Shell Games E-Book

Bonnie Kistler

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 427

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Is her mother's mind slipping, or has her charming new husband spun the perfect con? 'A truly spectacular psychological thriller' Matthew Blake A dazzling thriller about a young woman whose fabulously wealthy mother might be the victim of an elaborate con or might be losing her mind – and the daughter can't tell where the truth lies. Julie's mother Kate is a force of nature – a glamorous woman of seventy, a self-made real estate developer, a grande dame in Florida society, and a power broker in Florida politics. It wasn't easy for Julie to grow up in the shadow of such a dynamo, but she loves her mother, and she and her husband Eric are thrilled when Kate marries her long-lost high school sweetheart, a salt-of-the-earth man named Charlie. But their storybook romance ends abruptly. On their wedding night, Kate calls the police in hysterics to report that Charlie just confessed to a notorious unsolved crime from decades before. Charlie says she imagined it. Eric says that Kate has dementia. And the FBI says that Charlie couldn't possibly have committed that crime. Julie doesn't know what to believe. Is her brilliant mother losing her mind? Or is sweet, lovable Charlie gaslighting Kate to gain control of her fortune? As Julie tries to navigate through this maze of paranoia and mind games, cracks start to develop in her own marriage as it seems that Eric is keeping secrets . . . Set against a backdrop of rampant development and devastating climate change, Shell Games is a psychological thriller that will make your head spin and the pages turn as you wonder exactly who is doing what to whom.

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Praise for Bonnie Kistler

‘A truly spectacular psychological thriller’ Matthew Blake

‘The Cage is a firecracker of a novel: it starts out with a bang and keeps on dazzling until its final, thrilling page’ Jessica Barry on The Cage

‘The Cage starts with one of the most unique thriller setups I’ve ever read, and it keeps moving at warp speed. A must read’ Phillip Margolin on The Cage

‘An elevator door opens, two women are found inside, one dead from a gunshot, the other alive. Suicide or murder? It doesn’t get better than this superb thriller with tripwire suspense, intrigue, and smart women – set in the corridors of international high fashion. If you liked The Firm, you will love The Cage’ Michael Elias on The Cage

‘[An] exciting psychological thriller... The suspenseful plot careens among various surprising twists toward a satisfying finale… Kistler is a writer to watch’ Publishers Weekly on The Cage

‘Evocative writing and wholly realized characters complement a multifaceted tale that’s both harrowing and profound’ Kirkus on House on Fire

In memory of

Rosemae Richards MacDougal,

my mother

Between lovers a little confession is a dangerous thing.

– HELEN ROWLAND

1

I have a confession to make,’ Charlie Mull said as he rose to his feet.

His big booming voice cut through all the shouts and laughter in the courtyard, the ringing of crystal and the clinking of silver on china. The guests hushed at once and swiveled their heads his way and scraped their chairs around to listen.

This wedding was the premier social event of the 2023 season. Kate Sawyer was a somebody, after all, not only in Florida but up and down the East Coast. A hugely successful real estate developer and a glamorous woman of a certain age, she appeared regularly in both the business journals and the society pages. Gossip had it she was a billionaire, which was true only occasionally depending on where the market was, but close enough to true that Kate did nothing to dispel the rumors. And she’d been squired about by some prominent men during all the years of her widowhood, including, rumor had it, Ted Turner. She did nothing to dispel that rumor, either.

The wedding venue was Kate’s own home, logically enough, since Sarasota had few rented halls or hotel ballrooms that could rival it. La Coquina was a Mediterranean-style palazzo built on a narrow spit of land between the gulf and the bay. Only a single bridge linked the barrier island to the mainland, and parking was at a premium, so Kate had chartered a party boat to ferry the guests over. They’d filed out to the beach for the sunset ceremony, then flowed back into the courtyard for dinner al fresco. A string quartet had played Mozart on the beach, and now a twelve-piece dance band was tuning up in the center island of the circular drive outside. Young people in cummerbunds and bow ties glided through the array of tables, some clearing plates, some refilling wineglasses, some still cradling magnums of Dom Perignon in their arms for those guests who continued to drink champagne long after the introductory toasts were over.

Charlie stood at a table for two, what the caterers called a sweetheart table. He and Kate had no use for a head table, not at their age. Their parents were decades dead, of course, and Kate thought a lineup of geriatric bridesmaids would have looked ridiculous. Charlie wore a tuxedo – unusual for a beach wedding, but Kate was a staunch believer in formal attire. Her gown was made of pale gold lace, and Charlie wore a waistcoat and bow tie to match. He was a big man, barrel-chested, with a broad back that was ramrod-straight even if tilted forward a few degrees off vertical. He had a shock of white hair and ruddy cheeks and watery blue eyes that still knew how to twinkle.

‘I have a confession to make,’ he said again, and grinned.

Kate gazed up at him with a look of fond exasperation. This was the expression she customarily bestowed upon him. The fondness was real enough; the exasperation she put on to moderate it a bit, so she wouldn’t appear besotted to her assembled friends and colleagues. There was only one way she aimed to appear tonight – amazing – and in that she’d succeeded. Her form-fitting gown fitted a form that still drew wolf whistles from construction crews, at least from the ones high up on the girders. Her jawline was tight, her skin smooth, her hair a soft shade of ash blond.

