“Wait!” she cried. “Please!”
There was a shimmer of tears in her eyes, and I felt the tremor in the hand on my arm. Heather wasn’t just afraid; she was terrified.
“Tell me the truth,” I said implacably. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her when she was so scared, but I wasn’t about to let it show in my voice.
She licked her lips, and I saw there was almost no lipstick left on them. “If I tell you something confidentially, can I be sure you won’t repeat it to anyone?”
The question connected a few dots for me, whether she meant it to or not. “You mean if you tell me you’ve done something illegal, will I go to the police?”
She winced and nodded. “You have to promise not to.”
Actually, under the circumstances, I didn’t have to make any promises whatsoever. Any idiot could see she wasn’t in a strong bargaining position, and if I threatened to walk away again, she’d start talking. But she was obviously in some kind of trouble, and I was beginning to feel a bit like a bully.
“Unless you tell me you murdered somebody, I promise not to go to the police,” I said, relenting. Heather’s face lit with hope, and I held up my hand to keep her from getting carried away by it. “Now, if the police were to question me for some reason, there’s nothing like attorney-client privilege protecting our conversation, and I’m not about to lie for you.”
For a moment, I thought she was going to argue, but she thought better of it. Eyes still swimming with tears that so far she had not let fall, she nodded and sank back down onto the sofa.
“All right,” she whispered, as I, too, returned to my seat. “I’ll tell you the whole, ugly story.” She clasped her hands together in her lap again, and she stared at those hands instead of looking at me as she began haltingly.
“I grew up really poor,” she said, and I refrained from telling her I already knew that. “My father left my mother when she was pregnant with me, and she had a real hard time as a single mom. She did her best, and she worked real hard, but . . .” She gave a shrug that was supposed to look careless. “Whatever. It’s the past. But I just . . . wanted you to have some idea where I was coming from.”
Heather risked a look at me, and I tried to look encouraging despite my natural inclination to cry foul. Growing up poor was not an excuse for whatever it was she was going to confess. It was nothing but a rationalization.
She unfolded her hands and wiped them on her jeans. “Men have been hitting on me since I was about fifteen. It was kind of flattering sometimes, but it got old fast, and some of the men were just gross. Married guys, arrogant pricks, men old enough to be my father—or even my grandfather—all thought I was fair game.”
If she thought I was going to feel sorry for her because she was pretty, she was sorely mistaken. My adoptive sister, Steph, is drop-dead gorgeous and rich to boot. Men hit on her for all the wrong reasons all the time. Yeah, it’s annoying, but as hardships go, it’s not exactly tragic.
Heather cleared her throat. She began fidgeting with a loose thread on the seam of her jeans, then seemed to notice herself doing it and hurried to clasp her hands together again. No doubt about it, she was a nervous fidgeter.
“A couple of years ago, I decided I was going to stop being annoyed about it and use it to my advantage.” Her voice died out, and one of the tears she’d been suppressing finally leaked from the corner of her eye. She swiped it away with annoyance, but she didn’t start talking again.
“You started accepting money for your services,” I said, hoping to make the confession a bit easier for her.
Heather’s eyes widened, and she recoiled. “No! I’m not a prostitute!” Her cheeks reddened with embarrassment.
I held up my hands. “I wouldn’t judge you if you were,” I said, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. “But please, go ahead and tell me how you took advantage of the guys who hit on you.”
She looked like she wanted to protest her innocence some more. I imagined most women who weren’t hookers would be mortally offended by my suggestion, but Heather struck me as being more defensive than most, almost desperately so. She might not get paid for sleeping with these men, but something about her interactions with them felt to her like a form of prostitution, one she wished mightily to deny.
She let out her breath—and her protests—on a whoosh of air, then raised her chin. The tension in her neck and shoulders told me how unhappy she was about admitting whatever she was about to say.
“I figured if married men were so all-fired eager to cheat on their wives just because they saw an attractive woman, then they deserved to be punished for it.”
