Temptations - The Complete Series Page 39

  “Thanks for cleaning up. I would have done it myself, but…”

  “I know. And I’m sorry that you had to listen to all of that. Luke loves you, he really does. But he’s also having problems with letting go of his resentment of you. I’ve tried to tell him that you’re a good person who’s had some hard knocks in life, and he does understand that. And, of course, we’ve gone through absolute hell and back in the last year or so with Nottingham. He’s just being protective, a bit overly protective if you ask me.”

  “No. Not overly protective. I was asking you to do something highly illegal, and I regret that. I’ll just have to figure out something on my own to prove that Malcolm was involved. I might be able to implicate Charlotte if I find out more about her background and her obsession with Slade, although even that theory is going to be far-fetched for the police to take seriously, let alone the DA’s office. And, because this is such a high-profile case and the DA’s office wants to nail Slade so badly, it’s going to take a Herculean effort to get them to consider somebody else.”

  Dalilah nodded. “I can see that. This is the biggest case that office has had since OJ, and with the media attention on this, they want to come off as having bagged a big one, where they failed with the OJ case. So, you’re right, you have to have a smoking gun to nail somebody else for Jordan’s murder, and it certainly doesn’t help that Slade confessed.”

  I sighed. The odds of nailing Charlotte and Malcolm certainly were long. The odds of nailing them before Slade came up for his guilty plea were non-existent. Without that videotape, there wasn’t a damned thing that I could do to try to delay Slade’s guilty-plea court date. I could find out about Charlotte’s obsession, but her obsession was circumstantial evidence of her guilt, not a smoking-gun, and no prosecutor was going to try to get a continuance on Slade’s plea on circumstantial evidence.

  I needed that videotape. Slade wasn’t going to cooperate with me, so I was going to have to obtain it illegally. If Dalilah couldn’t help me, then I was going to have to find somebody who could. I guessed that I could Google “computer hackers” on the Internet to try to find somebody who could obtain the videotape.

  That was a joke, of course. If Dalilah couldn’t do it, I had no Plan B.

  Dalilah took a deep breath. “So, there’s really no way for Slade to avoid prison without that videotape?”

  “No. Think about it – his lawyer, Malcolm, is the one who actually killed Jordan. Obviously, Malcolm is going to be complicit in these shenanigans. If his lawyer doesn’t try to talk him out of it, then the guilty plea will go through. Even with the videotape, it will be dicey. But I would have to send it to the prosecutor’s office and hope that they do the right thing with it.” That was still a long-shot. The prosecutor’s office would have discretion on whether or not to accept the guilty plea. That would mean that they would have to do the right thing if they had the videotape on hand. If they decided not to do the right thing, they could still accept the guilty plea, videotape or no videotape. I silently prayed that wouldn’t be the case.

  It was all working against Slade – the obsessive media attention about the case, Charlotte’s evil plot, everything. The prosecutor’s office could very well ignore the videotape, on the grounds that they really wanted to bag the big fish. It was like Gary Condit all over again. The congressman was having an affair with a young intern who was murdered in the woods. The media pounced on the poor guy, ruining him and his career for life. He was guilty until proven innocent, just like Slade. It turned out that a random serial killer murdered Chandra Levy, the intern, but that was little-reported. The only thing that the public remembers about that whole debacle was Condit, the affair with Chandra, and the fact that Condit was clearly guilty of her murder.

  That was how media attention affected things. In this case, it might prove more important to the prosecutor’s office to nail Slade than to actually get at the truth. That videotape was our only hope, but even that was a long-shot for so many reasons.

  “Luke and I are obviously going to have to talk about this,” she said. “He’s in the other room and he’s calmed down, but he still doesn’t like the idea. I’ve told him that I know what I’m doing, or I can at least learn how to hack with today’s security protocols, and that even if the worst thing happens and Slade discovers what I did, I doubt that he will turn me in. Maybe I’m naïve about that, but he sounds like a really decent guy, and I can’t imagine him going to the authorities if he catches me doing that to his computer.”