‘As some of you folks know,’ Charlie was saying, ‘I’ve taken two bullets in my life. Once in Da Nang and the second time in Beirut. Barely winged me either time. But there was one time I took a direct hit to the heart. It wasn’t a bullet, though. It was an arrow. A Cupid’s arrow back in the eighth grade, when I first laid eyes on a little gal named Katie Weller.’

Laughter came from the guests, amid an audible groan from Kate.

‘So that’s my confession,’ Charlie said. ‘I fell in love with Katie the minute I saw her. Not that I ever stood a chance. I mean, come on, she was honor roll, and I was auto shop. She was country club, and I was junior ROTC.’

Kate shook her head in denial, but she was smiling.

‘She was so far out of my league I didn’t even have the guts to talk to her. She never would’ve known I existed if not for one Saturday in November.’ He looked down at Kate, and his face softened with the memory. ‘I was out on the football field, she was up in the stadium, and I kept her in my sights between every play. During every huddle. Then, I don’t know what happened, but she fell headfirst down those concrete stairs.’

‘It was the heat,’ she said, with enough firmness that no one thought to wonder about the November temperatures in Massachusetts.

‘I stopped dead in my tracks there on the twenty-yard line and watched her tumble. It was like in slow motion. A whole flight of stairs, and at the bottom she landed on her head with a crack I swear I heard out on the field.’

An ooh rippled through the crowd.

‘I was a running back, and that’s what I did. I ran back to the sidelines and around the bench and vaulted over the rail into the stadium. I picked her up and ran like I’d never run in my life. The hospital was five miles away, and I was halfway there when the ambulance caught up with me. They peeled her out of my arms and loaded her in and left me standing there on the sidewalk in my shoulder pads and helmet, wondering what the hell just happened.’

There was little suspense to the tale – Kate had quite obviously survived – but the guests were listening raptly. They were charmed.

‘What happened?’ Charlie went on. ‘Well, we lost the game, and I got kicked off the team, but I didn’t care about that. All I could think about was Katie. They said it was only a mild concussion, but I was worried sick. The next morning I screwed up my courage and went to see her in the hospital, clutching a ragged bunch of daisies. And there she was, sitting up in bed, pretty as a picture even with that bandage around her head, and she reached out a hand when she saw me and she said – I swear to God – My hero.’

Kate rolled her eyes. I did not, she mouthed.

‘Come here and let me hug you, she said.’

She gave a shrug to concede that much might be true.

‘So you see, it was way worse than a mild concussion. She was knocked clean out of her senses!’

When the laughter died down, Charlie continued with his tale. Kate went home the next day, and the day after that she astonished Charlie by asking him to be her date for the homecoming dance. The next few months were the happiest of his whole life, he declared. They went steady from Thanksgiving all the way through the Fourth of July.

‘But it couldn’t last past then,’ he said as a mournful look fell over his face. ‘Not when I was headed for Vietnam, and she was headed for Harvard.’

Radcliffe, Kate mouthed, trying to look sad even as she corrected the record.

They promised to write each other, and they did for a while, but those kinds of promises fade when life intrudes, and theirs did, each in its own way. She was caught up in her studies. He was caught up in the war. They lost touch. He never knew she’d married and moved to Florida; she never knew he’d made the marines his career. He never knew she’d lost her husband, and she never knew he’d been married and divorced. But the worst thing of all was that she never knew he’d settled in Florida after he left the corps.

‘So there we were,’ he said, ‘me up in Tampa and Katie here in Sarasota. Both of us single, living our separate lives only an hour apart, for twenty years. We would have lived and died that way if it wasn’t for the most incredible stroke of luck.’

Charlie was working at a car dealership, he told the crowd, selling luxury sports cars, mostly to rich retirees trying to relive their youth by driving something that could do zero to sixty in 2.8 seconds. But one day a young fellow came in, and Charlie nabbed him before any of the other salesmen could. The young fellow wasn’t sure what he wanted, a Maserati, a Lamborghini, or a Ferrari, so over the next few weeks, he and Charlie went on a bunch of test drives in and around the city, up and down I-75, sometimes into the swampy interior of the state. They’d stop for lunch and get to talking, and before long, they got to be pals.

‘I didn’t even care about my commission anymore,’ Charlie said, but when Kate guffawed, he amended: ‘Well, I didn’t care as much.’

Finally, the young fellow settled on a Lambo and bought the car of his dreams. He took Charlie home for dinner to celebrate, and Charlie finally got to meet his sweet young wife. When they sat down to the table, he noticed it was set for four. Expecting somebody else? he’d asked. My late mother-in-law, the young fellow griped. They were starting in on dessert when the mystery guest finally swept in.

An excited murmur rippled through the courtyard.

‘No, now, don’t get there ahead of me.’ Charlie laughed as he held up two halting hands. ‘Let me tell it like it happened.’

‘In swept the mystery guest,’ he said again, and he felt like his jaw hit the floor. She stopped and stared. He stopped and stared. He stood from the table. Charlie? she said. Katie! he said.

‘Yep. It was my own Katie Weller, fifty years later and a thousand times more beautiful.’

She rose from the sweetheart table – fluidly; she did squats every day to make sure of it – and went into his arms for a kiss that brought a hearty round of applause from the crowd. When they finally broke apart, Charlie picked up his glass. ‘So here’s to that young fella with the late mother-in-law. I’ll never be able to thank him enough. Dr Eric Hoffman!’