“Uh-oh,” I said under my breath as the puzzle pieces snapped together in my brain. “You’ve been blackmailing them,” I said, swiveling my head to look pointedly at her expensive theater system, at the art, at the lamp that may or may not have been genuine Tiffany. “And somehow, this time it’s gone terribly wrong.”
Heather squirmed in her seat and grimaced. “You could say that,” she murmured.
“Tell me what happened.”
She huffed out a deep sigh. “The men I pick are always super-rich, and I always ask for a small amount of money. I want it to be way easier for them to pay me off than to make a big deal about things. They get angry, and they sometimes make threats, but in the end, they always pay.”
“Why do I get the feeling there’s an exception to that rule?”
Heather ignored my interruption. “Early last year, I hooked up with this guy named Wayne Fowler. He seemed like just my type. Expensive suit, flashy watch, designer shoes . . . and a wedding band. We, uh, hit it off, and I took him back to the hotel room I’d rented for the night. I like to pretend I’m from out of town—it makes it easier for the men to tell themselves their wives will never find out. I had set up a hidden video camera and recorded everything. Then, the next day, I called him.” She shivered suddenly and wrapped her arms around herself. Her eyes glazed over as she temporarily lost herself in the memory.
“I’d made so many phone calls like that before . . . I thought I was prepared for anything, but . . .” She shivered again, shaking her head and dragging herself back into the present. “I told you other guys made threats when I contacted them, but they were threatening to call the police, and I never really believed they would do it. For them, it wasn’t worth taking the risk of their wives finding out. But for Wayne . . . it’s not the police he threatened me with.” She swallowed hard. “He told me in detail everything he would do to me if that video was ever made public. And he meant every word he said, Nikki, I know he did.”
Her face was pale, and her hands were shaking ever so slightly. Whether Wayne Fowler meant to follow through on any of his threats or not, Heather was convinced he would. However . . . “What does this have to do with Doug?”
“Wayne told me the only reason he didn’t kill me then and there was that the video might come out once I was dead. He told me I’d better hope nothing ever happened to that video, or he’d have the green light to do whatever he wanted.” She wiped her still-shaking hands on her jeans. “When I got off the phone with him, I got real paranoid. I backed up the video files online, but I was afraid Wayne might be able to get to the files there, so I made a couple of copies on USB drives and put them in a safe deposit box.” As if unable to help herself, she began fidgeting with the string on her jeans again. “A couple of days later, I came home to find my place completely trashed. Wayne—or someone he hired—went through my house with a fine-toothed comb looking for that video. They destroyed the memory card from my camera. Then they destroyed the computer. And they deleted my online backup files, too. I’m probably really lucky they didn’t hang around to wait for me, or maybe I’d have been dead before I could tell Wayne I still had a copy.”
Obviously, Heather had done a terrible job choosing her mark. The death threats might have been hyperbole, but the destr
uction in her house suggested maybe not. It sounded like Wayne was one dangerous dude, and I could see why Heather was sacred. However, I still didn’t know where Doug came into the equation.
“Months went by with nothing else happening,” Heather continued. “I put the safe deposit key in a locket, which I wore twenty-four/seven, just to keep it safe.” She pulled a heart-shaped locket out from under her hoodie to show me. “I had to spend a lot of money to repair the damage Wayne’s goons did. And I’d never be able to afford the mortgage on this house without some supplemental income. I figured running into Wayne was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so I started . . . going out again.”
I didn’t know whether to admire her courage or roll my eyes at her stupidity. You’d think she’d have learned her lesson, and keeping the nice house with all the nice stuff wouldn’t do her much good if some guy she picked up turned out to be another Wayne.
