Jennifer Sturman - The Key

“Okay. Where are we going, and what are you planning on doing with me? Oh, and why? It would be good to know why. Although I guess that makes it three questions.”

“We’re on the Long Island Expressway, heading out to the Hamptons.”

“Any special reason we’re heading out to the Hamptons? It’s a nice day and everything for March, but it’s still not warm enough for the beach.”

“We have some business to take care of out there. Nothing you need to worry about.”

“Jake, just tell her already,” interjected Annabel.

“No need to get her upset.”

“She’s probably figured out that she has a reason to be upset. You know, you just assume that any decent-looking woman is dumb and will believe anything you say. You’ve really become very sexist, and it’s not an attractive quality,” she said.

It occurred to me that helping to sow further dissension between my would-be killers might be beneficial. “It really isn’t an attractive quality,” I agreed. “He hides it really well, but once you get to know him-”

“-you find out that he’s a chauvinistic pig. Jake, you’re going to have to work on that.”

“I am not a sexist,” said Jake.

“Right,” said Annabel sarcastically. If this was how they got along when they were having an illicit affair, I didn’t hold out much hope for their prospects in a legitimate relationship, particularly since they were going to have to get by without a windfall from the Thunderbolt deal.

“I am not a sexist,” Jake repeated, clearly straining to keep his voice even.

“Whatever,” she replied.

“I’m not,” he said again.

“Yes, Jake, we heard you the first two times,” said Annabel. “Anyhow, Rachel, we feel bad about this, but we do need to get rid of you. So we’re going out to Glenn’s beach house. He keeps-whoops, I guess I mean kept, don’t I? I’m still getting used to that. Glenn kept a boat there, and once it gets dark, we’re going to take it out and drop you overboard. Might as well get some use out of the house and boat before that bitch Naomi takes over everything.”

“Why are you telling her all that?” Jake asked.

“She has a right to know.”

“What do you mean she has a right to know?”

“Don’t use that tone with me.”

“What tone?”

“That tone.”

“It’s not a tone.”

“Well then what would you call it?”

I didn’t want to be rude, but the squabbling was starting to get tedious, and the sooner I got the full story, the sooner the swooping and rescuing could begin, so I interrupted. “Uh, Jake? Annabel? I get what you’re up to, but I’m still a bit confused as to why.”

“Because Jake screwed up,” said Annabel.

“I did not screw up,” he protested.

“You screwed up,” she insisted. “If it weren’t for you, everybody would think Mark Anders or whatever that kid calls himself was the one who pushed Dahlia onto the tracks.”

“We were setting Rachel up, not Mark,” said Jake. “How was I supposed to know that I was giving him an alibi?”

“What do you mean, you gave Mark an alibi?” I asked.

“Wednesday morning. You got me worried that Dahlia was on to the Thunderbolt scam and that she’d tip you off, too. So we tried to solve both problems at once. Annabel dressed up like you and pushed Dahlia onto the tracks.”

“I knew things were going too smoothly. First, Rachel’s boyfriend spells out for you when she’s going to be leaving the house.”

“That was lucky. You usually take a cab in the morning, don’t you, Rach? But Peter said you’d be getting off to a late start, and I figured you wouldn’t be able to find one. And with Gallagher out of the picture, there was no reason for Dahlia to come in early, so it was a pretty safe bet when she’d be getting off the subway. Everything went perfectly, even better than if we’d actually killed Dahlia. She doesn’t remember a thing.”

“Except it didn’t go perfectly,” Annabel pointed out acidly.

“But everybody thinks Mark did it,” I said. This wasn’t exactly true, but everybody who had any decision-making power thought so-otherwise, I would have been having a much nicer day. “You have nothing to worry about. I don’t understand what your problem is, much less what it has to do with me.”

“Tell her, Jake. It’s your fault.”

“It’s not my fault,” he retorted.

“It is too your fault.”

“Look, the only reason I had Mark come into the office early that day was to help with work we had to do to make sure that the Thunderbolt deal would get done on schedule. So if it’s my fault, it’s your fault, too.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“Well, it’s not my fault, either.”

This time I decided to interrupt before they could get a good rhythm going. “Just to make sure I understand, Jake, you’re saying that you made Mark come into work early on Wednesday, and now he has an alibi for when Annabel attacked Dahlia?”

“That’s right,” said Jake.

“And once the police get around to checking his alibi, they’ll realize that somebody else must have attacked Dahlia?”

“Exactly,” said Annabel. “So, we still need you to take the blame for that. We’re going to need you to write a confession before we go out on the boat.”

It was impolite of them to assume I’d be willing to take the blame, much less write out a confession, but the finer points of etiquette seemed to have escaped them, and now didn’t seem like a productive time for a tutorial on manners. “But what was my motivation?” I asked instead. “Now that everybody knows I didn’t kill Gallagher, why would they believe I wanted to attack Dahlia? It’s not like I was worried that she knew something incriminating about me or anything I’d done.”

“That’s easy,” said Jake. “You were in love with me, and you thought I was interested in Dahlia, and you were jealous. So you attacked her, but now you know you’ll be found out, and you can’t live with yourself anymore, and you can’t have me, so you’re going to write a confession and then drown yourself.”

It took me a moment to absorb this one, and when I did, it rendered me nearly speechless.

“You’ve-what-but-”

The nerve of the guy! Not to mention the out-of-control ego.

“Are you insane?” I finally managed to spit out.

“It’s not insane,” said Annabel. “I mean, he has his issues, but you have to admit he’s a good-looking guy.”

“The chicks dig me,” Jake agreed. “It’s incredible the way they just eat up the entire ‘I’m-not-so-good-at-relationships’ pathetic loser thing.”

“Grow up,” said Annabel in disgust. “Chicks?”

“I’ve already planted a few rumors that things have been rocky with your fiancé,” added Jake. “And people know that we’ve been spending a lot of time together. And nobody would be surprised if they heard I was into Dahlia-have you seen the rack on her?”

“That’s so juvenile,” said Annabel.

“What’s juvenile?”

“You are! Did you really just refer to a woman’s breasts as ‘a rack’? I know more sophisticated thirteen-year-olds.”

“Maybe you should have stuck with Gallagher. Nobody would ever mistake him for anything less than middle-aged,” said Jake.

“Maybe I should have,” she said.

“Maybe you should have,” he repeated.

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.”

“No, you shut up.”

I was glad about the transmitter and my imminent deliverance, because it would have been truly tragic for my last hours on earth to be so lacking in witty banter. And I had all of the information I needed. It was time for the swooping and rescuing to begin.

“Ben?” I whispered as Jake and Annabel continued to argue in the front seat.