Beloved Liar (The Reed Rivers Trilogy Book 3), page 26
“And not only that,” I say. “From what Leonard’s been hearing, the arrest of Steven Price is imminent, as well.”
“Oh, good,” Eleanor says. “I hope all those men get everything they deserve in this life, and then go to hell after that. Especially that horrible football coach.”
“I have full faith justice will be served,” I say. And it’s the truth. I tell Eleanor what Leonard told me this morning, thanks to information he obtained from a buddy at the DA’s office. Specifically, that the line of women accusing Gates is so long and credible at this point, and the text messages and settlement agreements so damning, Gates is already apparently asking the DA for a deal in exchange for his guilty plea.
“A deal?” Eleanor asks.
“A lighter sentence than the worst-case scenario he could get, if he’s convicted on all counts at trial,” I explain. “But don’t worry. Either way, Leonard said the DA will make sure, no matter what, Gates goes away for a very long time. The whole world sees him for what he is now. Nobody is going to let this man walk away from his crimes.”
“When he goes to prison, I bet all the TV shows will want you to come on. Don’t you think, Reed?”
“Absolutely.”
She returns to me. “I think you should be on TV, all the time, Georgie. Not just about Gates. But as your actual job. You’re a wonderful writer, and Dig a Little Deeper is a fantastic magazine, but you’ve got a face for TV. When we were watching you on Good Morning America, one of my friends said, ‘Georgie should be on TV, every morning!’ And I told her I agree and would tell you so when you finally came to visit me.” She shoots Reed a withering look, nonverbally chastising him for staying away so long, and then returns to me, smiling. “Oh! What if you hosted that show where they ‘catch a predator’? You’d be so good at that!”
I can’t help smiling. She’s so cute. “Definitely something to think about.”
“Has Good Morning America asked you to come work for them yet? If not, I bet they will soon!”
I laugh. “Weirdly enough, not yet. And I’ve been waiting by the phone all day!” I wink.
“Did you like being on TV? It sure looked like it.”
“I did. I loved it. I was super nervous, right before going on. But then, the minute I got out there, and that little red light above the camera turned on, I felt nothing but excitement.”
“I could tell. You didn’t seem nervous at all.” She pats my arm. “It’s settled, then. You’re going to be a huge star on TV.”
I giggle. “Don’t rush me, please. I’m elated about my new job. Writing for Dig a Little Deeper has been my dream for a long time.”
My phone, and Reed’s, both ping simultaneously with incoming texts. I don’t look down, since I’m engaged in a conversation with Eleanor and don’t want to be rude. But Reed looks down. And when he does, he instantly blurts, “Ho! Maddy says she’s uploaded a rough cut of Alessandra’s video to the Dropbox!”
With excitement, I quickly explain to Eleanor the context—the backstory of the music video Reed is excitedly cuing up. And a moment later, the three of us are huddled around Reed’s phone, watching Maddy’s masterpiece.
It’s phenomenal. Better than anything I could have imagined. When it’s over, I look at Reed, and it’s clear he’s every bit as blown away as I am. In fact, I’ll be damned, he’s morphing into Business Reed before my eyes.
“This video is going to launch Alessandra to the moon,” he declares, his dark eyes blazing. “‘Blindsided’ will hit Top Thirty in its first week. Top Ten by its third. I’m calling it now.” Reed’s wheels are visibly turning. His excitement is palpable. “Real talk, Georgie. Do you think your stepsister will be able to handle overnight stardom? I’m talking about the kind of whirlwind success that’s going to make her drop out of school. Will she crumple under the weight of that kind of success, or rise to the occasion?”
My heart is pounding. I’m euphoric. “She’ll rise to the occasion, the same way she did at the video shoot. She’s ready for this, Reed. I promise. It’s what Alessandra’s always wanted.”
Reed nods, apparently reaching some sort of decision. “All right, then. I’ll get the machine fired up for a full album. The minute we get back from our trip, I’ll pull my team together and get everything scheduled. We’ll want to capitalize on the success of the first single. Keep momentum going.”