He lifted his glass in a salute to Eric’s table, then turned his toast toward his bride. ‘And here’s to Katie Weller, Kate Sawyer, and now Katie Mull. My one true love.’

As they kissed again, the guests surged to their feet, and their applause swelled through the courtyard. Charlie’s story was an inspiration, especially for the majority of the guests, who were three times the age of majority. It meant that their lives weren’t done. The past wasn’t past. They were still the same people they’d been at seventeen, and here was the proof. High school sweethearts separated for over fifty years, reunited. They weren’t at the end of their lives. Their story wasn’t over. A new chapter had begun, and the guests cheered and clapped and whistled as if they’d been handed a new lease on life.

Also, the cake was being wheeled out. Dessert was about to be served.

2

Kate stumbled as Charlie was handing her into the limo. She might have sprawled onto the seat had he not steadied her descent. She uttered a brief expletive at the trailing hem of her gown, though she knew it was more likely the champagne that made her wobble. She never indulged as much as she had tonight. After George’s death, she’d barely touched the stuff. But tonight was the start of a new life. She could throw away those old worries and enjoy herself. Celebrate!

But tipsy was one thing and sloppy another. A magnum of champagne sat waiting in an ice bucket on the limo bar, and she resolved to have none of it.

She tucked the train of her gown into the footwell and sank back with a happy, tired sigh. It had been a long day – week, really – but it was worth it. The wedding had been a total triumph, worth every goddam exhausting moment.

Though it certainly had been exhausting. She couldn’t trust a wedding planner with an event that meant this much to her, so she’d done it all herself. The music, the flowers, the food. And God! The seating plan. Florida was a political land mine in the run-up to next year’s election, and she had to tread carefully. The handful of Democrats had been easy enough to manage – she’d seated them with her daughter Julie and the few other guests under forty. But then came the two camps of Republicans, those who supported the former president and those who supported the current governor. It was Mar-a-Lago versus Tallahassee, and eventually the twain would have to meet but not in time for her wedding. Kate was a Republican, too, of course, but she was the genteel kind who liked low taxes and lax regulations. Not the kind who fretted about drag shows and public bathrooms. It was all such nonsense, this so-called culture war. It was being waged by people who had none.

Charlie bent to kiss her before he closed her door, and as he straightened, she couldn’t help noticing the stiffness in his back. It had been a long week for him, too, moving the last of his belongings from his apartment into her home. She’d wanted to send one of her crews, but he’d insisted on doing the job himself. It was one of the thousand things she loved about him – his self-reliance. He loved her, but he didn’t need her. It was such a refreshing change from most of the men who made up the dating pool for women her age. Florida women had an expression born of bitter experience: the men were only after a nurse or a purse. Sometimes both. But Charlie was after neither. He was in robust health, and it was he who’d insisted on the prenup.

Kate had made certain to leak that fact to the biggest gossips in her set. No one could ever gloat that he’d married her for her money. This was a love match, pure and simple. He’d get nothing if they divorced – not that they ever would. And if she predeceased him? He insisted he wanted nothing then, either, but how would it look if she left him a homeless widower? So the prenup provided him this house and the boat at the dock but nothing more. Not the New York apartment or the Maine cottage or the Key West conch house. Not any part of her investment portfolio. And most importantly, not her company.

He started to circle the limo, but the guests surged around him, pecking his cheek and shaking his hand, extending congratulations and saying goodbyes. They’d known him only these past few months, but already they loved him, too. Everyone did. He beamed his thanks and politely inched away until he finally gave a big departing wave to the crowd and opened the car door. Kate reached out an eager hand as he started to duck inside.

‘Charlie! Buddy, hold up!’ came a shout from the courtyard.

She scowled. It was Eric, her son-in-loathe, and her friends parted for him like he was the messiah he thought he was. Unfortunately, they thought so, too. As Sarasota’s top orthopedist, he’d rebuilt most of the knees and hips around him.

Charlie turned as Eric strode up, and the two men embraced and whispered a few words to each other. Charlie thought the world of Eric, and with a heavy sigh, Kate resolved yet again to make more of an effort to like her son-in-law. But it was such an effort, in the face of all that arrogance. And it was so undeserved! What was he, after all, but a glorified mechanic? He just happened to work on joints instead of engines. And he was such a bad match for Julie, who was quite meek enough without living in the shadow of an alpha dog like Eric. She’d had her tail between her legs ever since she met him. Even now she was shrinking behind him.

Such a mousy little thing, her daughter. Her face so colorless, her hair a drab shade of brown, and that dress! Silver might have worked, but this was a dull pewter gray and a size too big. Kate hardly knew where the girl came from. She’d been a late-in-life baby, a final triumph after a string of miscarriages, and Kate and George had called her their little miracle child. But as the years went by, Kate sometimes wondered if Julie was the last gasp of her aging ovaries, if the better eggs had already been used up by the babies who never were.

But no, that wasn’t fair. Julie was a sweet girl. Hardworking and reliable. Kate had installed her as general counsel of the company a few years back, and she’d been doing a perfectly adequate job.