“Then, on that day in December, I met Doug at Top of the Hill. He seemed perfect, and I even sort of liked him. When I took him back to the hotel room, I was thinking to myself that maybe just this once, I’d let him slide and not use the video. We’d had a couple of drinks at the bar, and we had a couple more back at the hotel. And then . . . nothing.” She shook her head. “I woke up the next morning with a hangover from hell. I could tell Doug and I had had sex, but I didn’t remember it. I tried checking my video camera, but it seemed we’d knocked it over during the night, and all my footage was of the bottom of the dresser. I spent most of the morning in bed at the hotel, feeling sick as a dog. Eventually, I went to check out, and when I did, I found out my wallet was gone.
“At first, I was pissed off, thinking I’d dropped it or lost it when I was drunk. Then I started really thinking about what had happened the night before and how sick I felt after. I’d never had a blackout like that before, and I’m not a moron. I’m not about to let myself get that drunk when I’m with a guy I just met that night.
“I think he slipped me a roofie, then went through my purse while I was out. He stole my wallet, which was bad. I figured he was some kind of con man and was going to be disappointed to have only scored about twenty bucks. It was a pain in the ass, but I didn’t think it was that big a deal. Until about a week later, when I got an angry call from one of the men I’d blackmailed. He was pissed off because some guy had called and demanded more money, even though I’d promised him I’d only ask once and that I’d destroy the video.” She shook her head in despair. “That’s when I finally thought to check my locket and found out the key was gone.
“He took the video, Nikki. He must have hired some chick who looked a little like me and gave her the ID from my wallet. She went to the bank and opened the safe deposit box. The one thing that was keeping Wayne from killing me is now gone!”
FIVE
I didn’t say anything for a while as I processed everything Heather had told me. She sat beside me on the couch and cried softly, covering her face with her hands. I had no doubt that she was genuinely afraid; however, she wasn’t exactly a paragon of honesty. I suspected Heather was the kind of woman who could and would summon tears on demand if she thought they would help her get her way. If she thought they were going to soften my heart and make me feel sorry for her, she was sorely mistaken. The woman was a serial blackmailer, and you could argue that she deserved whatever she got now that one of her schemes had gone wrong.
Okay, maybe you could argue that, but I couldn’t. Sure, she was a crook, and if she hadn’t been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, she wouldn’t be the least bit sorry for what she’d done. She’d made it clear that she thought the men she preyed on deserved what she did to them, although how much of that was true conviction and how much was just an attempt to justify her actions to herself I didn’t know. However, despite not being a model citizen, she didn’t deserve the death penalty, and if there was a chance that Wayne Fowler was as dangerous as Heather thought, then I couldn’t not help her.
“You really believe Fowler will kill you if he finds out you don’t have the video anymore?” I asked.
Heather nodded vigorously.
“And there’s something that makes you think he isn’t behind Doug’s little escapade?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t work for Wayne. If he worked for Wayne, I either never would have woken up, or I’d have woken up somewhere awful. Besides, if he worked for Wayne, he wouldn’t be trying to blackmail my . . . um . . .” She stalled out, searching for a polite term.
“Your marks,” I supplied for her, because there was no polite term.
She looked for a moment like she was going to object, then thought better of it and hunched her shoulders. “My marks,” she agreed meekly. “Doug’s been calling them one by one to demand money. Eventually, he’s going to call Wayne, if he hasn’t already, and Wayne will know I don’t have the video anymore. And then Wayne will kill me, and probably Doug, too.”
Doug was one hell of an enterprising guy. In fact, he’d played Heather to perfection. Picked her up (or let her think she was picking him up) at a rich man’s watering hole, slipped her a roofie, stolen the safe deposit key from her locket, and taken over her blackmail. He’d even grabbed her wallet, giving him access to her ID while also distracting her from the theft of his real target.
That had not been a crime of opportunity. Doug had known exactly who Heather was, what she had done, and what to look for. He was a larger, more sophisticated predator, and Heather had had no chance. Of course, if she was right about Fowler, she and Doug both might fall prey to a predator bigger than either of them. I put a thorough investigation of Wayne Fowler on my to-do list.
