The Beautiful and the Wicked (20 page)

“Hey, watch it!” Asher said, bending down to pick up the large white pills that had fallen to the floor. Lila knew they were OxyContins. “Listen, your old man will get what's coming to him. That's a guarantee.”

“He said he's going to cut me off completely!”

“I'm not going to let that happen.”

“You can't do shit. And my mom won't stop him. She's just some collagen-­injected zombie who does whatever he says.”

“Okay. I know we can figure this out. I just need to sober up.” He slapped himself in the face hard a few times. Then he plucked a pumpkin-­orange Adderall off the bed, popped it into his mouth, and chased it down with a swig of coconut rum.

“How fast do you think your dad can change his will?” Asher asked. Lila wasn't surprised that Asher's focus seemed to be on the money, but Josie was.

“Why do you care about the will?” Josie asked, pushing herself up out of her miserable little curled position.

“Baby, listen. You don't know what life without money is like. I do. Trust me. If we can keep you on your dad's payroll, it'll be better for everyone.”

“But I can't take his money if I'm with you! How many times do I have to say it?” she sobbed. “I chose
you
over his money.”

“This is what we'll do,” Asher said, completely ignoring Josie. The amphetamines had begun to trick his mind into some kind of faux clarity. “We've got to call your dad's bluff. Show him that he can't boss us around. He wants me off the boat and he wants you to come crawling back to him. But fuck him. Right? So we'll get off together in Anguilla.”

“Then what?” Josie asked.

“Then we do what we've talked about.”

“Do you think we have to?”

“It's the only way you'll be free, baby. The only way.” He walked over to her, lifting up her chin with his hand and kissing her deeply. “I know what I'm doing,” he said.

“Don't you have
any
money?”

“No, baby. I told you. Nash said your dad won't pay me shit. But I'm going to take what's mine. I always do.”

“You could sell your Rolex,” Josie whispered tentatively.

Asher slapped his hand to his wrist, covering up the watch as if Josie was about to snatch it off his body. “No way!” he said. “You know how special this is to me. If you understood me at all, you'd never ask that. God, maybe we should rethink this whole thing.”

“No, please!” Josie desperately pleaded. Now that Josie had been cut off from her family, she was terrified to lose the only thing she had left: Asher. “I'm sorry I asked. I'm sorry. I should've known better.” Josie's groveling made Lila feel sick in her stomach.

“You should have,” Asher sniffed in a patronizing tone. “Not all of us have grown up getting whatever we want. I had to work for this,” Asher said, pointing to his watch. “You haven't had to work for anything.”

“You're right,” Josie said as her shoulders slumped and her head hung limply on her chest, as if she were trying to make her tiny body look even smaller.

“Your inheritance. That's the most important thing. We've got to do whatever it takes. Then you'll finally be free,” Asher said. He was so obviously manipulating Josie, but she couldn't see it.

“My dad says I can't live without him? Well, fine.” There was a small catch in Josie's voice as she spoke, but she swallowed it quickly and replaced it with steel. “We'll show him. Won't we, baby?”

“Of course we will,” Asher said, reaching for her. “Of course we will. Now stand up.” Asher's voice changed from consoling to controlling. Josie, quick to obey, got up from the bed as a few errant pills tumbled to the floor. She went to wrap her arms around Asher, but he leaned away. “No,” he said coldly. “Turn around.”

“Not tonight, Ash. I don't—­”

“Turn around,” he said loudly, interrupting her.

She obeyed. Lila wasn't sure what was going on, but one thing was clear, Asher was totally in control.

“Put your hands up against the wall,” he said.

“I'm tired. Can't you just hold me tonight?” Josie asked quietly.

“Do it.”

Lila thought she heard small whimpering sounds from Josie as she placed her hands against Asher's cabin wall. She stood there looking down at the floor as if she was about to get frisked by a cop. Asher opened the drawer to a side table and took out a silk tie. He went behind Josie, pushing his weight against her as he greedily ran his hands over her body, between her slightly parted legs, up her waist, then down over her breasts. He whispered something into her ear that Lila couldn't hear.