But she paled beside Greta, her best friend from law school, who was standing there beside her. Greta was Eric’s sister, but Kate didn’t hold that against her. She was extraordinarily accomplished. A judge already – at thirty-three! But there was nothing sober about this judge. She was an icy blonde – like her brother, but on her it worked – and she dazzled in a dress of shocking pink taffeta. Her husband cut a dashing figure, too. Alex Blanco was a neurologist who probably had the same god complex as Eric. But in Alex’s defense, he treated the brain, which was in a whole different league.

Eric finally stepped aside to let Julie say her goodbyes, but Charlie’s own daughter got there first. Becky was a big woman, broad-faced with shoulders almost as wide as her father’s. Those shoulders wore angry blotches of red across fish-belly–white skin. Her husband was behind her, equally broad and equally sunburned. They’d flown in from New Hampshire for the weekend and had obviously spent the day at the beach.

Julie’s turn came at last. Charlie wrapped her in his arms in a bear hug, and Julie clung to him with tears of joy on her face. He was the father she wished she’d had, and there were times Kate wished it, too. Oh, to turn back the clock, to take a mulligan on life’s choices. For a moment she was almost teary herself.

But no, she had no real regrets. If she’d married Charlie all those years ago, she never could have built her billion-dollar business. Today KS Development owned or managed more than three hundred properties. Its portfolio included a hundred million square feet of office buildings, industrial parks, shopping centers, residential communities, and hotels.

It took an unfulfilling marriage to make that happen. Yes, George taught her about business, but largely through negative example. His companies manufactured industrial parts, and she’d watched as one product line after another failed, done in every time by cheaper foreign-made goods. It taught her that a business had to be import-proof to be safe. It had to be rooted in the good old U.S. of A., and what could be more rooted than real estate? What could be more irreplaceable than coastal Florida real estate? People thought that George left her a fortune when he died, but the truth was that his business had already gone bust by the time he died. He left her nothing but life insurance, and only enough of that to provide the seed money for her next project.

So – no regrets. Now she had her company and Charlie, too. The best of all worlds.

He climbed in beside her at last, and as the limo slowly rolled out of the circle drive and onto the road, Charlie leaned over. ‘Kiss me, Kate,’ he said – an old joke – and she obliged as the crowd cheered.

His bones creaked as he settled back in his seat. Kate patted his knee. ‘A long day at our age,’ she said.

‘At my age,’ he insisted. ‘Not yours.’ They were both seventy, but she looked at least fifteen years younger, a fact in which they took equal pride. For Charlie, it was the pride of possession tempered by his disbelief that he was actually married to this beautiful creature; for Kate, it was the pride of accomplishment. She’d accomplished a great deal in her life, but tonight the accomplishment that most filled her heart – and admittedly, swelled her head – was that she’d kept her looks. Thanks to healthy eating and exercise, of course, but also thanks to her other hero, Dr Russell Shein. She wished she could have invited Russ to the wedding, but plastic surgeons were like backstreet lovers – adored but necessarily hidden away. Which was silly, really. After all, this was Florida, land of perpetual self-renewal. Ponce de León would have succeeded in finding the fountain of youth if only he’d waited five hundred years and searched in doctors’ offices.

Charlie popped the cork on the champagne and poured a glass for each of them. They clinked their flutes together.

‘You’re a big fat liar,’ Kate said, and took a swallow, her earlier resolve forgotten.

‘What?’ he protested, laughing.

‘Your speech! There was hardly a word of truth in it. I had the hopeless crush on you, Mr Popularity, with your string of cheerleader girlfriends.’

He grinned. ‘I didn’t think you noticed. You with your nose always in a book.’

‘I was sneaking peeks at you the whole time. You were the only reason I went to those Saturday football games. It was a chance to stare at you without anybody noticing.’

‘Which is why you took that fall. You were watching me instead of your feet.’

They’d told each other this story many times before, back in high school and again over the last year. It never got old. The wonder of it all. That they were watching each other that whole time. The miracle that he loved her just as she loved him.

And oh, how she loved him. She didn’t even wait until their third date to cast off her virginity. It was a good thing she already had her Radcliffe acceptance letter, because she barely cracked open a book the rest of their senior year. They spent it all in carnal delight. The backseat of his car, the locker room after hours, the motel room they’d saved up for on prom night. Fifty-two years later and she felt flushed just thinking about it.

Though, again, that could have been the champagne. They polished off the bottle before the lights of Tampa began to swirl through the smoky windows of the limo. They would spend tonight at a hotel near the airport, in readiness for their early-morning flight to L.A. Another night there, then on to Tahiti, where they’d board the yacht for their monthlong cruise of the South Pacific. Carnal delights at their age would mostly take the form of fine meals and deep-tissue massages, but those would be delightful, too.

No regrets, she reminded herself. She mustn’t think of the fifty years lost, only of the utter joy they’d take in however many years remained.

Their luggage had been sent ahead and was waiting for them at the hotel in the premier suite they’d booked. Another bottle of Dom was waiting, too. Charlie headed for the bathroom in an exaggerated cartoon run that made Kate giggle. She stepped out of her gown in the living room and let it puddle where it fell. One of her employees would be along in the morning to collect it.

