With that, we all followed Nikki out the door for a drive across town, with of course one stop along the way for our ace in the hole.
Chapter Twenty-two
I walked into Market Vision with barely a tremble. True confession, I’m way more courageous with Candice at my side than I am on my own, which is why I held tightly to the MacBook tucked under my arm, not caring if I got a little black powder on my clothes. “Hi,” I said to the lanky young receptionist behind the front desk. “I’m here to see Stanton Eldridge.”
Lanky blinked at me. “Do you have an appointment?” he asked in that way that said, “You don’t have an appointment.”
“Oh, I don’t think I need one. I think Stanton will be more than happy to make room in his busy schedule to see me.”
Lanky’s mouth curved down into a frown, as if he felt sorry for me for thinking that. “He’s really very busy today.”
“I’m sure he is. But if you could tell him that Abigail Cooper is here to return the key to his back door, I’d appreciate it.”
Lanky’s brow knit together, and I could tell he was wondering if I’d taken an extra spoonful of crazy in my coffee that morning (if he only knew), but he wisely picked up his phone and turned away from me to speak quietly into it.
I perched my butt on the corner of his desk and waited. Three, two, one . . .
“Oh!” I heard him say. “Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I will.”
Setting the phone down, Lanky turned with that same knit brow to me. “He’ll meet with you in the conference room. I’ll show you the way—”
I hopped off the desk and waved dismissively. “No need. Just point me in the direction and I’ll find my own way.”
Two minutes later I found Stanton alone in the conference room, his back to me when I entered. “Close the door,” he said after I walked in.
I did.
He turned slowly around to face me and I was struck again by the difference in this Stanton versus the one I’d met several days ago.
That’d been the clue that had finally jumped out at me when I’d looked at Murielle’s Instagram reel. I’d gone back through her timeline to that first picture of Walter and Mario, sitting so snugly on some sofa in a bar where Murielle was stalking the Roswells. The group had all been huddled with their heads together, talking intimately, and Mario had been holding tightly to Walter’s hand, leaning in against him in that way that people who are in love do, and behind them, just to the right of the couch, had been someone I’d barely noticed. Someone I hadn’t initially recognized. Someone looking on at the four of them with such open hatred that, once I noticed it, it seemed impossible to have ever missed.
Stanton had stood there, consumed with jealousy and rage, unaware that anyone was noticing. But the lens on Murielle’s phone had.
Her camera had also caught other moments from a year or so ago when Mario was captured standing next to Stanton in a not so much intimate way, but nonetheless definitely suggested the two had been a couple.
I’d confirmed it with Walter that morning, just to make sure. Mario and Stanton had had a long affair, but it’d been a hard one on Mario. Stanton had a temper, so it seemed, and he liked to control Mario’s every move and belittle him publicly.
Robin had no doubt felt a bit of compassion for the lovely young man, having come from a terribly controlling and abusive relationship herself, and she’d made a point to introduce Mario to her dear friend Walter.
Maybe she’d known they would hit it off; maybe she’d only thought that his influence might give Mario some much-needed confidence. Whatever her primary motivation had been hadn’t mattered in the end. She’d been responsible in Stanton’s eyes for Mario’s leaving him for Walter.
That’s why he’d killed him first when he, Gudziak, and Hekekia had stormed the property. Dave had been the key to getting them in through the front gate, and Stanton would’ve known all about the panic room that Andy had built. They were best friends and partners after all, and Stanton of course knew about Andy’s key and how dangerous and valuable it was. On the international espionage market something like that could make a person a very wealthy man. And using it to close the back door on their deal with InvoTech would also assure Stanton of riches.
The whole plan had probably come together fairly easily; there was the issue of Texas Monthly featuring Andy, which had been the very same issue with the article and photo spread on Safe Chambers to give Stanton the blueprint for his scheme. He’d just needed to bide his time and wait for the opportunity, which maybe he wouldn’t have gone through with if Andy hadn’t been so eager to test out the key at InvoTech and blown the lucrative deal. With the gambling debts we found racked up on Stanton’s credit cards, it was no wonder he was anxious to collect his millions.
