The Tangled Web: an international web of intrigue, murder and romance (31 page)

“Logan! I was just coming to find you,” she cried pulling him by the arm. “Come inside the room with me! I can’t risk anybody hearing this.” Her hand shook uncontrollably as she closed the door behind them.

She shoved the bottle in his face. “Logan, look here!”

“It’s empty. But why all the fuss over an empty bottle?” Logan asked perplexed.

“My sleeping pills were in this bottle! It was almost full when I last took one. Now it’s empty!” she exclaimed hysterically.

“Virginia, get a hold of yourself. Why are you so upset over an empty bottle of sleeping pills?”

Virginia slumped on the bed and burst into tears. “Why can’t you understand what I’m trying to say? Isn’t it obvious?” “God forgive me for thinking it, Logan,” she said in a still voice, “but I know Clara wouldn’t have stolen my pills.”

Logan’s eyes moved from Virginia’s to the bottle. “What are you getting at?” he asked, appalled by her insinuation. “Gordon died of a heart attack.”

Virginia’s lips quivered in disagreement.

“Virginia, don’t be ridiculous. Come on now. You’re just overwrought, and that’s understandable. You’ve been through a lot in the past day.”

FORTY-FIVE

It was an unseasonably hot day for so late in the year. The humidity permeated every pore like a muggy steam bath, fogging windows of air conditioned buildings. The breeze off the sea, which would have made such a scorcher barely tolerable, had completely abandoned the capital. Not wishing to brave the heat, Mike stood at the sliding glass doors opening out on to his upstairs balcony and peered through the misted-over glass panes. A murky smog hovered over the city, the combination of particles of dust and industrial pollution with nowhere to go without a southwester to carry it away.

Mike gazed out at the city unseeingly, his mind some fifty miles away at Vale Verde. He had learned from Logan that Virginia was inconsolable. She was blaming herself. She felt she should have known something was wrong when Gordon had not gone to work for three days, something unheard of for him. Mike had wanted to know if Logan thought Gordon’s death had anything to do with the Indies Shipping scandal.

“That has crossed my mind,” Logan admitted.

Mike shook his head. “Life’s a bitch, Logan. The only sure thing about it is you can expect the unexpected.”

“You’re not wrong about that,” Logan agreed in a worn voice.

“How much longer will you be here?” Mike asked.

“I’ll stick around for as long as I can. I can’t stay too long though. I’d just got back to New York from London when I had to come back here. It’s been crazy.”

“Sure has. When’s the funeral?”

“No date has been set yet.”

“The state funeral for Freeman is next week,” Mike remembered.

“That should be a circus.”

“Circus or not, I’d like to see that bastard good and buried.”

“I never knew you felt that strongly about him.”

“Which thinking person didn’t feel strongly about him? With few exceptions, the whole country is rejoicing. Or haven’t you been keeping up with the news? Tell you one thing. I’d give my right arm to know who was behind it.”

There was an imperceptible pause before Logan said, “They’ll never get to the bottom of it. Trust me on that one.”

“That doesn’t sound exactly like a vote of confidence in our law enforcement. What makes you so sure?”

“They never got to the bottom of Kennedy’s assassination did they? And that was the F.B.I., not our sadly under-funded C.I.D.”

Mike turned away from the sliding glass doors deep in thought. That last remark of Logan’s had triggered something that had been lurking at the back of his mind ever since he had heard about the calls made to Cali by the now former Minister of National Security and Defense. Learning of those calls had lead Mike to question Logan’s interest in Colombia’s leading drug cartels. And what was the real reason behind Logan’s visit to the island shortly before Erick Freeman was killed? When Mike had seen him, he hadn’t given the impression he was on vacation, though he had been sticking close to the cottage. And why had he been in such a rush to get that information on the cartels? It all seemed like too much of a coincidence to Mike. Though he would never ask any questions and knew he would never get any answers, he was pretty sure Logan had been involved in some way. If that were the case, it had to be hell for him dealing with political intrigue of that nature, running a business, and handling the suicide of a family member, all at the same time.