Squealing, I pepper Reed’s handsome face with kisses, and thank him profusely.
“There’s no need to thank me,” he says, laughing. “This time I’m telling the truth. Alessandra is going to make me a mint.”
Swooning, I check the time on my phone. “We’ll need to call her in a couple hours. She’s still on her flight back to Boston.”
“This is so exciting,” Eleanor says. She leaps up and grabs my hand. “Come with me, Georgie! I’m going to introduce you to all my friends and tell them you’ve agreed with me you belong on TV one day—and, also, that your cute little stepsister is about to become a star!”
***
In a pleasant, sunlit game room, filled with people playing Scrabble and dominoes and cards, Reed and I are making the rounds, making pleasant small talk with Eleanor’s friends and nurses, when a newscaster on a TV in the corner reports something startling: “Breaking news. Howard Devlin, the billionaire studio head and movie producer, has just been arrested by LAPD for rape and various other sex crimes.” My jaw hanging open, I snap my head toward the TV in the corner, just in time to see Howard Devlin, in handcuffs, being shoved like a common criminal into a cop car that’s parked in front of his sprawling mansion.
I turn to Reed to find him looking as shocked as I feel. We quickly excuse ourselves from the game room and barrel into the hallway. First off, Reed immediately calls Isabel, but gets her voicemail. He calls Leonard, who says he’s heard the news, but knows nothing more than what’s being reported. Finally, Reed calls CeeCee and hits the jackpot. Confidentially, of course, CeeCee tells us Isabel and her posse went to the police station last night, through a back door and in the cover of darkness, and stayed for hours, giving their detailed statements.
“And this morning,” CeeCee says exuberantly, “Isabel’s lawyer called to schedule two interviews with me! An exclusive, one-on-one with Isabel, which we’ll do on network television. I’ve already made arrangements. And a second, more comprehensive interview, which will be published in a special edition of Dig a Little Deeper, along with individual, exclusive interviews of all the other women, too.”
“Holy crap, CeeCee. This is going to be the story of the year. A game-changer.”
“I know. Now, listen, Georgina. I want you to do some brainstorming while you’re in Italy. When you come back, you’re going to need to write an opinion piece for the special edition. Something that draws parallels between Gates and Devlin, from your unique perspective.”
“I’d love to. Yes.”
“I’ll handle both Isabel’s interviews, personally, but I’m going to want you to handle some of the other women’s interviews for me. We’re going to have a short turnaround time on this special edition to make it timely.”
“You got it. Thank you for trusting me.”
“Trusting you? This is all because of you.”
“No, it’s because you had a gut feeling about him. Because you warned me about him. And because, most of all, you’ve shown me what a kickass woman looks like.”
Our excited lovefest continues for a short while longer. But, finally, we end the call and I hand Reed’s phone back to him.
Reed looks at his watch. “We should think about catching our flight soon. If you’re still planning to show my mom that article you wrote for her, I think you should do it now, sweetheart.”
“Okay. Yeah, let’s do it.”
We head back into the game room, where Eleanor is chatting with her favorite nurse, Tina. After Reed tells her why that Howard Devlin news story sent us sprinting into the hallway, we lead Eleanor to a table in a quiet corner of the game room. And that’s where I reach into my purse and tell her I’ve brought her a special surprise.
“Since I last saw you,” I say, my heart thrumming in my chest, “I’ve been researching and writing an article inspired by something you told me.” I hand her the folded pages of my article. “I wrote an article especially for you, Eleanor.”
“For me?”
I nod. “If, for any reason, you don’t want the world to read what’s in your hand, then I promise, I won’t submit it to my boss. The only reason I wrote it is to give you a tiny drop of some much-deserved peace.”
Chapter 38
Georgina
Looking deeply perplexed, Eleanor puts reading glasses on, squints at the first page in her hand, and reads aloud the words printed at the top: “‘A War of Fire: How a Battle Between Rival Mobsters Shattered Innocent Lives.’”
She looks at me blankly.
