Simply Lies, page 19
She stopped talking and studied him with her green contact lens eyes. She wondered if they were as intimidating as his dark ones. Somehow, she doubted it. Which was good.
Underestimate me at your peril.
“He did make a lot of money. Off certain people who would like it back.”
“Can you tell me how?”
“Why would I?” said Trask.
“I came here to see if I could help bring this thing to a conclusion. A mutually beneficial conclusion.”
“Why do I need you to do that?”
Okay, that was a bit predictable, she thought. But then, don’t underestimate him, either.
“Maybe you don’t. You have lots of resources. You might be close to finding the money already. If so, I’ll just go. No harm done.”
She started to rise until he lifted a hand, which seemed to have the power to force her to sit back down.
“He paid five million for Stormfield. Did you know he was living there?”
He gave another slight incline of the head.
“That money will be going to the government. The funds used to purchase the estate are mob connected, at least the government will see it that way. But if you knew he was nearby, why didn’t you—”
“Why do you think I came here and built this place, Ms. Peters?”
“Enemies closer. Was it worth it for the geographical proximity?”
“Not just him.”
She nodded slowly. “Your father is also nearby.”
“As to Pottinger, he also made certain people a lot of money. He had talents for both making it and then hiding it from the government. It created in him a certain value, at least to some people.”
“So he was a good partner to these ‘people’?”
“Apparently so. Until he turned into a bad one.”
“But again, if that happened and he was right here . . . ?”
“Just because someone has a home doesn’t mean they’re in it. As a matter of fact, he was hardly ever there. I took pains to know that. And so we had really no opportunities to . . . chat about matters. But after his mob racket, I suppose he got in the habit of biting the hand that fed him.”
“Well, he finally came back here. If only to die.”
“Ideas on that?” asked Trask.
“Several. But we need to conclude some business first.”
He spread his hands. “I’m listening.”
“In the way of a finder’s fee.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen percent.”
“Five.”
“Twelve and a half?”
“Five.”
“Ten?”
“Five. It’s a big number. You won’t know how to spend it all. Or maybe live long enough to.”
“You had me right up until that point. It sort of dilutes the incentive.”
“Then let me fire it back up. If you can pull this off, I have no reason to wish you ill will. Your ideas?”
“I have several.” She sat forward. She did not mind getting lowballed on the finder’s fee for one simple fact.
Clarisse never intended to collect it.
About a half hour later, Trask walked her out. At the front door he said, “Someone visited my father recently. A woman. Know anything about that?”
“I may. But I need to be sure. She could be friend or foe.”
“I don’t need friends and I don’t like foes.”
“Then it may not matter.”
“It always matters. But just so we understand each other really well, you fall into the same category, business associate or not.”
“I never expected anything less, or more.”
“You’re a strange one. I can’t quite figure you out, and that’s unusual. I’ve seen just about everything.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Mr. Trask. I’m a little beyond ‘just about everything.’ ”
CLARISSE WALKED FOR TWO MILES. If they were going to follow her, she was going to make them work for it. She entered a store from the front and went out through the rear, after a pit stop in the ladies’ room where she had previously left a bag underneath the bottom of the trash bag with some fresh clothes and other disguise elements, and her phone.
When she came out she was transformed, blond to brunette, skirt and jacket to torn jeans and a sweater, heels to flats, glasses, makeup and lipstick shorn from her face. She could pass for a fresh-faced teenager with AirPods in her ears and a vape in her hand.
She grabbed an Uber and took it to within two blocks of her hotel. She went to her room, sat at her desk, and opened her notebook.
Then her phone dinged as the email dropped in.
You haven’t matured a bit, it seems. Same old snark. If no leverage on Mommy then I guess she becomes superfluous. What a word. Didn’t expect me to conjure that one, did you, darling? A bullet to the head, or a ligature display? Poison down the pipe. It won’t take much. Huff and puff and blow the old bitch down would do it actually. What shitty care you took of her. Way I see it, I found HL. That was the big part. Your part, finish the job. Then we divvy. And don’t take your time. I’m tired of mops and little diamonds where the fence screws you over after you do all the planning and take all the risk. A faraway beach beckons. I want to get there. But I want to get there in unassailable style. Wow, another SAT word. But I see you’ve been keeping busy too. Poor Mr. Schmuck. How much did you take him for in the offices of Creative Engineering? Saw him giving your ass a rubdown. Hope you enjoyed it. You always were poor at relationships. Have you even had sex yet, whirly-girl? I mean, not against your will of course. Not sure you’re capable, but I could be wrong. Let me know on Mommy. She eats a lot and she snores and her gas, well, it’s a problem. Tick, tock, tick.
Cheers, hon.
Her bluff on Mommy had been called, it seems. So what to do, what to do? She consulted the appropriate notebook, even as her mind lingered on the “had she had sex” part. That had been a low blow, and she knew the bitch had meant every word of it.