Asher used the tie to wrap one wrist and then the other, binding them tightly together above Josie's head. As he tied a final knot, Josie winced in pain, which just made him tie the knot even tighter. He lifted her dress up, putting the bottom of it over her head like a mask. Then he slid her underwear down around her ankles. Josie had started to shake ever so slightly as Asher stood back, observing her before he took a ­couple of long swigs of rum. The moment Asher began to disrobe, Lila turned away and went back to her room with a sick feeling in her stomach.

No point in sticking around for what was next. She'd seen enough for one day.

 

CHAPTER 17

T
HE NIGHT
OF
Jack Warren's murder was just ten days away, and for the first time in the entire decade she'd spent thinking about this case, Lila no longer believed Elise Warren was the primary suspect. She was now convinced that Jack's daughter and her lover were his killers.

As Lila tried and failed to fall asleep that August night while the yacht sailed south to Anguilla, she went through the details of what she knew about Josie. On the surface, Josie seemed about as likely to commit murder as the Dalai Lama. Vegan, existentialist Josie with her peasant blouses and her power-­to-­the-­­people politics didn't even faintly resemble someone who could murder her father and then frame someone else for the crime. But when Lila factored in Asher, the scenario changed radically.

Asher wanted money and Josie wanted Asher. It was that simple. And the only thing that stood in the way of their getting what they wanted was Jack Warren. Lila thought about Patty Hearst. If that nineteen-­year-­old socialite could be kidnapped and brainwashed into robbing banks for the “revolution,” then twenty-­year-­old Josie Warren could be manipulated into killing the controlling father from whom she'd been longing to escape. Just chalk it up to the things we do for love.

Plus, there was something chilling about the scene Lila had just witnessed between Josie and Asher. He had been domineering and sadistic, nothing like the laid-­back persona he presented to the world. And strong-­willed and free-­spirited Josie totally disappeared in Asher's presence, transforming into a desperate-­to-­please weakling willing to do whatever he wished.

Lila knew that light S&M wasn't a precursor to murder, but the dynamic between the two of them was undeniably volatile and toxic. It all amounted to one giant red flag waving around in Lila's restless mind.

For the remainder of the night, Lila kept a close eye on Asher's door by periodically sneaking out into the hallway. But every time she checked, it was closed and the lights stayed off. It seemed that all the sex, drugs, and scheming had finally worn Josie and Asher out—­for now.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
,
none of the guests could talk of anything else over breakfast.

“We've known each other for a long time, Jack,” Thiago said as he took small and elegant sips from a Wedgwood china coffee cup. “Longer than anyone else here, including your beautiful wife. And I've never seen you overreact as badly as last night. And over such a small indiscretion. I'd venture to guess that everyone at this table has known the joy of feasting on forbidden fruit? Yes? Including you, my friend.”

Thiago looked around, but the only one who met his eye was Jack, who had a treacherous snarl on his face.

“Stay out of it, Thiago,” Jack warned. “You of
all ­people
have no right to tell me how to treat and protect my family.” The two men held each other's gaze. Lila, as she poured more green tea into Jack's cup, once again wondered what was going on between these two men. Was it about money? Or something more?

“I'm only offering my humble advice,” Thiago said. He reached for his wife Esperanza's hand. “Young women need to be treated with great kindness and understanding. Not control and anger.”

“And I'll say it again. Stay out of it.”

“It'll all blow over,” Clarence Baines said as he chewed his eggs noisily.

“What do you think, Elise?” Charity Baines asked, reaching out her little hand, with its pink nails and large diamond ring, toward Elise, who had been sitting silently at the head of the table, her meager breakfast untouched.

Elise began to speak, but Jack jumped in before she could say anything. “I'll tell you what
she
thinks,” he said. “
She
thinks I'm driving Josie away. But mark my words, that girl will come running back the moment she gets a taste of the real world. This one here,” he said, jabbing a fork at his wife, “wants to coddle her like a baby. And I'll tell you what that does. It creates a spoiled, insipid brat who wants to run off with the help. So, I'm done listening to
her,
” Jack concluded with disgust. “I've got to instill some real values in my daughter before it's too late.”

