Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

It was what he’d always wanted. Even when we were kids he would drop hints. I just ignored them.”
    She stopped. I waited, saying nothing, thinking suddenly of Tina and all the hints I had ignored.
    Marie said, “He told me I couldn’t say no. He said he would tell Father what I was doing with men if I didn’t let him do what he wanted.”
    “He raped you.”
    She shrugged. “That’s how it started. I stayed in that hospital for months. Jean-Marc visited every weekend. Every weekend he’d tip the same orderly to give us privacy.”
    “And when you got out of the hospital?”
    “He’d come to my room at home during the night. Once or twice a week. When I got into Yale, I thought it might be the end. But he came down from Harvard to visit me every other weekend. When I’d come home on vacations, he was there. He was there, his room right down the hall from mine, every summer during college. After I graduated, I met someone and told Jean-Marc we had to stop. Father was away on business. He’d be away for almost three months. That’s when the beatings started. My face was so broken, I didn’t dare leave the house. I was too ashamed. I stayed in my room. Jean-Marc took care of me till I healed. But even then I didn’t look right. He arranged for me to have plastic surgery so my father wouldn’t see what Jean-Marc had done to me. My father was so disappointed in me. I had looked like my mother, he had loved that about me. I didn’t look like her, or myself, anymore.”
    “You told Carter about all of this?”
    She nodded. “Tim was trying to use it to blackmail my brother. When I found out what he was up to, I left him. He was in over his head, it was only a matter of time before he turned up dead. I told him that.”
    “But he didn’t listen.”
    “He wanted a big score. He never understood why I didn’t want any of my father’s money. He was a boy, a child. He said he’d put up with anything for half of a hundred and fifty million dollars. He said that with Jean-Marc in prison, all the money would be mine. There was nothing I could say to set him straight. He didn’t know. He didn’t know Jean-Marc.”
    “The man who helped your brother get rid of the body that night, who was he?”
    “A family friend.”
    “I know, you said that. But who was he?”
    She looked at me. “I think you already know.”
    “The Chief,” I said.
    She nodded. “He’s Chief now, but he was just a cop then.”
    “He helped your brother get rid of the body of a man your brother had murdered in cold blood.” I needed to get that clear.
    “Yes,” she said. “Chief Miller was loyal to my family. My father helped him become chief. They met him when you and I met, actually. Do you remember that? The dog?”
    “Of course.” I paused. “I dream about it sometimes.”
    “Me, too.”
    “Your family met the Chief then?”
    She nodded. “He was the cop who shot and killed the dog. He saved your life.” She looked at my face. “You don’t remember that, do you? You don’t remember who shot the dog.”
    “I didn’t till you said it just now.”
    “I had them fix the scar on my leg, from where it bit me. You can still tell it’s there, though.” She paused. “I was scared that day, Mac. But I’m more scared now. You were beside me then, and here you are, beside me again. It’s no accident, if you ask me.”
    Everything happens for a reason, Augie had once told me.
    “You should have let me know who you were, Marie. Back on Long Beach. You should have told me then.”
    “I didn’t know if I could trust you. I didn’t know what the years had done to you, what kind of man that perfect boy had become.”
    I felt my face flush. I waited a moment, then said, “Your brother isn’t going to stop looking for you, Marie. You know that.”
    “I know.”
    “He hired a man to find you. He hired him through the Chief, who’s obviously playing out his own agenda. It sounds to me like the Chief sent the man he sent on purpose, maybe to get rid of the lot of you.”
    “His loyalty was to my father. He hates Jean-Marc. He knows that with my father gone, he’ll have to take orders from him. But worse than that, he knows there’d be no reason for me not to come forward with what I know. And he doesn’t want that.”
    “But would he kill you?”
    “You better than anyone, Mac, should know that when it comes down to it, we’re all pretty much capable of anything, if it means staying alive.”
    “So what are