Mercy

  Dallas came back to the table and sat down. “What did I miss?”

  Preston, who now looked as though he was going to be sick, answered, “Cameron wants to dissolve the club and split the assets now.”

  “No way,” Dallas said, appalled. “You make a withdrawal, and it can be traced by the IRS. It’s out of the question.”

  “He can’t touch the money unless we all go with him to the bank, remember? We all have to sign before we’re given access. That’s how we set it up,” John reminded them.

  “You’re a real bastard, John.”

  “Yeah, so you said. Face it, Cameron. You aren’t angry because I lied to you. You’re pissed off because your life’s miserable right now. I know you better than you know yourself. I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Yeah? Enlighten me.”

  “You think I didn’t have it all that bad. Right?”

  “Yes,” Cameron admitted. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  John’s voice was calm as he said, “But you didn’t have the courage to do more than whine. I did. It’s as simple as that.” He turned to Dallas. “You know, you’d never have asked Monk to kill Catherine if I hadn’t lied.”

  “But, John, if you wanted out, why didn’t you just divorce her?” Dallas asked.

  “The money,” he answered. “I wanted every dollar she had. By God, I deserved it for putting up with her. She was a controlling bitch,” he added, and for the first time there was bitterness and hatred in his voice. “Unlike Cameron, I didn’t mask my misery with booze. I planned. You have no idea how sickening she was. Her weight had gotten out of hand. She was a hypochondriac. All she thought about and talked about was her health. She did have a heart murmur, but it was no big deal. She was thrilled when she found that out. It gave her a reason to become even more slovenly. She took to her bed and stayed there, being waited on hand and foot by her maids and by me. I kept hoping her heart would blow up, and, honest to God, I tried to kill her with the ton of chocolates I brought home every night, but it was taking too long. Granted, I could have screwed around on her every night and she wouldn’t have known. In fact, I did screw around and she didn’t find out. Like I said, the woman was too lazy to get out of bed, much less leave her bedroom. I couldn’t stand coming home to her. Looking at her made me want to puke.”

  “Are we supposed to feel sorry for you now?” Cameron asked.

  “No,” he answered. “But as for crossing the line, we did that a long time ago.”

  “We never murdered anyone.”

  “So what? We’d still get twenty, maybe thirty years for all the crimes we have committed.”

  “But they were white-collar crimes,” Preston stammered.

  “Is that going to be your defense against the IRS?” John asked. “Think they’ll just slap your hands?”

  “We never killed.”

  “Well, now we have,” John snapped, irritated with Preston’s whiny attitude. Focusing on Cameron now, he said, “I’ll tell you this. It was easy . . . easy enough to do again. You know what I’m saying? We could wait a little while, maybe six months or so, and then talk to Monk again about your situation.”

  Dallas’s mouth dropped open. “Are you out of your mind?”

  Cameron cocked his head. He was already thinking about it. “I’d love for Monk to pay a visit to my wife. It would be worth every penny I had.”

  “It’s possible,” John said smoothly.

  “If you don’t stop talking like that, I’m out,” Preston threatened.

  “It’s too late for you to get out,” John countered.

  “There’s no such thing as a perfect murder,” Dallas said.

  “Catherine’s was pretty damned perfect,” John said. “I can tell you’re thinking about it, aren’t you, Cam?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “I am.”

  Preston suddenly wanted to wipe the smug look off of John’s face. “You’ve become a monster,” he said. “If anyone finds out about Catherine . . .”

  “Relax,” John said. “We’re in the clear. Now stop worrying. No one’s ever going to find out.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Catherine had the last laugh. The controlling bitch had ordered her attorney, Phillip Benchley, to wait six weeks to the day after her death to read her last will and testament. John was furious about the delay, but he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. Even in death the woman continued to try to manipulate him.

