Outfox

by Sandra Brown

  The deputy gave him the spellings. “She was in the photograph of the party scene on the boat.”

  “So were dozens of other people. What was Easton’s particular interest in her?”

  “He couldn’t disclose that, because it’s—”

  “Classified.”

  “Yes, sir. I thought you would know what his interest was.”

  What he didn’t know about Easton’s recent activities would fill the fucking Superdome. “Was this Talia Shafer considered a person of interest in the Harris case?”

  “No, sir. Agent Easton asked if there were any notes taken during her interview, but it was just basic stuff. Date and time. Names of the officers who talked to her. Nothing came of it, nothing to follow up on. Agent Easton thanked me for checking, and that was it.”

  Rudkowski figured that he’d had too much to drink. He was having trouble connecting the dots. “So, if that was it, why are you trying to reach Easton now?”

  “Because about an hour ago, our department got a call from Charleston PD.”

  “South Carolina?”

  “Right.”

  Rudkowski listened with shrinking patience as the deputy related what he knew about the death of an Elaine Conner.

  “They haven’t ruled out that it was an accident, but they’re leaning toward foul play. A man was with her on the yacht. He’s unaccounted for. Anyhow, one of the investigators up there remembered reading about our case down here and was struck by the similarities.”

  “Rich lady. Snazzy boat.”

  “Yes, sir. So they called our department to compare notes. I thought Agent Easton would want to look into this Charleston case, too.”

  “I’m sure he will. I’ll tell him—”

  “Especially since Talia Shafer is from there.”

  Rudkowski froze in the process of raising his glass to his mouth. “Say again, deputy.”

  “Talia Shafer lives in Charleston. At least she did. I’m not sure Agent Easton knows that. This incident in Charleston occurred only a few hours after he called me, asking about her. It’s a crazy coincidence.”

  “Not so crazy,” Rudkowski said, speaking too softly for Gray to hear.

  “I figured he would want to know about this new case, if he doesn’t already. Since I can’t reach him, will you see to it that he gets the message?”

  Rudkowski clicked off the TV and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “You can count on it, Deputy Gray. In fact, I’m going to deliver it personally.”

  Chapter 22

  Talia was immobilized by Drex’s stare as two men eddied around him into the kitchen and introduced themselves to the detectives. Drex walked toward her, crowding into her personal space before he stopped. “Surprise.”

  “You’re FBI?”

  “The writing thing wasn’t working out.”

  A cavalcade of recollections flashed through her mind. Her involuntary reactions to his deceptive charm, her nervous retreat from his apartment, her anguish over what had taken place in the garage of the medical building, the ambiguities she’d wrestled with, the times she had defended him against Jasper’s reservations. All that crystalized into hatred.

  Softly but emphatically, she said, “Go straight to hell.”

  “You tried that already.” He spread his arms. “I’m still here, and you’re up shit creek.”

  He held for a beat, then turned away from her and shook hands with Locke and Menundez. “I apologize for crashing your party, but I believe you’ll welcome our intrusion. We can shed a lot of light on your investigation. Excuse me, Mike.”

  He nudged the enormous man aside and knelt down to reach beneath the cabinet. When he straightened up, he held out his hand to show the detectives the object in his palm.

  “What is that?” Talia asked.

  Drex turned to her. “Commonly called a bug. I’ve been using it to eavesdrop on you and Jasper.”

  “You bugged our home?”

  “You say that like you didn’t know it was there.”

  “I didn’t! Isn’t that illegal?”

  She asked the group at large, but it was Drex who said, “It’s not as illegal as kidnaping, conspiracy to commit murder, and murder, which is what you and Jasper stand to be indicted for, so if I were you, I wouldn’t split hairs on legalities.”

  He wasn’t teasing. He wasn’t baiting her as he’d done in Elaine’s living room. This wasn’t playacting. He was serious, and the import of what he had alleged stole her breath. “What are you talking about?”

