Chapter 60
Sydney sits in a sidewalk café, a glass of white wine in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
She smokes when and as much as she likes of late.
One day she’ll quit, but not now, not while she’s still recovering from all that’s happened.
And not while she’s living in France. Her habit helps her blend in with the Europeans, keeps her inobtrusive.
One day, when it’s safe, she’ll return to America and get healthy.
For now, she’ll let herself lean on this crutch.
It’s autumn, a bite in the air, but the sun filters through pale clouds and the café is equipped with tall heat lamps.
Syd huddles into her thick sweater, takes a last drag on her cigarette, and butts it out in the ashtray.
Her phone rests on the collaged tabletop, and she picks it up, types in the first of her usual search items. Dread tightens her chest, makes her breath shallow as the results load, but it’s subtler than it once was. It’s manageable.
She only checks for news on the fatal mushroom poisoning near Cadaqués about once a day now.
It’s been nearly six months since she’d called the police from her Madrid hotel, asked them to do a welfare check on her husband.
She hadn’t heard from him for several days, she told them, and he wasn’t answering her calls.
It would take her roughly eight hours to drive home.
Could an officer make sure Curtis and his friend were okay?
They weren’t, of course, and Sydney knew it.
She’d sent the professionals because she’d been too afraid to return and find them dead, their bodies bloated by kidney failure, yellowed by liver damage.
She hadn’t wanted to deal with the vomit, shit, blood, and whatever other bodily fluids would have seeped from their beings.
The police had found the two men, one of them still miraculously clinging to life, the other deceased.
An ambulance was summoned. And the coroner.
The juez de instrucción, a woman in her fifties with jet-black hair and a no-nonsense air, had concluded that the death was a tragic accident.
A simple mistake. There was no evidence to suggest anything nefarious.
No money had ever changed hands between the two victims. And the truth was too complex, too bizarre, to be pieced together by even the most brilliant investigative mind.
Before Sydney had fled, she’d had the wherewithal to erase the video footage and disconnect the surveillance cameras.
She’d thrown some clothes into a small suitcase, grabbed a few toiletries and some cash.
Had she left behind any loose ends? Her head had been a muddle of emotions: Disgust. Hatred. Loss. Sorrow.
But to the police and the coroner, Sydney’s absence was completely ordinary.
She’d gone for a week of shopping and sightseeing in Madrid while her husband caught up with his mate Damian.
When the men had fallen ill, they’d logically assumed they had mild food poisoning or a common virus.
They were men after all. And neither of them was a physician or healthcare professional.
When things turned dire, they hadn’t been able to call for help because their phones were damaged.
They were found on the pool deck, destroyed by water.
Clearly, they had been forgotten outside in the sudden rainstorm.
But Sydney knew otherwise. She knew Curtis had his phone beside the bed on the last night of his life.
Bianca must have tossed the devices in the pool before she left, ensuring there was no way Curtis could save himself.
One of them, likely Damian, had fished the phones out of the water, but it was too late. They were destroyed. Useless.
Sydney assumed Bianca had taken her advice, gone straight to the hospital.
But which one had she visited? Surely another death cap poisoning would have raised suspicion with the medical staff.
Perhaps Bianca had driven to a different hospital than the one that processed the poisoned men.
With appropriate and timely medical care, she could make a full physical recovery. Had she made it in time?
The authorities hadn’t mentioned Bianca’s presence in the house.
There were no feminine accoutrements that couldn’t be attributed to Sydney.
The other woman has vanished without a trace, like she was a sylph, a spirit sent to reveal Curtis’s horrible secrets.
Her presence had lifted the veil on Sydney’s marriage, showed her the toxic truth of the man she had forgiven.
Bianca visits Sydney’s mind regularly. She wonders where Bianca is, if she feels her sister’s death has been avenged.
Is she able to move forward now that Curtis is dead?
Or is she still hell-bent on retribution, moving up the ladder from Curtis to the next rung?
Sydney takes a mouthful of wine, tries to wash away the dark and ugly feelings that have surfaced.
But it will take more than an afternoon glass of Sancerre to erase the disturbing memories.
She may not have discovered her husband’s body, but the detective had described the scene in remarkable English. And remarkable detail.
They had discovered Curtis, dead, in their marital bed, clutching a framed photo of their wedding.
The policía had assumed he’d grabbed it off the nightstand in his final moments, grasping for comfort as he slipped away.
But that photo had never been displayed in their new home.
At some point in Curtis’s slow, agonizing death, he’d found the picture in a storage box.
He’d taken it to the bedroom, and despite everything, he’d died with Sydney in his arms.
Somehow, Damian had survived the poisoning.
He was much bigger and stronger than Curtis (a fact he never let her husband forget), and his size had saved his life.
He was found collapsed in the front hallway, going for help, trying to be the hero.
Sydney doesn’t know if he’ll ever recover.
Damian has likely suffered permanent organ damage.
He may need a transplant to survive. His mother had flown over from the States, had been at his bedside.
Sydney doesn’t know where Damian is now, and she doesn’t care.
