“They do,” replied Gibson.
“And?”
“And I don’t think their priority is finding money. It’s finding a killer.”
“Perhaps to find the killer, you have to locate the treasure,” noted Clarisse.
“I can’t tell them how to do their job.”
“But you can suggest things,” said Clarisse.
“Maybe. But if the police find the killer and the treasure, where does that leave you?” asked Gibson.
“It will make me stop looking over my shoulder.”
“Bullshit, you want the money. I doubt you’re worried about your personal security.”
I wasn’t until Mommy went missing. “We can agree to disagree on that. So what will you do next?”
“I’ve got some leads. I’ll run them down.”
“Will you be working with Wilson Sullivan on this?” asked Clarisse.
“I won’t bother to ask how you know about all that, but yes, I will, at least on some of it. And what will you be doing?”
“Don’t worry, my plate is full.”
“Did Nathan Trask know who I was?” Gibson wanted to know.
“Not that he said, just that you visited. But he could easily find out your identity.”
“He must keep eyes on his father.”
“Of course,” said Clarisse.
“So you did walk me right into a trap.”
“Look, Mickey, I want you to survive this.” Actually, I don’t care, thought Clarisse. You had your shot, Mickey Rogers Gibson. You had everything, and you pissed it all away.
Gibson barked, “You don’t care about me, which is why you let me put a bull’s-eye on my back with Trask.”
“In case you forgot, I went to visit the man directly. He knows about me, too. I didn’t use my real name, but with his resources, he could find me as well.”
“I don’t know for sure that you did visit him.”
“He has a female butler. Two guards at the front gate who wanded me. They took me up to the main house in a golf cart trimmed in gold. The place is enormous but not furnished over-the-top. He met me in a small room with a couple of chairs. He’s around five eight, fit build, early fifties, and has the darkest pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. I can hold my own with most people in pretty much any situation, but I have to confess, he intimidated me by saying almost nothing.”
“I’ll be in touch,” said Gibson. The line disconnected.
Clarisse looked down at her MICKEY GIBSON notebook. But she had nothing right now she wanted to write in it.
She stared at the muted reflection in her computer screen. There might be two or three people in that reflection, she thought. Depending on the day and the need. And whatever else was swirling around inside her head.
She wanted to punish Gibson for not living up to her potential. Why Clarisse should care about that was complicated. But, essentially, it came down to the haves and the have-nots. Gibson had had it all. Clarisse had had nothing. When you have it all, it was your duty to capitalize on it. Otherwise, you were disrespecting everyone. Including people like Clarisse.
Nothing like a little pressure, Mick, she conceded, if only to herself. Some days she wondered why she was so obsessed with the woman. But she had an obsessive personality; every shrink she’d ever been to, and they had been legion, had diagnosed that about her. She could have saved them the time and herself the money because she had already self-diagnosed. It hadn’t been hard.
In her more rational moments she had seen that Gibson owed her life’s choices to no one other than herself. And she couldn’t have foreseen marrying a louse and having two kids to raise on her own. And she was making the best of it that she could.
But another side of Clarisse refused to yield any ground on the subject.
I am giving her the chance to do something extraordinary. All she has to do is succeed and then survive. And maybe a part of me, deep down, actually wants her to.
Chapter 43
Gibson let out a long breath. It seemed like every call with the woman made her blood pressure rise and her nerves fray.
And with Nathan Trask now aware of her she had good reason to be anxious.
Yet the visit with his father had been illuminating, so there was that. Plus, he was a nice old guy and Gibson was glad to have met him. He reminded her of her dad. And he might be of use on this case. A lot of use, in fact.
She wasn’t entirely convinced that Clarisse had actually been to see Trask, despite the details, which included the golf cart Gibson had seen on her reconnoiter of the place. But for some reason, she thought the woman was probably telling the truth.
She must have some chutzpah to go into the lion’s den with that guy. Or a death wish.
She sat back and mulled over things.
Langhorne was dead, murdered. A treasure might or might not be out there to be found. Clarisse might or might not be Francine Langhorne. She had no idea where Doug Langhorne might be, if he was still alive. Nathan Trask might be involved with all this somehow. And she was informally helping Wilson Sullivan in his investigation but not getting very far with it. And there was something about Sullivan that was bothering her.
She felt fairly sure that if Clarisse was Francine, she just wanted the treasure. But had she killed her father attempting to locate it? But what didn’t make sense, as she had thought before, was why involve her? Why not just keep looking for it, with no one the wiser? And why leave the weird message on the wall? She could maybe understand the choice of poison. Francine might have told her father, Tell me where the money is and I’ll give you the antidote, that sort of thing, though she wasn’t sure there even was one for botulinum. But a man who had swindled the mob, then brought them down and lived to tell about it, did not seem gullible enough to buy that sort of line. And he was dying anyway. What did it matter to him?
I’ve got to find out who Clarisse really is. If she’s not Francine, then what’s her interest in all this? Without knowing that I’m spinning in circles.
The kids were down for short naps, so she went on her computer and read the news stories so far about the murder of Daniel Pottinger. Withheld from them was the message on the wall written presumably by two people — which might mean Francine and her brother were working together. The police had also not released the fact of Pottinger’s real identity. That was definitely an item to hold back, though she was sure they had told other law enforcement agencies. She knew her father and Art Collin would know to keep that on the QT.
Gibson didn’t necessarily believe that some old mob guy or their son or daughter had found Langhorne and taken him out. But stranger things had happened. If so, looking into Langhorne’s history was a no-brainer from an investigative point of view. Indeed, it would have been gross negligence not to.
DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO.
She had looked it up. It apparently had originated in the Book of Matthew. Jesus was speaking to the multitudes and his disciples, and he told them that the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. After that it got a bit muddled, but the message was, apparently, watch them but don’t follow what they actually do, because what they say and what they do are two different, and probably diametrically opposed, things.
She had heard that growing up from her father. He’d been a rabble rouser as a kid, always getting in trouble. But don’t you do that, Mick, he would tell her over and over. There was something logical and instinctive about an adult wanting their kids to avoid their parents’ past mistakes, but it still seemed disingenuous. Yeah, Dad, you weren’t mature enough to avoid all that crap but you expect me to just because you say so? Easier said than done. And you probably had the same lecture from your parents, so there.