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

by K. J. McGillick

“I gather he hasn’t been completely honest with you, but everyone has secrets they’re ashamed of or want to keep private. Both he and Fiona have indicated she knows a secret of his. If she feared for her life, I don’t think she would have told you she knows Hightower’s secret. She would have kept it to herself and then disappeared. We can wrack our brains as to what the secret is, but in the end, does it really matter? The only thing that matters is, if you’re convinced he’ll hurt her or kill her to keep his secret, then you can’t aid and abet him.”

  I watched their reactions and decided to continue. “I’m not at all suggesting this is what you should do, but what’s the harm in telling him where she’ll be tonight. She might show up, or she might not. I’m pretty sure he’s not stupid enough to try to bring a weapon into a sex club. I’m also sure they provide some type of subtle surveillance. If he approaches her and the argument gets heated, the club has to have personnel to handle that type of situation. What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked.

  While I had my own suspicions on what could happen, I wanted to know what Lee was thinking.

  “He has two hands and the ability to choke her,” Lee said.

  “Cameras are everywhere—” I started.

  “We don’t know that,” Lee said.

  “True. But these are rich and powerful people. I honestly don’t see the club owner leaving them unprotected,” I said.

  “Aren’t you forgetting one thing?” His eyebrow raised as he leaned forward, balancing his forearms on his legs.

  “What?”

  “If this party was a setup to trap us, as we suspected, then I’m sending Hightower into a dangerous situation,” Lee said.

  Boom. There it was.

  “And if Fiona is part of it and she gets her hands on him, we helped her turn the tables on him. Once he goes in, there’s no guarantee he’ll leave,” he said, rubbing his face with his hands.

  “Here’s my two cents. Hightower’s your client, so you have to protect him to the best of your ability. But he’s also a highly intelligent man able to make his own decisions.” I paused for a moment to see if anyone wanted to jump in. Then I continued. “I say you lay out all your information along with the risks, and let him make up his mind.” It seemed like an easy solution.

  “I can’t let him go in there alone,” Lee said.

  “Why not? If he wants to risk it, that’s on him,” I said, not understanding.

  “That’s not how I work, Belle. If he goes in, I go in,” he said.

  “What makes you think he’ll get past the door?” Mary asked. “The invitation is addressed to you and Belle. If he goes alone, he could possibly pose as you, but could he get in without anyone questioning why he was coming alone? And if he goes as himself, they didn’t vet him, so they won’t let him in. And if you go with him, they aren’t going to let two men walk in when the invitation clearly says man and woman.”

  She had an excellent point.

  “When’s he arriving?” I asked.

  “In three hours,” Lee said. “What were you going to tell us when you came in?”

  “The hair on Mahir’s jacket was real hair but from a wig,” I said.

  “How did someone determine it was from a wig?” Mary asked.

  “No root, so it was processed hair; therefore, no DNA,” Lee said.

  “Do you have any idea how long the hair was?” Mary asked.

  “No. Just that it was long. Why?” I asked.

  “And you have no idea if someone planted those hairs after the crime or if they shed during the crime,” Lee said. “It’s too wide open to even speculate. However, the fact similar hairs were found at both crime scenes leads me to believe they were planted.”

  “God, that just makes it all the more confusing doesn’t it?” I said.

  “In a way,” Mary said. “But at least you can deduce it’s someone who knows Fiona. Who else would know to plant a similar hair?”

  We all agreed.

  “But is it someone trying to frame Fiona, or some whack job leaving a calling card that the killing was done on her behalf or at her behest?” Lee asked.

  “What do you mean? Like she hired someone to do it and left a clue it was her but not her?” I asked.

  “No. I mean someone who thinks Fiona hasn’t been treated fairly and decided to set the scales of justice in balance,” he said. “Maybe someone decided to plant evidence.”

  “That’s a possibility I hadn’t considered,” I replied as I watched Mary go for her third cup of coffee.