The Spanish police may have questioned him, but Curtis cooked that meal without Syd’s knowledge.
Bianca threw the phones in the pool. Syd is not culpable.
Sydney had to call Curtis’s mother too, a few hours after she’d identified the bloated, jaundiced carcass that was once her husband.
Curtis had never fostered a relationship between the two women in his life.
He’d painted his mother as stern, cold, and emotionally stunted.
But Curtis was adept at lying. And yet the stoicism, almost indifference, with which the older woman accepted the news of her son’s tragic and untimely death told Syd her partner had been honest about that, at least. Curtis’s mother didn’t request her son’s body be brought home, didn’t mention a funeral or service.
So, Sydney donated his remains to science.
She takes the last sip of her wine and sets down the empty glass. A silver-haired waiter, distinguished in his white shirt and bow tie, approaches. “Une autre, madame?”
“Pourquoi pas?”
Why not? Sydney’s evening stretches long and lonely in front of her.
She loves this charming little village outside of Toulouse, and her French is passable.
But she keeps to herself for obvious reasons.
She’s not officially on the run. She may not even be in danger, but she is cautious.
She sold her husband’s car and bought a nondescript secondhand Fiat in her own name.
She uses cash often. She smiles and nods but doesn’t engage in conversations.
Sydney had kept her promise to Curtis to report the pedophile ring anonymously.
Not because she owed him anything but because she knew West Beatty and his cohorts would be ruthless.
They wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate her to save themselves.
And so, she’d used a computer in the business center of a Spanish hotel.
She’d created an alias email address and sent all the details she knew to a New York journalist and the state attorney. And now, she waits. And she watches.
So far, there have been no charges and no arrests.
But Syd’s a lawyer; she knows it takes time to build a case.
And she knows West Beatty has the resources to cover his tracks, that he can hire the sharpest attorneys to help him wriggle out of accusations.
But she hasn’t given up hope that all these predators will be brought to justice.
Tapping on her phone, she peruses several American news sites, entering relevant search terms:
West Beatty
New York Sex trafficking
New York Pedophile Ring
Curtis Lowe
Waters and Lowe Property Management
A headline appears that sticks her inhale in her throat. A tight fist of anxiety presses hard on her sternum as she looks at the familiar face beaming in the photograph. He’s on a beach somewhere, tanned and handsome. She taps on the article, hunches over her phone and reads.
Simon Waters, owner of Waters and Lowe Property Management, dead at 46
A successful Manhattan businessman has been found deceased in his Midtown office. Simon Waters owned one of the city’s largest and most successful property management firms. Waters died of an apparent suicide.
Waters formed the property management business with his college friend Curtis Lowe, who left the partnership last year. Lowe died earlier this year in an accidental poisoning at his house in Spain.
Simon Waters had been divorced for several years from former model Nicole Kwan. The couple had two sons together and remained close. In a statement, Kwan said her ex had been stressed lately and struggling with drugs and alcohol. He was 46.
Three possibilities run through Sydney’s mind.
Simon killed himself out of guilt for his forced role in the pedophile ring.
He was a father; he must have hated himself for facilitating something so exploitive and disgusting.
And he would have been terrified of being found out: by his colleagues, his ex-wife, his two boys…
He would have been even more terrified of West Beatty.
Simon had tried to back out of the role Curtis had foisted upon him, refused to provide venues for the debaucherous events.
Maybe he’d even threatened to expose the illegal activities.
Simon had become a liability. So, West Beatty had sent one of his henchmen to kill him and made it look like a suicide.
Somehow, Bianca got to him.
Whatever happens, Simon’s death means the wheels are in motion.
The rats are scurrying, hiding, and trying to protect themselves.
Syd will need to be extra vigilant now. She glances around, but she’s surrounded by locals sipping rosé and beer, engaged in their rapid French conversations.
She breathes through her diaphragm, assures herself that she’s safe.
Curtis’s death was ruled an accident. The monsters have no reason to suspect that the grieving widow knew her dead husband was involved in a pedophile ring.
But she’d left a reputation as a smart, savvy attorney in her wake. She can’t be too careful.
She’d sold the Spanish house shortly after the “tragedy.” José Sainz had assured her that her husband’s accidental death would not need to be disclosed, that the mishap wouldn’t affect the value.
And he’d been right. Once the mess had been cleaned up, the property had sold quickly and slightly over asking.
The money is enough to finance her nomadic lifestyle for years if she wants that.
Her brother, Reid, knows she’s traveling, healing, dealing with her grief.
He’d been so angry with Curtis when he’d admitted his affair, but Reid was shaken by the news of his brother-in-law’s sudden passing.
He’d offered to come to Europe, to bring Sydney home, to provide comfort and support.
Her brother is all she has left now. But Sydney had explained that she needed solitude to process all that had happened.
One day, she’ll go back, but she’s not ready yet.
Her glass of wine arrives, and she smiles at the waiter, takes a sip. For now, she will stay in Europe, enjoy the culture, the wine, and a cigarette every now and then.
And she’ll watch from afar as justice is finally served.