Michele Martinez - The Finishing School

He read her mind.

“Just in case you get any bright ideas, remember this,” he said, and pulled his big black gun from his coat pocket, displaying it for her.

Carmen stared at it with wide eyes.

“I’ll use it, too. I already have,” Bud bragged.

“On who?” Carmen’s voice, untried for days, came out as a hoarse croak.

“None of your business,” he said.

Carmen visualized her sister dead, and her eyes overflowed with tears.

“Shit! Stop blubbering. How the fuck am I supposed to take you out on the street like that?”

The tears rolled unchecked down Carmen’s cheeks. She just couldn’t help it. She was feeling so weak, physically and mentally. Really, she didn’t see how she could beat him at this game. He held all the cards. And now she was convinced he’d killed Lulu.

“It wasn’t anybody you know!” he exclaimed, exasperated. “But if you give me trouble, it will be. Remember, I can get to your sister whenever I feel like it.”

“No-oo, ple-ease!” Carmen wailed.

“I don’t know why you’re so fucking broken up over her! Lulu hasn’t done shit for you, Carmen. We both know she saw me at Whitney’s the other night.”

It was true. Lulu had seen him there earlier that night, had told Carmen about it. Ironically, his presence was part of what had made Carmen feel comfortable going upstairs in the first place when Whitney called her. Even at that late date, Carmen hadn’t suspected a thing. It wasn’t until the final, horrible moment in Whitney’s bathroom when she turned around and found him standing behind her that everything fell into place. She realized how corrupt he was, realized she’d picked exactly the wrong person to tell about the money. But by then it was too late. She was already caught.

“Lulu doesn’t know,” Carmen protested. “Just because she saw you, that doesn’t mean she understands.”

“Oh, she understands. Lulu’s a lot quicker than you are, Carmen. But she’s smart enough to look out for herself, so don’t expect her to come to your rescue.”

He put the gun away, grabbed a loose black overcoat and knit cap off a nearby armchair, and shoved them at her.

“Put these on. It’s time to go,” he commanded.

Looking into his dead eyes, Carmen saw no other choice. She swallowed her tears and did as she was told.

LEAVING THE JAIL after talking to Juan Carlos Peralta, Melanie was convinced of two things: First, Carmen Reyes was still alive. Second, she wouldn’t be staying that way for long.

Melanie’s suspicions of something sinister afoot at Holbrooke had been right on the money. Literally. Carmen had stumbled across a major embezzlement scheme, one that couldn’t be completed without her fingerprints transferring the final ten million. Once the money moved-presumably shortly after seven-thirty tonight-Carmen became not only unnecessary but a huge liability, which meant Melanie had to find her ASAP. And while she’d love to march right into the Holbrooke benefit and haul Patricia Andover off for a haute couture perp walk, she didn’t have enough hard evidence. She needed to let the scheme unfold and pounce at the right moment.

But there was something major that Melanie just didn’t get. What did any of this Holbrooke stuff have to do with the heroin case she’d been assigned to investigate? Melanie couldn’t ignore the significance of the drug angle. Just look at all the people who’d died because of it. Whitney Seward and Brianna Meyers. Fabulous Deon and-though she could barely stand to think of it-possibly Trevor Leonard as well, for informing on Esposito. And Esposito himself, killed overnight, his murder made to look like a suicide. She’d originally been convinced that the drug case held the key to finding Carmen, but now she wasn’t so sure. Were the two schemes linked at all? The only point of intersection Melanie could even think of was the fact that Carmen Reyes had last been seen at the Sewards’ apartment the night Whitney and Brianna died.

The hair stood up on the back of her neck.

For a while now, Melanie had a strange sense that somebody was out there, pulling the strings, doctoring the evidence, trying to throw her off. She hadn’t listened to this instinct before, but now she felt certain of it. Call him the unseen hand. She didn’t know who he was, or where to find him. But she knew where he’d been -at the Sewards’ the night Whitney and Brianna died and Carmen disappeared. And if he’d been there, she could think of one person who just might have seen him.

FOR MELANIE the most difficult thing about paying a visit to Charlotte Seward was that it brought her closer to her own apartment than she’d been in two whole days. The temptation to rush home and cuddle with her little girl was overwhelming. But she reminded herself that Maya was safe, snug, and well cared for, whereas Carmen and Trevor were still out there somewhere, lost in the cold night.

And night it had become. The sun had set while Melanie was on the subway heading uptown. The wind blew furiously down Park Avenue, whipping a fine spray of crystallized snow into her face. She put her head down and rushed into the Sewards’ lobby, where she stood stamping her feet while the doorman called upstairs. Melanie was almost surprised when he gave her the okay to proceed to the penthouse.

At the Sewards’ a uniformed maid escorted her to an opulent sitting room. The maid took Melanie’s coat and disappeared without a word, only to return a few minutes later with a harassed air.

“So sorry, ma’am. The missus change her mind. She’s not feeling well enough to receive you after all.” Her facial expression suggested that such whims were a regular occurrence.

“Look, tell Mrs. Seward this isn’t a matter of choice. I’m investigating a crime. Either she talks to me or she talks to the grand jury.”

“She won’t care, ma’am. She don’t listen.”

“Where’s Mr . Seward?” Melanie asked-not because she thought he’d be of assistance, quite the opposite. Melanie was half convinced James Seward was the unseen hand. Certainly he’d been in this apartment on the night in question, and his whereabouts during critical hours were still unaccounted for.

“He went to Whitney’s school for a party.”

He’d be at Holbrooke during the transfer of the ten million, then. It was more evidence pointing to Seward’s involvement. But at least the fact that he was gone now meant he couldn’t stop Melanie from wringing information out of his wife.

Melanie stood up. “Take me to Mrs. Seward,” she demanded.

“If you insist, ma’am.”

The maid turned, leading Melanie down a darkened hallway to a set of ornately carved double doors. Following her into the gloom of the bedroom, Melanie nearly gagged on the heat and the smell. It must’ve been ninety degrees in there, with a close odor consisting of equal parts unwashed flesh, musty sheets, and stale cigarette smoke. Charlotte Seward languished on a heap of pillows in the halo of a single lamp, wearing a satin bed jacket with a large wet stain down the front. The table next to her bed was littered with dozens of tiny prescription bottles-some open, some closed, some empty and lying on their sides.

“Excuse me, ma’am, this lady from the police, and she say she need to see you,” the maid announced.

“What the hell !” Charlotte said, her eyes darting toward Melanie with alarm. She was rail thin, with a frozen face that spoke of too much Botox and plastic surgery.

“I tell her no, but she insist, ma’am,” the maid said.

“Magdalena, you’re on thin ice already, and you pull a stunt like this?” Charlotte fished around on the bedside table for a cigarette, which she lit with shaking hands.