It didn’t take long before his thoughts returned to Virginia. He thought it sad that twenty-three years of marriage had ended in tragedy for her. She and Gordon had an idyllic marriage from all appearances. What would life have been like for her, and for him, Mike, had she taken a different path, he couldn’t help wondering. Not that he had ever blamed Virginia for leaving him and marrying Gordon. He had behaved like a complete ass. But if it was any consolation, he had been young, too young to be thinking about settling down. Though over the years he had come to question whether there was such a thing as being too young to begin a lasting relationship. He knew couples that had married in their early twenties and made it work. Gordon and Virginia were a prime example. One thing he knew: two decades after the fact, he could safely say Virginia was the love of his life.

Logan hadn’t been around at the time they broke up. He was still at university in England. By the time he heard about it, it was already stale news. The whole thing fell apart on a day that started out looking like it was going to be all right. It was a typical Saturday morning in those days when Saturdays were about parties, tennis, sailing, going to the beach, and getting laid if you got lucky. He and Virginia had gone to the beach with a group of friends, her friends mostly. He couldn’t quite remember how many of them there were. It was too long ago to recall with any accuracy, but it was a big enough group as he remembered. They could blame what happened on his roving eye all they wanted, but who could have resisted the vamp? She had been eyeing him all morning, shooting him flirtatious looks when Virginia’s head was turned the other way. She was Virginia’s friend and he had made a valiant effort to ignore her blatant come-ons – until she walked into the water wiggling her ass for all she was worth. That was some ass, Mike recollected ruefully, one of the finest he’d ever seen. The tragedy of it was it was the very ass that got his burned.

After, he had begged Virginia’s forgiveness. Though knowing it was a lame excuse, he had tried to explain it hadn’t meant anything. It had been a harmless fling. Unrelenting in her anger, Virginia had huffed off into Gordon’s waiting arms faster than Mike could say give me a second chance. Having lost Virginia, he decided he might as well continue seeing her friend, milk it for all it was worth. He was doomed anyway. As it transpired, that had been his second fatal mistake. Virginia had been enraged when she heard about it through the grapevine. She had called and given him a piece of her mind. He had been at a complete loss as to why she was still so angry.

“But you’re dating Gordon,” he’d sputtered in defense.

“You have no respect for me!” he remembered her shrieking at the top of her lungs. “The body isn’t even cold and you’re seeing that bitch! You just couldn’t wait, could you?” She had slammed the phone down before he could come up with a response and that was the end of that.

He didn’t see Virginia much after. They would run into each other on occasion after she and Gordon were married. It wasn’t long after when he moved to New York. Mike thought about those times in New York, those days when he was venturing out on his journey along the path of Eros. It was the seventies and eighties when everybody was snorting cocaine and tumbling into bed with everyone else. Yes, he had to admit there was a time when he had screwed just about anything that moved, but he had never thought of those forays into eroticism as earth-shattering events so much as a seductive banquet laid out for the tasting. He searched within himself to find the thing that had brought him to that place. At what point do you become so numb your fingertips can no longer thrill to another’s touch? At what point does a person begin to need more and more to feel, and in the end be capable of feeling nothing more than an orgasm? It was a strange hell, that dwelling place of the phantoms of emotion, mere ghosts of what they had been before they died at the hands of too many meaningless liaisons and too much hurt to feel again.

But by some miracle he had not died – not completely. There were one or two women along the way who had ignited him, though never in the way Virginia had. Even now when he saw her, the old feeling awakened. They were older, they had taken different paths, but his love for her had never really died. It had simply been thrown into a closet that stored life’s impossibilities until they became buried and forgotten under the dust of time. Was it possible that people circled back to each other to complete their circle of life? Mike pushed the thought out of his mind guiltily. Gordon wasn’t even buried yet. Besides, to think Virginia would consider him again was a stretch. Though there had been times over the years when he had caught a fleeting look in her eyes – wistful, questioning. But it was always quickly replaced by a laugh or humorous comment that killed even a fading dream.