  “We’ll get to it. First, meet Agent Mike Mallory, who put me on to you and Jasper.”

  “A pleasure.”

  His response was so droll, Talia couldn’t tell if it applied to the introduction or to the service he’d performed for Drex.

  Drex pointed to the other man. “Agent Gif Lewis. He—”

  “You’re the man from the coffee shop,” she said. “I remember you.”

  “That’s a first,” the heavy man said under his breath.

  Gif Lewis acknowledged her with a polite nod. “Mrs. Ford.”

  Feeling stung and betrayed, she said, “But you seemed so nice. I truly believed you were trying to help.”

  “I was. Drex was coming on a little strong.”

  “He does that.” She shifted her gaze to Drex, wondering if his fellow agents knew how strongly he had come on to her in the parking garage. He was still watching her with cool contempt, as though she were responsible for his actions, for the kiss. He didn’t look away from her until Locke addressed him.

  “You said you could shed light?”

  Drex seemed to shake off whatever else he was thinking and got down to the matter at hand. “Has anybody checked Elaine Conner’s financial portfolio, her bank accounts?”

  “It was on another team’s to-do list,” Menundez said.

  “Let me tell you what they’ll find.” Drex formed an O with his fingers and thumb. “Zero. Zilch. He cleans them out. He kills them. He vanishes.”

  “You can’t mean Jasper.”

  Drex ignored Talia’s outcry and said to his cohorts, “Take these gentlemen into the living area and start briefing them. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  Locke looked uncertain about leaving her alone with Drex, but Menundez fell into step behind Drex’s men. Locke followed. She waited until they were out of earshot before she launched into Drex. “You’ve been spying on us?”

  “Most of it was boring. I didn’t bug your bedroom.”

  “You bastard.”

  “But I make damn good corn on the cob.”

  Incensed, she spun away from him. “I want to hear what they’re saying.”

  “Wait. Did you burn your hand?”

  She looked back at him, wondering how he knew.

  “The kettle whistled. You cried out.”

  “Never mind my hand.” She placed it behind her back. “I want to know what’s going on. First Elaine…” Grief, exhaustion, dismay, fear, and another dozen emotions avalanched and overwhelmed her. Hot tears filled her eyes. Her voice cracked. “I hate you.”

  “Let me see your hand.”

  She didn’t move, so he went to her and reached behind her back. His touch wasn’t rough, but still she flinched as he took hold of her hand. He examined the red splotch on the back of it, then pulled her over to the sink, turned on the cold water tap, and guided her hand beneath the stream. “Don’t move.”

  She wanted to tell him to fuck off, but the cold water brought instant relief, so she stayed. He got ice cubes from the dispenser in the door of the refrigerator and returned with them. Placing his hand beneath hers, palm to palm, he supported it while gently rubbing the ice cubes across the burn.

  She stared at their joined hands as the water spilled over them, became hypnotized by the slow circles he drew on the back of her hand with the ice cubes. “Don’t be nice to me,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You’re ruining my life.”

  “You ruined your life the day you went in cahoots with J
asper, whom I first came to know as Weston Graham.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. None of it.”

  His eyes bored into hers. “Where is he, Talia?”

  “Atlanta. If you were listening in, you no doubt heard us laying plans last night. He and I—”

  “He’s not in Atlanta. He never went. He never intended to.”

  “You’re trying to trick me like you’ve been doing since I met you.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he curled his fingers up, linking them with hers and keeping her in place.

  “Listen to me.” His voice was low and emphatic. “All those questions the detectives put to you about Jasper, where he was tonight, and so forth? They already knew the answers. And your answers didn’t mesh with what they know for fact.

  “Local police, the sheriff’s office, state police. They’ve got resources. Mike has even better resources. We’ve all been busy trying to determine Jasper’s whereabouts ever since Elaine’s body washed ashore and witnesses claimed that a man was at the helm of her yacht.”