She went into the bedroom and changed into a dressing gown and sat down at the vanity table. She leaned close to the mirror and blinked a few times to clear her vision. Yes, despite all the champagne, despite all the clammy hugs and smooches, she still looked fine. Makeup flawless and not a hair out of place. Not a hint of gray, either, though that was nothing special. Florida women of her set never went gray. The first telltale silver strand would be offset with golden highlights. As the years marched on, the highlights turned increasingly ashen and increasingly abundant until the women were completely blond and no one remembered a time when they weren’t. For any who happened to reach their eighties, the ash turned to platinum. The few who made it to ninety then sported a brilliant white – brilliant because they’d arrived there without ever having to endure a single gray hair. This was the trajectory Kate planned on.

She opened her cosmetic case. She had a nightly routine, and she followed it religiously, whether or not she was tipsy, even on her wedding night. First to carefully remove her makeup and peel off her lashes. Then to apply all the various serums and lotions, glycolic, hyaluronic, collagen, retinol – it was a chemistry lab set for women of a certain age. Finally, she picked up the syringe that she’d preloaded with her daily dose of Sermorelin peptides. This was the other miracle in her life, an anti-aging cocktail that she swore by, courtesy of Dr Shein.

Charlie came up behind her wearing a white terry robe. He wrapped his arms around her and grinned at their reflection in the vanity mirror.

‘Shoot me up, darling?’ Her hands were trembling too much to line up the injection.

He took the syringe from her. ‘You know I love you just the way you are.’

‘Then it’s important that I stay just the way I am,’ she said. For a moment there were two of him and two of her in the mirror, until she blinked and got her vision back.

‘Seriously, you don’t need this stuff,’ he said, but he dutifully plunged the needle into her thigh and did it so deftly she didn’t feel a thing. Though that might be due to the champagne, and suddenly, he had another bottle in his hand and a pair of crystal flutes that he set down beside her chemistry set. My chemical romance, she thought, and laughed out loud as he popped the cork and filled their glasses.

She felt a sudden stab of pain behind her eyes, ten times sharper than any of her usual dull headaches. Too much alcohol, she knew. But there was no way she was going to plead a headache on her wedding night to her one true love. She fished a bottle of Tylenol out of her cosmetic case and squinted at the markings on the cap. The arrows swam in her vision. She lined them up, she thought she did, but the cap wouldn’t dislodge. ‘Open this for me, darling?’

A cloud seemed to fall over his face as she handed him the bottle. He stared at it a long moment before he groped for a chair and sat down heavily beside her. ‘Katie,’ he said after a long moment. ‘You know how much I love you.’

‘No more than you, I,’ she said, but that didn’t sound right. ‘I mean, no more you than – oh, what the hell!’ Laughing, she gave up. ‘Me, too!’

‘I want us to always be completely honest with each other.’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you remember the Tylenol murders?’

‘What?’ She blinked hard. She couldn’t imagine why he was bringing this up now.

‘In Chicago, back in the eighties, when somebody tampered with the bottles on the store shelves and put potassium cyanide capsules in with the pills? Seven people died?’

Oh, now she understood. ‘God, yes,’ she said with a groan. ‘That’s why we all have to suffer now with these damn tamperproof caps.’

He had no trouble, though. He flipped the cap and tapped a pill into her hand. She popped it in her mouth and took a big swallow of her champagne to chase it down her throat. What fool ever said you couldn’t have it all? she thought. She had everything now, everything she’d ever dreamed of.

‘Katie. Darling,’ he said sadly as the room tilted leftward. ‘I have a confession to make.’

3

Julie was supervising the clean-up crew when she felt a shiver run up her spine.

Every hair rose on the back of her neck, and with a moan, she turned into Eric’s arms. He ran his hands over the curve of her hips and up to her breasts, and his eyes bored into hers, posing the question, making the challenge. She threw a look over her shoulder at the men loading the banquet tables into the truck. The caterers still had to load their vans, and the cleaners still had to sweep and mop and put everything back as it was. Her mother had charged her with the responsibility of overseeing all of it. But Eric charged her in every other way.

She gave one quick nod, and he grabbed her hand and tugged her after him. They ran past his sports car, parked where no one was supposed to park and no one else would dare to. It was low-slung and flame-orange and smoldered like an ember in the dim glow of the houselights. Beyond it was darkness, and they plunged into it, across the road and onto the beach.

The sea was a void, black water against black sky, demarcated only by the shimmering white foam of the surf. Her shoulder bag banged against her hip as she struggled to keep up, and when they reached the beach, she kicked off her heels. The sand was warm against the soles of her feet, and it squished between her toes as she followed Eric over the dunes. He peeled off his dinner jacket and tossed it into the wind. Julie had dressed so carefully that afternoon, but she undressed now with wild abandon, and so did Eric, until they were both naked and gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the starlight. She dropped to her knees, but he was already hard, and he pushed her down onto her back.

He didn’t need to check if she was ready. She was always ready for him. All it ever took was a glance across a room, a knee squeeze under the table, a fingertip traced along her spine. She’d been in thrall to him from the day they met, from the moment she twisted her ankle stumbling off the deck at Greta’s backyard barbecue. She was dazed from the fall and blinded by the sun and barely registered the faceless hands reaching out to help her up. Until another pair of hands touched her and lit a fuse that burned like wildfire from her foot to her face. It was Eric, squatting at her feet, cradling her calf in one hand while he probed her ankle with the other. ‘Trust me. I’m a doctor,’ he’d said, and given her a smile that made solar flares radiate from his face, as if he were a sun god.