They had lived an enchanted life when they were young. It was one the younger generation would never experience. He doubted they could even begin to imagine what it was like back then for him, Logan, Virginia and their peers. They were as free as the wind, the island their playground. It was a life of privilege, which being young, they had not valued. They knew nothing else. There was nothing with which to compare, except with the lives of those less fortunate; and that there were less fortunate people was also something they took for granted. There were those who had, and those who didn’t. And for those who had, doors opened effortlessly. It was still the same to some degree, but it would never again be as before. The country had become more egalitarian, the gap between the haves and the have-nots lessened. Mike was not opposed to that. It had always been his belief that the chasm had been far too large and the privileges of the advantaged too often abused. It was too early to tell where the island was heading now Freeman was gone, but he fervently hoped Logan’s efforts, if he had indeed been involved, had not been in vain.

FORTY-SIX

The warm jet of water from the showerhead beat down on Lauren’s back until the bathroom filled with steam and the mirror over the sink became fogged. With closed eyes, she stood motionless under the shower, trying to empty her mind. It had been a harrowing week, the clincher being Gordon Matthews’ suicide. Rumors had reached her ears that Gary Matthews was blaming Gordon’s suicide on her news report. Doubtless she was now persona non grata at Vale Verde, though what did that matter now, she asked herself bitterly. She let the shower run a while longer then stepped out, at last feeling better than she had in days. But no sooner had she begun toweling off, than her mind began racing again. Shrugging on a sleep shirt, she headed for the living room. A stiff drink was in order. It was already well after midnight and she would never get to sleep at the rate her mind was going.

Lauren perused the meager contents of the liquor cabinet that seldom catered to guests and reached for a half-empty bottle of vodka. She was about to unscrew the top when she spied the bottle of Pinot Noir Logan had taken from his wine cellar and given her when she visited him in New York. Lauren contemplated the bottle hesitantly. She had planned on saving the wine for a time when she would be able to have Logan over for dinner. She pulled it from the shelf and scrutinized the label:
2005 Alain Hudelot-Noellat Nuits St. Georges Les Murgers
. “What the hell,” she muttered picking up the corkscrew. “There’s no time like the present, especially when the future you envisaged isn’t about to happen.” She poured herself a glass, and not giving the wine even a second to breath, took a gulp. “Here’s to you Logan Armstrong,” she toasted the air with a flourish. “May your future be joyous – without me.”

She plopped herself in a chair near the window and put her feet up. Tears of anger and betrayal welled in her eyes. How could they have done such a thing? How could her aunt have done such a thing? Margaret had ruthlessly thrown her to the wolves by asking her to make the delivery to London. Knowing Lauren trusted her implicitly, Margaret had brought her into some insidious plot to get rid of Erick Freeman. And she, like a fool, had sacrificed her integrity as a journalist to protect an aunt who had suddenly become a monster she did not recognize. And Logan… the whole thing was sickening. Boogey men were appearing at every turn, manifesting themselves in people she thought she knew. She was desperate to give Logan the benefit of the doubt, and she would have clutched at any straw to believe he had not been involved. But her ears had not deceived her when she overheard Margaret on the phone that evening she had visited her. She reached for her glass and found it already empty.

Unsteadily, she hoisted herself from the chair and went to pour herself another glass. She took it back to the chair and sat, desperately trying to fight back the thoughts that had tormented her ever since her visit to Foster & Foster. She had buried herself in work, reaching the point of exhaustion where she had come home each night and thrown herself into bed comatose. But still, the thoughts had consumed her, held her in a vicious stranglehold from which she could not free herself, no matter how hard she tried.

The tears came at last, along with sobs that wracked her body as they ripped through her from the center of her being. “Why, why?” she cried. Margaret was like a mother to her; she was closer to Margaret than her own mother. Had love for her aunt blinded her to the woman she really was? There was no answer, only the aloneness of an endless night.

A terrible sense of loss swept over her as she thought of Logan. How long would her feelings for him take to fade away? How could she have come to love him so much in so short a time? And how could she still love him after all that had transpired? What was love? Was it some form of insanity that bonded you to someone against your will? Why could her love not be selective, sensible? Or was it some fatal flaw in her that made her still yearn for him? Hidden in all the madness there had to be an answer. If only she could find it.