My gut said that he’d even overheard the call between Andy and me setting up the appointment days earlier—I could even remember from my first visit with Stanton in his office how he’d been nervous that the nerd in Andy’s office would overhear us. Maybe Stanton had hired Hekekia and Gudziak to trail Dave the previous Saturday, telling them to pick a spot to force his truck off the road and kidnap him, and, to keep everyone from suspecting anything amiss, I imagined he’d instructed Gudziak to impersonate Dave on a few of his appointments with the incentive being they could go back and rob the places they visited at their leisure. Certainly no better opportunity to case wealthy homes would so readily present itself to the likes of them.
But at the Roswells’ on that Saturday afternoon, the front gate had been opened and in had driven three killers. Somewhere on the route Gudziak had ditched his truck and Stanton had joined them in the cab of Dave’s vehicle and off the three of them had gone to carry out their plot.
Stanton had wanted two things: revenge and Andy’s key. He’d gotten one.
I had the other.
“How’s the FBI?” he asked me when at last he spoke.
“If, by that, you mean where my lying, cheating soon-to-be- ex-husband works, I have no idea. They are two consultants lighter, this morning, though.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that your friend Murielle sure gets around. She’ll sleep with anyone, apparently.”
Stanton’s eyes narrowed. I could tell he didn’t believe a word I said, but he didn’t really need to. Yet.
“She slept with my husband and my partner’s husband,” I continued. “Maybe they all got cozy together.”
I had to suppress a grin at that moment, because, well, I could just imagine the side-eyed looks that comment was getting from Dutch and Brice.
“If you don’t believe me, you could make a few calls,” I offered when Stanton simply continued to glare at me. “I’m sure someone like you, Stanton, has powerful governmental connections. You could find out if I’m telling the truth.”
Stanton took out his phone from his back pocket and turned away to walk to the corner of the room. I waited patiently where I stood, hearing small bits of the murmured conversation before he pocketed his cell again and came back toward me. “Why are you here, exactly?” he asked, his tone clipped. I could tell he was a little thrown off not only by my appearance, and the fingerprint-dusted MacBook I hugged to my chest, which was clearly Robin’s, but also by the fact that so far my story checked out.
“I want to make a deal,” I told him.
“Or entrap me,” he replied.
“Or entrap you,” I agreed. “But if you’ll hear me out, maybe you’ll see that I’m not feeding you a line of bull.”
For a long time Stanton simply stared at me. Then, slowly, he turned toward a credenza that was behind him, and after opening the drawer, he reached in and lifted out a gun. Pointing it at me, he said, “Open your shirt.”
I’d been expecting him to pull something like that, so I wasn’t too surprised when the gun appeared. Still, it wasn’t the highlight of my day to unbutton my
blouse and flash my cleavage at gunpoint.
Eldridge moved forward, that gun holding steady on the center of my chest while he used his free hand to feel all along the underside of my bra. I wanted to chuckle at him, because wires these days are so small that they’re easily hidden between the underwire and the seam in a bra. Plus, the Victoria’s Secret number I was currently wearing had lots of lace that helped to obscure any bump a wire might form.
Stanton removed his hand after a thorough groping and moved up and down both of my legs. Then he peered at my necklace—the one Candice had given me—and he backed up. “Take that off,” he said.
“Why?” I said, my hand going to the necklace protectively, just like we’d practiced on the way over.
Stanton’s expression turned ugly and he reached forward to yank the thing from my neck.
For the record, having a necklace pulled from your neck hurts like a bitch. It’s not like in the movies where it barely causes a flinch when it easily breaks. Stanton literally pulled me off my feet when he yanked hard on the chain, and I went down on one knee and one arm while still clutching the laptop.
I muttered a few expletives and rubbed the back of my neck as I got up; the chain had cut into my skin before the thing broke.
