“Involved?” Clare asks.
“Involved, yes. I don’t know what to else to call it. Zoe and I traveled the world when we first got married. I made connections. Once we were back here, I was able to bring in some foreign money, some investors. Lune Bay was this shining real estate star. You can’t lose with oceanfront, Jack would always say. And he was gifted at turning a dime. But lots of the deals seemed to happen behind the scenes. I’d hear promises in restaurant meetings that never showed up on official documents. Roland Song was right in there. Jack paid off some of his business debts, helped the restaurant weather some slow times. And in exchange, Roland offered him a place to do his dirty work right out in the open. I literally watched envelopes of cash get passed around. I asked questions, but honestly? I didn’t push very hard. And that was my mistake—looking the other way because I liked Jack’s attention. He could be fatherly when he needed something from you. But I never knew the extent of his criminal dealings. He kept the worst of it from me. He saved that for Zoe.”
“The worst of it. You mean the women. There were young women involved in these ‘behind the scenes’ deals, Malcolm. Kendall Bentley, Stacey Norton.”
Malcolm nods “See? You’ve put the pieces together. Jesus. I knew you would.”
“You knew about them?” Clare’s voice shakes with rage.
“No. Not until long after,” Malcolm says. “I knew bribes were happening. Fraud. But I didn’t know about the women. The trafficking. After Jack died, Zoe really started amping it up. She wanted an empire. That’s the word she’d use. I could see the young women around, some way too young. They worked at Roland’s, or at The Cabin. And I see now that I was turning a blind eye. I regret that. A few years after Jack’s murder, a man showed up on my doorstep clutching a photo of his daughter.”
“Kendall Bentley’s father,” Clare says. “He told me that he went to you.”
“Yeah. And I played dumb with him because I didn’t know how else to handle it. But my ignorance ended then. I knew what Zoe was doing. Who she was hurting in the process. She was finding young, vulnerable women and taking them under her wing, then selling them to the highest bidder, using them to close business deals, rewarding cops or lawyers or coroners who looked the other way. Kendall disappeared. Others had too. I couldn’t believe what was happening. My wife, for God sake. I even brought it up with Colin Rourke, and he said he’d look into it. But turns out, he was in on it. A lot of cops were in on it. By then, Zoe was mostly living at her parents’ house. We barely spoke or saw each other. But after Kendall’s father came to me, that was it. I couldn’t abide by it anymore. I confronted Zoe. I told her I was going to blow her whole sick business wide open.”
“Then what?” Clare asks.
Malcolm scratches at his head and drains the last of his whiskey, waving to the bar for yet another one.
“She told me that she’d never loved me. That I’d been a fallback plan. You know, because of my family money. She could feign love, but I don’t think she ever really felt it. And in that moment, I saw the worst of her. She said she should have handled me a long time ago. That was the word she used. Handled.”
“A threat?” Clare asks.
“Very much so. A final warning. She told me there was a video of the shooting. She said that she knew I’d hired Grayson to kill her father. That she’d take the video to the police. That Charlotte would corroborate. And I understood then exactly how far she’d gone.”
“That she had her father killed.”
“Of course she did.” Malcolm laughs, shrill, eyes to the sky. “I was fucking blind. Numb. Ashamed that I’d married her, to be honest. Jack told her about the cancer. And Zoe, ever the good daughter, gave him what he wanted: a quick death. They were both just insane enough to orchestrate such a thing. It suited Zoe to have him gone. It installed her as the head of the business. She actually instructed Charlotte to film him while his wife was blowing out her candles. She told her own sister, who knew nothing about it, to film their father’s death. Then Grayson came in and shot him. And then Zoe? She took the video and tucked it away. To frame me, if necessary. She knew Charlotte was fragile. She was fueling her own sister’s drug habit.”
“Why?”
Malcolm shrugs. “To keep her pliant. To keep her out of the business. It’s the perfect crime, if you think about it. Zoe’s father was gone. She was the kingpin. She had us all exactly where she wanted us. I’m telling you, Clare. Zoe is a deadly combination. She’s evil, a soulless kind of evil, and she’s brilliant too.”
A misting rain has started to fall, but neither of them make a move to head inside.
“What about Colleen Westman? She must have known something.”
“She was the good wife,” Malcolm answers. “Whatever she knew of the family business, she’d rather die than turn on her own family. I supposed it killed her in the end.”
Clare drains her second drink.