  “That’s a good point. An excellent point. He’ll be furious, for sure, but I don’t think that he’ll want you prosecuted.” I got quiet for a bit. There were other things that I was worried about. “But Dalilah, the security on his system is going to be like Fort Knox. He has to have amazing security because of all the patents he has pending with his drugs. Corporate espionage is a real thing, and it’s something that he has to safeguard against. His system is going to be very secure. It’s going to be like hacking into the government servers. I know that you’re absolutely brilliant, but I also know that hacking isn’t your full-time gig. Are you sure that you can pull this off?”

  “No, of course I don’t know that for sure, but I’d like to try.” She sighed. “Truth be told, I’m kinda bored and, pardon the cliché, but stuck-in-a-rut. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family. Olivia has been a dream baby so far, and Luke, is, well, he’s Luke. He’s the love of my life, and I didn’t think that it was possible to feel the way that I do when I’m with him. I can’t even explain it, except to say that he’s really my soul mate. Yeah, we argue and fight, because he’s very headstrong and so am I. But we get each other.”

  After that, she got quiet, and I knew that more revelations were coming. “There’s a ‘but’ in there,” I said. “You love your life ‘but’…”

  She shrugged. “It’s kind of the same thing as before I met him. I’ve been frustrated by my inability to motivate myself to do something real. I mean something real outside of my maternal and wifely responsibilities. I don’t know what it is – I was starting to get my artistic voice back, I really was. I was producing stuff that I thought was as good as the things that I was producing when I was a young girl. But, with Olivia here, my focus has shifted, which is good and bad. Good because I love being her mother. Bad because I don’t want that to be my only role in life. When I was a very small child, my parents were convinced that I would cure cancer. When I got a bit older and was getting so much recognition for my art, they thought that I would become a world-renowned artist. Now, nobody is saying much about me doing anything important for the world. I guess I feel that if I helped you that maybe that would somehow help me retrieve a piece of me that seems lost.”

  I laughed a little as I took another sip of my wine. I scratched Gigi’s ears, and she raised her muzzle to me while she closed her eyes. Her back leg thumped against her belly, and this made me laugh some more. “Sorry, I don’t find this funny, at all. Your dilemma isn’t funny in the least. But the reason why I laughed is that I’m asking you to do something illegal. Are you sure that’s the hill you want to die on?”

  “No, but it will be a start. It will get my brain working again, and sometimes, when your brain gets working in a creative way, any kind of creative way, it helps unblock you. Hacking Slade will be difficult and will take all my intellect, abilities and creativity to figure it out. My hope is that once my brain is working towards something that isn’t family-related, it will become unblocked and I can start to get back to who I was, or who I was going to be. Unlock my potential again.”

  I nodded. I knew that Dalilah was having on-going problems with being artistically blocked, and I felt for her. She was a brilliant, brilliant, woman, which put pressure on her from all sides. Luke certainly wasn’t helping with his over-protective nature, although I knew that he helped her in other ways. He was very supportive of her art career and always encouraged her.

  “Well, talk some more to Luke tonight and see if
you guys can come to an agreement. If you can’t, you can’t. I don’t want this, or anything else, to come between you guys. You and Luke have been through too much already. The last thing I want is for there to be some kind of relationship issues that I caused.”

  “Shhh, don’t talk like that. Luke and I are fine. We’ll survive anything, because in the end, we’re very strong together and weaker apart. He needs me and I need him.” She patted my hand. “Anyhow, I wanted you to know that I’m on your side. If I can convince Luke to give in, I’ll be on your project as soon as I can. I know that time is of the essence, and if he has as tight security as you think that he does, it will take me days to figure this out. I know that we have less than a week before Slade comes before the court. So, I need to get started immediately.”

  We stood up and I hugged her tightly. I was closer to her than I had been to any woman, ever. I would have even said that I was closer to her than I had been to any person, ever, but that wasn’t entirely true. I was seared to Slade. He was a part of me that I simply couldn’t ever let go. God forbid he went to prison, but if he did, I would stay faithful to him no matter what. I loved him that much.