  “Wearing a baseball cap that belongs to you.”

  “I didn’t realize it was missing until Locke mentioned it. I’m certain that Jasper took it from the apartment the night we went out to dinner.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off with a hard shake of his head. “We’ll argue the finer points later. What’s important to your future, short-term and long-range, is to stop lying. Now.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  His jaw tensed angrily. “You lied to those detectives about a damn dental appointment and disagreeable pain pills. If you’ll lie about something that trivial, you’ll lie about something large.”

  She lowered her head. “That was a fib, not a significant lie.”

  She could feel his angry breathing against the crown of her head. “You’ve lied about plenty that is significant, Talia. Confirmed by the airlines: Jasper wasn’t on that flight, nor any other Delta flight, private plane, or another carrier. Confirmed by TSA: His boarding pass was never scanned. He wasn’t on their security cameras. Confirmed by the Lotus Hotel: He didn’t check in or show up for your dinner reservation. All of which you told those detectives that he did.” He put his finger beneath her chin and tipped her head up, forcing her to look directly into his incisive eyes. “Where. Is. He?”

  “If he’s not at The Lotus Hotel in Atlanta, then I. Don’t. Know.”

  He held her stare for several seconds, then dropped the remnants of the ice cubes into the sink and turned off the faucet. They shared a dishtowel to dry their hands. “Do you want to put some salve on that burn?”

  “I think it’s okay.”

  He motioned her toward the living area. “Remember, I gave you a chance.”

  Mike, Gif, and the two detectives had drawn chairs up to the coffee table and were huddled around it, intent. As Drex and Talia entered the room, Locke was saying, “But no bodies were ever discovered?”

  Drex said, “Not until Marian Harris.”

  Talia stopped in her tracks. “Marian?”

  “Your friend Marian Harris.” Drex pointed at the sofa. “Have a seat.”

  “I’ll stand.”

  “Suit yourself, but this is going to take a while.” In order to join the group, he pulled a chair over to the table, took off his jacket, and hung it on the back before sitting down. As he loosened his necktie, he asked Mike, “Have you worked forward or backward?”

  “Forward. Starting with—”

  “Lyndsay Cummings,” Drex said. “The first we know of.”

  “Right.” Mike shifted in his chair. “We’d just got to the Harris woman.”

  “Please don’t refer to her like that,” Talia said. “She was my friend.”

  Drex crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. “You and Jasper talked at length about Marian last night. My ‘excessive’ interest in Key West had you both skittish.”

  “Did you bring up Key West only to bait me?”

  “Yes. And guess what? You bit.”

  He turned to the detectives. “During her conversation with her husband about it, Talia admitted to getting upset over any mention of Key West and/or Marian Harris.” He recapped what he’d overheard.

  “This is a direct quote that refers to me. Jasper asks, ‘Do you think he knows something about Marian?’ Talia replies, ‘No. Maybe, Jasper. I don’t know.’ Jasper, anxious and insistent. ‘He’s living next door, Talia. I should have known about this immediately.’

  “They go on like that for about ten minutes. Neither confessed to nailing her inside a shipping crate, but it was a telling discussion. On the heels of it, they made plans to leave town. It’s recorded. You can listen if you want.”

  Talia was looking at him with horror. “Jasper thought you were on a fishing expedition, that you might have nailed Marian inside that shipping crate.” She turned to the other men. “Jasper didn’t completely trust him from the start. He thought he was a phony.

  “He became even more suspicious when Drex expressed his interest—which was excessive—in Key West. Out of the bug’s range, Jasper theorized that the discovery of Marian’s body might have made the culprit nervous, that he was going around to former acquaintances of hers and testing their reactions to any mention of her or Key West.” Looking back at Drex, she said, “If he sounded skittish, it was because he didn’t want happening to me what had happened to Marian.”

  She had grown heated. Drex remained cool. “The culprit did get nervous, all right. Because he feared I knew that he had bilked Marian, then killed her.”

