The Lies I Tell(42)
“What can I get for you?” the barista asked me.
“Black coffee, please.” Whatever would get me out of there the fastest. To Kat’s neighbor I said, “It was really great running into you!”
She smiled as she slid up to the counter to take her turn, and I grabbed my coffee and hurried out, as if I had somewhere important to be.
Instinct is a funny thing, a whisper of trouble that we can never quite name, never quite define, that allows us to locate danger. Women are taught from a young age to ignore theirs. We’re forced to justify our instincts with evidence, or we’re taught to ignore them—as a way to keep the peace, to prioritize other people’s comfort over our own.
It’s taken me a long time to override those impulses. To pay attention when something seems off. And my instincts weren’t wrong about Kat. The inheritance story was a good one—impossible for an outsider to verify—but it lacked the background details that might have fooled me for longer. An inheritance large enough to purchase a home in Los Angeles would show up in your life in other, smaller ways. Maybe as a new car, or nicer clothes. Jewelry. Even expensive highlights from the salon. But Kat had none of those things. She drove a ten-year-old Honda. Her yoga wear was from Old Navy, not Lululemon. Her makeup was from Sephora, not Neiman Marcus.
My mind began circling through ways to cut her loose. Become too busy to show her any more properties. Avoid her calls and texts, build a wall that would keep Kat separated from what I was planning.
But then my instincts kicked in. Casting her aside wouldn’t stop her. She’d continue to target me, follow me, possibly feeding information to Scott. But if I held her close, I could control the narrative. Make sure the only things she saw were curated by me. So I made her my assistant instead.
I’m not a fool. I know Kat plans to write about me, exposing who I am and what I do. I see beneath her soft sympathy and the delicate questions she’s likely known the answers to for years. But I have a plan too, and Kat will be a useful part of it.
It’ll be easy to pull her in and feed her the pieces I need her to have. And because she’ll be so close, it’ll be impossible for her to see the whole picture. Like standing under the Eiffel Tower—when you’re inside of it, it’s just a bunch of crisscrossed steel. It’s only from a distance you can see it for what it really is.
Kat
July
Scott’s reaction is predictable. “You have no idea how hard undercover work can be. It’s 24/7. We still have bills to pay.”
What he’s not saying: How will we be able to live and pay down my debt if you’re not cranking out six or seven shit articles a week? I swallow down a sharp reply. “I’ll work in the evenings. Carve out pockets of time when I’m not with Meg. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to write one thousand words about the power of positive thinking, or to come up with five new moves to super-sculpt your abs. Besides, Meg is going to pay me.”
He rolls his eyes. “She’s not going to pay you to hang out with her. It’ll be twenty hours of actual work a week, if you’re lucky.”
“We can economize. Eat out less often. Stay home more. It’s only for a couple months,” I say.
“You don’t know that.”
But I do. Meg isn’t back in Los Angeles to sell real estate to people like Veronica and her friends. I’m almost certain she’s after the Canyon Drive house, and she’s using the distraction of the election as cover. Taking advantage of a time when Ron can’t possibly be as focused as he should be.
“It’ll be over by Thanksgiving,” I hedge. “Four months. And if it’s not, I’ll step away and get some paying work.”
Scott nods and I pull him into a tight hug. By the new year, everything will be different. I can feel it.
***
The job turns out to be mostly property searches for clients Meg supposedly picks up from Veronica or her friends. I use the MLS—the Multiple Listing Service—which is a real estate database that has every house for sale, along with its purchase history. I can look up any property in Los Angeles and see all the buyers and sellers, going back decades.
The first thing I did was look up the Canyon Drive property. But it didn’t show me anything I didn’t already know. Bought in 1954 by Rupert and Emily Williams, refinanced in 1986 and again in 1993. Default on the loan in 2004, and a quitclaim deed to Ron Ashton that same year.
***
I’d worried that Meg might want to keep me separate from Ron, the better to shield whatever she has planned for him. But shortly after I start, she invites me along on a showing with him. He enters the Apex office in a wave of cologne and importance.
“It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Ashton,” I say, hoping to head off any indication this is the first time we’ve met. In my experience, politicians will never admit to not remembering someone, and Ron proves no different.
“You too,” he says, his eyes lingering a little too long on my chest. I cross my arms and plaster a smile on my face.
“I’m taking you to see a multiunit property that’s USC-adjacent,” Meg says as we walk toward the Apex parking garage.
“That’s real estate speak for low-income,” Ron says, making a beeline for Meg’s front seat.
I’d always intended to sit in the back—not just in my role as assistant, but to better view the two of them side by side. But the fact that he didn’t even make a show of offering the front seat to me tells me that Ron is here as a consumer, and he plans to consume everything.