Meanwhile, Stanton had tossed the necklace to the floor and he stepped on it with his heel until it crunched. Then he motioned for me to button up, which I did. “Satisfied?” I asked him, a little bitter about the pendant. It’d looked expensive.
“No,” he said. “But give it your best pitch.”
“Like I said, I have something you want.”
“What’s that, exactly?”
I reached into my pocket, ignoring Stanton’s stiffening posture, and pulled out the cell phone with the ivory case. “Recognize this?” I asked.
Stanton eyed the iPhone, his expression unreadable.
“It’s Robin’s,” I said helpfully. “Know where I found it?”
Stanton’s gaze moved slowly, predatorily, from the phone to the laptop, then up to my eyes. I swear to God in that moment, as realization dawned, he was a breath away from pulling that trigger. “Now you know,” I said softly, trying not to send him over the edge. “You do something for me, and I’ll do something for you. We’ll make an exchange and everybody wins.”
“Where’s the key?” he asked, the knuckle on his trigger finger whitening with tension.
“It’s with a friend of yours,” I said. “Someone you trust. Or someone you’ve been forced to trust.”
Eldridge’s eyes narrowed again. I could see he wasn’t sure he understood. I decided it might be best to get to the point and help make it crystal clear for him. Carefully placing the laptop on the conference table, I said, “May I?”
He hesitated, but finally tilted his head slightly to indicate I could proceed. I opened up the laptop and said, “I need a Wi-Fi password to make the connection.”
Stanton dictated the password and I sent out the call. It was answered on the third ring. “Hi, Rachel,” I said, waving to her as she came into view.
Robin’s sister was perched on the edge of her couch, her features tense. Next to her sat Candice, and around Candice’s neck was a necklace at the end of which was the duplicate to the key we’d taken from Andy’s safe.
Eldridge peered at the screen, and I could tell he’d spotted the key right away. “How did you find it?” he asked me, his voice hard and angry.
“I’m not sure if you know this about me, Stanton, but I’m a professional psychic by trade. The other day when I was trying so hard to find Dave McKenzie and his wife, Gwen, I had a vision. The vision was of a full-length mirror, and out from the mirror came a large iron key. When Candice and I discovered the bodies of Robin and Andy, I remembered that there’d been a big full-length mirror in their panic room slash closet. So, last night after we discovered proof that our husbands have been cheating on us with Murielle, well, we hatched a plan to sneak inside Andy and Robin’s place, and see if my vision was right.”
“You snuck in?” he said skeptically. “APD just let you walk right past their patrolman?”
I laughed lightly. “Do you know of a Nikki Grayson? She’s a detective with APD and a good friend of mine. All we had to do was call her and ask her if it was okay for me to take one last look around the place to see if my intuition could pick up anything useful, and she was all, ‘Go for it, and let me know if you find anything!’ See, everybody trusts us, ’cause of who we’re married to and all the work we’ve done for the bureau over the years.”
“And you expect me to believe that now you’re just throwing all that away?”
“Oh, no, I don’t expect you to take my word for it. I expect you to take their word for it.” I pointed to the computer screen, and Candice, right on cue, swiveled her computer to the side, revealing a huge pile of cash.
“It’s real, Stanton,” we heard Rachel say.
Candice swiveled the screen back and we waved to each other. “She’s right,” I said to Eldridge. “It’s real. Well, at least Rachel’s half is. We’re taking the other half. You’re not getting any of it, though, which is a bummer, but these are the rules.”
Stanton inhaled deeply and let it out slow. I had a feeling he was thinking through his options, and I figured one of those options that was starting to look really good to him was to shoot me in the face for taking his money.
“This is how this is all going to go down,” I told him before he had a chance to consider that option much longer. “I’m going to give you this cell phone. You’re going to upload all of Murielle’s dirty little secrets onto her social media accounts, and you’re going to create a few more so that she can’t simply delete them.”