  “Jasper didn’t even know her!”

  Drex lunged forward, almost coming out of his chair. “You two met through her.”

  “No, we didn’t. I told you how we met.”

  He sat back. “Share with the detectives. Mike and Gif already know the story.”

  Talking rapidly, in stops and starts, she told Locke and Menundez a condensed version.

  When she finished, Drex said, “It’s awfully sweet, but it’s a lie.”

  Mike addressed the two detectives. “Our guy had hooked his other ladies using online match-up services.”

  “That’s not how he and I met,” Talia said.

  “Right enough,” Drex said. “You were introduced by Marian Harris.”

  “Jasper and I didn’t meet until months after Marian’s disappearance.”

  Drex motioned to Mike, who withdrew the party photo from a file he’d brought in with him. Drex got up and walked over to the sofa, where Talia had changed her mind about sitting down. He held the picture out to her. “Ever seen this?”

  “Yes. It was the last known picture taken of Marian. After her disappearance, the police interviewed everyone who was at that party, me included.”

  He looked at the photograph as though giving it a fresh assessment. “You’re not exactly in on the merriment. How come you’re out there on the fringes all by yourself?”

  “I didn’t know any of the other guests.”

  He cocked his head to one side, indicating doubt.

  She said, “I went to Key West to check out a hotel. Marian was a good client. I called her to see if she and I could have lunch. She said what good fortune it was that I was in town. She was hosting a party that night and insisted that I attend.”

  “You didn’t know anyone else there?”

  “I just said that.”

  “You didn’t mix and mingle?”

  “Since I was the outsider, Marian introduced me to several people.”

  “What about him?” He pointed out the blurred figure silhouetted against the sunset. “Did she introduce you to him?”

  She squinted. “Possibly.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Daniel Knolls.”

  “If we were introduced, I don’t remember him.”

  He leaned down to her and whispered, “You’re sleeping with him.”

  She recoi
led. “That’s not Jasper!”

  He passed the picture to Locke, who looked at it and passed it to his partner. It made its way back to Mike, who replaced it in the file. Drex returned to his chair and gave Talia a long look. She stared back with defiance and hostility. “Say you’re as honest as Abe, telling the truth—”

  “I am.”

  “Haven’t you been struck by the similarities between Elaine Conner and Marian Harris?”

  He could tell by the wariness in her eyes that she had. He let that question simmer, then said, “You told the detectives that you and Jasper parted company in the airport parking garage.”

  “We did.”

  “You told Jasper that you didn’t feel up to going, but urged him to go without you. You kissed goodbye and waved each other off.”

  She nodded, but only after a nanosecond of hesitation, which Drex made mental note to pursue later.

  He said, “You drove Jasper’s car out of the airport.”

  “Yes.”

  “She did,” Menundez said. “I got texted a security cam freeze frame.”

  Mike had that, too, but Drex didn’t reveal that. The local cops didn’t need to be apprised of Mike’s hacking talents, lest some rule-bending was soon called for. To Talia, he said, “The camera got you, but if someone was inside the trunk of your car, Jasper for instance, he would have gotten away unseen.”

  “Uh, Easton. He took a taxi.” Menundez held up his cell phone. “They texted me the video. Shows clear that he never went inside the airport. They’re checking with the taxi company to see where it dropped him.”

  Mike had obtained that information more than an hour ago. Drex had only used the ploy about escaping in the car trunk to see how Talia would react when she learned that Jasper truly had run out on her.

  Looking stunned, she asked quietly, “May I see that video, please?” Menundez handed her his phone. Stoically she watched the brief segment of video, then passed the phone back. “Thank you.”

  Drex got up again, walked over to the sofa, and, this time, sat down beside her. Close beside her. Close enough to feel her trembling. “Talia, it’s not too late for you to talk to us. I don’t know what Jasper told you, or promised you, but it appears that he’s abandoned you to take the fall.”