions.

  “I’ll pick him up when he lands,” Lee said. “I have no concrete reason to believe he’ll harm Fiona. So I’ll provide him with information about where Fiona might be tonight.” He looked at me, as if I had some power to lessen his sense of doom.

  “I see. Has Hightower indicated he’s going to do anything other than speak to her?” I asked.

  They both shook their heads no.

  “He’s paying you to gather information, and there’s no crime in that job, unless it reaches a stalking level. What you do with that information is the important part. If you’re leading someone to a place where they can hurt someone, then that’s where you’ve got to stop. I’m not telling you something you don’t already know. But I get the sense you want me to intercede,” I said.

  “Right now, if we do anything, it feels like we’re trying to be the thought police. It’s not a crime to think about something. How do we know what’s in Hightower’s mind, and what he plans to do?” he asked.

  “Lee, seriously? If you’re working this hard to justify what you’re doing, then it’s wrong. You know that. Let’s break this down so you can make a decision. You don’t need to answer me, just listen.

  “You have to meet him. He’s your client, and if you don’t go, it would be unprofessional and rude,” I said, and he nodded. “Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute.”

  “Oh, I like this,” Mary said. She poured a second cup of coffee.

  I had been around them enough to know that three cups of coffee was her limit, and I’d have to cut her off soon. After three cups, her thoughts were sporadic and not well thought out.

  I settled back and planned the best way to present my thoughts.