  That’s what love was – for better or for worse. I never knew what that meant until Slade. Now I did, and there was no way that I could ever give that up.

  “Dalilah, you mean the world to me,” I told her. “Thank god my silly brother found somebody like you. Without you, I don’t know where he would be.”

  “Oh, he would be fine,” she said unconvincingly.

  I knew better. He wouldn’t be fine. He would probably still be broke. Dalilah sacrificed a lot to make sure that Luke got his shot in the limelight. She married a beast whom she hated, because the beast blackmailed her into it by threatening to sabotage Luke’s career if she didn’t. That same beast, though, was responsible for Luke getting the shot of a lifetime that eventually led to his current success. It took a lot of twists and turns before that happened, though. In the end, Nottingham, the potential instrument of their destruction, really was the instrument for Luke’s success. It was ironic how it happened, though.

  “So,” I said to her. “When will I hear from you about yay or nay?”

  “Tomorrow. Luke and I are going to talk about this seriously when we get back to our hotel room.”

  “Are you sure you can’t stay here? I have that guest bedroom that’s all nice and cozy and ready for the two of you.”

  “We will, but not tonight. Tonight, we need some space to talk about this.”

  I hugged her again. “Well, make sure that he’s really and truly on board with all of this. If he has any doubts about it, then don’t do anything. I certainly don’t want to be the thing that drives the two of you apart. And make sure that he’s not grudgingly accepting it. I’ve had experience with that, and it always comes back to bite you in the future. You know, he’ll finally say ‘sure, let’s do it.’ Then, in every fight you guys have in the future, he’ll use it to throw back in your face. I don’t want that, and I know that you don’t either.”

  “Oh, I know about that. That’s something that every couple has to face – the thing that’s tucked away, just waiting for the right moment to strike. So yes Serena, I’ll make sure that he doesn’t have any hesitation. But, of course, if something happens and I do go to prison…”

  “Luke will never forgive me. I know that.” I knew that, but I was willing to take that chance, anyhow. It was that important to me. If there was another way, any other way at all, I certainly would never take that kind of chance. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and these were certainly desperate times.

  I felt terrible, though, that Dalilah was taking that chance as well. She was doing it for me, and only for me. Well, for herself as well, according to what she said earlier about unleashing her creativity, but mainly for me. I loved her more than I could love any family member, and she wasn’t even blood.

  We went back into the dining room, where Luke was busy holding a fussy Olivia. The little girl was crying, and Luke was bouncing her up and down and talking softly to her. I smiled at the sight of my brother and his new baby. I also felt a pang, knowing that I was putting a wrench, a possible wrench, into their happiness. I wished that it could be helped, but I knew that it couldn’t be.

  Damn Slade and his loyalty to his mother and to me. Damn Charlotte for doing this. I hated Malcolm for doing this as well, but I realized that he was nothing but a pawn in Charlotte’s sick games. One man was dead and another man was on the ropes, all because the woman was sick in the head. Sick and psychotic.

  “Well, we better be going,” Dalilah said, with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “It’s getting late and Olivia is getting fussy.”

  Luke gave Olivia to Dalilah and looked at me sheepishly. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” he told me. “You caught me off guard. I don’t still resent you.”

  “Yes you do,” I said with a smile, so he didn’t think that I was too angry about what he said. “But that’s okay.”

  “No, Serena, I…” Then he shrugged. “I guess there is still some resentment there, but I’m working on it. Dalilah is right – you saved my ass in the Nottingham business. I couldn’t have done it without you. You put your own self on the line there for me. I’m not saying that I’m ever going to be on board with Dalilah doing this for you, but, at the same time, I know that it has to be done. At any rate, we’re going to talk about it.”

  “That’s all I ask,” I said, giving Luke a hug. “Now you two get that little one to your hotel room, and I’ll be seeing you soon, okay?”