“Hear, hear!” Clarence Baines said. “It's never too late to teach our children the important lessons of personal responsibility. I've had my own children read the great Stoic philosophers since they were little tykes. I think it was Marcus Aurelius who once wrote, ‘The first rule is—­' ”

“Clarence?” Jack interrupted.

“Yes, Jack?”

“I think I speak for everyone at the table when I say, put a fucking sock in it, will you?”

T
HE YACHT ARRIVED
in Anguilla a little after noon. As the crew scrambled to dock the behemoth and the passengers gathered on the main deck, anxious to get on dry land, Josie and Asher, absent all morning, finally made an appearance. Holding each other's hand, they solemnly walked past everyone without saying a word.

Josie had made herself up to look like a hippie bride. She was wearing a long, white maxidress with a plunging neckline. Her hair was braided and pinned up elaborately. A wreath of flowers encircled the top of her head. Lila had never seen two ­people supposedly in love look so incredibly unhappy.

As they were about to walk down the gangway, Josie turned to her father, who was standing silently watching them.

“I want to read you all something before I go,” Josie said, unfolding a piece of paper she had been holding tightly in her fist. She spoke like someone who was onstage in front of a large crowd for the first time—­stiff and serious, with fear evident in every tight-­chested breath. “This is a poem from Rumi that I'd like to share with you.”

“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” Jack said, with a disgusted roll of his eyes.

But her father's words only made her more defiant. Josie read,
“ ‘Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about things going badly. Let the lover be
.
' ”
Her face was grave, as if she'd just shared a piece of deep wisdom with this group of hard-hearted adults. She folded the paper back up, then took her lover's hand. Asher looked anxious to go. He pulled Josie toward the dock, but she wouldn't budge. She was having a profound moment of defiance and she wouldn't let anyone cut it short. “Let me be, Dad,” Josie said as she descended the gangway.

“With pleasure,” Jack yelled out to his daughter, who kept walking away.

Lila had no idea where Josie and Asher were going. She was desperate to follow them, but leaving the yacht was an impossibility. She had a long list of tasks to complete and her own personal overlord constantly hovering around to make sure everything was done just right.

Only crew were on the yacht that day. Jack and Ben were meeting Caleb Johnson, an experienced helmsman whom they were interviewing as a potential addition to their America's Cup team. The plan was to go out together for a long sail. They brought Thiago, Esperanza, Clarence, and Paul Mason along for the ride. Having zero interest in racing around the Caribbean on an uncomfortable sailboat, Elise and Charity decided to take a chartered speedboat over to St. Martin, the French-­Dutch Virgin Island only a fifteen-­minute ride away, for some very expensive retail therapy. After all, Elise did have to find some way, aside from her usual diet of alcohol and sedatives, to cope with the fact that her only child had just run off with a muscled sailor with dollar signs in his eyes.

One of Lila's tasks that day, the only one that she was actually looking forward to, was clearing out Asher's room. If she couldn't tail him, then she hoped that having unfettered access to the things he'd left behind would give her some sort of insight into the man that had Josie Warren wrapped around his coconut-­scented finger.

At first, she found nothing, just a lone white sock at the back of the closet and a jump rope left dangling on a hook. Because Asher's room was identical to the minuscule one she shared with Sam, a thorough search took only a ­couple minutes. After she came up with next to nothing, Lila rechecked every surface of the room. As she was running her hand inside the three dresser drawers under the bed, she felt something taped to the top side of the middle drawer. When she pulled it carefully off, she saw it was a thumb drive.

Her heart jumped. Finally, something! Praying there was useful information on it, Lila rushed down the hall to her room, shut the door behind her, and grabbed her laptop. And there she sat, hunched over the computer, opening the first folder and then click, click, clicking her way through image after image . . . all of Josie. The digital pictures went back four years, which meant that Josie and Asher had been involved for much longer than anyone had ever suspected.

There were three folders in total. The first one contained pictures that Josie had taken of herself either with her phone or with her computer. The earliest photo was dated September 21, 2004, and showed a baby-­faced Josie shyly posing, her eyes down, a smattering of teenage acne visible on her forehead, her shirt bashfully pulled aside to show a hint of her nipple. But as the months and years progressed, and as Josie grew up and got bolder, the pictures became much more graphic in nature. Nothing was left to the imagination.