“It’s about your family,” I say nervously. “About the fire. After you told me about it during our last visit, I decided to poke around to see if I could solve the mystery of how it got started. I wanted to see if I could clear your father’s name. And I did it, Eleanor. I figured out, without a doubt, your father didn’t set that house fire. I’m positive.”
Eleanor looks beyond flabbergasted. She looks at her son, and then at me, before throwing her hands over her face and bursting into wracking sobs.
“Aw, Mom.” Without missing a beat, Reed gets up and takes his weeping mother into his arms. “Wait until you hear what Georgina figured out. You’re gonna be so happy, Mom.”
But Eleanor is inconsolable. Crying so hard, so violently, a nurse comes over to make sure she’s okay. And, of course, I’m mortified to have provoked this horrifying reaction. All I wanted to do, the only thing, was to give this poor, tormented soul, who’s suffered so much in her lifetime, the tiniest measure of peace. But, obviously, my unexpected news has had the exact opposite effect than intended.
Thank goodness for Reed. This ain’t his first time at this particular rodeo, obviously, and he’s smooth as silk with his mother. He holds her tenderly. Strokes her back and whispers to her in a calm, controlled voice. He’s so simultaneously confident and nurturing, in fact, I can’t help thinking as I watch him, “Damn, this man is going to make one hell of a father one day.”
Eventually, Eleanor quiets down and becomes a rag doll in her son’s muscular arms.
“How about Georgina tells you the gist of what she wrote, so you don’t have to read the article itself?” Reed suggests. “She can tell you how she solved the mystery, like she’s telling you a detective story.”
Eleanor nods, rubbing her slack cheek against Reed’s broad shoulder. “I’d like that.”
My stomach somersaults. “Maybe you should tell your mother about the article. I’d hate to say something wrong.”
Eleanor shakes her head. “No, I want you to tell me. You’re the one who solved the mystery. I want to hear it from you.”
I look at Reed and he nods encouragingly.
“Okay. Of course. Whatever you want.”
But where to begin?
In my article, I start by setting the stage for the reader. I describe the ill-fated Charpentier family, and the tragic house fire that claimed four of six of them in one horrible night. I describe how Charles’ insurance company refused to honor his property claim because of “suspected arson and insurance fraud.” And how he fought to clear his name, and secure the funds owed to him, for the better part of the next year, because he wanted desperately to build a new house, and a new life, for his sole surviving teenager, Eleanor.
I explain in my article that, in the end, a defeated and beleaguered Charles Charpentier marshalled every last dime in his bank account and used it to send his bereft daughter to an art school in Paris. And that, when he knew she was safe and sound on another continent, painting family portraits while overlooking the Seine, he put a gun in his mouth and ended his life on the one-year anniversary of the fire.
But, obviously, Eleanor doesn’t need to hear about any of those tragedies, seeing as how she lived them, plus many more, once she met Terrence Rivers—a strapping, smooth-talking thirty-year-old American—who happened to be vacationing in Paris.
I turn my article facedown on the table, deciding to ditch the format of the article, and, instead, walk Eleanor through my investigation, step by step.
I say, “After you told me about your family and your father during our prior visit, I couldn’t help wondering what investigations might have been conducted at the time, either by the police or the insurance company. I called my favorite professor from UCLA, a woman named Gilda Schiff, and she was excited to help me. Right away, we discovered police records regarding the fire were nonexistent. So, we focused on trying to track down the insurance company’s investigation. At my professor’s recommendation, I hired a local investigator in New York to help identify the insurance company, and, pretty quickly, she was able to find an archive of old property records that provided the answer.”
“Mom,” Reed says. “What Georgina isn’t telling you is that she hired that private investigator with her own money. I didn’t even know she was doing any of this research.”
“I didn’t want to tell Reed, or anyone, in case I came up empty handed,” I say. But the full truth is that I didn’t want to say anything to Reed, or anyone else, in case I stumbled upon evidence that suggested, or possibly even confirmed, that Charles Charpentier had set that fire. I continue, “To be clear, though, I only paid for the investigator in the beginning. When my little pot of money ran out, she continued working on the case pro bono for me, simply because she’d become as obsessed with the case by then as me.”