  Catherine had hired Phillip before she’d married John. He was a partner in the prestigious firm of Benchley, Tarrance, and Paulson. Benchley knew which side of the bread was buttered. The old fart had catered to Catherine’s every whim. She must have changed her will at least three times that John knew of while they were married, but the last time he went through her papers to make sure he was still the primary beneficiary was six months ago. After that, he’d done his best to monitor her phone calls and visitors to make certain she didn’t have the opportunity to talk to her kiss-ass attorney again.

  Since her death, John’s bills had been piling up, most of them now past due, and Monk was breathing down his neck, waiting for his money. To placate him, John had had to up the bonus to twenty thousand.

  John fumed while he waited in Benchley’s plush corner office. It was outrageous that the attorney was keeping him waiting.

  John checked the time again. Three-forty-five. He was supposed to meet his friends at Dooley’s to celebrate. He knew they were probably just now leaving their offices.

  The door opened behind him. John didn’t bother to turn around. He wasn’t going to be the first to speak either, no matter how childish that made him appear.

  “Good afternoon.” Benchley’s voice was cold, damn near glacial.

  “You’ve kept me waiting forty minutes,” John snapped. “Let’s get this done.”

  Benchley didn’t apologize. He took his seat behind his desk and placed a thick folder on the blotter. He was a little man with frizzy gray hair. He slowly opened the file.

  The door opened again, and two young men John assumed were junior associates walked over to stand behind Benchley. Before John could ask what they were doing, Benchley gave him a clipped one-word explanation. “Witnesses.”

  The second Benchley broke the seal and began to read, John relaxed. Fifteen minutes later he was shaking with rage.

  “When was the will changed?” He had to force himself not to yell.

  “Four months ago,” Benchley explained.

  “Why wasn’t I notified?”

  “I’m Catherine’s attorney, sir, if you will remember. I had no reason to inform you of your wife’s change of heart. You did sign the prenuptial, and you have no claim to her trust fund. I’ve made a copy of the will for you to take with you. Catherine’s instructions,” he added smoothly.

  “I’ll contest it. Don’t think I won’t. She thinks she can leave me a hundred dollars and leave the rest to a goddamn bird sanctuary, and I won’t contest it?”

  “That isn’t quite accurate,” Benchley said. “There is a four-hundred-thousand-dollar gift to the Renard family, to be divided equally among her uncle Jake Renard and her three cousins, Remy, John Paul, and Michelle.”

  “I don’t believe it,” he railed. “Catherine hated those people. She thought they were white trash.”

  “She must have had a change of heart,” Benchley said. Tapping the papers with his fingertips, he added, “It’s all here in the will. Each of her relatives will receive one hundred thousand dollars. And there was one other special request. Catherine was quite fond of her caretaker, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “Of course she liked her. The woman catered to her every whim and made no bones about hating me. Catherine was amused by that.”

  “Yes, well,” Benchley continued, “she left Rosa Vincetti one hundred fifty thousand dollars as well.”

  John was infuriated over that news. He wished now he’d had Monk kill her too. He hated the holier-than-thou witch with her hawk
ish eyes. How he had relished firing her. Now she, too, was getting a piece of his money.

  “Every dime belongs to me,” he shouted. “I’ll fight this and win, you pompous ass.”

  Benchley appeared unruffled by the tantrum. “Do what you will. However . . . Catherine thought you might want to fight her wishes, and so she gave me this sealed envelope to hand deliver to you. I have no idea what’s inside. But Catherine assured me that after you’ve read it, you will decide against a legal battle.”

  John signed for the package and snatched it from Benchley. Venom all but spewed from his mouth when he said, “I don’t understand why my wife would do this to me.”

  “Perhaps the letter will explain.”

  “Give me a copy of the damned will,” he muttered. “And I assure you, nothing Catherine had to say in her letter is going to change my mind. I’m litigating.”

  He slammed out of the office. The rage was boiling inside his head. Then he remembered all the bills and Monk. What the hell was he going to do about that?

  “Goddamn bitch,” he mumbled as he got into his car.

