Dirty Little Lies (10 page)

Manning sniffed, rubbed his runny nose. “Thought you might give me an inside scoop. Can’t help but wonder why a corporate giant like Titan International is working a political case. Is Bennett dead?”

“Nearly,” Frankie replied. They had hoped to keep the congressman’s condition under wraps, but the local television station had already reported that the politician hadn’t yet expired, though he was unable to communicate. “Clearly, the man isn’t as easy to kill as someone might have thought.”

“Kind of like a cockroach,” Manning muttered as he moved toward the kitchen.

“Sounds exactly like something a guy who might order a hit would say,” Marisela noted, following him into the place where he cooked his meals—or more accurately, where he tossed his takeout containers. Chinese, Italian, pizza, subs. She counted at least five bags from McDonald’s. Either he was a recluse, he was hiding out, or his junk food addiction required professional help.

Parker took a long toke on his cigarette and blew the smoke in Marisela’s direction. “I won’t pretend I didn’t hate the bastard. But I didn’t buy any fucking hit.”

“Says you?” Marisela challenged.

“Yeah, says me. Look around. Do I look like I have cash to spare? Anyone who checks out my bank accounts knows I don’t have the dough to hire a professional.”

“What about your parents?” she pressed.

The vein in his neck pulsed. “My father died six years ago with no life insurance. My mother lives with my aunt out in Illinois. Check it out. You’ll find that the Mannings aren’t exactly the retribution types.”

While Marisela sparred with Manning in the kitchen, she spied Frankie looking around the living room. He worked slowly, methodically, covering much of what she’d already perused and, like her, finding nothing of interest.

“You live like
un puerco
,” Frankie assessed.

“I live however the hell I want,” Manning replied. “Look, if you find out who did order the hit, tell him I owe him a beer.”

“We just might,” Marisela said, “if you tell us what happened that night.”

“I wasn’t there. I was here all night, working.”

“Not last night,” Marisela said. “Guy like you on that guest list? Please. I’m talking about the night your sister died.”

His mouth seemed to constrict even as he pushed out the words. “I was away at school.”

“But according to our sources, you came home right away and talked to a lot of people. Rumor has it you were a hotshot journalism student then. And you knew all of Rebecca’s friends. What did they think happened?”

Manning tossed his cigarette into the sink. “Those creeps camped out on that island all the time.”

“Which creeps?” Marisela asked.

“Hightower, both of them. Cole and Bennett, too. It was their getaway from all that money, privilege, bodyguards and nannies. They drank, smoked, fucked around. Whatever.”

“Does that
whatever
include bringing their girlfriends out with them for a little tent action?” Marisela asked.

With a disgusted sneer, Manning shook his head. “Those boys didn’t invite anyone along on their trips. Kids were salivating to get asked to go to the island. Fucking social event of the season. But no one copped to ever going. Just Bennett, the Hightower boys, and that Cole asshole. Summer, spring, fall. Once a month, they took a boat from the marina and hit the trail.”

“So they knew the place pretty well?”

“Well enough to know where to stash my sister’s body so she wouldn’t be found for two months, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Marisela watched regret and anger play on Manning’s face.

“Why was your sister there, then?”

Manning reluctantly shook his head. “They
said
they never brought girls out there and I couldn’t prove otherwise. Doesn’t mean she didn’t go out there on her own and they were pissed off about it.”

“You think they killed her because she crashed their private party?” Marisela asked, doubtful.

He patted his shirt in search, she guessed, of more nicotine. “I don’t know what to think. All I know is that my sister was wild for that Bradley Hightower jerk and she ended up dead just yards from where he was camping out. To me, the math is pretty simple?”

Marisela looked for Frankie, who’d slinked out of sight. Probably checking out the rest of the apartment while Marisela kept Manning occupied in the kitchen.

“Tell me about Brad Hightower.”

“Big fucking bastard,” Manning said, removing the last cigarette from the pack in his pocket. “He could easily have snapped her neck.”

“Didn’t she die from blunt trauma to the back of the head?” Marisela asked.

Manning skewered her with a disgusted look as he wiggled in his chair while extracting a lighter from his pants. “You read the autopsy?”

