He stuffed the contents back into the file, but his face showed no emotion, except of course those involuntary reflexes that poker players all over the world would pay big bucks to eliminate entirely.
“This has nothing to do with Teresa’s disappearance.”
“Oh, I think it does. It shows the lengths to which you’re willing to go to be the homicidal control freak we all know and love.”
He held up one of the printouts. It was a copy of the insurance policy Teresa had taken out. “I told Agent Carson. I didn’t take out this ridiculous policy on Teresa. She did. She took one out on me and one on herself. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Maybe you did,” I said with an indifferent shrug, doing my best to protect Teresa, “maybe you didn’t. But it sure looks bad, in my opinion.” If he knew she’d been planning to leave him, there was no telling what he’d do to her.
“How much do you want?” he asked.
I maneuvered myself so that when he faced me, the hidden camera would pick him up. It was in the wall clock. An old trick, but a good one. I walked to the wall and leaned against it just underneath the clock.
“Well, Keith,” I said — I couldn’t help myself, “you seem to be doing very well in the net-worth department. How about an even mil?”
He scoffed, then leveled a really angry glower on me. “You’ve got to be kidding.” He folded the envelope and stuffed it into the back of his pants. His light coloring made the emotion rushing through him turn his skin a ruddy shade of scarlet.
“I have another copy, don’t worry.”
A wave of anger and panic washed over him. “How can I get that one as well?”
“I told you,” I said with a smile, “by giving me lots and lots of money.”
He turned from me, his fury almost uncontrollable. Seems the charmer had a temper after all. “I don’t have that kind of money,” he said, dropping all pretense. “Why the fuck—?” He stopped before incriminating himself any further.
I needed to give him more incentive. Perhaps the threat of imminent death would do the trick. “Let me assure you,” I said, offering him my own poker face, “I have one and only one copy of that file you’re holding. I won’t make another. It goes to the highest bidder.”
Surprised, he stepped back, his gaze darting along the floor in thought before returning to me. “You’re bluffing. The cops won’t pay for this information.” A triumphant smile slid across his face. “They’ll arrest you for withholding evidence. It’ll be useless in court.”
With every ounce of my being, I wanted to snort. Useless? In his dreams. He was playing me, so I’d play him. “I have no intention of handing this information over to the police. I said the highest bidder, not the most desperate.” Uncle Bob was going to kill me for that statement.
He fixed a suspicious frown on me. “Then who are you talking about?”
“I have someone in mind who’d be willing to pay lots of money for that information.” I nodded, indicating the file he’d stashed. “A man with a vested interest in the health of your wife.”
The moment realization dawned, a stupefying kind of dread fired his synapses and flooded his nervous system. I could feel it weigh him down like cement blocks on the feet of a drowning man. But he decided to keep up the pretense. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“Okay.” I shrugged and headed for the door, when he grabbed my arm none too gently and jerked me toward him.
“Who is it?” he asked, curious now, wondering if I really knew who’d pay good money for his life.
With a roll of my eyes, I said, “Luther, Dr. Yost. Luther Dean.”
The emotion that swept over him was hard to put into words, but if I had to, I’d say it was one part astonishment and two parts paralyzing terror. I realized in that moment that he’d had a run-in with Luther at some point. He was too afraid not to have. I found the idea fascinating. Clearly Luther had been holding out on me.
Left with no other choice, he ran back to what he knew. A curtain fell over the second act, and the third stepped through it into the spotlight. He pressed his mouth together, regret and shame saddening his features as he amped up the lost-puppy expression he’d used so successfully over the years. I tried not to giggle.
“Charlotte,” he said, his voice soft, hesitant, “I know you have no reason to trust me, but I felt a connection to you from the moment we met. I can explain everything, if you’ll just give me a chance.”
“Really?” With my best doe-eyed expression, I stepped closer. My breath quickened — mostly because I threw up a little in my mouth — and I bit my bottom lip in uncertainty before I said, “Because I’d have to be all kinds of stupid to trust you at this point, Keith.”
He clamped his jaw together and turned away from me.
“How many have you killed now? Let’s count,” I said, holding up my thumb. “Okay, there’s Ingrid, but that’s a given.”
“Shut up,” he said, a sharp edge to his voice.
“But I’ve just started. Ingrid’s mother,” I continued, holding up my index finger. “Yolanda’s niece.” When the stillness of utter shock came over him, I said, “Oops, never mind. She lived, thank goodness. No thanks to you. I wonder what that little girl’s father, Xander Pope, would pay for this information? Maybe he and Luther could go Dutch.” He took a menacing step closer, so I brought out the big gun, the one thing that would send him running for the hills. “Oh, and let’s not forget Teresa’s sister, Monica.”
He stopped, his eyes widening a split second before he caught himself.
“Arsenic in the sparkling water? Really, Nathan? That’s the best you could do?”
His jaw dropped a solid two inches as he gazed at me.
“Yep. I know it all. Along with all those receipts and reports and things you stuffed down the back of your pants — not that I would touch them now — I figure you’ll get a fairly long sentence if Luther doesn’t get to you first.”
He stood without moving, his mind racing a mile a minute.
“Now you’ve done harm to two of Luther’s sisters. I doubt he’ll see the bright side of any of this.”
“I … I can try to scrape something up,” he said at last.
“You’d best have a really sharp scraper, ’cause I ain’t cheap, Keith.”
He glanced around like a cornered animal before refocusing on me. “Will you meet me tonight? We can discuss this, make arrangements.”
That time I did snort. “So you can kill me and bury my lifeless body in a shallow grave?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I would never do that to you.”
Oh, for the love of chocolate. I needed to throw a ticking bomb into the mix.
“Actually, I’m having dinner with Luther Dean tonight. Seems he was quite taken with me, or so his sister says.”
With a frustrated sigh, he scrubbed his fingers over his face. I could imagine the walls closing in on him as his options dwindled down to nonexistent.
“I can get you a hundred grand right now,” he said.
“Cash? Small, nonsequential bills?”
He nodded. “I can get you more later.”
“And I’m just supposed to trust you’re good for the rest? A man who kills wives for a living?”
He lowered his head. “If you had known my first wife. If you’d seen what kind of woman she was. Hateful and materialistic.”
“Like you?”
Fury reared inside him, but he stayed calm on the outside. “You have no idea what she was like.”
“You mean, besides alive?”
He turned from me for something like the tenth time, the melodramatic move losing its efficacy, but he had a decent-enough ass. “She was going to take everything from me. Everything I’d worked for. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Better. We were definitely getting there. “So, you killed her?” When he didn’t answer, I added, “Wouldn’t a good lawyer have sufficed?”
With a contemptuous sneer, he said, “So she could lie in court? Tell the judge I’d beat her or something?”