  “Any more news to share?” Lee asked.

  “Something odd showed up in the tox report and in the surrounding skin of the wound. We won’t know specifics until the results come back from the mass spectrometry, but something similar to curare was found in the wound—”

  “Curare is a muscle relaxant used in anesthesia and, in the past, in arrow poisons by the indigenous people of South America,” Mary interrupted.

  “What are you, Wikipedia?” Lee asked. “How does this figure in, Belle?”

  Mary jumped in again. “Curare competes with acetylcholine, a chemical that carries information between nerve and muscle cells, and blocks transmission of the information, paralyzing someone. They can still process information but can’t move.”

  “OK, how in the ever-loving hell do you know this, and should I be afraid of why you know these things?” Lee asked.

  I lowered my head into my palms. This was getting more and more complicated. We still hadn’t narrowed down our suspect pool one iota. In fact, it just kept growing. All I’d really concluded was the murders hadn’t been random.

  “Not that this isn’t a fascinating who done it, but again we’re completely out of the boundaries of our original mission in the case,” Lee said. “Are we still looking for a stolen drive? Do we even still think there actually is a stolen drive? Or now that we’ve located Fiona, is that the end of all of this?” he asked.

  “I don’t understand why you must be such a party pooper, Lee,” Mary said. “I honestly don’t give a flip about the drive. I told you from the start the drive was a red herring. Frankly, I’m more interested in who killed those men and why. So if we need to make up a reason to stay on the case, then I’ll say there is a drive. Hightower is still sticking with his story about the drive, so I’m good. I’ll pretend I believe him.”

  “Will you still ‘be good’ if someone gets hurt?” Lee asked.

  “Everyone in the game is apparently playing by their own rules, Lee, except for us. So yeah, I’m good,” she said.

  I felt like a spectator watching a ball volley back and forth. An amusement, but I needed an answer.

  “What about Hightower?” Mary asked. “What are we going to do if he goes off halfcocked to crash this party?”

  “I could accompany him,” I said. Why I offered even I didn’t know. It certainly wasn’t well-thought-out.

  “No, absolutely not,” Lee said. “If he wants to put himself in danger after we explain to him we think he may be in danger if he goes to the party, then that’s on him. It appears Fiona had nothing to do with the murders, so why do you need to follow any more leads about her?”

  “There’s no conclusive evidence whether or not she was involved in the murders. That door is still open. It appears she didn’t do it, but did she have a hand in the planning?” I asked.

  “Let’s wait to talk about this anymore until we see what’s going on with Hightower,” Mary said. “Now, I’m going to take a nap. You two take some time and get to know each other in case you decide to pursue this together tonight.”

  “Thanks, Mary,” I said and touched her hand as she took a few pastries for a snack. She winked at me and left.

  Lee

  “Thanks for staying, Belle. My head’s not in a great place. Now that we have some down time, how about we make good use of it, and you tell me about yourself?” I asked.

  She smiled and snuggled down into the couch, getting comfortable, and I hoped she would tell
me more about herself. I thought there might be a tender heart hiding behind the wall she’d put up to the world. Had she closed her heart off for a reason? Or hadn’t she found a worthwhile person to trust?

  She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and said, “How about this instead? I’ll tell you something about me, and then you tell me something about you. It can’t be something like, ‘My favorite color is red.’ And, if you show me the real you, I just might have pictures to go along with my story,” she said. A bright smile emerged that made me want to push her down on the couch and gently kiss her lips. “I’ll start. Because I’ve met your family, I already know a little about you.

  “I grew up in the Bronx. When I say that, I’m always afraid people will cringe because the Bronx has a bad reputation because of crime and gangs. But there are actually one or two pockets left that have a nice, almost suburban feel. My parents and I lived with my grandparents, the warmest, most loving people, who spoiled me rotten,” she said.

  She retrieved her phone and showed me a picture of a small brick home in a well-kept neighborhood. In the photo, her grandparents were sitting on the front stoop playing with a beagle, clearly enjoying their time together.