“That surprises you?”

“Nah, guess not. Look, Bradley Hightower was Boston’s golden boy. Honor roll. Quarterback. Drove a Porsche. Used to put the top down even when it was snowing. Girls used to cream over him down at the marina.”

“That’s where your sister met him?”

Manning nodded. “Becca actually thought the son of a yacht owner would fall in love with the daughter of the guy who cleaned his boat. She and Tracy started hanging out at the docks weekends, scoring invitations on board those million-dollar floaters. Mom told me they even took the bus from school to watch football practice at the fancy private academy those assholes went to. It was pathetic.”

Marisela watched Manning carefully, noting the perspiration gathering along the collar of his shirt. She’d attributed his shaking hands to DTs, but what if he was nervous? Afraid of what they might find out? He was telling them quite a bit, but he wasn’t revealing anything they couldn’t find out through other sources. Why, then, did he look so uncomfortable?

Marisela guessed that discussing the situation wasn’t exactly easy. His sister had died in a horrific way.

“What about Tracy?” Marisela asked. They’d read next to nothing about her in the police reports, but Marisela figured a brother who’d lost one sister would be extra protective of the other. “How did she play into all this?”

Amazing self-control kept Marisela from breaking Parker Manning’s finger when he jabbed it close to her face. “You keep Tracy out of all this. Becca’s death nearly destroyed her. She’s never been the same.”

Marisela stared at his grimy fingernail until he lowered it. “They were close, then?”

“Only a year apart,” he replied. “Becca was seventeen when she died. Tracy was just about to turn sixteen. Of course they were close.”

Now that was a big fat lie, or at least a huge misconception. Marisela was only two years older than her sister, Belinda, and they hardly spoke to each other during their childhood. Of course, special circumstances played into their poor relationship—circumstances she’d rather not think about. Not now. Not ever.

“Did Tracy see Rebecca that night?” she asked.

“She was home with my parents. Asleep in her room.”

“Did she share the room with Rebecca?”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“The police report said Tracy didn’t notice her sister missing until the next morning.”

Parker narrowed his eyes and the shaking in his hands increased so that little flickers of ash were flying over the newspapers, threatening to ignite the kindling at any moment. “Tracy didn’t see anything. That Hightower asshole was using her. He probably just wanted to piss Becca off, so he started fucking around with Tracy. She was a kid, okay?”

Marisela held up her hands, processing the new information. Brad Hightower had dumped one sister for the other?

Interesting.

“Okay, I got it. She was your little sister. You’re protective.”

“You have no idea,” he grumbled.

“Then let’s go back to Rebecca,” she suggested. “How do you think she ended up on the island that night if the guys didn’t invite her?”

Parker Manning blew more cigarette smoke into the haze gathering around his head. “For whatever fucking reason, she thought she loved that asshole. She’d pinned her future on marrying Bradley Hightower and becoming the lady of the fucking manor. Rebecca wasn’t stupid, but she knew she didn’t have much book smarts, and frankly, she was lazy. Always wanted the easy way. She wasn’t going to get out of our parents’ house by going off to college like I did. She had to marry her way out.”

“She couldn’t just get a job?”

The question was out before Marisela could call it back and the hatred burning through Parker Manning’s eyes nearly singed her hair. “Sorry,” she said, her apology genuine. “I just never could understand women who were willing to pin all their hopes on some guy.”

She flicked a look over at Frankie, who’d returned and was now quietly chuckling at her comment.

“I wish she hadn’t, but she did,” Manning replied. “I don’t know how or why she was at that island if they didn’t take her. The night she disappeared, Becca had told my parents and some friends that she was looking for Bradley. The police searched the island, but they didn’t find any sign of her. Few days later, a fisherman towed in an old maintenance boat he’d caught floating near Grape Island, just southeast of where the jerks were camping. The marina manager figured someone had gone out joyriding with it and dumped it. Happened every so often. He showed my dad, who found Becca’s scarf.”

“But there was no other sign of her anywhere?”

“Not until a month and a half later,” Manning replied, his voice choked. “Winter had set in. Rangers found her body in the marsh on Peddack Island. If there’d been any physical evidence of a crime, it was long gone.”

