Chapter Eleven #2
She shook her head. “Maybe that was part of it, but mostly I wanted to finish her life. I wanted to keep her alive, and the only way to do that was to become her and to become the good person she was. Isla kept to herself —because of the disease, I think—so I made new friends for both of us, and I helped you because it was something Isla would have done.” She shrugged.
“Her mother never closed up her apartment or anything. Never ended her enrollment at the university. As far as I know, she never even notified anyone. They had no other close family other than that scumbag brother. It was just the two of them. There had to be a reason that happened.”
Leah turned away, couldn’t bear to look at her.
“How did you become acquainted with Raymond Douglas?” Owen asked, speaking for the first time.
Alyssa glared at Owen as if he were her enemy. Leah wanted to be furious with her. To hate her. But how could she, after hearing that story? Then again, maybe this woman was a master manipulator. A liar. A cheat. How could Leah believe anything she said?
Alyssa shrugged. “He was freshly divorced and hanging out at the same clubs as me and my friends. He was quite wealthy, had the right personality. I was drawn to him.”
“You were drawn to him, or to his money?” Leah snapped. Those flashes of anger just wouldn’t be tamped down.
Her former roommate looked at her, pain in her expression.
“I guess I was his type and he was mine. He flirted and I flirted back. But—” she looked at Leah as she told her the rest “—the chemistry fizzled quickly. We saw each other from time to time to blow off steam. But that was it.” She drew in a deep breath.
“Until a few weeks ago. He said he needed to disappear. He wouldn’t say why.
But he had a plan, he just needed a witness to…
” Another big breath. “To his murder. Then he would disappear and never be bothered again. He gave me five thousand dollars. I needed the money. The funds Isla left in her account were running out, and I was getting desperate. I was never able to access the mother’s money. ”
“He wanted a reliable witness,” Owen said, “to his fake murder. Did he ask for Leah by name?”
Alyssa looked away a long moment, then nodded. “He’d looked into the backgrounds of my closest friends, and he thought the problem Leah had that summer after her high school graduation would be useful. It would lend credibility to what he needed the police to believe.”
Leah’s breath caught. “You told him?” She had shared her deepest secrets with this woman. How could she? Right. Of course. She did whatever was most beneficial to her.
“No,” she argued, her fingers curling around the slats of the gate as if they were prison bars, “he found out about it through the background search. I never said a word.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Leah argued. “You still betrayed me.”
Her dark eyes shone with emotion. “I did. I’m sorry.”
“What went wrong?” Owen asked.
Alyssa blinked, turned her attention to him. “He wanted to stay at the lake house for a couple of days after his fake murder, so I said okay. It wasn’t like I needed the place.”
“You told the woman pretending to be your mother that you and I went there, but we didn’t. Ever.”
She looked away. “At first I couldn’t face you.
That’s why I didn’t come home on Sunday.
I went to the lake house with the intention of telling Raymond that I had to tell you the truth.
When I found the blood and the handcuffs, I panicked.
I told the woman I hired to play the role of Isla’s mother what to say and warned her that she should likely disappear too. ”
Leah wanted to shake her. “Thanks a lot.”
“I knew you’d be okay, Leah,” she said, her words urgent. “I never meant for you to get into trouble. I didn’t know this was really going down. It was supposed to be insurance fraud, not murder.”
If she expected forgiveness, she could forget it.
“Who killed him?” Owen demanded, his tone leaving no room for argument.
“That’s the thing, I have no idea. Raymond planned this whole thing himself.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t tell anyone. He would have been damned stupid to do that.
My best guess is that one of the other investors in his business figured out what he was up to and killed him.
I really don’t know. I just know he said he was in trouble. ”
“How would this investor know about his plan?” Owen asked. “Or where to find him?”
“I have no idea,” she said.
“If you told anyone and caused all this,” Leah warned, “you’re an accessory to murder.”
“No! I didn’t. I didn’t tell anyone. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m really good at keeping secrets. Like I said, all I wanted was the five thousand. But then after he disappeared, I was too terrified to talk to anyone.”
She shook her head. “But I knew I had to tell you,” she said to Leah. “I couldn’t have you believing I did this.”
Leah met her gaze and lied. “I knew you didn’t kill anyone.”
Tears welled in her former roommate’s eyes. “I’m really sorry this happened. I never meant for it to turn into this.”