  “So, you had a happy childhood?” I asked. It appeared an easy question.

  “Not quite,” she said. “When I was growing up, no one talked about mental health issues, but my family seemed riddled with them. My mother had severe anxiety and depression, and in my family, no one acknowledged it or suggested she get help. We all had to walk around on eggshells, so we didn’t make her angry. And on the occasions I crossed some invisible line, known only to her, I’d get the shit beat out of me for the smallest thing. Sometimes she used her hand, sometimes a brush,” she said, staring at the picture.

  “What about your dad? Didn’t he do anything to intervene?” I was shocked by what she’d told me.

  “He wasn’t around much. But when he was, all I remember about it was the fights he and Mom had. They were verbally abusive toward each other, and their fights always ended with him beating on the walls. I had my grandparents as a buffer, and though not ideal, my childhood toughened me up,” she said, with a twinge of discomfort. “Now you.”

  “The neighborhood I grew up in was tough, and you learned to claim your territory on your street about the time you entered kindergarten. Your friends from the neighborhood remained your friends for life; no one seemed to move away from the community. I had a small group of friends I did things with, and some of the stuff we did…now I wonder how we didn’t get killed. We explored old buildings and climbed trees that were a few hundred years old, and from those adventures there were lots of broken arms or legs. We all played on the same baseball team, and old man O’Hara always donated our baseball team uniforms. My dad drank too much, but my mom tempered his mean streak when it got too bad. When she saw he was getting too drunk, she would get him to get up and dance. Then either one of my brothers or I would take his bottle and hide it, so he couldn’t drink anymore. We rotated the job of hiding the bottle, spreading the risk,” I said.

  “OK, now that we each got something negative about ourselves out of the way, I’ll tell you a positive,” Belle said. “I’m a classically trained pianist, but living in an apartment, I haven’t practiced in years. But, you can bet your boots if I had some sheet music, I’d be able to pick it right back up. Another positive is I learned to ride the public transport system at an early age. Today, a child like I was, might be taken in by child services for being left unsupervised. But because of how I grew up, I can go anywhere in the world and figure out how to get somewhere by bus or train. It’s quite a skill,” she said with a laugh.

  “That’s impressive,” I replied. “I know something else about you. If I remember correctly, you said you attended an all-girls Catholic school—”

  “Um, yes, but not by choice. Oh, one good thing about going to that school, I didn’t have to worry about fashion because we all wore uniforms,” she said.

  “Ah, the Catholic schoolgirl uniforms.” I laughed.

  “I can imagine what you’re thinking in light of Fiona exploiting it, so don’t say a word. Back to you,” she said.

  “I loved baseball when I was a kid. There was a time I wanted to go pro. But one evening while I was doing a prank, I broke my arm, and it didn’t heal right, so that blew that dream away. I then learned how to play soccer, which I ended up being so good at that I got a scholarship to play in college. My father never came to any of my games, because, according to Patrick Stone, soccer was a game played by European sissies.”

  I didn’t tell Belle about the arguments Dad and I’d had every few weeks when he’d pressured me to quit the team.

  Belle said, “I had a slew of Barbies that remain in their boxes to this day; I despise dolls. Maybe because I had no one to play dolls with. I preferred listening to classical music and looking at paintings than playing imaginary games. Nancy Drew was my favorite book series, and I’m sure that’s where I got my love of investigation. Early on, I learned to ride horses, and when I can, I still ride.

  “In school, basketball was my favorite sport, and I played rotating forward, even though I was shorter than most of the rest of my team. My mother forced me into cheerleading, and I hated it, so don’t tease me about it. I always had good grades, and I was in the National Honor Society in high school. I didn’t have a lot of friends; I guess I was an introvert, and being the youngest in the class was difficult. But being introverted didn’t stop me from playing Lucy in our school’s A Charlie Brown Christmas play.”