  Luke nodded, looking a bit perplexed. “You really have changed,” he said. “How did you change so much?”

  “Years of therapy.” I wanted to tell Luke about my secret pain and all that I had gone through, but I didn’t really have words. I didn’t really want to open up to anyone about the rape, although Dalilah knew about the molestation when I was a baby. That was something that I just discovered through hypnotherapy, so, because it was something that was fresh, I did want to talk about that with people I felt close to. For some reason, I had always felt close to Dalilah, as if she were my sister. I had a sister, Amy, but I never felt close to her. She was so different from me, and we never did find common ground. So Dalilah was really the sister that I never had in a way.

  We said our goodbyes, and I cleaned up the kitchen. There really wasn’t too much to clean up at that point though, as Luke and Dalilah had apparently done most of it, bless their hearts. There were a few dishes, and I put them in the dishwasher while the two dogs stood at my feet. They tended to follow me everywhere, anyhow, but especially when I was in the kitchen. They knew that I would possibly give them a treat. They stood at my feet, looking up at me expectantly, Gigi’s tiny non-tail wagging and Bella’s entire body doing the same. Gigi barked a tiny little bark, a sound that was so cute and precious that I felt that I had to give them both a little something. I went to my ceramic cookie jar and got them both a greenie, and they took it eagerly into the next room to eat it on their dog beds.

  Tiny things make those two happy. If only it were the same with humans. We humans were messy, complicated and sometimes ruthless. We were jealous and irrational. And sometimes, as with the case of Charlotte, we were just plain nuts.

  As I did the few dishes that were still not clean, I pondered. Charlotte was not a suspect in the case, and I didn’t know how to make her a suspect in the case. It was mind-bending. She had kidnapped me and almost killed me, yet there was no way to prove any of that. If I could prove it, it would go a long way to show that she was behind everything. The fact that Malcolm was the perpetrator made the whole thing infinitely more complex.

  How was I going to nail them both? I couldn’t go to Malcolm and ask him to investigate Charlotte as a suspect. That would send off alarm bells, and I probably would end up fired from the firm. I was going to have to, somehow, someway, show that Charlotte was unhinged enough to have somebody murdered,
just to frame the man with whom she was obsessed.

  And I was going to have to do it completely on my own.

  Chapter 20

  About 2 AM, I awoke with a start. I was feeling just a bit hungry, but I didn’t really need to eat, so I didn’t wander into the kitchen. The dogs were snoring on my bed, and they both looked up at me when I awoke. They were light sleepers, as dogs usually were. I guessed that was instinct for dogs – if they weren’t light sleepers, their ancestors would have been in trouble in the wild. It was a survival mechanism.

  Bella and Gigi sleepily wagged their tails, before putting both of their little heads down and the snoring began again. I smiled as I sat there in the dark, willing myself back to sleep. After a few minutes, though, I knew that I was going to be awake for awhile, so I got out my laptop.

  This was the first quiet moment I had since the kidnapping. The first moment where nothing was going on – no guests coming over, no Slade wanting to see me – and it was the first moment where I decided to investigate Charlotte online. It was remarkably easy to do, at least under her stage name. Just typing in “Charlotte Boswell,” brought up a multitude of pages. Her IMDb page, her Wikipedia page, and tons of articles about her rise from supermodel to the Hollywood world. Critics were saying that she was one of the few models who could actually act. She had been in just two independent films, but they had been carefully chosen for her to play against type, and she had apparently knocked the socks off of some of the major movie critics.

  The consensus was that she was the one to watch in the coming years.

  Not that any of this was interesting to me. I was so out of touch with the Hollywood scene and with movies in general that I barely knew who she was. I was a bit surprised that she was becoming so acclaimed, but I really shouldn’t have been. Of course she was an amazing actress – she was crazy. The roles that she had taken on, that of a junkie in a Gus Van Sant film and as a prostitute in another independent film, by a director that I didn’t recognize, were suited for somebody like her.