“We want her ruined,” Candice said.
“Yep,” I said. “And then, you’re going to make an anonymous, nontraceable call to APD and tell them where they can find Dave McKenzie and his wife. I suspect my friends are trapped somewhere close to you, Mr. Eldridge. Maybe at your house. I’m not sure if you have a panic room or not, but I know you’ve got Dave locked up somewhere without windows or any chance of escape. And I know you know all about Dave McKenzie, because Andy was featured in the same edition of Texas Monthly that Safe Chambers was in. A photo of Dave standing next to his silver Ford F-one-fifty is on the second page of the article and there’s a short bio and interview of him there too.”
“Great article,” Candice quipped.
“It was,” I said. “It’s where you learned all you needed to know to hatch your plan to kill your best friends, am I right, Stanton?”
From the computer there was a small gasp. Rachel. I ignored her and kept talking. “You wanted that key, didn’t you? Andy probably showed it to you, and showed you how it worked. He might’ve been getting ready to deliver it to someone here, like the CIA, or he might’ve been getting ready to sell it on the international market to make himself a bajillionaire. My gut says he was about to deliver it to someone at the CIA to use against the Chinese who’d tried to steal his secrets years ago, but who knows other than you?”
“How about you get to the point?” he sneered. I knew he was trying to provoke some fear into me, and trust me, he’d get a “Mission accomplished!” on that score, but it did me no good to show him that I was one gun wave away from peeing my pants.
“Yes, sorry,” I said, collecting my thoughts to give him my best pitch. “Where was I going with all that? Oh, yeah, you knew about the key and you knew where Andy was going to take it after he sold off Market Vision, and you started to think about how valuable that key was, and maybe you were a little too curious about it? Maybe you asked Andy one too many questions, or maybe he left his laptop here one night and saw signs that you were trying to discover the key’s secrets.
“That’s probably why he created a duplicate that wasn’t so much a duplicate as a decoy. I remember the other day you told you
r office geek that the first part of the code was on what you thought was the key, but it wouldn’t work for you, would it? Andy gave it up to you to save his wife, though, and because you’d allowed Gudziak to rape her while demanding the key from Andy, you thought no way could he be lying. But he was lying, and that’s why I think Andy was a good guy after all. I think he developed the key for his own government to use as revenge against the Chinese government for trying to steal his trade secrets. He wasn’t interested in selling it on the black market, where it could be used against U.S. companies. He wanted it used to level the playing field when it came to corporate espionage. But you have no such morals, Stanton. You just wanted the money to continue to feed your gambling addiction.
“So you took the key he offered up without question, and from his home office, you took his laptop—the one APD suspected had been stolen, as they found the power cord still plugged in and some papers on the desk were shuffled around. Of course you assumed the original code for the key could be found on the laptop, but it wasn’t there, was it?”
I paused here to see if Stanton would maybe say something in the form of a confession, but he remained stubbornly, irritatingly silent. I continued trying to provoke him. “It must’ve excited you to kill Andy. You’d get the key, close the InvoTech deal, and mete out some revenge.”
“Like I asked you before,” he snarled. “What. Do. You. Want?”
“Ah, yes, well, like I said before, we want to take our half of the money we found in Andy’s safe, and for you to point APD to Dave and Gwen, and after we hear that Dave and Gwen have been found, we’ll tell Rachel that it’s okay to give you the key.”
“You can then close the back door on Market Vision’s code, and close your deal with InvoTech,” Candice said, her voice sounding out loudly from the computer. “And that will allow you to collect all those hundreds of millions of dollars for yourself.”
I glanced at the screen and saw Rachel looking absolutely terrified of the track the conversation was taking, but Candice had also noticed and she added, “Of course Rachel isn’t about to ask you to share the money from the deal with InvoTech, Stanton, because, like we’ve said, she already knows you’re capable of murder. It was okay when it was her ungrateful, selfish sister, but when she or her family become the next target, well, things get a little dicier.”