“I have to find Doug,” Heather continued. “I have to warn him about Wayne before he makes the same mistake I did. If it’s not too late.”
I couldn’t resist a little snort of amusement. Unlike her besotted marks, I wasn’t blinded by her beauty and wouldn’t take anything she said at face value. “If you want me to help you, then I suggest you cut the crap. You aren’t looking for Doug because you want to warn him. You’re looking for him because you want to steal the video back.”
“I would have warned him, too,” she told me earnestly.
I wasn’t sure if I believed anything from her anymore. “Before or after you told him he was going to be the father of your child?”
Her cheeks flushed pink. “I’m sorry I lied about that, but I didn’t know if you’d take the case if you knew the truth. I really need your help.”
“Have you considered going to the police?”
Heather’s face quickly drained of color. “I’d go to jail. And even if Wayne didn’t manage to have me killed while I was there, he’d be waiting when I got out. Google his name. If I’d done that before I tried to blackmail him, I’d have steered clear. I need to get that video back. It’s my only chance. Please help me. I’ll pay double your fee. Triple! Whatever you want.”
I held up my hand to stave off her pleas. There had never really been any chance I would wash my hands of her when she could be in mortal danger. “I’ll keep looking for Doug, and I won’t charge you extra for it.”
Her shoulders sagged in relief.
“The good news,” I told her, “is that Doug didn’t just pick on you out of nowhere. If he hadn’t been specifically targeting you, he’d never have known to look in your locket for the key, nor would he have known where the box was.”
“But how could he know any of that anyway? It’s not like I go around shouting it out to the world.”
“I don’t know what exactly brought you to his attention in the first place, but something did. He either knew or suspected what you were up to. And chances are he kept a close eye on you long before he struck.” I took another look at the smooth, handsome grifter from the photo. Dressed in cheap clothes, without the fancy watch and wedding ring, maybe with a little five o’clock shadow to roughen his jaw, he’d probably
be the kind of man Heather would never deign to notice. How long had he stalked her before swooping in to make the kill?
And then it struck me. Just because Heather hadn’t noticed her stalker didn’t mean no one else around her had. Even scruffed up a bit, he’d turn a woman’s eye, if she were looking for something other than a rich mark to victimize. No one at Top of the Hill seemed to know who he was, but that didn’t necessarily have to be a dead end.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say Top of the Hill isn’t your only hunting ground,” I said.
Heather gave me a dirty look, having apparently gotten over any hint of embarrassment over her behavior. “It’s not the only place I’ve met men,” she confirmed with a defiant lift of her chin.
“Then I’ll need a list of every pickup spot you’ve trolled for the last six months or so. It’s highly likely Doug has been at some of the same places, and it’s possible someone at one of them will know who he is.”
At this point, I had no clue what I was going to do if and when I found Doug. But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
I had been in the car for umpteen hours already, and the thought of driving around to a bunch of bars that were scattered throughout the D.C. metro area was spectacularly unappealing. Heather had cast her net wide, which I supposed made good business sense for a blackmailer but wasn’t exactly a picnic for me. I could have been satisfied with my day’s work already—I had, after all, gotten a hell of a lot accomplished—but aside from my desire not to hang around at the mansion, I had a nagging sensation that I didn’t have all the time in the world. I hadn’t had a chance to research Wayne Fowler yet, but I figured for the time being, my best bet was to assume he was as dangerous as Heather thought.
Unlike a police officer, I couldn’t just walk into a bar and start asking questions. Not if I wanted anyone to cooperate with me, that is. And so at each stop, I had to buy an expensive drink and leave a big tip, then hang around for a while sipping at the drink to establish myself as a “real” customer. Having learned my lesson at Top of the Hill, I took no more than one or two sips of my drink in any one place, not letting myself get even a hint of a buzz. While alcohol might lower my inhibitions enough to let my subconscious hunches shine through, I couldn’t afford to let my tongue get away from me. Besides, I was driving.