From that moment on, her fuse never stopped burning. Even on a moonless night like tonight, he dazzled her. Even in the dark. Especially in the dark. All those people who questioned the happiness of her marriage, the friends who pitied her, they didn’t know about this. They could never imagine this.

He plunged into her, and she closed her eyes and watched pinwheels whirl across the sky. ‘So fucking hot,’ he moaned as he pounded her into the sand, then his mouth was on her breast, and depth charges detonated inside her, and the wind roared and the waves crashed, and she was in the sea and the sky and everywhere and nowhere.

Until another sound penetrated. A ringtone from her bag a yard away on the beach. ‘Mamma Mia.’

Julie froze, but Eric didn’t. ‘Leave it,’ he said through gritted teeth, still thrusting.

‘But – it must be an emergency. She wouldn’t call – I mean, it’s her wedding night!’

‘Exactly. She has Charlie now to step and fetch. You don’t have to be at her beck and call anymore. Leave it!’

She couldn’t. She was programmed to respond to her mother’s voice and, by proxy, her ringtone. She twisted to reach for her bag under the pile of clothes. Eric slipped out of her, and he reared back on his knees with a growl of frustration.

‘Mom?’ she exclaimed into the phone as he jumped to his feet and ran to the water’s edge.

‘Is this Julie Hoffman?’

Her breath caught at the sound of a man’s voice. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Sergeant Oster, Tampa PD. Your mother is Katherine Sawyer?’

‘Oh my God! What’s happened? Is she all right?’

‘She’s not hurt, but she’s upset,’ the officer reported in a flat voice. ‘She wants you to come up.’

Julie could hear Eric diving into the sea, breaking the surface with fast, furious strokes. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘She called 911. She reported a murderer.’ The man’s tone didn’t change as he added the rest. ‘A mass murderer.’

4

No fucking way,’ Eric shouted, and slammed his palm against the steering wheel for emphasis. He was driving too fast. He always did in the Lambo, but more so now, at two in the morning, when the highway was nearly his alone. More so now, when he was so angry. ‘I can see her witnessing one murder, maybe, but there’s no way to witness serial murders! Not unless she was following the guy around!’

‘I know!’ Julie had to shout, too. The top was down, and the wind was roaring in her ears and tearing through her hair. ‘I don’t get it, either. But that’s what he told me.’ Though suddenly, she wasn’t so sure. ‘I think. Maybe he said mass murder? Like maybe she witnessed a mass shooting?’

Eric shot her a look. He got annoyed when she doubted herself that way. ‘She wouldn’t need to call 911 for that. It would be all over the fucking news.’

‘Right,’ Julie said. None of it made sense. She’d been trying to reach her mother for an explanation, but every call went to voicemail. The cops must have held on to the phone, which made her worry even more.

‘I tell you, she’s losing it again! I bet she hallucinated the whole thing. That’s why she’s at the hotel and not at the police station. The cops know she’s crazy.’

Julie didn’t respond to that. He’d never liked her mother, and over the years he’d come up with a host of reasons why. She was too controlling. Too vain. Too meddlesome. Lately, it was her supposed dementia. He claimed he could see it every time she misplaced her keys or ran late for an appointment. As if such things didn’t regularly happen to him and everyone else in the world. And even if Kate had been a bit more forgetful of late, who wouldn’t be? She’d been in a frenzy of activity these last few months, organizing the wedding and the honeymoon, not to mention her business affairs, to keep all her projects on track while she was away. And if she’d seemed a bit giddy at times, almost girlish – well, no wonder. She’d been reunited with her high school sweetheart; she’d fallen in love all over again.

Anyway, Julie knew exactly why her mother would be in her hotel suite and not at the police station. Because she was Kate Sawyer. No one would dare to inconvenience her, not even law enforcement.

‘Hey,’ Eric said, more softly. He lifted his hand from the gearshift and squeezed Julie’s knee. ‘I’m sorry. I know you don’t like to hear that. It’s just – I thought once she was with Charlie, we’d be done with all her drama. We could focus on us. But here we go again!’ He returned his hand to the gearshift. ‘I mean, why the hell does she need you? She’s got Charlie right there!’

Julie didn’t respond to that, either, because that was her darkest fear. That whatever kind of murder her mother had witnessed, Charlie – dear, sweet Charlie – was the victim.

Eric didn’t trust the valet parkers at the hotel, not with this car. He dropped Julie off at the entrance and roared off in search of his own parking space.

She expected to find the lobby swarming with police, but there was only the usual late-night crowd of partygoers returning to their rooms. She followed a giggling trio of girls in sparkly minidresses across the hotel lobby to the elevator bank. They side-eyed her as they waited for a car to arrive, and she was suddenly aware of her own post-party appearance. Her elaborate updo had come elaborately undone. She’d lost her bra on the beach, and her breasts felt loose and saggy inside the bodice of her dress. She could feel sand in her shoes, in the crack of her buttocks. ‘Fun night?’ one of the girls snarked as the elevator doors opened.

Julie said nothing as she got in and pushed the button for the penthouse. The police officer on the phone had carefully recited the suite number, as if she didn’t already know it. As if she hadn’t booked and confirmed the reservation herself.