Frankie came around the corner and leaned against the doorjamb between the living room and the kitchen. “Then why blame the guys? You had no proof.”

Manning slammed his hand on the table. “The Hightower family couldn’t get their silver-spoon sons to Europe fast enough. Police never even interviewed them. And Bennett? He gave a statement written by his rich father’s attorney and then clammed up tighter than a drum. Even changed prep schools to one in Newburyport for the rest of his senior year. They acted guilty. They were rich and privileged and thought they could get away with murder. And obviously, they did.”

“What about Evan Cole?” Frankie asked.

Dismissively, Manning inhaled half his cigarette, then ground out the filter on a plate. “He wasn’t there.”

“You know this for sure?”

Manning shot up from his chair. “Look, you don’t think I checked into every dirty little secret those creeps had? You think I didn’t do my best to find out who killed my sister? Girls her age don’t steal boats and then walk into a nearly frozen marsh, bang their head on a tree, and die alone, okay? Whether on purpose or because they were fucking with her mind, they lured her there. She died because she couldn’t let go of Brad Hightower or his lifestyle.”

He took a deep breath, which instigated a coughing fit. “But the past is the past,” he said once he’d regained his ability to speak. “Leave it be.”

Manning slumped back into his chair, defeated. Marisela could easily guess what he was feeling. He hadn’t been there to protect his sister. He hadn’t been able to give her justice. Now, he seemed to have just given up. On a lot of things, including himself. Or else he’d turned the dirty work over to someone else who could get the job done.

Marisela stood, figuring they couldn’t get much more out of him right now. Their next step would be to find Brad and Raymond Hightower and find out their side of the story.

“One more thing,” Frankie said just as Marisela brushed past him. “Where can we find your sister, Tracy? We’ll chat with her next, see what she can share.”

In the flash of movement that followed, Manning launched forward and grabbed Frankie by the collar.

Marisela moved to intervene, but Frankie already had the man in a headlock, his forearm tight against the guy’s throat and his arm twisted behind him.

“Get…off…me,” Manning ordered, failing to execute a decent head-butt thanks to Frankie’s iron grip.

“Calm down first,
maricón
,” Marisela spat out, knowing if the jerk didn’t comply, he might be nursing a broken arm in the next few seconds.

Manning gulped huge breaths of air and held his hands out, as if to show he had no further urge to attack. Once satisfied that the man had recognized the error of his ways, Frankie tossed him toward Marisela, who broke his fall.

Frankie stood in front of them, arms crossed, eyes cool. “You don’t want to push us, Mr. Manning.”

Manning heaved, his face red and skin splotchy. “Stay the fuck away from my sister!”

Marisela struggled to contain the man. He was out of shape, but his rage imbued him with unpredictable power. He’d gone from calm to out of control in seconds. Question was, was Manning so hot to protect his sister because of what she’d suffered in the past—or because of what he’d done in the present, like hire a hit on a congressman?

Or maybe the wallet behind the hit belonged to Tracy? Maybe Parker Manning didn’t have the cash on hand to pay an assassin, but perhaps, despite her sad past, Tracy Manning did.

“Something you want to tell us about Tracy?” Marisela asked. “Something you’re hiding?”

Manning just shook his head.

“Leave her alone. She’s been through enough.”

“Which makes her all the more likely to want Bennett dead,” Frankie offered.

“Tracy’s been to hell and back. You don’t know. You don’t have a fucking clue. She doesn’t want—she can’t relive that night again. I won’t have you harassing her. I swear to God, if you go anywhere near her, I’ll make you pay.”

Frankie allowed the threat to hang in the air, then smoothly moved to the door, gesturing for Marisela to follow. “Well make a note. Thanks for your…cooperation.”

“Fuck you.”

* * *

“Where do we go next?” Marisela asked as she slid into the cab of the custom truck Frankie’d pulled out of the Titan garage. At first, she didn’t think the vehicle suited him. For her, he’d always be a souped-up
El Dorado
kind of
hombre
. But witnessing him wrestle all the horsepower of this top-of-the-line F150 really turned her on.