  It was dark inside the garage. John turned the overhead light on and tore open the envelope. There were six pages in all, but Catherine’s letter was the first page. John lifted the paper to see what other surprises she’d saved.

  Incredulous at what he was seeing, he flipped back to the first page and frantically began to read.

  “My God, my God,” he muttered over and over again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  John was frantic. He broke every law imaginable as he sped up St. Charles, weaving in and out of traffic like a drunk driver at seventy miles an hour.

  Catherine’s obscene letter was clenched in his hand. He kept slamming his knuckles into the leather dashboard, wishing it were her face he was smashing. That bitch! That conniving bitch!

  He couldn’t believe what she had done to him, wouldn’t believe it. It was all a bluff. Yeah, that was it. Even in death, she was still trying to manipulate and control him. She couldn’t possibly have gotten around all the safeguards he’d built into his computer. She hadn’t been that smart, damn it.

  By the time he pulled into his driveway, he had almost convinced himself that it was all a hoax. He misjudged the distance and hit the garage door when he slammed on the brakes. Cursing, he jumped out of the car and ran to the side door and only then realized he’d left the motor running.

  He cursed again. Stay cool, he told himself. Just stay cool. The bitch was still trying to get under his skin, unnerve him. That was all. But he had to be sure. He ran through the empty house, knocking over a dining room chair in his haste. When he reached the library, he kicked the door shut behind him and lunged over the desk to turn the computer on, then sat down in the padded chair.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” he muttered, drumming his fingertips on the desktop while he waited for the computer to boot up. The second the icon appeared, he slipped in the disk and typed the password.

  Scrolling down the documents, he counted the lines as Catherine had instructed in her letter, and there on line sixteen, right smack in the middle of the transaction made over a year ago, five words had been inserted. Thou shalt not commit adultery. John roared like a wounded animal. “You fat bitch,” he screamed. Stunned, he fell back in his chair.

  His cell phone began ringing, but he ignored it. Cameron or Preston or Dallas was calling to find out what was keeping him. Or maybe it was Monk calling to find out when and where to meet him to collect his money.

  What in God’s name was he going to tell Monk? John rubbed his temples while he thought about the problem. Dallas was the solution, he decided. He would let Dallas handle Monk. After all, Monk didn’t belch without Dallas’s permission, and he would surely agree to wait for payment if he were told to.

  But what would John tell the group? Lying wasn’t going to get him out of his nightmare, and the longer he waited, the worse it would get. He had to tell them, and soon, before it was too late.

  He desperately needed a drink. He crossed the room to the bar, spotted the empty silver ice bucket, and knocked it to the floor. When Catherine had been alive, she had made sure the bucket was always full of ice, no matter what time, day or night. Such a stupid little detail, but suddenly important to him. She ran the house from her bed, just as she tried to run him ragged with her whining and her demands.

  He poured a full glass of whiskey and carried it back to the desk. Leaning against the side, he drank it down, hoping it would steady his nerves for the ordeal ahead of him.

  The phone rang again, but this time he answered it.

  It was Preston. “Where are you? We’ve been waiting to celebrate your windfall. Get your butt over here.” Music and laughter clattered in the background.

  John took a breath. His heart felt as though it were going to explode. “There isn’t any windfall.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve got a problem.”

  “John, I can barely hear you. Did you say you didn’t get the windfall yet?”

  “Are the others there with you?”

  “Yes,” Preston answered, his voice cautious now. “We even ordered you a drink and —”

  “Listen to me,” he said. “We’ve got a serious problem.”

  “What kind of a problem do we have?”

  “It’s not something I want to talk about over the phone.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At home.”

  “You want us to come over there? Is this problem something we need to talk about right away?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What the —”

  “It’s bad,” he shouted. “Just get over here.”

  John hung up before any more questions were asked. He refilled his glass at the bar, then returned to his desk. He sat staring at the glowing monitor screen as darkness descended.

  Cameron and Preston rode together and arrived at his doorstep fifteen minutes later. Dallas was right behind them.

