Last to Know: A Novel(71)

This was my first mother we’re talking about, the real one, I guess.

The only activities she allowed outside the house were to go to school, because she had no choice; and to swim in the local public pool, for which I allowed her no choice. I simply went. And I swam my bitter heart out every morning at six when the pool opened, and later, after school, until it closed.

My mother was always a drug addict. At first she’d dealt, small-time, in pills, faking multiple prescriptions, and also cocaine, small-time too, until she got too confident, too big for her boots you might say, and usually ended up in jail.

In effect, I had no mother. I certainly had no father, at least not then. I had no family. I looked after myself. I stole, a few dollars at a time, to buy packets of ham or baloney and white bread wrapped in plastic that lasted forever without going moldy, as well as ice cream and Cokes. My mother never displayed any curiosity about what I might be eating, or whether in fact I had eaten. It did not take long for me to realize she did not care whether I lived or died. In fact she told me frequently she would be better off without me. I did not doubt that she was right. And that’s when I decided to get me a new mother.

The real one “overdosed” on a lethal amount of steroids mixed up in her nightly bottle of gin. Gin was an oddball drink, mostly people like her drank scotch or vodka, but she loved that bitter quinine flavor, which was useful in disguising additives, like steroids. It was to be her undoing.

I was twelve when she departed my life for, as the social workers told me, “a better place.” It surely couldn’t have been much worse, I told them. And just like that, they found me a new mother.

I did not last long in my new family. They took a dislike to my quiet, “scheming ways” as they called them. And I took a dislike to their sanctimonious condescending attitude, when I knew all they wanted anyway from their new foster child was the money paid over monthly for my keep.

I was out of there and on the run when I was thirteen, and never regretted it for a moment. I was an independent thinker, I could look after myself. I was a girl on the loose and I enjoyed it. I learned lessons even those of good heart would have found useful, and with my own evil heart only made things even clearer. I loved myself. I loved the way I looked. I learned how to use those looks, cleverly, how to play the innocent, to catch at their hearts with my long blue gaze. I learned how to be a killer. And I want to tell you, it came easily.

And then Lacey Havnel, aka Carrie Murphy, found me. Or did I find her? Whatever, we knew we needed each other. It was at a bar, of course, where else? And of course I was underage and she recognized it just as the cops arrived. She got me out of there. We hooked up. I became the “daughter” of a con artist supreme, a bad drug dealer and an alcoholic. It worked for me since I was better at the con game than Lacey. I got her to take out the insurance policy on the house, one and a half mil, and another mil on her life. I wanted two but she wouldn’t go for it. I also got her to steal the cash she was meant to hand over to the representative of a drug cartel—a minor one in that world, but still, nobody likes to lose their money.

And then, of course, I needed to get rid of her so I could take the money, become the beautiful little rich girl. That’s the way life works out, right? She had nine hundred thou of the stolen money already stashed in the bank after buying the lake house. No mortgage, that would never have been possible. With her dead, it was all mine. I could afford that room at the Ritz.

And then a whole new life opened up for me. I found Rose, the mother I had always wanted, the Osbornes, the family I had always wanted. But because they were not mine and never could be I set out to destroy them. It was the old principle: if I can’t have them, no one can.

It was easy to take out this kid, Diz. More. It was a pleasure because I could think of Rose, suffering. I offered to help her, of course, and of course she could not resist my soft pleading, to be counted in, to help find her beloved youngest child. They say the youngest is always the most precious. I had no doubt, in Rose’s case, this is true. First I’d dealt with her husband, Wally. Now Diz. A blow to Rose’s heart.

I knew exactly where I would take Diz next and what I would do. No one would see Diz Osborne alive or dead again. The thought gave me intense pleasure.





55


Len watched the woman he now believed to be his daughter, on the opposite side of the lake, striding purposefully up the hill behind her house through the birch woods, then out of sight. He guessed he would have known who she was, what she was, if he’d looked properly at her earlier, taken a blind bit of notice instead of dismissing her from his mind as a meaningless grifter, a con artist of the highest order; a drama queen who milked her beauty for gain; who used her demure demeanor, her sad puzzled gaze until the world gave her what she wanted. And what they didn’t give, Bea took.

Bea Havnel’s name should, in reality, have been Beatrice Doutzer, though Len would never have claimed paternity. Only after her death had Lacey tried to foist that on him, and he was still puzzled about why. He guessed it was because in life, there’d been nothing to gain from a man who had nothing; she’d probably gotten more off whoever the poor bastard was she’d told was the father, until he’d disappeared into the night too. Or into death, the way Lacey had. The way several people who came in close contact with the beautiful Bea had.

Bea certainly did not have Len’s dour looks, nor his desire to be alone; nor, he guessed, his taxidermy skills. Not from him had she inherited the desire to torture, because Len was not into torture. That was purely Bea’s own desire. And torture was exactly what she was doing now, to Rose Osborne.