Simply Lies

Chapter 24

The good folks in Greenville, South Carolina, had called late last night. Her mother had taken a turn for the worse. Clarisse wasn’t unduly concerned, since the woman took a turn for the worse at regular intervals.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she had said. “Tell her to hang on until I arrive.” She clicked off the line.

That had stopped the woman on the other end of the call in her tracks, she felt sure. Clarisse could imagine the silent gasp, the brow wrinkled in outrage at a daughter’s callousness.

Oh honey, if you only knew. And it’s complicated. You can care about someone and still hate them at the same time. At least I can.

With that last thought she picked up her Mickey Gibson phone and made the call. Clarisse had just downloaded an app on her computer that would analyze a person’s speech pattern and spew out findings on a variety of emotional measures including anxiety and fear, which Clarisse knew all too well.

“Hello,” said Gibson.

Clarisse eyed the screen to see if this simple greeting had caused any alarms to go off.

Nothing yet.

“You got the list. Have you checked it twice?”

“If you’re trying to be funny.”

“I thought it would work well for a mom with two little kids.”

“Christmas is a long way off,” noted Gibson.

Not for me, not if things go according to plan. “So what have you learned?” Clarisse asked.

“Nothing that I’m sure you couldn’t have learned already. But I did go by Trask’s house. It’s a fortress. I’m not sure what you expect I can do about it.”

“I wasn’t suggesting a frontal assault, if that’s what you’re implying. You’re a stealth girl, remember?” added Clarisse.

“I’ve been online. There’s a ton of stuff on the guy, but so what?”

“Have you checked his assets?” said Clarisse.

“Why, is he a deadbeat and I need to find something to grab before he can hide it?”

“His net worth puts him at number eighty-nine on the Forbes list.”

“He’s not on the Forbes list. I did check that,” said Gibson.

“That’s only because they don’t put suspected criminals on there, since their wealth can’t be verified using traditional measures. That’s why you won’t see Putin on there, but for some odd reason, they do list a number of his oligarchs. I simply estimated his net worth and placed him within the Forbes list rankings.”

“Again, so what? That doesn’t help us find out if he had Pottinger killed. And Trask is only fifty. He’s really too young to have been much of a player in Langhorne’s mob days.”

“What did you learn about Trask’s past?” Clarisse asked.

“He was born in Chicago. He seemed to have a normal upbringing. Hell, his father was Sam Trask, an FBI special agent of some note. But then again maybe that’s a variation of the ‘preacher’s kids gone wild’ theme. Anyway, he got into some scrapes with the law, managed to dodge any jail time, and after that he headed to South America. Probably cartel business. Then he came back home flush with cash, and he built on that footprint to get where he is now. He owns a lot of businesses and properties.”

“Laundering fronts?” said Clarisse.

“Probably. He doesn’t tweet or post or say anything publicly. He just makes money and lives in a grand style. But there were a lot of gaps in the story. My thinking is those gaps represent the man’s true history, but people are afraid to post it, because they’ll get sued or, more likely, killed.”

“I’m impressed, Mickey. You’ve covered a lot of ground and your analysis is perfectly acceptable.”

She studied the screen and finally had a hit. The analysis of Gibson’s speech pattern showed stress and doubt and conflict.

Amazing that your words can show all that.

She wrote in her notebook: Speak far less.

“Okay, but I don’t see where it gets us.”

“Remember that I only threw out that list as possibly being connected to Langhorne’s death. You’re right that Trask is too young to have really been part of the mob back then. But there are other alternatives that need to be explored.”

“If he did kill or have Langhorne killed, it seems far more likely it was connected to whatever Langhorne did as Daniel Pottinger rather than stretching back to the mob days. Maybe he screwed Trask over some deal and the guy decided to punish him for it.”

Okay, let the big one drop and see what it does to little old Mickey Gibson. “How is that reconciled with the phrase ‘Do as I say, not as I do’?”

She listened to the woman’s breathing, and waited for the words to come and be analyzed.

“If you knew about that, why not tell me?”

She looked at the stress meter. Oh, yes, straight-up pissed-off angry at me on that one. “I assumed you knew if you were in the room. And obviously you did.”

“Yeah, but only recently.”

“You were in the room with the body,” she repeated.

“I didn’t search the whole thing. I found the body, got out of there, and called the cops. They wouldn’t let me back in there — it was a crime scene.”

Still angry but mellowing. “But now you do know, so someone told you, or showed you.”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose only to you.”

“What does that mean?” exclaimed Gibson.

“I don’t know. What does it mean to you?”

“I’m not playing the patient to your shrink, okay?”

Clarisse said, “My take is that either Trask did it or paid someone to do it because Pottinger screwed him over fairly recently, as you suggested. The writing on the wall might be mumbo-jumbo, or it might have some meaning between Trask and Pottinger. Or Trask is not involved, and someone else killed Pottinger for recent dealings.”

“Or,” Gibson said, “this does date back to Langhorne’s screwing the mob over.”

Oh, Mickey, you missed an obvious one, babe, but that’s for me to know and you hopefully never to find out.

Gibson continued, “If the latter, then I can start digging into the mob from back then.” She paused. “Langhorne might have escaped with a shitload of mob money. The mob, at least the one today, may have discovered that, and wanted it back.”

Oh, how right you are, at least partially. “The question becomes, did they find it?”

“Is that what you want, too? The mob treasure?”

She analyzed the screen and saw that Gibson had been remarkably calm when uttering these lines. Clarisse automatically wrote some thoughts in her notebook. Her anxiety goes down when she believes she’s right about something.

“I could lie and say it never crossed my mind, but what would be the point? Besides, don’t girls multitask really well?”

“I’m glad you can see it that way,” muttered Gibson.

“Are you? It brings me no particular joy.”

Her other phone silently buzzed. She looked at the screen. It was Greenville. What now?

Frowning, she said, “I’ll have to get back to you.”

Only in her hurry, her finger didn’t hit the right button.

She answered the call. “Yes? I already said I would be there as soon as I could.”

The woman’s voice on the speakerphone was trembling. “Ms. Frazier, I’m afraid—”

“Afraid? Don’t tell me she died already.”

“No, ma’am. But it seems that... that...”

“Oh for God’s sake. It seems what?”

“It seems that she’s gone missing,” the woman said.

It was only then that the other line disengaged, as Gibson clicked off her phone.