“I didn’t realize that,” Reed says. “Give me your investigator’s address later. I’ll send her a big, fat check to thank her.”
I smile at Reed. “Thank you. She’ll be grateful for that. She worked really, really hard on this case.” I address Eleanor. “I should mention it was only because of Reed’s generosity with me that I could afford to pay that investigator, at all. Thanks to him, I didn’t have any expenses this summer.”
I pause, thinking Eleanor might say something, but when she only stares at me, wide-eyed and visibly overwhelmed, I realize this isn’t going to be a back-and-forth conversation. Plainly, Eleanor is too shell-shocked to do anything but sit and listen to an unending monologue. And so, that’s what I give her. The full story, in one long, continuous ramble, summarized as follows:
The private investigator I hired, Carla, quickly figured out the Charpentier home had been insured by a long-defunct company called Shamrock Insurance, which went out of business within a year of the fire, when its owner, Henry Flannery, a renowned New York City mobster, was arrested for money laundering, racketeering, and other criminal enterprises.
After finding out the shocking news about Shamrock being owned by a mobster, I called Leonard with some general questions about money laundering and racketeering, and he told me criminals always run their “dirty money” through legitimate businesses, in order to “clean” it. Or, in other words, to make the money look, on the books, like it didn’t come from a criminal enterprise. Leonard explained, “It sounds like Shamrock Insurance was one of the legitimate businesses Henry Flannery used to clean his dirty money.”
At that point, I devoured every article I could find on Henry Flannery, and noticed that many of them mentioned his bitter feud with another New York mobster named Giuseppe Benvenuto, who’d famously owned a bustling restaurant in Lower Manhattan called “Sofia’s”... until it burned to the ground in a raging fire a mere six days before the Charpentier fire.
Bam! For some reason, that fact hit me like a ton of bricks. Just that fast, the investigative reporter inside me knew I’d hit on something big. A restaurant in Manhattan, owned by one mobster, burned down in a fire, and less than a week later, a home insured by that mobster’s rival also burned down in a fire? Rationally, I knew it was a stretch to link the two fires. But my gut told me there was almost certainly a connection.
Not knowing what else to do, I read a biography about Henry Flannery, written, with the help of a professional co-writer, by a high-ranking member of Henry’s crime organization—a “lieutenant” who’d flipped on Henry during Henry’s trial, and then disappeared into the witness protection program. And what I discovered while reading that lieutenant’s biography broke the entire cold case wide open.
According to this “lieutenant” dude, Henry ordered Giuseppe’s restaurant torched to the ground for some unknown offense. And so, in retaliation, Giuseppe decided to “take down” Shamrock by forcing it to pay out on a whole bunch of property claims, all at once. Specifically, claims that would be filed by Shamrock’s handful of few “legitimate clients,” whom the lieutenant described in his book as “suckers from rich suburbs, who’d bought cheap insurance from Shamrock, not realizing they were doing business with the mob.”
Well, that was it for me. After reading that description, I knew in my gut poor Charles Charpentier had been one of those “suckers.” I knew, in my gut, he hadn’t set the fire that claimed his family. Giuseppe Benvenuto had. But, obviously, a gut feeling wasn’t going to be enough. I knew I needed to find unquestionable facts.
When I tried to track down the professional co-writer of the Henry Flannery biography, I learned he’d died a decade ago. But, lucky for me, his adult daughter—a professor at Cornell—was more than happy to chat with me on the phone and relay to me all the detailed stories her beloved, and very talkative, father had told her about the legendary mobster, Henry Flannery.
According to the co-writer’s daughter, ninety-five percent of Shamrock’s clients were dummy profiles with bank accounts controlled by Henry or one of his family members. Only five percent of Shamrock’s client roster was comprised of real people—poor saps Henry counted on, without their knowledge, to prove his company’s legitimacy, if needed. Over the years, on the rare occasion when one of Shamrock’s few real clients filed an actual property claim, the company always denied it on whatever grounds. And then, as necessary, bribed someone at the Insurance Commission to rule in Shamrock’s favor on the claim, if the client persisted.