The party girls peeled off on a lower floor, and Julie rode alone to the top of the hotel. When the doors opened, a man brushed past her into the elevator. He was silver-haired and sun-bronzed and wearing a business suit in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. But it wasn’t until she spotted the flag pin in his lapel that she realized. ‘Senator Richards?’

He put an arm out to hold the doors open. He squinted at her. ‘Ah. Judy, is it?’

She’d been introduced to him many times before at various fund-raising events, but there was no reason for him to get her name right. It was her mother who was his largest donor, not Julie.

‘I’m sorry I can’t stay any longer,’ he said. ‘I have an early flight back to D.C. But it’s all in hand. I called Roger Engel.’ At her blank look, he clarified: ‘The U.S. Attorney. He owes me, so he’s got the FBI pulling their archives and checking the military records. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Don’t you worry.’

None of this made any sense. She wondered if he was confusing her with someone actually named Judy. ‘I’m here for my mother?’ she said.

‘Yes, I’ve just seen her,’ he said as the elevator beeped its impatience. ‘My doctor’s with her now.’

‘Doctor?’ she exclaimed. The officer on the phone had said her mother hadn’t been hurt. ‘Is she all right?’

He withdrew his arm. ‘She’s – well, she’s pretty upset. What a thing to happen on her wedding day.’ He thought of something else as the doors slid shut. ‘She got my gift, I hope?’

She turned and ran down the corridor, but the room numbers were going the wrong way, and she had to turn and run the other way until she arrived breathless at the door. It was locked. She rattled the knob and was starting to knock when it swung open. Another man in a suit stood inside. This one was younger, with russet-colored hair and skin that was more sunburned than sun-bronzed. He wore an earpiece with a coiled wire disappearing into his shirt collar. ‘Mrs Hoffman?’

‘Yes?’

‘Mrs Eric Hoffman?’

‘Yes,’ she said again, baffled.

He stepped back to let her through. ‘I’m Detective Brian Holley, Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.’

Her eyes moved past him to sweep across the living room of the suite. There was no sign of a struggle, no disarray beyond her mother’s wedding gown on the rug. Thanks to the stiff boning in the seams, the bodice stood upright while the skirt puddled into the floor. It reminded her of the melting witch in The Wizard of Oz.

‘Your mother’s in there with the doctor.’ The detective nodded at the closed door to the bedroom.

‘Where’s Charlie? Her husband?’

‘He’s been detained downstairs.’

That meant Charlie was alive, but Julie’s relief lasted only a second before her confusion swelled to crowd it out. Why would he be down in the lobby now? What could he be doing? Consulting the concierge? Browsing in the gift shop while his bride was up here in hysteria?

‘Sarasota?’ she said as she recalled how the detective had introduced himself. ‘I thought the murder happened in Tampa?’

He shook his head. ‘Chicago. And I guess the feds have jurisdiction. But your mother called the sheriff, and he sent me up to see if I could be of any assistance.’

Now Julie was totally lost. How could Kate have witnessed a murder in Chicago? And called the Tampa police to report it? While she was also calling a U.S. senator and the sheriff of Sarasota County?

The door to the bedroom opened, and another man emerged. He was gray-haired and gray-bearded and wore an aloha shirt and sandals. He was carrying a doctor’s satchel. He eyed Julie. ‘You the daughter?’

‘What happened? How is she?’

‘Hysterical when I arrived. I gave her a sedative. She’ll drift off to sleep in ten or fifteen minutes. Go on in. She’s been asking for you.’

Julie hurried past him into the bedroom. Her mother was lying on a white linen duvet with her eyes closed and one arm trailing toward the floor. She looked so different, so powerless, that for a second Julie was afraid to come closer. ‘Mom?’

Kate’s eyes fluttered open. ‘Oh, Julie. Finally!’ She was wearing her favorite silk dressing gown, the one with the peacock fanning its tail on the back. Julie had just picked it up from the cleaner’s on Thursday.

‘Mom, are you all right? What happened?’ Julie squatted by the bedside and took Kate’s loose hand in hers.

‘Oh!’ A single sob escaped Kate’s lips on a rush of air. ‘Why did he have to tell me? We could have lived out the rest of our lives without – If only he hadn’t opened his damn mouth!’

‘Charlie?’

Kate jerked her hand free and pressed it to her forehead. ‘He said he had to tell me. Oh, God, my head – it’s splitting! What was I supposed to do with that information? Live with it?’ Another sob tore out of her. ‘Did I do the right thing? God, I don’t know!’

‘What? What did he tell you?’

Her eyes sank shut. ‘I didn’t know what to do. The love of my life…’

‘Mom!’ Julie jostled her. ‘What did Charlie tell you?’

‘Those people. All those people.’ Her arm dropped off the side of the bed again.

‘What people?’

‘Tylenol,’ Kate mumbled.

‘You need a Tylenol?’ Julie looked around the room. ‘Where is it? In your cosmetic bag?’ But she remembered the doctor had given her a sedative. ‘No, I don’t think you should take anything else now.’

‘He killed them,’ Kate said in a whisper, barely more than a breath.

‘What? Who?’ Julie leaned in closer.

‘Tylen – Tylen…’

Julie jostled her again. ‘Mom?’

A light snore was the only response.

