On screen, Caitlin nodded. It had been four years since the attack. Seven since the family studio portrait. Her blonde hair was now cropped closer to her head. She’d lost that cheerleader prettiness. It had turned into something else, something more fragile, almost ethereal.
That can work for you, Michelle thought. Lots of people found vulnerable-looking women attractive. They weren’t threatening. They needed protection.
“Yes. I felt that not enough attention was given to the victims of violent crimes. So we try to act as advocates for them.”
“But you push for stronger public safety measures as well.”
“Well, that goes hand in hand with supporting victims.” Caitlin sat on a couch in what might have been her own home. An expensive cream-colored sofa in a large living room. Michelle couldn’t make out many details the way the shot was framed, but she thought that the sofa might be a Barbara Barry.
“When people have been victimized, they are desperate to have their sense of safety restored. And by knowing that violent offenders will be locked up where they can’t hurt anybody else, they get just a little bit of their own security back.”
She smiled. A sad, tentative smile.
It wasn’t just that she looked vulnerable, Michelle realized. If anything Caitlin was beautiful now, instead of merely pretty.
“Drugs have taken over our cities.” A deep, bourbon-voiced narrator, who Michelle was pretty sure also did trailers for Hollywood movies.
Grainy black and white shots of addicts drawing on crack pipes, white smoke swirling around their pockmarked, skeletal faces. Graffiti-bombed street corners, with furtive dealers exchanging brown paper bags of contraband.
“Yet Felix Gallardo insists that drugs aren’t a problem.”
A shot of a politician at an impromptu gathering-outside a courthouse? City Hall? Surrounded by news mikes. “Drugs aren’t the problem,” he said in quick staccato rhythms. Michelle wondered if the bite had been edited. “We’re spending too much money on law enforcement solutions-”
A freeze-frame on his face, his expression caught so that he appeared to be half-drunk. A crawl of text with statistics, with the narrator reading highlights: the percentages of violent felons with illegal drugs in their systems, drug-related traffic accidents, the crimes committed by addicts, the number of kids who’d smoked pot last year, rolling by so quickly they were hard to read.
Then, a smash cut to a young black man wearing prison scrubs, sitting at an institutional aluminum table, clasped hands resting in front of him. “I was so high I was crazy,” he said, staring at his awkward, knobby hands. “So, yeah, I shot them. I killed them.”
Back to the freeze-frame of the politician and the voice-over artist.
“Drugs aren’t a problem. Really, Felix?” The shot fading to a black screen. “Paid for by Safer America.”
Michelle picked up her Emily iPhone and called Gary.
“I do have a few questions. Are you free tomorrow, for breakfast?”
Chapter Six
“So, if it doesn’t say ‘organic,’ and it uses canola oil, doesn’t that mean it’s genetically modified?”
“Probably.”
“And same thing with soy?”
Michelle gritted her teeth and nodded.
“What’s the world coming to, when you can’t even trust tofu?” Gary said with a sigh.
“Just coffee,” Michelle told the hotel waitress.
“Yeah, me too.” Gary settled back in his bucket chair. “I’ve been doing intermittent fasting anyway.”
They sat in a corner of her hotel’s coffee shop, underneath a painting of an offshore oil rig done in Day-Glo colors, which looked to be part of a series also decorating the adjoining bar and lobby.
“So, I want to make sure that I understand the situation,” Michelle said. “Caitlin’s actively involved with fundraising for this foundation of hers. Right?”
“Right.”
“And the foundation contributes to political campaigns.”
Gary nodded.
“And there’s a national election coming up in November.”
The waitress arrived with their coffee and a white ceramic pitcher and a matching container of sugar and sweetener. Gary took a sip of his coffee and made a face. “Is that half-and-half?” he asked. He winked at Michelle. “I’ll risk the bovine growth hormone.”
“So Caitlin’s going to be in the public eye a lot,” she continued, after the waitress left.
“Yeah. That’s one of the reasons we need you for this job. She can go a little overboard on the cocktails, and we can’t afford to have that happen on the national stage.”
“And I’m her babysitter.” Michelle had a sip of her coffee. He was right; it was pretty bad. She poured a little half-and-half from the pitcher into the cup. “How does that make sense?”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a boyfriend in jail on pot charges,” she said in a low voice. “Odds are I’m going to get questioned by, by the FBI, or whoever’s investigating this at some point. Even if I’m just standing in the background, things like that get found out. So if you really want this to work-”
He snorted. “Oh, I see where you’re going on this-I should get Danny’s case dismissed. Actually, I have a better idea. Emily might have a pot-smuggling boyfriend. Michelle doesn’t.”
It took her a moment to get what he meant.
“Wait… you want me… you want Michelle-?”
“Sure! We can work that tragic widow angle. Maybe you and Caitlin can do some bonding over it.”
Sucker punched again.
Stupid, she told herself. You’re so stupid. He’s already thought two steps ahead of you.
She sipped her coffee, which tasted even worse as it cooled off. Thought about Gary’s move. And realized, it still didn’t quite make sense, not on the surface, anyway.
“I guess I don’t get why that’s better,” she said. “So Danny’s a pot smuggler. My husband cheated investors. If he hadn’t died, he’d be in jail.”
“Well, we’ve been doing a little cleanup on your late husband’s business. He still doesn’t come off great, but more like, incompetent and in over his head, rather than an outright crook.” He pointed at her, grinning. “You, on the other hand, were safely out of the loop. Which is the truth.” He leaned closer. “Right?”
She felt her cheeks flush. She knew what he was implying. He’d accused her of being Tom’s accomplice before.
She hadn’t known. But she’d suspected. And she hadn’t done a thing about it.
“Right,” she said, keeping her voice steady.
“And your motivation is, you’re trying to move beyond the pain of the loss by helping others. Plus, you need the money.”
“Where have I supposedly been for the last two years?”
“Mexico, and then you traveled. You know, looking for meaning, or romance, or what have you. Like in all those books you women love. Not staying in any one spot for too long. India, China, Vietnam, Bali… all places you’ve been, don’t worry about that.”
“Places I’ve been a long time ago. Gary, this, this is…”
Crazy.
She stopped herself from saying it. “Crazy” was how Gary operated.
“Yeah, maybe skip China,” he muttered. “Too many changes.”
“Problematic,” she said.
“It’ll work. Everything will check out.”
“I left some loose ends. The lawsuits-”
“Fixed. Turns out a little hedge-fund group came in and bought up the remaining assets of your husband’s business. As a part of the deal, they settled with the original investors.”
She hadn’t thought there were any remaining assets. Just the shell of Tom’s company and ownership on paper of a project he hadn’t been able to develop, the one that had taken their house, taken their savings, that had bankrupted his business. As far as she’d known, anything left had been hopelessly encumbered when she’d gone to Mexico over two years ago, for her five-day vacation.