The next folder was filled with hundreds of pictures that Asher took of him and Josie together. These started in 2005. None were sweet pictures of lovers smiling for the camera. On the contrary, they all felt dark and humiliating, showing Asher sexually dominating the young heiress. One had Josie on her knees, her wrists bound, Asher's hand at the back of her head, forcing himself into her mouth. Another showed Asher taking Josie from behind while he shoved her face to the floor. It was clear that Josie knew these very private moments were being documented, but Asher was the one in control.

The last folder was by far the most jarring. It contained fifteen videos, all about thirty minutes long, of Asher and Josie having sex, a lot of it involving bondage, some including other ­people. In one, Josie and Asher took turns snorting coke off the body of a naked woman. Any randomly selected ten seconds of these hours and hours of videos would result in a media firestorm and a huge family scandal.

As Lila perused what felt like the digital diary of a twenty-­first-­century Marquis de Sade, her conviction that Asher and Josie were behind Jack's murder grew stronger. There was only one reason for Asher to methodically categorize four years of these pictures and videos on a thumb drive that he left behind on Jack Warren's yacht. He
wanted
it to be discovered. He wanted the Warrens to know that he held information that could destroy them. Lila knew that Asher's next step would be to extort Jack for money. And if the Warrens didn't pay, which Lila figured they wouldn't, Asher would understand that the only way to get the money he was after was by killing Jack.

Lila stored Asher's thumb drive in her drawer. He had clearly planned on Jack and Elise Warren discovering this little treasure trove of sexually explicit images and videos. But for now, Lila decided to keep this information to herself.

The sailing contingent returned a little after sunset, all sunburned and windblown. Jack seemed electrified by his day out on the water. Per Edna's instructions, Lila was waiting for them with flutes of Dom Pérignon. As everyone talked about how lovely the day had been, no one so much as mentioned Josie's or Asher's names. Jack talked at length about how the helmsman had turned out to be everything he'd wanted him to be, plus some. Despite, or because of, his daughter's absence, Jack Warren seemed in better spirits than Lila had ever seen him since Miami.

Elise was another story entirely. When the boat that she and Charity chartered pulled up to the yacht, all anyone could see was a laughably large number of high-­end shopping bags: Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Céline, Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Chanel. It was safe to say that each woman had spent more money in one day than Lila made all year as a homicide detective. But the retail therapy didn't seem to have the mood-­bolstering effect Elise had wanted. She stepped onto the yacht as the hired hands carrying her many, many purchases trailed behind her, looking as sour and tight-­jawed as she had before.

“Has anyone heard from Josie?” she asked the group. But everyone shook their heads and said nothing. Jack, as usual, ignored his wife. “I'll be in my room. You there,” she said, snapping at Lila. “I'll need a vodka martini with a twist brought to the master suite immediately.”

“I'm sure she's fine,” Esperanza said to Elise before she retreated to her room. “You shouldn't worry too much. She's just a young girl having some fun.”

A look of absolute disgust crawled onto Elise's face as she stared at the gorgeous Brazilian, standing there with her young, flawless, caramel-­colored skin and her long, black, curly hair, made wild from the salt air and the wind. Despite Elise's scowl, Esperanza kept smiling at her.

“You're not a mother, are you?” Elise asked Esperanza.

“Not yet,” Esperanza said with a shrug, giving her husband a sly wink.

“Then you don't know what the hell you're talking about.”

The encouraging smile that Esperanza had on her face was instantly wiped off. “I was only trying to help,” she said.

“Well, don't,” Elise responded coldly as she left the group to be alone with her martini and her misery.

“Now that Josie's out of my hair,” Jack said jovially, “all I need is for someone to run away with my
wife
. Then I'd really be a happy man. Say, Ben, are you up for it?” Jack asked, throwing his arm around the shoulders of his first officer. Seeing that Ben and the rest of the group were made uncomfortable by his joke, Jack said, “Oh, hey, Ben. Don't worry. I'm only kidding. I wouldn't wish that bitch on my worst enemy.”