Julie sat back on her heels. Charlie had told her he’d killed some people? In Chicago? And now he was blithely killing time down in the lobby? She didn’t believe it for a minute. But the only other explanation was Eric’s favorite theory – that Kate was losing her mind – and she couldn’t believe that, either.

‘Mom?’ she said again, but Kate was out cold.

5

Julie!’

Eric’s shout sounded from the hotel corridor. Julie hurried out to the living room of the suite. He stood in the doorway, and the Sarasota detective had one hand on the knob and the other on the jamb, blocking his entry.

‘Out of my way,’ Eric snapped at him.

The man glanced at Julie over his shoulder. ‘You know him?’

‘My – my husband.’

The detective immediately lifted both arms in apology and backed away.

‘Julie!’ Eric charged at her. His dinner jacket was open, his cummerbund and tie lost to the beach. ‘What the hell’s going on? Charlie’s sitting in the backseat of a locked cop car in the parking lot.’

‘What?’ she gasped. Then she realized. Charlie hadn’t been detained. He was being detained.

‘I knocked on the window, and all he could do was shrug and shake his head. Where’s your mother? What’s this all about?’

Julie threw a helpless look at the detective, but he was touching a finger to his earpiece and listening to another conversation. ‘I – I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘Mom’s been sedated. She’s out now, and she wasn’t speaking clearly before that. But I think she said that Charlie confessed to killing some people?’

‘Get out,’ Eric scoffed.

‘I know. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe she’s got a migraine? She kept asking for Tylenol.’

‘If I might…’ the detective said quietly.

Eric wheeled on him. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Detective Brian Holley, Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office. Ms Sawyer reported that her husband – Charles Mull? – confessed to her tonight that he was responsible for the Tylenol murders.’

Eric stared at him a long moment before letting out a hoot. ‘And you bought it? You actually took that seriously? For fuck’s sake, the woman’s got dementia!’

‘No, Eric—’ Julie began.

‘The FBI’s running it down,’ Holley said. ‘It shouldn’t take long to check dates and alibis.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Eric raked a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t fucking believe this.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Julie said. ‘What are the Tylenol murders?’

Eric shot her an astounded look. ‘Jeez, did you grow up in a cave? How do you not know that?’

Detective Holley ducked his head and sidled to the door. ‘I’ll be right outside,’ he said as he slipped into the corridor. ‘If you need me.’

Julie returned to the bedroom and closed the door before Eric could see her cry. It wasn’t the harshness in his voice or the pitying look on the detective’s face that made the tears burn in her eyes. Or it wasn’t only those things. Because under it all was terror. Either dear sweet Charlie was a murderer or her mother had completely lost her mind, and she didn’t know which possibility frightened her more.

Eric opened the bedroom door without knocking. ‘Julie?’ He scowled at Kate on the bed, but his face softened when he saw Julie’s tears. ‘I’m sorry, babe.’ He put his arms around her. ‘I didn’t mean to snap at you.’

She hid her face against his chest.

‘It’s just – seeing Charlie in the back of that cop car. In a bathrobe! I mean, jeez.’

Eric turned to study Kate where she lay on the bed. Julie turned, too. Even in repose, Kate’s skin was smooth and nearly unlined. Her sleep looked peaceful, and Julie felt a brief burn of resentment that she could rest undisturbed while everyone else was in turmoil.

‘She needs a doctor,’ Eric said.

‘He was just here—’

‘Not that kind of doctor. A neurologist.’ He pulled his phone from his pocket. ‘I’m calling Alex.’

‘Eric, no. It’s three in the morning!’

He continued scrolling through his contacts. ‘I think this qualifies as an emergency, don’t you?’

He went back into the living room to make the call, and Julie pulled out her own phone to google Tylenol murders. The Wikipedia entry came up first in the search results. She heard Eric leaving a voicemail message for Alex as she scrolled through the article. Drug tampering, she read, in 1982, and she felt somewhat vindicated for not knowing about events that had happened forty years ago, before she was even born. She read on: Chicago metro area. Tylenol capsules replaced with potassium cyanide. Seven deaths. Murders remain unsolved.

This was ridiculous. It wasn’t possible that Charlie had confessed to such a heinous crime. It wasn’t possible that Charlie could have done such a heinous crime. He was the gentlest man Julie knew. So much so that she once felt compelled to ask him how he’d ever survived in the marines. It was tough sometimes, he’d admitted, but I did what I had to do. I had my buddies to think of, and later I had my men. They counted on me.

That was how he survived: by thinking of others first and putting their well-being ahead of his own. It was impossible that such a man had committed these murders. Any murders.

She gazed at her mother. It was equally impossible to believe that there was anything wrong with Kate’s mind. Only two weeks before, she had closed on a three-hundred-acre tract near Naples and done so with the most creative financing vehicle their outside lawyers had ever seen. It had involved multiple shell corporations and cross-guaranties and buyback schemes too complicated for Julie to process without pages of flow charts.

I don’t know how she comes up with these ideas, Jack Trotter had marveled when they celebrated the deal afterward. Jack was the company president and managed the mundane affairs of the business, leaving Kate free to imagine and scheme and create. Those things she sometimes forgot, the blunders Eric kept harping on – they were trivial matters she could depend on Jack and others to handle. That was her brain’s way of prioritizing the details of her life and business. No one needed a flow chart to understand why that made sense.