“What about Douglas’s insurance policy?” Owen challenged. “Whose idea was it to put Leah as a beneficiary on his insurance policy?”
Alyssa made a face. “What insurance policy?”
“There is a ten-million-dollar life insurance policy on the man who hired you to help him fake his death,” Owen explained. “Half to his ex-wife and half to Leah.”
She looked at Leah. “What the hell, Leah?”
A blast of outrage that this supposed friend would dare accuse her roared through Leah. “That’s what I’ve been asking myself all week. What the hell?”
“Are you prepared to turn yourself in to Detective Lambert?” Owen asked. “I’m sure he would be willing to offer some sort of deal for the information you have.”
Alyssa drew back a little. “I’m not putting myself in the line of fire when it comes to a murder charge.”
“Then help us prove you didn’t do it,” Owen suggested.
Leah felt like telling him they weren’t going to bother, but that was her anger speaking. “He’s with the Colby Agency. If there is anyone who can figure this out, he can. Let him help you.”
Alyssa looked from Leah to Owen and back. “I didn’t kill anyone. I don’t know who did.”
“The list of probable suspects is not that long,” Owen told her. “You, the ex-wife or the investor you said he screwed over.”
Leah wondered if Lambert had even looked at the ex-wife. The investor was a possible lead he might not have known about. But they knew now.
“What am I supposed to call you?” Leah asked before the other woman could comment on Owen’s statement.
“Al,” she said. “Alyssa Jones is my name, but my mom and the people who used to be my friends called me Al.”
Leah nodded. “Did Raymond ever talk about his ex-wife?”
“He never said anything good, that’s for sure,” she said. “He complained that she was always having her lawyer go to a judge and demanding more child support and alimony. He wanted to be free of her in the worst way.”
“Do you know her?” Owen asked. “I would think a person as intelligent as you would have looked into the situation before agreeing to the sort of deal you made with Douglas.”
She shrugged. “I did a little checking up on her. Her family was poor. She met Raymond at a nightclub where she worked as a waitress. He always said that once she got her claws into his money, she wasn’t letting go.
He realized as soon as they had their first kid that he was never getting away from her.
She proclaimed right from the beginning that she was never going to be poor again.
He says he stuck it out as long as he could for the kids’ sakes. ”
Leah wanted to throw up. What a jerk he’d been. She would never have accepted a date with him if she had known what sort of person he was. “You couldn’t have told me this.”
Alyssa had no answer, just stared at the ground.
“Did he ever say anything about how far she would go to keep his money?” Owen asked.
The woman shrugged. “All he said was, she would never let go as long as he was alive.”
“We need to set up a meeting with Detective Lambert,” Owen said. “Will you cooperate?”
Alyssa backed up a step. “I don’t think I can do that.” She glanced at Leah. “I’m sorry, but this has gone too far. I’m out.”
“Please,” Leah urged, “your life could be in danger.” Maybe she would cooperate if she feared for herself. She certainly cared for no one else. “Someone has been watching me.”
“The black sedan,” Al suggested.
“Yes.” Leah grabbed the bars of the gate. “Do you know who it is?”
She shook her head. “That same car was watching me even before Saturday. I mentioned it to Raymond, and he said it was probably just some guy who had a thing for me, but I knew he was wrong.”
“Let us help you,” Owen urged.
“I can’t.” She took off running toward the other end of the alley.
Owen tried to open the gate, but it was locked. “Let’s go. We can cut her off on the next block.”
They ran to the car and climbed in. He shot out of the parking lot.
When he pulled out his cell phone, she put her hand on his. “Don’t call Lambert.”
He arrowed her a look. “You sure about that? We can’t be certain she was telling the whole truth.”
“I know. But we can’t be certain she isn’t either.”
He left the phone on the console and focused on driving. They drove around several blocks but never spotted Alyssa. She was gone.
Leah hoped she stayed safe. As angry as she was at her former roommate for what she had done, she didn’t want her to die too.
She just hoped they could both survive this…thing that was still somehow continuing even though Raymond was dead.
Then Alyssa could go to prison and suffer the consequences of her actions.
Leah felt like a seesaw. Up and down… One minute she was up and wanted to believe Alyssa, the next she was down and didn’t believe a word she said.
How would they ever find the truth?