I could say the exact same about you, babycakes. Isn’t that what they called you? Young and just meant to be eaten up, with no other purpose in life?
But no reason to antagonize, not yet anyway. And she had not even mentioned her comments on Oxblood’s murder. She would give it a bit. No need to rush a reply. She had obviously taken her time in answering.
Plus, I have other things to do.
She turned to another notebook and flipped through some pages, making notes and crossing out other ones.
What would I do without these? They allow me to make sense of my world. To put things in precise, logical steps to achieve a precise, logical outcome.
And they also prevent me from losing my damn mind.
Clarisse had told herself she was not going to do what she was just about to do. But things had changed. And when things changed, your plans must as well.
She looked at her computer screen and hit the key. A few seconds later Mickey Gibson answered.
“I wasn’t sure you would pick up,” said Clarisse.
“I almost didn’t.”
“Things weren’t left well, I know. But I have information pertinent to you.”
“Okay.”
“Just like that? No rehashing of what went down before?”
“Do either of us have time to play it that way?” asked Gibson.
Okay, unload H-bomb and see what happens. “Nathan Trask knows you visited his father.”
She thought she could hear Gibson’s breathing accelerate, but only slightly. The woman really did have stainless steel balls, Clarisse had to give her that.
“How do you know that?”
“He told me personally.”
“You mean you got in to see him? How?” asked Gibson.
“The only way I could. I had information that was relevant to him.”
“Relevant information such as?”
“Treasure,” replied Clarisse.
“You’ll need to flesh that out.”
“Harry Langhorne left a lot of mob money behind. We’ve gone over this.”
“So why does Trask care about that? Was he involved with Langhorne in that laundry list of crimes you told me about before?”
“Maybe not all of them, but enough. He also told me he built his fortress in Virginia Beach because Langhorne—or Pottinger, to him—was nearby.”
“And you believed that?” said Gibson.
“Doesn’t matter. His father is nearby, too. That could be the real reason, or it could be both. The point is, he was connected to Pottinger at some point and in some way.”
“So he doesn’t know who Pottinger really was?”
“I didn’t tell him, but I did reveal that he had taken a great deal of mob money from decades ago. Some of it he used to buy Stormfield. But the rest? It has to be somewhere. And I think that Pottinger ripped off Trask as well, at least he strongly intimated that was the case. So the treasure might even be larger than we think.”
Gibson said, “If Pottinger had ripped off Trask, how come Trask didn’t take care of him? He was right next door and had been for years. The man should have been dead a long time ago.”
“I asked him that.”
“And his response?”
“Something to the tune of just because he owned the place didn’t mean he actually lived there.”
“Well, he was killed there. Did Trask do that?” asked Gibson.
“We covered this before, too. The poison, the strange message left. Not his MO. And do you think he’d confess the deed to me?”
“Did Trask have any idea how much money he got ripped off for? Or how?”
“I’m sure he does, to the penny. And again, he didn’t exactly admit to being ripped off at all. But it was meaningful enough for him to agree to see me. And it’s not just money with those guys. It’s reputation. If they can get taken, it’s a sign of weakness. In that business, you don’t want the other sharks to see your blood in the water.”
“Trust me, I know that,” said Gibson.
“Did you find any clues to a treasure at Stormfield?” she asked.
“I found a note, in the man’s boat. It basically acknowledged that he was aware people would be looking for something, and suggested they try harder.”
Okay, her giving that up without a fight does surprise me. “Do the police know about this note?”
“They do,” replied Gibson.
“And?”
“And I don’t think their priority is finding money. It’s finding a killer.”
“Perhaps to find the killer, you have to locate the treasure,” noted Clarisse.
“I can’t tell them how to do their job.”
“But you can suggest things,” said Clarisse.
“Maybe. But if the police find the killer and the treasure, where does that leave you?” asked Gibson.
“It will make me stop looking over my shoulder.”
“Bullshit, you want the money. I doubt you’re worried about your personal security.”
I wasn’t until Mommy went missing. “We can agree to disagree on that. So what will you do next?”
“I’ve got some leads. I’ll run them down.”
“Will you be working with Wilson Sullivan on this?” asked Clarisse.
“I won’t bother to ask how you know about all that, but yes, I will, at least on some of it. And what will you be doing?”
“Don’t worry, my plate is full.”
“Did Nathan Trask know who I was?” Gibson wanted to know.
“Not that he said, just that you visited. But he could easily find out your identity.”
“He must keep eyes on his father.”
“Of course,” said Clarisse.
“So you did walk me right into a trap.”
“Look, Mickey, I want you to survive this.” Actually, I don’t care, thought Clarisse. You had your shot, Mickey Rogers Gibson. You had everything, and you pissed it all away.
Gibson barked, “You don’t care about me, which is why you let me put a bull’s-eye on my back with Trask.”
“In case you forgot, I went to visit the man directly. He knows about me, too. I didn’t use my real name, but with his resources, he could find me as well.”
“I don’t know for sure that you did visit him.”