  We went back and forth, sharing stories until Belle laughed so hard she had trouble catching her breath.

  As I reached across to wipe a tear of laughter from her face, I felt an intense need to kiss her. I reached up and held her face between my hands, searching her eyes for permission to kiss her. I leaned in, and lightly kissed her nose and then each cheek. Looking into her eyes, as I leaned in to kiss her, I thought, this is crazy.

  She nipped at my bottom lip as my lips parted, and I slipped my tongue in and our tongues seemed to dance together.

  The blare of my phone ringing tore us apart. I was tempted to let the call go to voicemail, but I saw the caller was Hightower.

  I caught my breath and picked up my phone. “Stone.”

  “It’s Hightower; I’m ten minutes from landing. I’ve got a driver on standby and will meet you at the hotel in an hour and a half. Meet me in the restaurant,” he said. When I confirmed, he disconnected.

  Well that killed the mood. “Do you want to continue this tonight, after things settle down?”

  “Definitely,” she said as she wrapped her arms around my neck and brought me in for a preview of the possibilities.

  After a discussion with Jackson, we decided Belle shouldn’t be at the meeting as it might be a conflict of interest. Although disappointed, she understood and settled in her room to watch some HBO.

  At the restaurant, Hightower approached our table and immediately reached for my hand. A handshake a little too firm that ended with a double clasp. He nodded dismissively at Mary as he sat.

  The server took our order and left us to attend to our business. The fact Hightower had ordered a double scotch on the rocks with the smell of liquor already on his breath didn’t sit well with me.

  “I want to get this cleared away before we start,” he said. “I think you’ve done a great job tracking Fiona down. However, we are no closer to securing the drive than we were at the start. So, what are you going to do about that problem? I want solutions not excuses.”

  This wasn’t going to be easy; he’d purposefully put us on the defensive. I took a sip of water to pace myself before I spoke.

  “Benjamin, I understand your zeal for finding your drive, but there is little evidence that Fiona has it—”

  “Of course she has it!” he interrupted. “Why would she run if she didn’t have it?”

  “Maybe Fiona didn’t like the work environment and ha
s another job lined up,” Mary offered, testing the waters.

  He ignored her and continued maintaining eye contact with me.

  “I have one man dead and another recovering from a severe drug overdose, and neither are in a position to put the drive up for auction. So that leaves her. Tell me about these murders she’s supposedly involved in,” he said, accepting his salad from the server.

  “We don’t have any proof of her involvement,” I said. “All we know is that two men from her past were murdered.” I had no intention of sharing information Belle had given us in confidence.

  “That’s it? Two of the biggest police forces in America are investigating this, and you’re telling me that’s all they have? There’s no evidence?” he asked in a terse tone.

  “Benjamin, you don’t understand how long it takes to gather evidence and sort through it, much less analyze it. The police are not in the business of supposition and speculation. It may be awhile before Fiona is implicated in a crime, if ever,” I said.

  “Benjamin,” Mary said, “we’re working closely with a NY detective. In fact, she is here in the hotel working on the murder case as we investigate Fiona’s involvement in your missing drive. And there’s nothing yet that has implicated Fiona in the murders. Just bad luck at knowing both victims.

  “What Lee said is correct. The detective has shared with us that Fiona is still a suspect in a big pool of suspects. However, there is nothing of significance, yet, tying her to the murders. Now, should I call the detective to join us, or is the discussion you want to have with us confidential about what Fiona refers to as your ‘secret’?”

  I about lost my mind. Had Mary gone off the deep end? Why would she betray Belle’s confidence?

  He placed his fork down and looked from me to Mary.

  “Fiona said she was pregnant, and it was mine. A night of too much drinking and not enough protection. I thought she’d terminated the pregnancy. But I suppose she found this was a way to extort money from me. I suppose her angle was for me to pay her hush money to avoid a scandal that could ruin my business or make me pay child support; neither works for me.”