Money to Burn

65

THE MAIN HANGAR DOOR WAS CLOSED, AND I HEARD A CAR PULL up outside. The narrow row of polycarbonate windows that stretched across the big sliding door from end to end was above eye level, but Burn was standing on the boarding step to the helicopter, high enough to see out. He did not seem alarmed. A moment later, the smaller entrance door opened to the darkness of night. Jason Wald entered first, followed by his uncle.

Kyle McVee was dressed casually in a navy blue sailing jacket, linen slacks, and deck shoes, as if he were on his way to a weekend getaway at his waterfront estate in the Hamptons. His demeanor, however, was anything but relaxed. He walked toward Ivy and stopped in front of her, his glare like lasers.

“I’ve waited for this day,” he said.

“So have I,” she said.

McVee wasn’t the only one confused by her response.

Ivy said, “I’ve always wanted to know why you held me-and me alone-responsible for Marcus’ suicide.”

“You can’t seriously mean that,” he said.

“It was Eric who hired me for the assignment. But you never blamed him.”

She was clearly pushing buttons, taking her cue from the voice-mail message I’d played from Agent Henning. But McVee seemed to find something humorous about the exchange, and he was looking at me while talking to Ivy.

“Still playing the good wife to Michael Cantella, I see.”

“The only role I ever played was the one Eric hired me to play. But in the end, he wasn’t the one you came after.”

Eric spoke up for himself. “A little corporate espionage is what any reasonable businessman would do to protect his own company.”

“I’ll handle this,” said McVee, silencing him. “But Eric is right: He was doing something that anyone would do. You, on the other hand-you were different.” He stepped closer, his stare tightening. “There was no need for you to do the things you did to Marcus.”

“What things?”

“I’m sure you researched matters before starting your undercover role. You knew the family history was there-that his mother had taken her own life. You saw Marcus’ highs, and you knew how low his lows could be. And still you did whatever it took to get the information you needed out of him. You flirted. You slept with him. And you even pretended to be in love with him.”

“That’s not true!” she said.

“When you had the information you needed to report back to Eric, you crushed Marcus-told him to his face that he’d been played for a fool. My son didn’t kill himself because of anything Eric did. He killed himself because of you-the way you destroyed him.”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” said Ivy.

“You used my son the same way you used Michael Cantella. Hell, you were even willing to marry Michael, if that was what it took to pull off your disappearing act.”

I exchanged glances with Eric-McVee had just repeated the story that Eric had told me in the WhiteSands dining room-and then I looked at Ivy.

Her eyes pleaded with me. “Don’t believe any of this, Michael. I married you because I loved you. I never slept with Marcus. Okay, I may have flirted-that’s part of the game-but it was never intimate. Never. And definitely not while I was with you.”

I didn’t know what to think, but an idea came to me on how to get to the bottom of it. I looked at McVee and asked, “How do you know Ivy was sleeping with your son?”

“Eric told me,” he said.

“Just like Eric told you in the dining room!” said Ivy. “It’s a lie, Michael.”

I wasn’t sure how she knew about that conversation, but it didn’t matter.

“That’s not exactly what Eric told me,” I said. “He said it was Kyle who told him that Ivy was sleeping with Marcus.”

McVee glanced at Eric, and I could see from the expression on his face that I’d raised his suspicions. “That’s not true,” said McVee. “Eric was the one who told me.”

Again, Eric was under the microscope. He wasn’t holding up well.

“Look,” he said, his voice shaking. It was as if he had finally realized that he was in way over his head. “I’m not trying to get anyone hurt or…killed. I’m just-”

“Shut up!” said McVee.

His words startled Eric-and everyone else as well. The tension in the air may have made it the worst conceivable moment for me to speak up, but it felt like now or never. I spoke straight to McVee, as if it were just the two of us in the hangar.

“Eric is lying,” I said. “And the reason he’s lying is because your son didn’t commit suicide.”

Thankfully McVee wasn’t holding a gun, because he would have shot me dead right then and there.

“No, I don’t mean he disappeared like Ivy,” I said, clarifying. “I mean his death wasn’t suicide.”

Slowly McVee’s need to hear me out prevailed. And even though I was speculating to a large extent, it wasn’t just something that had popped into my head on the spot. My suspicions had begun when Ivy told me that Andrea was FBI, and my focus had turned to Eric during our conversation in the WhiteSands’ dining room. I had to believe that everything Ivy and I had shared four years ago was real, and that Eric’s claims were false. There was no way she would have prostituted herself on a corporate espionage mission for WhiteSands. I knew she wasn’t just pretending to love me. I knew she didn’t marry me just to facilitate a plan to escape. Eric was lying. And people usually lie to protect themselves.

I had to go with my instincts on this one. It was life or death-literally.

“I knew Marcus,” I said. “Your son was a savvy businessman who did his homework. So savvy that I think he knew Ivy was a mole. He used her; she didn’t use him.”

“What are you talking about?” said Eric.

I continued my focus on McVee, ignoring Eric and everyone else. “Eric hired Ivy to work undercover and prove that Ploutus was spreading false rumors about WhiteSands to manipulate the stock price. The reality was, Marcus wasn’t spreading false rumors. The dirt he uncovered was absolutely true.”

“That’s preposterous,” said Eric.

“Maybe that information wasn’t just damaging to WhiteSands,” I said. “Maybe it was embarrassing to Eric, personally.”

“Michael, that’s enough.”

I was on to something. I could hear it in Eric’s voice. “Are you going to make me keep guessing, Eric? Or are you going to tell me what laws you broke?”

“Michael, stop right now, or you are going to take us both down.”

“Is that what you told Marcus,” I said, “when he confronted you with his discovery?”

Eric was silent, and I knew him well enough to realize what his silence meant. I almost couldn’t believe what I was saying, but everything was suddenly making sense to me.

“That’s why you killed him, isn’t it, Eric. Or maybe you had him killed. Made it look like he took his own life. Then you went to his father to tell him how sorry you were for the loss of his son. To tell him that it was all Ivy’s fault, that you never dreamed she would push him to suicide in playing her role. I’m guessing that you didn’t anticipate what Kyle McVee’s reaction would be-that he’d want Ivy dead.”

Ivy filled in the rest, with me every step. “So you helped me disappear, which worked out very nicely for you. That left no one to dispute your version of what happened between Marcus and me.”

“Once Ivy was gone,” said McVee, his train of thought lining up right behind ours, “I stopped looking for the person who was really responsible for Marcus’ death.”

His glare came to rest on Eric.

There was chilling silence in the hangar as the truth settled in. Ivy, her mother, McVee, and on down the line-everyone was waiting for Eric to say something in his defense. But even Eric knew that there was no convincing anyone any longer. McVee stepped away from the helicopter. He stopped just a few feet away from me, his gaze still fixed singularly on Eric.

“Jason,” he said to his nephew, “spill the fuel.”