  John showed them into the library, hit the light switch, and pointed to the letter he’d unwadded and left on the desk blotter. “Read it and weep,” he muttered. He was well on his way to getting drunk.

  Cameron picked up the paper and silently read it. When he was finished, he tossed the letter back on the desk and went for John’s throat. Preston blocked him.

  “Are you crazy?” Cameron shouted as his face turned red. “You let your wife have access to our records? My God . . .”

  “Calm down, Cameron,” Preston demanded as he pulled him back. “You read the letter, and then tell me to calm down,” Cameron shouted back.

  Dallas got out of the chair, reached for the letter, and read it aloud to Preston.

  Dear John,

  Long good-byes are tiresome, and so my farewell is going to be short and sweet.

  It was my heart, wasn’t it? Forgive me for being trite and saying I told you so, but it was as I suspected all along. I died of heart failure, didn’t I? Do you believe at last? I wasn’t such a hypochondriac, after all.

  By now you must be reeling from the shock of finding out that I have changed my will and have left you nothing. I know you well, John, and right now you’re determined to contest it, aren’t you? Perhaps you’ll claim that I was out of my mind or too critically ill to know what I was doing. I suggest, however, that by the time you finish reading this, you will have decided to go away quietly and hide. One thing I am certain of is this — you won’t contest.

  You’re also thinking about all the expenses you’ve incurred since my death. I’ve requested that the will not be read for six weeks from the date of my passing because I know that you will go on a little spending frenzy, and so I want you to be left high and dry. I want you to have to hide from your creditors too.

  Why have I treated you so cruelly? Retribution, John. Did you truly believe I would let you have one dollar to spend on your whore? Oh, yes, I know about her. I know all about the others too.

  A
re you fuming, my darling? Get ready for more. I’ve saved the best surprise for last. I wasn’t such a “stupid cow.” That’s right, I’ve heard you on the phone with your whore, calling me such names. I was crushed and angry at first, and so disillusioned, I cried for a week. Then I decided to get even. I began looking through your office for evidence of your affairs. I was obsessed with knowing how much of my money you had spent on your sluts. When you would leave for your office, I would get my “fat ass” out of bed and go downstairs to your library. It took quite a long time, but I was finally able to come up with your password and get into your secret little files. Oh, John, I never realized how twisted and corrupt you and your Sowing Club friends are. What will the authorities say about all of your illegal investments? I made copies of every single file, and just to make certain that you will know I’m telling you the truth, do hurry home and pull up the file labeled “Acquisitions.” Scroll down to line sixteen. I’ve inserted a little message in one of your latest transactions, just to let you know I’ve been there.

  Are you worried? Terrified? I, on the other hand, am gloating. Imagine my joy in knowing that after I’m gone, you will spend the rest of your life rotting in prison. The day you get this, the printouts are going out to someone who will do the right thing.

  You shouldn’t have betrayed me, John.

  Catherine

  CHAPTER NINE

  Michelle had just finished the paperwork to dismiss one of Dr. Landusky’s patients and was sitting in his cubicle on the surgical floor of St. Claire Community Hospital, trying to summon up enough strength to finish dictating her charts. Nine were completed, and she only had two more to go. Most of the patients belonged to Landusky. She’d been taking calls for him for the past two weeks while he went on a whirlwind tour of Europe, but he would be back at work tomorrow, and Michelle would officially start her first vacation in so many years she couldn’t remember the last one.

  She couldn’t go anywhere, though, until the charts were finished. And the mail. My God, there was a stack of unopened mail she’d carried from her cubicle to Landusky’s, and she vowed she wouldn’t stop until she had sorted through it all. Exhausted, she looked at her watch and groaned. She’d been on her feet since four-fifteen this morning. A ruptured spleen from a motorcycle accident had gotten her out of bed an hour earlier than usual — and it was now five o’clock in the evening. She propped her elbows on the stack of charts she’d already dictated, rested her cheeks in the palms of her hands, and closed her eyes.