Клео Коул - Espresso Shot

Think, Clare. Do something!

“Excuse me, Doctor?” I called as he unlocked the heavy door.

He turned. “Yes?”

“May I trouble you for a glass of water? I’d really like to take a few of these now...” I shook the bottle. “Please? My pain is bad.”

The man paused for a moment then nodded. He left the room. When he came back with a half-empty glass, I was sitting, uninvited, on his shabby sofa.

“Here you are,” he said.

The glass wasn’t the cleanest, but I had to make it look good. I put on a show of shaking a few pills into my hand. I knocked back the imaginary hit and took a drink of the stale water. Then I leaned my head against the couch back and pretended to close my eyes—the junkie getting her fix.

Winslow was still standing over me. His unkempt odor combined with the smell of creosote was making me queasy; the loudly ticking grandfather clock was close to maddening.

Through the bottom of my lashes, I watched the cadaverous drug dealer watching me. Winslow stood motionless, his dilated pupils sweeping my body up and down. For long minutes, my breathing stopped altogether and my heartbeat pulsated like something out of Poe.

Mike’s out there listening, I reminded myself. The ticklish wire between my breasts was my lifeline, the only rope that could save me if this scarecrow in sweats decided to slip me something other than narcotics.

Winslow’s skinny limbs began to move. Every muscle in my own limbs stiffened, ready to fight him off if I had to.

But I didn’t have to.

The gamble was working. The man moved away. When he finally settled into a nearby chair, I released my held breath. He misunderstood the reason for my sigh.

“Good, isn’t it?” he whispered.

“It always takes a little while to kick in for me.” I opened my eyes. “You don’t mind if I hang until it does, do you? Like I said, my pain is bad.”

Winslow gave me a little smile—one junkie to another. “I understand.”

I scanned the dreary space, deciding the best way to prod more information out of Winslow was to goad him.

“You know, it’s hard for me to believe you and Breanne were a couple. She’s so dynamic. A woman with exquisite taste in fashion, art, wine—”

Winslow laughed. “She didn’t start out that way. When I met Breanne, she was a struggling journalist. She could barely afford the rent on her East Village walk-up.”

“That must have been a long time ago.”

“She was in her twenties. I was considerably older.”

“The first marriage for both of you?”

Winslow shook his head. “I’d been married for over a decade to a proper wife. I had two proper children, as well, and operated a proper pharmaceutical company.”

“So... how did the two of you meet?”

“Breanne interviewed me for a piece in New York Trends —”

“You mean Trend , right?”

“ New York Trends doesn’t exist anymore. Breanne saw to that.”

“Oh, I see... so what did Breanne interview you about, exactly?”

“An antiwrinkle pill my drug company had developed. It was quite effective, in some ways revolutionary.”

“Wow. Sounds lucrative. So what happened? Did you two fall in love during the interview?”

“Love...” Winslow laughed. The sound was harsh and hollow. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes as if envisioning the past. “Breanne was stunning back then, dazzling, even more of a beauty than she is now. It was hard for me to concentrate with her sitting across from me. She seemed impressed by my background, my academic records at Haverford and Princeton, my ‘patina of refinement’ as she called it. She was flirtatious and seductive. And so we had sex, lots of it.”

“And you married her.”

Winslow opened his eyes. “I didn’t want to, but Breanne wasn’t content with being a mistress. She found a way to inform my wife about our relationship.”

“Was that really such a big deal? I mean, you probably weren’t happy in your first marriage, right?”

Winslow shifted his wasted frame. “The breakup of my marriage caused me problems. My family was unhappy. They settled the Winslow fortune on my ungrateful offspring. At the time, I didn’t care. I still had my company, and I had Breanne. It was enough for me. It was not enough for her...”

The man sighed, fished a vial of pills out of his pocket, and dumped a few into his mouth, swallowing them dry. Then he stared off into space.

Come on, Clare. Find another button to press...

“So why did you and Breanne break up exactly? It sounds like you had a pretty good thing going.” (If you can call a torrid extramarital affair capped by a heartbreaking revelation for the wife and kids a “pretty good” thing.)

“Breanne wanted more than just a marriage. She always wanted more. It’s her defining characteristic.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She worked at New York Trends , but she wanted her own magazine. So she convinced me to give her $250,000.”

“For what?”

“A pitch. That’s what she called it. A prototype and multimedia demonstration for Reston-Miller Publications.”

“So your money helped start her magazine. That was really nice of you.”

“Nice? I was a dim-witted dupe . Within a year the bitch dropped me like an out-of-season handbag. She started an affair with the photographer who shot her magazine’s first cover. Then she filed for divorce, the greedy little lying tart ...”

Winslow’s mood was getting uglier by the minute, and I wondered what he was on right now. While I needed to push him off balance emotionally, the drugs were heightening his agitation, and I was starting to worry about physical safety.

I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I wanted badly to nail this creep for Hazel Boggs’s murder. To do that, I had to get him to admit he wanted his ex-wife dead. Of course, I didn’t want to end up dead in the process. Quinn would never forgive me for being that stupid.

“So, was the divorce messy?” I asked, pressing on.

“ Expensive is what it was. Bloodsucking lawyers, all of them. Of course, I still had plenty of money then so I didn’t pursue a percentage of her magazine. I wanted to be rid of her, and I assumed Trend would fail in its first year, anyway. Then those bureaucratic bastards at the FDA forced me into bankruptcy.”

“The FDA?”

Quinn had said something about Winslow’s company going out of business because of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit. I made a leap.

“Was it the antiwrinkle drug? The one Breanne interviewed you about?”

“There was nothing wrong with it!” Blue veins throbbed visibly on the man’s forehead. “The FDA trumped up false data about life-threatening side effects and forced a recall!”

“I can see they robbed you blind.” I gestured to the crumbling paint, the soiled rugs, the empty spaces where possessions once existed. “I guess that’s why Monica’s deal sounded pretty sweet then, huh? How did you two hook up, anyway?”

“Oh, that...” He waved his hand. “Monica overheard me arguing with my ex-wife in her office. I only wanted the money the woman rightfully owed me.”

“You mean that $250,000? The money you lent her to start Trend ?”

“I demanded every penny back with interest. She said no. I stormed out, and Monica followed me. We had lunch, and she asked me about my past with Breanne—just like you’re doing now. Stealing the rings was her idea.”

“Yeah, Monica never could stand her boss. And Breanne made a complete fool of you, right? I’ll bet you wouldn’t mind seeing her get what’s coming to her.”