“He has a female butler. Two guards at the front gate who wanded me. They took me up to the main house in a golf cart trimmed in gold. The place is enormous but not furnished over-the-top. He met me in a small room with a couple of chairs. He’s around five eight, fit build, early fifties, and has the darkest pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. I can hold my own with most people in pretty much any situation, but I have to confess, he intimidated me by saying almost nothing.”
“I’ll be in touch,” said Gibson. The line disconnected.
Clarisse looked down at her MICKEY GIBSON notebook. But she had nothing right now she wanted to write in it.
She stared at the muted reflection in her computer screen. There might be two or three people in that reflection, she thought. Depending on the day and the need. And whatever else was swirling around inside her head.
She wanted to punish Gibson for not living up to her potential. Why Clarisse should care about that was complicated. But, essentially, it came down to the haves and the have-nots. Gibson had had it all. Clarisse had had nothing. When you have it all, it was your duty to capitalize on it. Otherwise, you were disrespecting everyone. Including people like Clarisse.
Nothing like a little pressure, Mick, she conceded, if only to herself. Some days she wondered why she was so obsessed with the woman. But she had an obsessive personality; every shrink she’d ever been to, and they had been legion, had diagnosed that about her. She could have saved them the time and herself the money because she had already self-diagnosed. It hadn’t been hard.
In her more rational moments she had seen that Gibson owed her life’s choices to no one other than herself. And she couldn’t have foreseen marrying a louse and having two kids to raise on her own. And she was making the best of it that she could.
But another side of Clarisse refused to yield any ground on the subject.
I am giving her the chance to do something extraordinary. All she has to do is succeed and then survive. And maybe a part of me, deep down, actually wants her to.
GIBSON LET OUT A LONG BREATH. It seemed like every call with the woman made her blood pressure rise and her nerves fray.
And with Nathan Trask now aware of her she had good reason to be anxious.
Yet the visit with his father had been illuminating, so there was that. Plus, he was a nice old guy and Gibson was glad to have met him. He reminded her of her dad. And he might be of use on this case. A lot of use, in fact.
She wasn’t entirely convinced that Clarisse had actually been to see Trask, despite the details, which included the golf cart Gibson had seen on her reconnoiter of the place. But for some reason, she thought the woman was probably telling the truth.
She must have some chutzpah to go into the lion’s den with that guy. Or a death wish.
She sat back and mulled over things.
Langhorne was dead, murdered. A treasure might or might not be out there to be found. Clarisse might or might not be Francine Langhorne. She had no idea where Doug Langhorne might be, if he was still alive. Nathan Trask might be involved with all this somehow. And she was informally helping Wilson Sullivan in his investigation but not getting very far with it. And there was something about Sullivan that was bothering her.
She felt fairly sure that if Clarisse was Francine, she just wanted the treasure. But had she killed her father attempting to locate it? But what didn’t make sense, as she had thought before, was why involve her? Why not just keep looking for it, with no one the wiser? And why leave the weird message on the wall? She could maybe understand the choice of poison. Francine might have told her father, Tell me where the money is and I’ll give you the antidote, that sort of thing, though she wasn’t sure there even was one for botulinum. But a man who had swindled the mob, then brought them down and lived to tell about it, did not seem gullible enough to buy that sort of line. And he was dying anyway. What did it matter to him?
I’ve got to find out who Clarisse really is. If she’s not Francine, then what’s her interest in all this? Without knowing that I’m spinning in circles.
The kids were down for short naps, so she went on her computer and read the news stories so far about the murder of Daniel Pottinger. Withheld from them was the message on the wall written presumably by two people—which might mean Francine and her brother were working together. The police had also not released the fact of Pottinger’s real identity. That was definitely an item to hold back, though she was sure they had told other law enforcement agencies. She knew her father and Art Collin would know to keep that on the QT.
Gibson didn’t necessarily believe that some old mob guy or their son or daughter had found Langhorne and taken him out. But stranger things had happened. If so, looking into Langhorne’s history was a no-brainer from an investigative point of view. Indeed, it would have been gross negligence not to.
DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO.
She had looked it up. It apparently had originated in the Book of Matthew. Jesus was speaking to the multitudes and his disciples, and he told them that the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. After that it got a bit muddled, but the message was, apparently, watch them but don’t follow what they actually do, because what they say and what they do are two different, and probably diametrically opposed, things.
She had heard that growing up from her father. He’d been a rabble rouser as a kid, always getting in trouble. But don’t you do that, Mick, he would tell her over and over. There was something logical and instinctive about an adult wanting their kids to avoid their parents’ past mistakes, but it still seemed disingenuous. Yeah, Dad, you weren’t mature enough to avoid all that crap but you expect me to just because you say so? Easier said than done. And you probably had the same lecture from your parents, so there.
She stared at the words on the screen again. They were important to the killer or killers.
But were they something every cop looked for in trying to solve a crime? Were they an MO?
